The Heavenly Demon Can’t Live A Normal Life [EN]: Chapter 238

The servant’s smile disappeared suddenly.

His lips moved as if he wanted to speak, but then other servants came into the room, and he stopped.

Roman Dmitry drank his tea slowly.

He even ate a cookie, something he usually didn’t do. He seemed not to care about danger.

However, there was no dramatic change.

The servants quickly cleaned up and left, and Roman Dmitry, finishing his tea, sensed someone entering.

“What are you doing?! You drank it! Do you know what was in that tea?”

It was the servant who had just left.

It was Greg, the servant who had just left. He looked confused and angry.

A sudden warning.

There was a possibility that he wouldn’t be trusted.

But any normal person, regardless of trust, would naturally be wary of the suggestion that the tea might be poisoned.

Yet, Roman Dmitry had drunk the tea without a moment’s hesitation.

Greg had risked warning Roman Dmitry, but Roman Dmitry drinking the tea showed he didn’t care about the warning.

Plop.

He set down the teacup.

Roman Dmitry looked at Greg with a calm face.

“I knew from the start that Barbosa mainly uses poison. And poison doesn’t work on me.”

“…What do you mean?”

The moment he drank the tea, the energy of the poison spread through his body.

It showed the characteristics of a San Gong poison, subtly taking over the body to the extent that even Aura Swordsmen who handled mana would not notice its presence.

Barbosa’s weapon was certainly powerful.

If he had drunk this San Gong poison the day before, he would not have been able to reverse the situation when he stepped onto the main stage.

A poison that didn’t show on the outside.

This poison was deadly.

By the time he belatedly complained of abnormalities, his head would be flying from Barbosa’s sword, unable to utter any excuses.

However, the opponent was Roman Dmitry.

With the rapid development of his body, ordinary poisons no longer worked, and since accepting the flames of Hwama, it was no exaggeration to call it a state of immunity to all poisons.

The flames of Hwama burned away all the energy in the body that Roman Dmitry considered ‘foreign substances’.

It did not allow any impurities, and thanks to this, while maintaining pure energy, the poison was engulfed in the flames of Hwama as soon as he drank it.

The heat rising from within.

The heat flowing from the esophagus rendered Barbosa’s plan useless.

It was a truth Greg could not know.

His astonished face asked why he had drunk it even knowing the truth, but Roman Dmitry did not give him the answer.

“If you truly want to help me, can you prove with the remaining ingredients in the teacup that someone tried to poison me?”

“…It is possible, but the problem is time. It is no coincidence that Barbosa uses poison on the eve of the festival. Those who know, know that Barbosa deals with ‘poison,’ but there is no way to prove the poison used the day before until the main stage is over.

If you suspect the poison and give up the fight with Barbosa, Barbosa will seize public opinion and drive the opponent as a coward. Rejecting a duel in Valhalla is a disgraceful thing, regardless of the reason, so even if you present evidence at that time, no one will listen.

But to go on stage and prove the result, Barbosa’s sword is not easy.”

Barbosa was cunning.

The day before, he cornered his opponent.

Whether he drank the poison or not, it was a win for Barbosa.

If the opponent, wary of the poison, couldn’t eat anything and stayed up all night, that was the picture Barbosa wanted.

To somehow wear down the opponent’s condition.

The swordsmanship of Barbosa, called the Twelve Swords of the Continent, was capable of completely overwhelming the opponent with just that much difference.

He was trapped.

In a situation where he would normally have no choice but to succumb, Roman Dmitry chose the bold method of drinking the poison.

Roman Dmitry rose from his seat.

“Prove that there was poison in this teacup by the time the main stage ends tomorrow. If you bring me the results I want, you will also get the results you want.”

He didn’t wait for an answer.

He moved his steps.

Barbosa used poison first. Now Roman Dmitry would use that as a reason to attack back.

The servants who carried the refreshments.

One of them bowed to a man and spoke in a secretive voice.

“Roman Dmitry drank the poison. Since he even ate the cookies, it is certain that he has been poisoned.”

“Is that so?”

The man’s identity was the butler in charge of overseeing the external guests.

Unlike his neat appearance, he stroked his gray beard and gave a sly smile.

“Foolish man. Drinking it so easily. Dmitry will regret this.”

This mission.

He judged that the possibility of failure was high.

Roman Dmitry was such an unpredictable person, and he had shown himself as a strategist on the battlefield, so it was not easy to poison him before the duel.

But was it because his subordinate had won the eve festival?

More easily than expected, he committed the careless mistake of drinking the poison.

It was then.

As the butler took the gold coin pouch and turned around, a familiar figure burst into the kitchen where the butler was.

“Are you the head of this place?”

“Yes, I am…….”

Wham!

Thwack!

“Kraaah!”

The butler’s face was slammed against the wall.

Roman Dmitry grabbed the opponent’s hair and looked down at the face from which blood was dripping.

“The servants here just fed me poisoned tea. As the head of those who manage them, you cannot escape that responsibility. What poison did you feed me? And did Barbosa order you to feed me poison?”

“N-No! What on earth are you talking about! I have nothing to do with it!”

The butler’s face turned pale.

Surely not.

He didn’t expect him to find out about the poison and come here so recklessly.

He denied it for now.

He thought that if he emphasized that he was just a butler, Roman Dmitry would not be able to do anything about it.

“No, you are not unrelated. If you were unrelated, there would have been no reason for the servants to receive gold coins from you.”

Slap.

*Smack!* The sound echoed in the suddenly quiet room as Roman Dmitry slapped the servant hard across the face.

