Chapter 25
Several hours later.
[What is all this?!]
At the thunderous voice, Cecil frowned. Though the voice hadn’t been heard through her ears, it rang so loudly in her head that her ears actually hurt.
[Cecil! Don’t tell me… Don’t tell me you spent all that money… on onions?!]
Nibelung’s shock was understandable.
Cecil had asked a servant to purchase something for her, and a few hours later, the servant returned with a sack full of what looked like dozens of onions.
“Can’t you keep it down? You’re hurting my ears. And they’re not onions, you idiot. They’re bulbs.”
Indeed, the item in Cecil’s hand resembled onions but was slightly different in shape and smaller in size.
[Bulbs? Like tulips?]
“Exactly.”
[What kind of profit are you expecting from tulips that you bought so many bulbs? Besides, it’s late spring. Isn’t it a little late to be planting flowers?]
Nibelung’s concern seemed reasonable, but Cecil didn’t look the least bit flustered. She chuckled and replied,
“Just watch.”
Planting bulbs required space.
Cecil had already scouted a good spot. In a corner of the backyard, far from the mansion, there was a small patch of land that seemed unused.
She began planting the bulbs one by one with a small trowel.
Her stamina wasn’t that great to begin with, and with the frail arms of an eight-year-old, her arms started aching after planting about fifteen.
“Phew, this is hard. I’ll plant the rest tomorrow.”
[Cecil, are you sure it’s okay to plant bulbs here? What if the gardener digs them up or throws them away?]
“That’s why I cast a perception-blocking spell over this area. No one but me will even notice it’s here.”
As she spoke, Cecil pulled something from her sleeve—a small vial containing a purple liquid.
“It’s a growth stimulant I developed for myself. It’s still unstable for human use, so I’ve just been storing it. But I finally get to test it out now.”
She let a single drop of the purple potion fall onto the soil where the bulb had been planted.
White smoke rose from the earth, and a green sprout emerged.
In the blink of an eye, the sprout stretched into a stem, and soon after, a large, vibrant blossom bloomed.
“Perfect success. Right?”
[Wow…]
Nibelung let out a sigh of admiration instead of words.
Cecil smiled. Her eyes sparkled with pride and anticipation as she looked down at the red petals.
For the bulbs to bring in real money, she had to wait for the right time. So, satisfied with having planted them, she returned to the mansion.
‘Better get back to my room before Anne finds me.’
She was thinking just that as she walked across the garden—when she overheard something.
“Did you hear? Count O’Neill’s daughter has been cursed!”
A curse. It was a word familiar to Cecil, though not something you commonly heard in this setting.
“Really? How did that happen?”
“I heard the Count angered a witch who lives in the forest…”
“Oh no, poor girl. She’s still so young.”
“She’s about the same age as Lady Cecil. How tragic.”
A group of maids were chatting, each carrying a basin under their arm, likely just back from hanging laundry.
‘Messing with a forest witch? What rotten luck. It’s unfortunate, but there’s nothing I can do.’
Cecil turned to head back to the mansion—until she heard the next part.
“They say the Count is looking for someone to break the curse. The reward is enormous.”
“Really? How much?”
“Something like… two thousand gold coins?”
Cecil froze in her tracks.
‘All that hard work selling mayonnaise only made me five gold coins… Two thousand?!’
Her mental calculator began spinning at lightning speed.
With two thousand gold coins, she could open a shop of her own instead of relying on personal connections to sell her inventions.
‘I don’t even know if I can break a witch’s curse in this child’s body… There’s a lot of risk, but… Two thousand gold changes everything.’
Without hesitation, Cecil turned toward the gate—not of the mansion, but the one leading outside.
‘Sorry, Anne. I’ll make so much money, I’ll make it up to you tenfold.’
Two hours later, in front of Count O’Neill’s estate.
Cecil stood before the count’s home.
She hadn’t gone through the main gate to avoid leaving a record of her visit. Instead, she used a small hole in the wall she had scouted earlier and rode a hired carriage instead of the duchy’s.
‘It took longer because I had to confirm the rumors along the way.’
Everything the maids had said turned out to be true—including the amount of the reward.
Of course, she couldn’t show up in her eight-year-old form and claim she could lift a curse. So Cecil slipped into a secluded alley and transformed into an adult.
Her short, curly black hair became long, flowing red waves. Her short, chubby limbs elongated, and freckles appeared across her face and body.
[Looks like you can maintain this form for about two hours. That’s a big improvement from the last time, when you barely lasted thirty minutes!]
‘I’ll need mana to lift the curse too, so it’s safest to finish everything within an hour.’
It was a tight deadline—breaking the curse and collecting the reward within an hour—but she had no other choice. Cecil decided to go for it.
She quickly headed to the count’s manor.
In the drawing room of Count O’Neill’s mansion.
Cecil sat across from the count and countess. Both of them wore deeply troubled expressions.
“I travel often due to managing several merchant guilds,” said the count, a man with a brown mustache, sighing heavily.
“That day too, I was returning from a business trip. I’d heard the Mantis Forest was rough, but I wanted to see my family as soon as possible, so I decided to cut through with my attendants.”
In short, the count and his men camped out for four nights as they traveled through the forest.
One day, they came across a hut. Glad to see signs of civilization, they approached to ask for a place to rest.
No one responded to their knocking, but the door was unlocked and the inside was pitch dark.
Feeling their way inside, the count saw a terrifying sight.
There, in the darkness, was a witch chanting spells and stirring a cauldron.
“She was tossing in ingredients like dried lizard tails and frog eggs while muttering incantations. The potion inside the cauldron glowed an eerie red.”
Frightened, the count tried to flee—but accidentally knocked over a shelf.
Bottles of strange ingredients—dried herbs, eyeballs—came crashing down.
Only then did the witch notice his presence.
Furious, she shouted:
‘You wretch! Do you know where you are?!’
‘I-I’m sorry! I thought no one was home…’
The count, trembling in fear, apologized profusely, but the witch wasn’t appeased. She glared at him with bloodshot eyes and said:
‘You have a daughter, don’t you?’
‘Wh-what? H-how do you know that…’
‘Keh keh keh… that poor girl. Because of your stupidity, she won’t live to see her full life. It’s a tragedy to have a father like you!’
The witch laughed maniacally, and the count fled the hut in utter terror.
“After that, I couldn’t stop worrying about my daughter’s safety. I rushed home, driving day and night for two days without sleep. And when I got here…”
The count sighed with a pained expression.
‘A classic reclusive dark mage. They’re all incredibly private.’
Cecil thought.
‘A dark mage living in the Mantis Forest… I think I know who that is.’
Dark magic was strictly forbidden by the empire’s religion. So dark mages typically lived in remote places with no contact with the outside world. The empire didn’t even bother policing them unless they caused trouble.
‘Unless they were like me in my past life, running around causing all sorts of mayhem.’
“We’ve called in many mages since, trying to lift the curse—but nothing has helped. I hope you’ll be the one to finally make a difference.”
As the count spoke, Cecil stole a glance at the clock.
‘Ten minutes already. If I want to finish this in under an hour, I need to move.’
She set down her teacup with a soft clink, drawing the count’s attention.
She said,
“Alright. Let’s begin. Please take me to your daughter.”
