This Heroine's Friend Has the Power of Botany

Chapter 72

Poisoning

After separating herself from the others, Ellie spent her time channeling magic power in her secret dimension. In her cultivation plots, a variety of crops were ready for harvest, and even the orchard was beginning to bloom and bear fruit. This made the secret dimensional plots from the Setter family flourish abundantly. If it weren’t for the fact that these secret dimensional plots couldn’t contain living animals, Ellie might have caught insects or butterflies to help with pollination.

Due to the limitations of this treasure, she had to use her own hands to pollinate the plants, which took a bit of time. Fortunately, her botanic powers allowed her to distinguish between male and female pollens, making the work manageable; otherwise, the task would have been much more difficult.

Working in her own space, Ellie felt somewhat disconnected from the outside world. She truly enjoyed spending time with herself. Perhaps after graduating, Ellie would live in a remote place, happily tending to her small vegetable garden. If she needed more money, she could just accelerate the growth of rare herbs and sell them.

Ah...but until then, she needed to learn more effective self-defense techniques.

In past battles, if she hadn’t relied on her Spirit Rake, her purple mushroom power wouldn’t have been effective against beasts. Even if it transformed into a large purple mushroom, decomposition would still take time. In a real fight, enemies wouldn’t wait for her to finish decomposing them; they’d easily slit her throat with their swords.

Ellie’s future plans were becoming clearer. As soon as she advanced to a Level 3 elemental user, she would awaken her powers again. This time, she would choose to bond with a more formidable plant, using her own eyes to find one with strong offensive capabilities.

Of course, that was only a rough plan. For now, the most important thing was for her to train her powers more. If possible, she hoped to reach Level 3 within the next month.

With the permanent power-enhancing crystals from the Setter family, Ellie believed it wouldn’t be long before she could advance her power level. Additionally, during the special mission, Ellie used her power daily to accelerate the growth of plants in her secret dimension, then allowed her body to recover. As mentioned earlier, using up her power reset her energy levels, helping her empty body quickly absorb natural energy and expand her power storage capacity.

Despite the many headaches here, Ellie had gained significant benefits. Especially with her spores and purple mushrooms, which were almost at Level 2. Through battles and consuming the life force of numerous beasts, it wasn’t surprising that her spores were now flourishing and multiplying rapidly.

Fortunately, Ellie’s bonded plant summoning power differed from others’. Once summoned, maintaining their form didn’t require additional magic power. Otherwise, the sheer number of spores would have surely exhausted her to the point of fainting. She only needed to summon them initially and then pay magic power again for different options—whether to disperse into small spores or gather into a plant. Thus, maintaining the spores wasn’t an issue.

Ellie felt fortunate to have the purple mushroom as her first companion. Its versatility and low magic consumption were valuable. If it had been another plant, she wasn’t sure it would have been as good.

While absorbing energy from the permanent power-enhancing crystal, Ellie also used her time to monitor her surroundings through the vision of her spores. This allowed her to notice some abnormalities happening between the story’s heroine and an important figure in the camp.

The fact that someone was scattering poison powder around the camp without arousing suspicion was odd from the start. Ellie guessed it had to be an insider. However, she had never suspected the Camp Leader before.

His actions and the way he spoke about the poison powder to Nara surprised her. Additionally, the young man approached Nara with an unusual determination... Wasn’t he the Camp Leader? In such a situation, why was he wandering around alone? There were no soldiers protecting him. Was this even possible?

Fortunately, Ellie had witnessed the scene from beginning to end and heard what they said about her. Her instincts, honed from years of being a salaried worker, told her this was similar to the typical collusion between a boss and a sycophantic employee. It indicated that both of them were interested in her, but their true intentions were unknown.

In the past, Ellie knew that when coworkers talked about her, it was usually out of jealousy, not wanting the boss to recognize her value over theirs. They would subtly suggest that she wasn’t suitable for her position, implying that the boss shouldn’t give her too much credit. On the other hand, the boss would mention her to make everyone else resent her. This was a special tactic the boss always used because the boss was insecure, fearing that a competent employee might overshadow them. To prevent this, they would incite discord among their subordinates, ensuring that if any issues arose, the boss would still be needed to manage the chaos.