The servant, pale and thin, with vacant, unseeing eyes, stumbled back as if he would fall. But Roman Dmitry’s merciless grip on his collar held him steady.

Even if the gold coins given to the servant seemed like a small reward, Roman Dmitry knew they were important.

It was not a small thing that the butler checked every servant before they served food. This showed the butler was in charge of security and knew everything that happened in this house.

Roman Dmitry believed the servant had no right to feel unfairly treated. He was being punished for a serious crime.

“If you think I am wrong to hit you,” Roman Dmitry said, his voice cold, “then call the person who is really in charge here. Let them explain this situation.”

“…Th-that’s…”

Hesitating eyes gave conviction to the violence.

The servant’s short hesitation showed he was not worried about the serious crime. He seemed more worried about making a mistake.

From then on, he added no more words.

Smack!

He slapped the servant across the face again.

Roman Dmitry made a loud scene on purpose. He wanted to make someone in charge come quickly to stop him. He wanted to force the ‘tail’ – the person sent to fix problems – to show themselves.

Roman Dmitry did not beat around the bush. Just as the opponent openly used poison, he openly used violence, ruthlessly poking at the opponent’s mistakes.

It was as expected.

In order not to escalate the situation, the ‘tail’ had no choice but to reveal itself.

* * *

“Stop this at once! What in the world is going on here!”

It was Baron Jonathan. His face, still stinging from a past beating, now showed pure bewilderment at the situation before him.

In that instant, Roman Dmitry smiled.

If Baron Jonathan was the tail, it meant that Marquis Belphegor and Barbosa were beyond him.

Thud.

Leaving the servant, who was barely gasping for breath, Roman Dmitry wiped the blood from his hands.

“Just now, the servants here poisoned me. And the butler gave them a pouch of gold coins as if praising them. Baron Jonathan, what do you say about this? I am certain that they were acting under someone’s orders, poisoning me to disrupt the festival stage.”

“That can’t be! Don’t shame Valhalla!” Baron Jonathan exclaimed.

At Roman Dmitry’s words, his heart sank.

Barbosa’s poison could never be detected by ordinary means. Colorless and odorless, its ability to slowly scatter mana meant that its effects were not immediately apparent.

But how on earth did he find out?

Unlike his wildly beating heart, Baron Jonathan maintained a confident attitude.

“Valhalla’s festival is a sacred stage! If such a thing had happened, we would seriously look into the truth and punish it severely. But Roman Dmitry, the butler using poison is just a guess. We use magical tools to detect poison before serving food to our guests. So, what reason do you have to be so sure that there is poison in the tea?”

Baron Jonathan tried to control the situation. He avoided taking blame. Instead, he tried to blame Roman Dmitry.

“If there is no poison in this tea, can Roman Dmitry be responsible for it? This matter is not simple. It is an act of shaming Valhalla, and even if the guest is very important, we cannot just ignore it. If you are so suspicious, cancel the festival stage. I will report directly to His Majesty the Emperor and put another warrior on stage in Roman Dmitry’s place.”

It was a fallback plan.

If Roman Dmitry avoided the confrontation, they would proceed with one of the plans they had initially considered, framing Roman Dmitry as a ‘coward’.

The truth? It didn’t matter.

After all, Valhalla controlled both the investigators and the evidence, so how could the existence of poison be proven?

Roman Dmitry was not allowed a place to reveal the truth to the citizens of Valhalla.

The reason Barbosa had always been able to win was because he was on the side of the powerful.

But then, Roman Dmitry showed a different reaction than expected.

“The stage will proceed as planned. But I have no intention of just forgetting what happened today. Baron Jonathan, if the existence of poison is proven, you will have to be responsible for what you just said to me.”

With this, the issue of poison came to the surface.

At the sight of Roman Dmitry taking a step back, Baron Jonathan felt a strange unease, unlike his relaxed face.

* * *

The series of events was reported to Marquis Belphegor and passed on to Barbosa.

“Roman Dmitry has discovered the existence of the poison. Will it be alright?” Marquis Belphegor asked.

Barbosa’s face was revealed in the light. His snake-like face was filled with a broad smile.

“Marquis Belphegor, do you know why I prefer that poison? It is a different concept from ordinary poison. At first, people poisoned with it don’t even realize there’s a problem due to the subtle effects, but the mana-scattering effect soon leaves them pale-faced and in a very bad situation. Roman Dmitry is in the same boat. I don’t know how he found out about the colorless, odorless poison, but he is now convinced that the poison is not having a significant effect.”

San Gong poison was a well-known name in the *Murim world* – a world of martial arts experts.

However, Barbosa was the one who created a new type of San Gong poison here, on the *Salamander Continent* – this land where our story takes place.

Whirr!

Thud.

He slammed a dagger on the table. Revealing a chilling aura, Barbosa spoke with conviction.

“Even if he is not poisoned, what is there to worry about? Even if he easily beat Morales, that does not mean he is equal to me. I will prove it before the people. The difference between Valhalla’s 12th rank and 6th rank is not simply six steps, but an overwhelming difference that cannot be dared to look up to. As always, trust me.”

“Indeed, you are reliable,” Marquis Belphegor smiled.

Barbosa was a loyal dog of the *Progressives* – a powerful group in Valhalla who wanted to control everything.

He was the perfect person to flawlessly decorate the ending of this plan.

The night, which had been bustling since the eve, thus, the day came to an end.

But the next day, the festival that everyone had been waiting for was heated up early in the morning by a single rumor.