Tale Spinster

EP 6: THE BET

"Wh–what do you mean, Your Majesty?" I gulped.

"Let's bet. The winner shall take the slave."

"And what would we bet on?" My voice was so weak. 

Damn it. I didn't know Diana was this scared of the King. 

In the book, the King died. That was the only reason Kieran could rally his people and took down Malatai quite easily. And because her brothers were all cowards and ran away, there was only Diana that was left to take on all of Kieran's rage.

He had a lot of rage.

A LOT.

And a LOT more pent-up sexual frustration. Like seriously. It made me shudder every time I remember all the things I read about what he did to Diana.

"The slaves are needed to mine Rolexia elixir to find the cure for Lady Mirala," the King said slowly. "The royal alchemist told me he needs a thousand liter of Rolexia elixir to cure Lady Mirala completely."

I gulped. I felt like this king was bent on giving me an impossible task.

"We are only at a fraction of the amount we need. One day of mining produces approximately two millimeters of elixir. We predict that in two years from today we can finally have the cure for Lady Mirala." He continued, "However if you can figure out how to cure Lady Mirala in a month, I will free all the slaves."

I had to blink several times before the words register in my mind.

He said he would free all the slaves. But the way he said it made me suspicious. I wondered what kind of illness Lady Mirala was having. Because if it was a curable illness, surely the King wouldn't go to all this trouble of mining the cure for her for two years.

Technically, I am a medical student. So... this should be in my element. However, I am in a novel world. The rules of nature here are different from the rules of nature in my world. The human anatomy could very well be different, too.

I did know, however, that the humans in this novel world still have red-colored blood.

Besides, if they had projected the cure to be complete in two years, yet I was asked to find the cure in a month... then it was obvious the King was testing me. He set up an impossible task for me, though I did not know what he would get from this.

"And... if I couldn't do it?" I asked meekly.

Van Dich and Margeritha gasped when they heard me considering the King's offer. They looked at me in disbelief. No. They looked at Diana in disbelief.

The King shrugged. "If you can't do it, then the boy dies."

Now the boy gasped behind the iron bars. I looked straight at the boy in ragged clothing. A woman slave soothed him in the cell. When I looked all around the cell, I couldn't see the white wolf anywhere.

I gulped. The pressure was getting to me.

I literally knew nothing about the medical world of this world and the elixir they had been mentioning. It would be suicide. But... I didn't see any other way to free the boy. And even if I could sneak the boy out of the palace, what if there was another werewolf slave that got sick because of the bacteria in the mining cave and spread the disease to Black Rose Kingdom?

Saving all the slaves would be the safest bet I could take. For my own life in the novel and for everyone else.

Besides, this was a fictional world. If the boy dies... it's not like I have killed a human child...