Ugh like everybody, I'm also frustrated how Karsas don't just kill the council and get this over with. But the author be really cooking. After reading the novel, now I'm disappointed by my utter lack of faith in their plot building because they wrap it up so cleanly, well putting the romance aside, story had a decent end of tying it all together.
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MAJOR SPOILER AHEAD
DON'T READ IF YOU'RE NOT REALLY CURIOUS SINCE THE MANHWA IS ALREADY PRETTY CLOSE TO THESE PARTS
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Karsas goal in his bet with the council was to consume more of the black potion since he needs it to grow his power, the more he consumes it, the stronger he gets. Because Karsas locks himself in his room after their potion feeding sessions, Truyde mistakenly thought that he was addicted to it and is experiencing the side effects hard but in reality he was just training and growing his power in there. This whole time there was really no real risk for Karsas because he is immune to the potion and its not because of Melmont's antidote either.
Remember when he was a kid? Karsas was often killing small animals, his ability was to summon them but when he was in the forest with Abel, he was able to summon large animals like the bear that Ashler helped defeat. That means the forest was making Karsas possess the power he would have developed as an adult while he was there. So when Truyde burned down the whole forest, the forest's power ended up being aborbed by Karsas thus making him powerful enough to withstand the poisoning despite being a kid that was supposed to be underdeveloped yet.
Karsas considers the council really dumb for not even questioning how his eyes healed when no other kings before him was ever recorded to have regrown missing body parts.
He is just playing with the council since he's bored out of his mind and is killing time before his power is truly at its max. Karsas is saving up getting rid of Truyde for last since he think he at least deserves to know that it was his ego that ended up giving Karsas the power to defeat them. I say his ego because Truyde was well aware that he can just order the brainwashed previous king to retrieve the prince that was hiding in the forest but no, he wanted to exert his dominance and show Karsas that even inside the refuge of the forest, he can not hide from the power of the council.
I was not really feeling the ml so I kinda was not into the romance part of this story but the plot and revenge part keeps me hooked. So I decided to read the novel to skip to those reveals instead.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
MAJOR SPOILER AHEAD
DON'T READ IF YOU'RE NOT REALLY CURIOUS SINCE THE MANHWA IS ALREADY PRETTY CLOSE TO THESE PARTS
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Turns out the black potion was just Truyde's blood and that's why it can't be produced in large quantities and will easily spoil. You know the key ingredients they were looking for? It was the Hawk's herb, the one the birds eat so they can eat spoiled meat. I believe Karas mentioned this herb to Ashler when he was recalling it as one of Abel's lesson to him as a child. What prompted this discovery was while Truyde was about to rape Abel after torturing him, he forcefully kissed Abel and that's when Abel smelled the herb on him. Truyde was utterly shaken when Abel pointed out to him that his scent was similar to that herb and he left hurriedly for the dragon's forest to confirm something. Abel was shocked that something he pointed out half-mindedly let him escape being killed and raped.
Abel then tells this discovery to Karas but Abel was pretty sure that it can't be an ingredient to the black potion since the herb is not poisonous enough and thus making it a useless info, Karas though, immediately figured out what it was for. Truyde was eating the herb himself to prevent stomachache from consuming spoiled meat, and you know what the spoiled meat was? It was the freaking corpse of the previous king, Karas' father. Truyde was five when his father forced him to eat a black meat (it was either he ate it or his father would strangle him to death), since then he needed to eat the corpse periodically to continue absorbing the dragon's power in his body to maintain the potency of the black potion, it was the duty passed down to the head of the family. He's currently doing the same to his toddler son btw, feeding him the corpse.
This did not surprise Karas tho since it would make sense that only the dragon's power can defeat the dragon's power. He initially thought that the black potion was made from his father's body and was kind of disappointed to know that it was just Truyde's blood.
Wasn't expecting him to be killed by that person, but the build up to it was really truly satisfying.
Saw someone commenting that it's still missing, so I translated and uploaded this chapter too. Hope it gets approved soon.