Limits

The woman was a bit stunned that I actually stopped and turned around towards her. I ran at my fasted speed towards her with 2 daggers, one in each of my hands. She smirked and though I want to try close combat again but I had different plans this time.

She took out the whip again and when the space between us was only couple of metres, she lashed with the whip. I didn't dodge, I ran straight at her. The whip hit me in my chest and it was very painful but I persisted and swallowed the pain. Her face was shocked when she saw this. This moment of surprise gave me time to get close. I was now within the range of one metre. I threw couple of daggers at her from that range while slashing at her with my other hand.

She wanted to avoid it but because of the proximity and my speed, she could either avoid the daggers or my strike. She chose to avoid my strike, which I think was a better option myself and used the whip to deflect the other daggers.

I knew she would choose one or the other and I was waiting for that. Because she avoided my strike I was now very close to her, I pretended to strike again with my right hand. She tried to block it but I was sure she immediately noticed that there was no strength in that attack. It was a simple decoy.

My real attack would come from my left hand. I took a step forward and thrusted my fist towards her. She had no time to dodge and so, she chose to block my attack. This was also expected by me and I needed her vision to be blocked for a second.

Within that second, I retrieved the last vial and attacked with my left hand again with lightning speed. She didn't expect for my attack to not arrive and so she took down the guard that was covering her face. The next instant "Boom!" "Crack".

I punched the vial full of Cloud Haze Poison into her face. I didn't believe that my poison didn't work. Even if someone had some immunity, if I injected that poison straight to their blood, I would expect to see the effects. That was my plan.

Her face was full of cuts due to the vial and the poison already seeped inside her body. In liquid state it was much more powerful as it was more concentrated. The liquid state could not be kept for long as any contact with air would immediately make the poison start to change into a cloud form.

The woman screamed and backed away. I also backed away and started to run again. I wasn't certain this will work but I wanted to at least try it out. 'If she dies, that's great! Otherwise, it may give us some more time to run away and lose her' I thought to myself.

I could hear some screams behind me and then "You little bastard. You will pay for this". I didn't turn around to check, I simply ran. Shelly was also running beside me, due to the time I was running and fighting with this old hag, Shelly was allowed to rest a bit. Shelly recovered somewhat and could keep up with me but I imagined that the broken shell produced some pain as well.

I could hear the old woman shouts growing fainter and fainter. I turned around just to assess if she is still on our tail. To my surprise when I turned around, I saw that the old woman had bloodied face with purple tint on it. I guessed it must've been the poison. I could also see that she was struggling. It meant that the poison did work on her. She must have had better immunity against the poison therefore the cloud could not affect her.

The liquid on the other hand was concentrated and even I was starting to feel a bit ill, despite the fact that I took the antidote already. I didn't want to faint in a critical moment, I took out another antidote from my bag and drank it. Shelly was fine and had no symptoms of being poisoned.

We ran outside of the village, and the old woman behind us was already on her knees. I could hear her cursing "You bastard, you will pay for this!" then "Even if I die, I shall haunt you to death!". I could hear unwillingness in her voice. Even though she had better skills and was stronger than me and shelly put together, she was tricked by me and I was the final winner.

I didn't return to the village because she might have been faking this to some extend. We continued on towards the forest and escaped the sight of the village. I needed to tend to our wounds before I could check out if that woman died or not. If she did not die, I could run immediately and at the top of my condition, she wouldn't be able to catch us. If she died, then that would be even better.

We ran like this for 2 hours when I finally decided to stop and take a rest to heal our wounds. Shelly only received one attack and so it's shell was cracked a bit but other than that, it was fine. I on the other hand, had many wounds. On my legs, arms back, chest and side. The wounds were done by the whip with metal barbs in it. The skin was ripped and loads of blood came out. Thanks to my knowledge in the Art of Medicine, I wasn't bleeding as much as any normal human but I still felt pain and still lost a lot of blood.

I took out the Vital Liquid and smeared it on my wounds. With the medicine applied I felt another discomfort besides pain. It was as if worms were drilling inside my wounds. "Arrrghhh. This hurts!" I screamed and laid on the ground without any strength. After a while, I applied some of the liquid to Shelly's shell as well, for it to heal better.

This process of healing with such a low level medicine, would take at least a day and there will be scars left as well. If I were to use advanced medicine on such wounds, There wouldn't be any scars left and the time it would take to heal would be 10 times smaller.

We rested for a whole day and Shelly would go somewhere to hunt small animals. Shelly already had big appetite and because we were both wounded, the appetite for food increased as well. The next morning, I could see that my wounds were starting to scar. This meant that I could run and do everything but not at my full power. I said to Shelly "We shall go and check if that old hag is dead or not. If she's still alive, there is nothing else we will do. We will just leave this place to travel further north". Shelly nodded it's head and we traveled back to the Limestone Village.