Chapter 68: Poison

Pieces fell from Teo’s grip as each card was destroyed. The glowing lines of the array slowly dimmed as the pieces disintegrated into powder. He finally let out a sigh of relief as his plan finally was completed.

He slowly sat and waited for Lia and Windle to return. From the tests, Teo had gained some understanding of the limits of the arrays from his test, but it was still not enough.

The Emerald Pavilion knew that it would be difficult for Teo to retrieve the information of the individuals that were assigned to test the shoes, so they devised a way to get the information to him. They had sent out fliers and posted it throughout the academy. Their decision had annoyed the Imperial family but the Pavilion had insisted that this was part of the eccentric’s conditions.

Teo waited for his friend’s return to hear the full details of the event.

While devising his plan, he felt pity for the four that went last, but it quickly passed especially when he considered the whole situation. His hand was forced, and this was one of the best solutions he could come up with.

The arrangement he had made beforehand was quite useful. His original plan was to have people test his arrays and destroy the arrays after collecting enough data. He had discovered an incredibly useful linking array earlier when he was experimenting. By linking up three different arrays, he could easily trigger the array to self-destruct when destroying any one of the other linked arrays. Three arrays for one pair, one in each shoe and the other in the wooden cards that Teo made. If any one array was destroyed, the other two would self-destruct.

But then he was forced to change his plans after saw the Emerald Pavilion’s warning. The situation forced him to be extremely cautious and his original plan to watch his guinea pigs in action changed, but luckily with the wooden card, he could remotely observe a few simple things.

He could learn at which level of cultivation the boots could handle. If it lit up without breaking, then with the information from the fliers, he could easily deduce to what cultivation level could the materials handle.

The only thing piece he was missing was if the cultivator’s body could handle such speeds. Moving at high speeds would be useless if you could not control your own movements. He needed to know if they could safely change direction, stop, and jump without risk of injuries. This was the purpose of the obstacle course.

As for his four targets, he relied on the headmaster’s bias to deliver the four pairs. By instructing the Emerald Pavilion to deliver this pair to the academy, he would avoid their suspicion.

His initial plan was to sell six pairs to the Emerald Pavilion then anonymously deliver the other four pairs to Zachery’s group. He was hoping that they would test the shoes after he leaves a description of the boost it gave. Since it was far better than the shoes they used to chase Teo down, they would undoubtedly use them to chase him down in the future and he could simply break the linked array to taunt them. But after he found out how big of an impact these shoes had made, he quickly changed his plans.

After delivering the second batch, he altered his instructions while avoiding suspicion. The boots were to be sent to the academy to test, but he did not indicate which individuals would test them.

Teo knew that the headmaster would be the one to decide which students would test these pair of shoes and relying on the fact that the headmaster was extremely biased towards Zachery and by setting the testing restrictions to class two fighters and below, Teo was almost sure who the headmaster would choose for his candidates.

From some other perspective, the headmaster would freely choose the candidates, but in fact, Teo knew that at least one of these pair would fall into Zachery’s hands! By doing this, he had removed any possible evidence linking between him and his targets.

Putting a mild poison into the four pairs of shoes, he planned to hamper Zachery from doing anything to him for at least half a year. With the help of his array, the poison would be absorbed through the skin and muscle, and irritate them as if tiny ants biting them. While the poison was very painful, it did not cause any permanent damage or death and only lasted for about 6 months. The pain could be numbed by using medical herbs and even allow them to walk without pain, but it would prevent them from running. Even a light sprint would aggravate the poison and cause the symptoms to relapse.

He had purchased this poison while in disguise so that there was no way for others to track it back to him. From his past incident with the stink bomb, Teo learned about the different types of investigation methods used to track someone; specifically when Windle was tracked down for purchasing his bomb’s ingredient.

Upon breaking these wooden cards, the array would activate and evaporate, destroying the shoes while injecting the poison.

But there was still a possibility for error. So on the day of the lab rats came to test his work, Teo sat down from a distance and watched the only road that led towards the Colosseum from the central district. He had to make sure that none of his targets were innocent parties. He did not want to repeat his past mistake when he had accidentally involved Emily in his trap. Luckily, all four of his targets were there carrying each pair!

….

“God dammit!”

The young envoy of the Rizon main family cursed the heavens, his tightly clenched fist and grinding teeth unable to vent his frustrations. The item he had longed for had broken!

His gaze was fiercely swept over the four injured people on the ground before it landed on Elon who stood by his unconscious grandson.

Elon broke into a cold sweat as he felt an intense gaze. He was dimly aware that chance to go to the capital was slowly vanishing like mist in the morning sun.

Seeing this scene, the elder envoy spoke to mediate the situation. He knew that the youth blamed Elon and the four, but in reality, nobody could be blamed.

“Nephew, calm down. You cannot falsely push the blame onto these people. These things were clearly defective and despite the effects being ‘saint tier’, they were far too unstable.”

The old man let out a deep sigh of relief, as he thought of what could have happened.

