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“I don’t know? What do you mean by ‘thing’?”

Akkard inquired, raising one eyebrow as if he was taken aback.

Damia nodded with perplexed eyes.

“Yes. I had only overheard a tiny bit.”

Damia then wondered why she had thought Akkard would know about the item Louise had talked about.

Akkard’s brow furrowed when he heard her answer. He remained silent for a while as if he were in a difficult situation, and then surprisingly explained further.

“They were referring to a kind of drug that causes mental illness.”

“……What? Drugs?”

Damia asked, feeling like her throat was closing up. Herbs and ingredients for many drugs usually grew a lot in hot areas. Therefore, they were unfamiliar to those who lived in the cold, conservative, and barren north like Damia.

“I guess you don’t know. It’s a product that secretly has been circulating among the southern nobles recently, but I haven’t heard about it being in the north.”

As expected, the news was late to arrive here because the north was a remote place.

Akkard clicked his tongue against his teeth in displeasure and put down the tableware in his hand. He added a brief explanation, And for the alarmed Damia.

“Compared to more commonplace drugs, this one is much more addictive and works quicker. It breaks down the mind, makes people anxious, and renders them unable to discern reality from hallucinations.”

“Oh my God! Why would people take such drugs?”

Damia was confused by the purpose of such unfamiliar narcotics.

Her heart sank numbly upon contemplating Cecil might eat such a thing.

Upon glimpsing Damia’s feeble trembling fingertips, Akkard softened his tone.

“The purpose is simple. After you’ve broken the mind with drugs you can make them a desperate customer that clings to the supplier. That way, you can control people as you please.”

There was a faint sense of resentment in Akkard’s explanation. He had witnessed several people struggling with their drug addiction in the south.

In the midst of the high, they had been full of confidence, morale and so they had looked more attractive.

But it made them burn brightly before their flame was exhausted and the night consumed them.

Having depleted their energy with drugs, they became frightened beasts. Illusions, hallucinations, and lifeless nightmares rushed in and ate away their reason. He witnessed people succumbing to endless seizures, panic attacks, crippling them and ruining any hope for a stable life.

These were common symptoms of withdrawal, one couldn’t even spend their day properly, only seeking the next hit. The only way to overcome these horrible symptoms was to take more drugs. So they did anything to get the medicine.

Akkard knew of a man willing to sell his wife and daughter, and even his last dignity left as a human being in exchange for only a handful of narcotics.

‘It’s repulsive.’

From the ‘pollution’ to a growing drug epidemic. The current situation in the south was an increasingly unrelenting hellhole.

Akkard’s eyes clouded over.

It struck him as suspicious. Just as many pro-temple aristocrats followed the High Temple in the north, there were usually many pro-king aristocrats who followed the royal family in the south.

However, why are so many disasters concentrated only in the southern part of the country, which can be said to be the home of the pro-king faction?

It was as if…….. it was an elaborate plan to dismantle the supporting party of the royal family step by step.

“How complicated,”

Damia muttered, shaken.

She also had so many mysteries to solve. How Cesare got his hands on drugs this far north. And why would they want to feed it to Cecil?

Fortunately, she now had a partner to solve these dilemmas together.

“What does Cecil Evergreen have?”

Akkard clenched his chin after he asked.

Damia replied, stuttering as she tried to organize her racing thoughts.

“Well… um, the… Cecil’s family… transports the mineral trade. It’s a distribution business that transports minerals mined from northern mines to the capital.”

“So they work in the water transportation distribution network,”

Akkard mumbled his conclusion.

In the northern parts, where there was barren farmland, instead, there were mines where precious metals and iron ore could be dug up.

The north’s geography was a hostile, rocky, mountainous area. The metals mined were extremely heavy.

It was not easy to distribute them beyond the treacherous mountains to distant capitals.

One of the few families that managed to do this stably was Cecil’s family, Marquis Evergreen.

“Perhaps there are things they need to transport from the High Temple to the capital or vice versa.”

Secretly.

A cold smile spread over Akkard’s face.

***