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What Cloud brought back was something that I couldn’t really figure out. Inside of it was some weird mucus and it was submerged in the river.

“What is this…”
“No idea. But it might be something bad.”
“Huh, why?”

With those words, Cloud dropped the bag. His face turned pale all of a sudden and his body seemed to be in a pretty bad condition too.

“W-What happened!?”
“My body feels numb…”

He collapsed forward before he finished his sentence. I quickly caught it before he hit the ground, but his body was burning up.

“Wait… Did you contract the illness?!”

Michelle, who was being tortured by high fevers, flashed into my mind. Cloud was showing the same symptoms.

But why so suddenly… He didn’t show any signs of it until just a while ago. As I was thinking that, my gaze fell on the cloth bag at my feet.

Cloud said it was submerged in the river. That same river flowed into the city and it was the source of water for the citizens. What if someone put poison into that river? And that poison was this bag?

“Kabby, cast Antidote on Cloud!”
“Kyuu!”

Understanding my intention, Kabby quickly detoxified Cloud. Soon, Cloud’s condition visibly improved. But that wouldn’t restore his lost stamina, so he couldn’t stand up properly.

“U….Uah…”
“Cloud, are you awake?”
“I…Why…”
“Keep lying for some time. You discovered something very important.”
“Wha…?”
“The cloth bag that you found was probably poisoned. And that poisoned river water flowed into the city.”
“Then…”
“Yeah, Michelle and others should get better with this.”

Well, only if this was the only poison bag they left. I was thinking that but didn’t voice it.

This mucus-like thing was definitely poison. But it would have gotten dissolved in water quickly enough and disappeared.

In other words, it was put there very recently, which meant that the culprit would come again after a while.

This time, I was starting to get mad. If possible, I wanted to catch the culprit and hand them over to the authorities.

“I see. That’s good.”
“Can you stand? If not, I’ll lend you my shoulder.”
“Yeah, probably… Not.”

He tried to get up but collapsed again. It seemed that he still couldn’t put strength into his limbs.

Couldn’t blame him. He touched the undiluted solution of what poisoned hundreds of citizens with bare hands.

“Come, I’ll lend you my shoulder. Sorry, but you have to hang on. We need to bring this information back as fast as possible.”
“Got it.”

After putting the cloth bag inside my water pouch, I went to lend Cloud a shoulder. Or more like, I was practically carrying him.

Since the culprit put the poison here, there was no knowing when he would return. It would be almost impossible for Cloud to put up a fight against them in this condition. I wanted to get him out of this place as fast as possible.

Cloud’s powerless body was heavier than I expected, and he was also tall, so I was feeling oppressed as he leaned on me.

His limp arms slipped from my shoulders and touched my breasts, but I had no leeway to scold him for that. Cloud didn’t have the energy to enjoy it either.

We finally made it back a few hours past noon. The outward journey took us two hours, but it took more than double that.

As I made it to the gate, the strength left me and I collapsed.

The gate guard rushed to my side when he saw that. We were coming and going all the time, so we were all acquaintances. It was natural that he got worried when I collapsed like that.

“Hey, what’s the matter!?”
“F-Finally… Made it…”
“I have seen you collapse a lot Nicole, but it’s very rare for Cloud to be in that state.”

As the gate guard said in surprise, I told him to call Cortina at once.

“Huh, Lady Cortina? Why?”
“Hurry, we may have figured out the cause of the illness.”
“What did you say!?”

The epidemic had developed into a big problem for this city. If the cause became known, the method of curing it could also be discovered.

We detoxified Cloud, but we couldn’t do that for every single person suffering from it. It would be faster to distribute an antidote.

For that reason, we needed to ascertain what kind of poison it was. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the skills necessary for that, but Cortina and Maxwell might be able to do it.

We were carried inside the guard post and another guard rushed to notify Cortina. Meanwhile, Cloud was laid on the bed, where he lost consciousness and slept.

He was probably pushing himself with willpower alone to walk here.

Seeing that he was breathing calmly, I felt relieved for the time being. A simple detoxification spell seemed to have done the job.

Among the poisons, there were some that could only be cured with high-level detoxification spells. It was a blessing that this poison wasn’t one of those types.

Then, after I rested for a bit, Cortina came rushing while out of breath. Finia also followed behind her. They were probably worried about me, huh.

And then, I started talking to Cortina about the poison that was set up.