“Luckily, other people had tested them first. If we had bought them and you tried them on, the one who would be lying in bed would most likely be you!”

The destruction of these saint tier items caused various emotions to emerge within the people involved. The ones who purchased the shoes were depressed, while the others relished the moment of another’s misfortune.

The youth took a deep breath and calmed his rage.

The old envoy signal one of his guards to approach.

“Has the Imperial family found a lead?” He questioned.

The guard shook his head and said, “According to our agents, due to the arrival of many foreign visitors, the shoemaker could not remember who he sold it to. Even when tortured his old mind was too dull to remember and eventually died”

The old envoy frowned and started to walk.

Elon sensed the old envoy slowly approach from behind.

“How are the young ones?”

Despite his worried countenance and words, the envoy was more concerned with finding clues about the mysterious eccentric. Perhaps the only one that he was actually concerned for was Zachery because of his potential.

Elon bowed to the envoy and spoke.

“Elder, aside from some minor scrapes and my grandson’s fractured arm, the doctor said that their feet seemed to be suffering from the venom of a Dulldrum Scorpion”

As he listened to Elon’s statements, a thought immediately popped into his mind.

‘Does this inscription require such an ingredient to active its power? If so, then this is a huge discovery! Perhaps this is the key ingredient for these inscriptions!’

As he formed these conclusions, he immediately ordered Elon.

“Keep this information from spreading. Detain the ones that know, this must not be leaked! Silence them if you have to.”

Elon acknowledged the elder’s commands and acted as quickly as he could, but the information had already spread to some factions’ spies who were lurking around the area.

Since the saint tier books were no longer obtainable, they focused their search for the mysterious eccentric. The venom of the Dulldrum Scorpion was the only clue they had to work with to find this eccentric.

A few groups had already discovered from before a description of a masked individual who bought a type of poison before the emergence of the saint tier boots at the Emerald Pavilion. The descriptions matched the mysterious eccentric, but after that, all the clues hit a dead end.

Their only choice was to comb through everyone who was a possible suspect. With the limited amount of elementalists who had either wind or darkness attributes, they were easily monitored; Some even questioned.

There were quite a few individuals on the list, the main suspects were ones who attended the event within the Colosseum. They were sure that the eccentric in question would most likely attend to watch the events unfold, but what they didn’t know was this eccentric had the ability to remotely monitor these experiments in the comfort and privacy of his cave.

After they ruled out these suspects one by one, they moved their investigation to other elementalists that were within the academy. Even Teo had encountered someone who had swiftly stabbed him with a small needle and disappeared before he could even react.

They had forcefully taken some of his blood, which had cleared him from the suspect list, but the stabbing incident was repeated multiple times by multiple different factions. Once they had confirmed his divination result, they quickly moved on to the next suspect.

This was because the talent required to produce a saint tier inscription was very high! It heavily depended on one’s growth potential and age. Teo was very young and his growth potential was very low. Designing and creating new inscriptions could not be done by someone with such a low potential!

One by one, the suspect list grew smaller and smaller. Drifters who were discovered to be wind or darkness elementalist would sometimes vanish, and mysteriously turn up dead; showing many wounds that indicated signs of torture. Thankfully, the students were protected by the royal guards and the red guards or perhaps Teo and other students would be subjected to the same fate.

Eventually, the suspect list became as empty as the desert sands. Only one person remained on the list, but this person was a student of the academy. He had had both wind and darkness attributes and had been present during the event.

Unfortunately, this person had already been taken by Rizon family for questioning and could not move against them. Even the injured dualist, Ash Moran, was questioned by the Rizon family.

….

Teo eventually relaxed as time passed by.

At first, Teo would freak out whenever some stranger approached him. This was because of his experience of getting randomly stabbed with a small needle by someone whenever he walked outside. Despite being quick and painless, the psychological fear of getting stabbed was enough for him to keep his guard up at all times.

After some time, classes resumed as before. Teo’s schedule was back on track, aside from his new habit of mimicking a deer. Whenever he walked the street, his eyes opened as wide as a deer’s and his head swiveled nonstop in his paranoia of strangers. Eventually, he lowered his guard and continued his life. While all this fiasco was happening, he began to focus on learning the casting method from Lia and was finally allowed the use of the furnace during the weekends.

However, Teo needed Lia’s supervision to work the furnace, but thankfully, she did not mind as she was still teaching Teo many things about casting.

In the corner that Lia gave him, Teo had finally finished creating his own small ceramic mold. It had five holes on the cover and within it was a hole big enough to hold his stone prototype. The shape of the mold intrigued Lia’s interest.

“What is that mold for?”

The size of the mold was far too small to hold any armor or weapon that Lia could think of and couldn’t help but try to satisfy her curiosity.

“I am trying to reinforce the durability of the stone of my sister’s pendant. I want to give it to her before she leaves at the end of the year.”

