Survivance Affection

Chapter 8: Information

Kim Dokja climbed out of the window, down a long makeshift rope made from his bedsheets and other cloth he scrounged up from around his room, with one end secured to the leg of his bed. He was yet again greeted by the darkness of the night. The garden had become eerily quiet, the only sound being the rustling of some bushes and the distant steps of knights patrolling the castle. Unlike last time he snuck out, he didn’t bring Hand Sooyoung or Jung Heewon.

Dokja needed to gather some essential information for the future prosperity of the story, starting with anything he could find out about a certain drug from the novel. Later in the plot a noble family would go on to trick Yoo Mia into ingesting it, ultimately killing her, but little was revealed about how it worked or its exact effects.

Fortunately, his escape using the rock in the garden went much better than the first night, and he quickly made his way out of the castle and into the dark urban streets. Even though it was late at night, there were still a significant amount people walking about. Dokja wrapped his cloak tighter around his person and sped up his walking.

He arrived to a small alleyway between a butcher shop and a blacksmithing store. Dokja immediately entered it and went through the first door he saw, seeing light seeping from between it’s cracks. Once in the building, his eyes had to take a second to adjust to the light, but the sight that greeted him was a sparsely filled tavern. The interior was deteriorated slightly, with all the customers either drinking by themselves or passed out on the floor.

Sitting down at the bar with his face and body still concealed by his cloak, Dokja waved to get the bartender’s attention.

"Good evenin’ dear customer, what I can get for ya’!" the older bartender asked jovially.

"…Omniscient,"

The bartender’s eyes turned stone cold within the second. After taking a look around the room for a second, he hunched over the bar, bracing his elbows on it.

"What do you need from me, sir?"

Kim Dokja had frequented this bar often, though rather than drinking he’d used it as a base for his info gatherers, though he’d made a point to always conceal his face and identity from them.

"The White Kill drugs, tell me everything you know about them." The bartender’s eyes widened in alarm.

“H-How do you know of those sir…!”

The White Kill drugs were exclusively sold on the black market. While the general populace and the empire are unaware of these medications, there were still a select few aristocrats who are already familiar with them. In small doses, the drugs were actually used for medicinal purposes, but nobles had started abusing them for their own purposes.

Dokja leaned in closer to the man and spoke coldly, "It’s not your business to how or where I attain my knowledge from. Just tell me what you know and we’ll both be on our way.”

His body tensed with anxiety and his lips trembling, the bartender whispered, " When ingested, the drug makes you obey the person you first see after take it. It’s often used by nobles to coerce strangers to bed with them of their own will.”

"Hmmm, does it have the same effects of an aphrodisiac? Are there any other side effects?"

The older man hummed thoughtfully as contemplating the question, then abruptly snapped his finger.

"No, it doesn’t act as an aphrodisiac, but after the drug wears off the target will forget everything they had said or done while under it’s effects."

"But the target will still remember the person that drugged them, correct?"

"Yes… though it’s useless if the target has no idea they’d been drugged in the first place."