I Reincarnated Into A Single-Celled Organism! - I Reincarnated into a Single-celled Organism! - Chapter 90

After denouncing the advisor, there was a brief moment of silence as the words began to sink in. I had thought about things carefully, and this was my natural conclusion. Erika could be naïve, but she was also quick-witted, and her eyes flashed with realization first.

“If he hadn’t convinced me to leave, then I never would have left the castle vulnerable!” Erika looked over at him wide-eyed.

“My lord…” The advisor took a step back, and I could see his hand grasping something under his robe, “I would never do anything to threaten the kingdom…”

“No need to deny it.” I waved my hand dismissively. “Your crimes are obvious. Someone had to be there to allow the assassins into the castle in the first place in key positions. It would have been impossible to do it without an inside man. Since then, you’ve done nothing but encourage the escalation of the conflict with the Wildmen. You took the bribe of our enemy nations to push this exact scenario.”

“Enough!” the attendant was still near Erika, so he pulled a knife out and grabbed her, holding the knife to her. “Nobody move! This dagger is poisoned. A single nick and she won’t be able to pull through like last time.”

The Wildman woman had the closest view of everything going on. When I accused my attendant, she was dubious but seeing him pull the dagger all but confirmed my words, and she gasped. Several soldiers who rode out with the pair to provide protection also let out cries when they saw their queen under duress, reaching for their swords and taking a step forward. I held up my hand, stopping all of them.

“Since you favor poisons so much, I wonder what you’ll think of the one I’ve given you.”

“You… wait, wh-what…” His hand shook, and Erika took that moment to elbow him and escape his clutches.

He suddenly didn’t seem to have the strength to hold onto her. The advisor tried to grab after her, but his body seemed to stop listening to him and he collapsed to his knees. A moment later, he grabbed his gut and let out a cry of pain.

“You like it?” I grinned. “I took the wasting potion and then I modified it a bit. I’m afraid it works a lot more aggressively now.”

As for how I managed to poison him, I delivered it as an aerosol. I had already unlocked the secrets of the poison, so I was able to modify it to only target him. The poison itself wasn’t particularly dangerous, but it had been modified with magic. In a way, the magic acted as an enzyme. Specifically, it catalyzed the poison, allowing it to rapidly spread and persist in the body. The chemical I synthesized from the flower acted as a chelator.

The poison was a particular chemical that had a positively charged metal in it. That metal acted as an activation site. I wasn’t sure if magic had some association with electricity, but in this case, the negatively charged magic adhered to the positively charged poison. The flower chemical had a stronger electrical charge, or an ionic binding force, than the magic, so it would supplant the magic, causing the poison to become inert.

So, I modified the cure with my signaling trigger so that I could activate or deactivate the poison at will. It essentially functioned like the cells of my body. I could send an activation signal whenever the poison was within my range. Signal Transduction could be used in this way as well. Of course, if I didn’t activate it, the inert poison would eventually leave the body. At that point, it’d be harmlessly filtered by the kidneys and come out in the urine.

After making the poison selective, I further modified the cure so that if I sent the command, it’d morph into another form that did the opposite. Instead of blocking the activation site, it’d expand it, allowing each molecule of poison to connect to more magic. This would increase the potency by dozens of times, by my guess. However, I didn’t exactly have time to run trials, so I decided to go ahead and trigger it against the advisor as soon as I saw him going for his knife.

At first, he seemed fine, but then his body started to change. The man seemed to be growing thinner by the second. He let out another cry as the knife clattered to the ground, his hands no longer capable of holding it.

“You…” He glared hatefully as his body wasted away. “It doesn’t matter, you’ll never make it back to the castle in time. It’s too late!”

Erika looked away shamefully. It was clear by her expression that she felt guilt for falling for his ploy. Had she just done what I told her in the first place, we might have already passed this scenario. I wasn’t particularly worried though.

“This is why you were caught in the first place. You’re not mindful of your environment.” I pointed up as the red dragon sat up from where it had been crouched.

She casually blew out a cone of flame. It wasn’t as strong as her best, but the attendant barely could let out a cry as the fire flooded around him. He had already wasted away to nothing but bones, but the fire took care of the rest. Within seconds, he was reduced to ash. I hadn’t told the red dragon to do anything, but perhaps it had grown impatient.

“We have one more location to go,” I told the dragon.

“As I expected.” The dragon huffed, lowering its head back down as I leaped back onto it.

“You’re leaving?” Erika blinked as she finally realized the dragon was about to take off. “What about the army?”

“Negotiate,” I declared, pointing down. “With her.”

“Ah… me?” The Wildman woman was taken aback.

“Spirit… I don’t know if I can…” Erika began.

“I trust you,” I responded.

“Even after I…” She looked away shamefully.

“Especially because you did that,” I responded, causing her to look at me in surprise. “You are not my servant, you are my queen. In this world, you are the one who holds me accountable. You’re the one… who keeps me human.”

Erika suddenly looked shy. It seemed like my old playboy ways still worked when I wanted to get a girl to do something for me. In truth, I was confident the battle was over and didn’t want to get involved with the debating, so I dumped it on her.

“What about me?” The Wildman woman demanded.

“Are you not a princess? Strike a deal that most benefits both parties… Your brother only knows how to fight, so if we want peace, I will depend on you. Oh, and tell your brother if he wants to continue this war instead, he should remember, I have a dragon.”

With that, I gave a nod. The dragon snorted as it exploded off into the air. I could see both of them looking up at me with dumbfounded expressions. We flew high up into the clouds. I sat and considered a few things. It wasn’t too long until we landed at the castle. There was a small army that was in the process of breaking down the gates. The small retinue that had remained behind was desperately trying to support the door as it crumbled around them.

There seemed to be only a few minutes before the door finally gave way, but the arrival of the dragon completely upset the army.

“I suppose you want me to eliminate this army,” the dragon said as it landed.

“That won’t be necessary.”

I jumped from her back onto the ground. An entire army faced me, but they didn’t race forward on account of the dragon. I waved my hand, releasing poison spores. After observing the effect of the poison on the advisor, I made a few more modifications on the way. I combined the poison with Toxins and used Encapsulation to protect it. As a result, its effects were more drastic and far-reaching.

The men in the front immediately started coughing before collapsing, but it wasn’t long before the ones behind them joined. Like a wave, the entire army collapsed, one after another. Within five minutes, they were all dead. There was a bit of stunned silence, but someone on the other side of the wall seemed to recognize me and shout out the king’s name, followed by cheering. When I looked back at the dragon, it was staring at me with an inquisitive look.

“Just what are you?” the dragon asked.

“Just a human,” I responded, “Nothing more.”

“Well, human, have you been able to duplicate the flower?”

I looked down and sighed. “I have not. In the time allotted, the best I’ve been able to do is duplicate the seeds.”

I held out my hand, which was full of a few dozen seeds, which if planted in the right conditions, would eventually become the fire-cleansing orchids. Upon my admittance, the dragon’s eyes narrowed.

“Seeds were not the deal.”

I nodded. “I understand. I will come with you to incubate the egg myself.”