Teo held out a stone in his hand. The dark colored void stone had several tiny holes within it and the holes created an interconnecting pathway of array lines. Teo did reveal that the stone in his hand was actually a void stone similar to the stone within her sister’ pendant.

This was the prototype for the void inscription!

Teo did not care if Lia saw the stone, as visual inspection would only reveal the stone having many tiny holes. For what was inside, Lia had no clue due to a thin layer of dark material, coating the whole outer layer.

He took the stone and snugly placed it into the finished ceramic mold. Then, he took a cup full of molten metal from the furnace. This mixture also contained void elemental powder that Teo had secretly mixed in.

Despite the high melting point of elemental stones, once it was ground into powder and left in intense heat of a furnace, it would eventually melt. Teo then poured the mixture into one of the small holes of the mold and the mixture slowly flowed inside.

The molten mixture slowly filled up the tiny tunnel that was drilled into the stone one by one. Teo intentionally slowed the pace as he wished to minimize the risk of air pockets building up within one of the holes.

As the temperature increased within the mold, any remaining moisture in the air would build up like steam within a boiling kettle before bursting out. As the molten mixture slowly filled a hole, the steam should have exited through the other holes, but Teo still decided to slowly pour the mixture in small amounts to minimize the chance of air pockets.

If the array lines were not connected by the hardened mixture due to air pockets, then it would not work as it was designed or possibly, it might not even work at all.

Sweat quickly amassed on Teo’s forehead as he carefully poured the mixture in slowly to ensure perfection.

Not far away, Lia quietly sat on a chair as she observed Teo. She knew that this part of casting required concentration and just a single moment of distraction could cause the material to weaken due to air bubbles. Even when forging weapons or armors, air bubbles were their worst nightmare.

She looked at the mold and thought about how important this was to him and Rowen.

‘I can’t wait to get my new equipment after this. Hopefully after this, he can take care my request.’

Lia recalled that Teo said that her inscribed equipment would be finished by the end of the year.

‘I guess I can wait for 5 more months’, she said to herself.

….

The mold was completely filled up, and the only thing Teo needed to do was to wait for it to cool down.

“Lia what’s wrong?” Teo asked as he sensed that Lia was not her usual self. She looked a little troubled as she sat beside Teo.

“Teo, what are your plans for next year?”

Teo was surprised at the seemingly random question. He was stumped and couldn’t immediately answer. His time and focus were spent on finishing his sister’s gift. He had yet to plan for the future since his thoughts were dominated by his current situation. He had postponed thinking about the future because he thought there was still enough time before the year ended to make a decision.

“I’m not sure yet...”

“Windle told me that he plans to invest all his time into combat training,” Lia frowned.

“Hmm... What about you Lia? What are you planning on doing?”

Up until now, Teo had always chosen his classes based on his friends choices. Nothing had changed for him and he wanted a clear grasp of their intentions before making any decision. They had been together for more than a year and a half now and Teo considered Windle and Lia to be no different from his siblings.

Windle chose to think of his future and both Lia and Teo understood this as well. The more he stood out during the tournament at the end of the third year the better it would be for his future. He could even use this as a platform to spring off to get ever so closer to his goal of going to the capital!

“I… I want us to be like senior Gina and Rowen and head for the capital together.”

Teo knew that his sister also planned to go to the capital. It was a place where people could make a name for themselves if they had enough strength. The capital not only the largest city in the empire but also the strongest. It was so massive that within the capital was the Imperial city.

This was where the strong struggled against each other; fighting for fame, money and honor. Lia did not wish for a peaceful life, but rather a glorious one. To live her life in a brilliant blaze rather than being stifled down by a mediocre life. Windle, on the other hand, wanted to be rich and famous. With their goals intertwined, only Teo was left out.

Lia was unsure of what Teo wanted to do. He was obsessive with his interests and would probably prefer a peaceful life, but his impulsive nature would probably drag him into trouble.

Teo realized the meaning of Lia’s statement. It was an invitation! An invitation to pursue the same goals together. This would mean that they had to work hard during their time at the academy to reach a certain level of strength.

‘I don’t know what I plan to do yet, but strength is required to live a peaceful life.’

He knew the importance of strength. If he wanted to protect something, he needed enough power to do so.

Afterwards, Teo looked into Lia’s eyes and said as he smiled

“Okay! Let’s do it.”

‘...Hopefully the capital will have a bigger library there,’ he thought to himself.

[Edited by thisisnate]

[Author’s note: I have changed a few things from the past chapters. Some typos, some logic/explanation errors.

Ch 6, reduced the amount of days Teo spent to save for his sister’s necklace (from 3 weeks to less than a week).

Ch 37, changed “worked daily” to “work part time”

Reason: Reduce the amount of money a student can make so it is more in line with how much they can earn yearly.

Ch 61, confusing explanation error about the arrays and inscriptions is more clarified (i hope)

Ch 19, mixed up Gathering stage for Sensing Stage

Also will be renaming “heaven revealing eyes” into some other name for future chapters

Thanks to thisisnate for editing this long chapter ~3000 words]