Of course...the boss wasn’t the company owner. They didn’t care if the company’s chance of development would suffer due to employee conflicts. They just needed to perform their role well enough for upper management to see. If the executives decided the highly paid boss was no longer necessary, why would they continue to employ them?

All of this stemmed from a shared goal of securing their salary and position, making it easy to predict their actions. But in this world, money and position weren’t everything. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be creators of demonic beasts, right?

Some people took adversarial stances for fun, some acted out of personal grudges, and some just wanted to vent their anger. This world was much more complex and dangerous. Everyone lived on the fine line between "life" and "death," making their thoughts difficult to predict.

Ellie knew Nara quite well, so she could guess what Nara was thinking. But the person she was most wary of was the Camp Leader.

Didn’t Aman warn her not to stand out too much? Yet, how could her position as an important member of the Setter family not be prominent? Or was it when she fought the beasts with a Level 5 Spirit Rake? Regardless of the event, Ellie felt like she was becoming the focus of many eyes.

However, she couldn’t hide all her abilities; otherwise, she would limit herself too much in the future. For instance, the rake she received from the Setter family—even if she didn’t use it now, everyone would eventually know she had such a treasure from the Setter family. At that point, it might become even more suspicious why she had never used it.

Moreover, if she hadn’t taken action in the last battle, the injuries might have been twice as severe.

While she was contemplating these events and training her powers, a frantic voice called out in front of her tent.

"Student Ellie! Are you inside? You need to come out right now." The urgent tone of the person outside made Ellie move quickly. She threw all her crystals back into her dimensional ring and went out to meet the caller.

Outside, 3 soldiers stood with stern faces. Ellie looked around and saw several of her fellow students looking worried. It seemed that whatever was happening was serious.

"What happened?"

"You need to see for yourself! This matter requires an explanation, and someone must be held accountable!" The soldier’s harsh voice boomed. His strong arm grabbed Ellie’s small one to lead her to the center of the camp.

Grab!

However, before the soldier’s rough hand could disrespect Ellie, Wint, who had followed, grabbed the soldier’s arm tightly. His face looked stern and fierce.

"You should not be rude to a lady. Besides, we don’t know the full reason yet. Isn’t Lady Celey investigating this matter? You should let the investigation be completed first," Wint defended Ellie, clearly irritating the soldier. Nonetheless, his bravery encouraged several other students to speak up in support.

"P-Please, sir, calm down. Lady Ellie concocted more than 10 cauldrons of medicine, but only those who drank from the last cauldron showed any abnormalities. We think something must have gone wrong."

"Exactly, and there’s no reason for Lady Ellie to do such a thing."

"Sir, it’s best to wait for the investigation’s results. If Lady Ellie is truly at fault, then we can hold her accountable," several students chimed in. The soldiers exchanged glances, they truly didn’t want to have problems with the institution.

"Fine, then. Come wait for the results with us. I won’t let you sneak away," one soldier said, pointing ahead to make Ellie lead the way.

Wint looked at Ellie with confidence in his eyes. He knew she would never do such a thing. However...this incident needed careful investigation!

Ellie walked in the direction the soldiers indicated. Regardless, she was bound to be suspected. If not for Nara and the Camp Leader’s clear alibis as they were together since moments ago, Ellie might have suspected them. She needed to find out what happened, and what went wrong with her medicine.

"What happened?" She whispered to Wint as they walked. He replied in a low voice as well.

"The last cauldron of medicine was poisoned. It caused 10 people to lose consciousness. The soldiers believe you poisoned them and are linking it to the poison powder that attracts the beasts."

Hearing Wint’s explanation, Ellie’s brows furrowed in deep thought. The timing seemed too coincidental. Suddenly, she was accused of poisoning the soldiers and being behind the poison powder incident. If she couldn’t prove her innocence, she would be labeled as the culprit and eliminated.

But...what reason did they have for framing her for everything!?

As Ellie pondered, she saw Aman appear ahead. They exchanged a glance and instantly understood the gravity of the situation.

It seemed that as soon as Ellie became the Setter family’s people, all her actions were seen as being under the family’s command. Therefore, if she used poison powder, it was as if the Setter family had used poison powder to eliminate people. If this news spread, how much damage would it do to their reputation!

Sigh...Even though she had anticipated this, the enemies of the Setter family were truly formidable.

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