Limits

I did my training as usual and then late in the evening I've read the Great Scripture of Evil Medic to try and memorise more recipes that were left in the book. When I woke up the next morning, I went to the workshop as usual and completed my 3 ingots. By now due to the work I did in the workshop, I had created 20 daggers from leftovers alone.

But I was not satisfied with that amount. Because I lived in the Horseplain Village for a long time now and due to my work in the workshop, I was able to find out when the merchants from bigger villages come over for the supply of the purified steel ingots. I also knew they were sold for a cheaper price but that was expected due to the logistics and guards merchants had to hire.

I planned to take all the ingots away that were produced before the merchants would buy them from the village. I planned to rob everything when this village is, shall we call it depopulated. After my work, I went back to my house and awaited Nick to start the process of creating Cloud Haze Poison. Before Nick arrived, I went through the recipe in my mind and tried to remember all the details that Nick showed me.

Nick came over a while later and said "Are you ready to start?" to which I nodded my head and started to prepare the herbs, pot and other tools I would need. After all the thing were prepared, I started the process of creating the Cloud Haze Poison.

First, I poured in the specific amount of water into the pot and threw in the Poison Grass then started the fire. When the water and the grass started to boil, I threw in the Cloud Mushroom and waited for the properties of the mushroom to combine with the water and the Poison Grass. The recipe stated it would take about 5-6 minutes before I could throw in the Hazy Flower.

The indication to that was the amount of water left in the pot. I waited till the moment where half of the water in the pot evaporated then threw in the last ingredient, Hazy Flower. I then immediately closed the lid and sealed it. Now I had to cook it for about another 5 minutes before extinguishing the fire.

I've waited 5 minutes and then extinguished the fire. The last step was the cooldown as well as extraction. I needed for the poison to cool down for about 15 minutes, then pour it into a vial with a cork that had a hole big enough to fit inside the extraction valve but not bigger because the poison could leak out. Nick didn't supply me with another vial that had this specific hole carved in the cork. I had to make one myself.

I measured the dimensions of the extraction valve and created a hole a bit smaller than my measurement. If it was not enough, I would be able to adjust the hole in the cork but if it was too big, I would have to use new cork and make another hole.

After 15 minutes of waiting, I tried to squeeze in the vial with the cork into the extraction valve but it was going in too tightly, so I decided to scrape the edges of the hole a bit and make it tiny bit wider. After enlarging the hole in the cork a bit, it now fitted quite well and was not lose. I decided to try and extract the poison now.

When I turned the valve open, the liquid poison started to pour in. Fortunately the valve sealed the hole very well and no air entered the bottle. After all the liquid inside the pot poured into the vial, I prepared the clay and coal putty to take out the vial and seal the cork.

I went through my memory and tried to remember the detailed movements that Nick did when sealing the vial. After a while, I placed putty around the valve that was still connected to the vial and with one swift movement, I pulled down the vial while using the other hand to seal the hole in the cork.

It seemed to work because the Cloud Haze Poison was still inside the vial and didn't leak out nor changed partially to a cloud. I could then hear Nick saying "Well done for your first try. You produced the poison and it will have some effect but you weighting is a bit off, therefore the poison will be a bit less effective you also threw in the Cloud Mushroom a bit too soon but other than that it was fine. It's still applaudable that you could achieve that after trying for the first time".

I asked Nick while making the fire under the pot to burn the leftovers and clean the pot "Do you know how less effective will mine poison be compared to yours?" to which Nick responded "I'd say about 20-25% less effective than mine. It is still deadly but the symptoms would be less severe in case of normal people, it would also take longer for the infected person to die".

Nick then continued "Don't worry, you will get better with time. You just have to work on the weighting part of your skills. It comes with experience. I have a method that you can use in order to learn how to weight the ingredients more accurately". I looked at Nick with expectations and asked "What sort of method?".

Nick replied "It's simple. You just have to use couple of different sized containers and fill them with water. Depending on the container's size, the weight will change and it is quite precise". He then continued "For example. If you make a container that is 5 by 5 by 5 centimetres the weight of the water would equal to 5 grams".

I thought about it and then asked Nick "But what about the container? It also weights something, so the water may weight 5 grams but adding in the container, it will weight more depending on what it is made out of". Nick smiled when he heard my comment and said "Yes, if you don't know how much the container weights then it really is a pointless exercise. Of course there are weights and scales in this world where people can weight stuff to a very precise amount but the problem is, you don't have that and learning how to precisely weight ingredients with your hands will make those tools useless for you".

He then said "As I said, I have something that can help you and that is the containers with precise weight. I will pass them onto you later on but each container has a specific weight and if you fill it in with water, you will be able to know how much is 10, 15, 100 or 500 grams".

I nodded my head in understanding. Nick then said "I shall leave you to your training. I brought you enough herbs to create 6 of such vials. We already did 2 batches and so there are 4 left. Wait till I bring you the containers and you can then practice your weighting with them". I agreed with Nick and then he left while I got ready to start training again.