Limits

When Nick left, I started to comb through the Great Scriptures of Evil Medic to find any poison I could use on many people at once. If I wanted to accomplish Nick's last favour, I would have to kill all the people in this village not sparing anything, not even animals.

There were some recipes that could accomplish this deed but the ingredients were not widely available. I needed something versatile and easy to make. I couldn't find anything that would be easy to make, so I recalled all the recipes from the Evil Manual of Medicine. I only found one that fit the criteria and was not that hard to make. It was called Cloud Haze Poison. This poison was in liquid state but when it made contact with the air, it would turn into a cloud of poison, spreading for couple hundreds of metres.

I would need 3 vials of that. My plan was to set up the 3 vials in a triangular formation that would contain the village inside and spread the poison. When the poison was inhaled it would spread inside the body and affect the internal organs. The symptoms were simple, those who inhaled the poison would vomit blood constantly until they died from lack of blood.

I also needed an antidote for this poison, so that I would be able to intake it and give some to Shelly. My plan was formed and now all I needed was to gather all the ingredients and create the poison. I had no one watching over me anymore and Rand would probably wonder where his servant/disciple went. I guessed that Rand will visit me or at least try to find out if I had something to do with it.

Of course I already had that covered up and even if they could find the body which I highly doubted, they still wouldn't be able to trace it to me. I practiced my art of hidden weapons for the rest of the day and only stopped to eat some food.

The next day I went back to the workshop as usual and I noticed that besides Grond, Rand was there as well. When I entered, I showed a surprised expression and said to Rand "You are not here often. Actually, you never visited before". To which Rand said "Did you see my disciple the past week or so?" I showed a confused expression and said "What disciple?". Rand's face went a bit grim and said "The one that brought you over the other day to my study, and the one that you talked about your work here".

I said "Oh, this guy? I didn't know he was your disciple. No I didn't see him at all". Rand looked at me deeply then said to Grond "Alright, I will talk with you some other time". He then left. I knew he was still suspicious but he couldn't believe that I would be able to do something to his disciple. Besides he probably came back to check if I did all my work for the past days they were absent.

There was only one evidence that would tie my in with that disciple guy Rand spoke of. That would be the copy of the book I found on his body. I still had the book, I just didn't have time to read it. I mostly focused on my training and my Great Scriptures of Evil Medic but I wasn't stupid enough to leave that book at my house. I hid it in the forest and even if he manages to find it, He would not be able to link it to me.

I started my work as usual and completed the 3 ingots in the afternoon. I then went back to the house to collect Shelly and together we went to the river for some fishes. Shelly was very proficient at hunting in the water so I didn't have to do anything besides making a fire and cooking the fishes.

After the meal, we returned to the house where I would read and practise my art of hidden weapons. At the moment I needed to learn how to place and retrieve daggers from around my body, so that my whole body is a hidden weapon and not just my sleeves. This was not an easy task because I would have to make certain moves to accomplish retrieving or hiding a dagger in that place. For example, if I wanted to hide or retrieve a dagger from some place near my boots, I would have to bend down and that alone would waste time.

I thought about this aspect and figured something out. I could only use some of the hidden weapons on my body when there was a specific situation. Like jumping, dodging, running and so on. My idea was wrong in the beginning because I always thought I need to be motionless but that was wrong to assume. I needed to be able to retrieve a dagger from any place while I was on the move.

This way I could retrieve a dagger from my legs, back etc as long as I was in the move. I instantly tried this out and to some extend I was able to accomplish this. What was left was practise as well as correct placement of my daggers on my body. These daggers didn't just levitate around me, I still needed holders and therefore I needed to create more holders for more daggers as well as adjust them in such a way that would not hinder my movement in any way.

While thinking and practising like that, I came up with another idea. I was much more proficient at the long distance battle due to the training I did but because of that my close combat was not so great. I could calculate my opponent's moves and what not but against someone that had rich experience, I would lose.

The idea I came up with was to tie a string of some sort to my dagger and then use that to retrieve it and attack in close combat. I would throw the dagger all the time but at the same time, I wouldn't have to worry about running out of them. Because of the string, I would be able to automatically retrieve the dagger and attack again. In short distance of couple of metres, If I could theoretically throw couple of daggers on that string and retrieve them constantly I would be able to attack endlessly with a barrage of attacks that would be very hard to escape from.

I got this idea when I remembered how Nick used the puppets for my training. He wasn't using any magic, he was using strings. If I could duplicate that and apply it to my daggers then learn how to control the string, I would be able to unleash quite a powerful skill. I thought about it more and figured that at most I would be able to use 10 daggers at once due to having only 10 fingers, which was much better than throwing 3-5 daggers at my opponent and then retrieving the daggers manually.

Of course there were flaws in this technique as well. If I threw the dagger without anything, I would be able to throw it quite far and hit the target but with this new technique, I would only be able to attack up to about 5 metres in radius around me.

'If I can learn this technique, it can become an attacking and defending skill at the same time. Although the range is a bit small, I still have my skills for the long range' I thought in my mind. I decided to ask what Nick thinks about that, when I get the chance to meet him. For now I would practice art of hidden weapons the way I figured at first and memorize more recipes from the book.