Chapter 248: 248
Standing in the library, Michelle stared at all the books in front of her with a slight frown. At the moment, the most she could do was study the herbs to create a poison that would randomly burst a vein. But that could bring absolutely no effect to the victim or kill them. It would all depend on luck.
To make a poison with which she could control where it would attack, she would need to analyze the poison Mavreth gave her for a long time. Or she would need the help of a Poison Maker Master who knew how Mavreth made his poisons.
But was there someone like that? Mavreth didn’t seem like the type of person to let others see how he worked.
Even to Michelle, who was his disciple, he only taught a technique to bypass the ranks. Nothing else. And every Poison Maker Master had his own signature mark they left on their pills. With Mavreth, it wasn’t that his pills could bypass ranks. He wasn’t the only one who could do that,
But Michelle had yet to discover what it was.
In other words, if she met other Poison Maker Masters, she wouldn’t be Mavreth’s disciple in their eyes.
Because she didn’t know what his signature was. Not that she cared that much.
If Mavreth didn’t want her to be recognized by others as his disciple, she would let it be. And if he wanted her to find out on her own what his signature was, she would find out. It would just take her a while, and she would need to see a bigger variety of his poisons and pills, to see the similarity in all of them.
Throwing the thoughts to the back of her mind, Michelle returned to studying the herb books. She did so for the next few days until she found a mixture of herbs that could form into a slime upon contact with blood.
And the next day, she found a herb with strong corrosive power. But it had one downside. It quickly disappeared after activating.
That was why most Poison Maker Masters avoided using the herb. It couldn’t really be used to deal much damage.
But Michelle could put it to good use.
She would put a concoction from the corrosive herb into the mixture that turns into slime upon contact with blood.
Upon putting that into her blood, the slime would activate and wrap around the corrosive herb. The corrosive herb would then get to work and slowly corrode the slime away. When the slime was gone, the last bits of power of the corrosive herb could snap a vein open from inside.
But to achieve that, there was one important thing Michelle had to make sure of.
The slime had to be harder to corrode away than the vein. Because if too much power remained in the corrosive herb after destroying the slime, it would not only proceed to snap a vein open, but even damage the area surrounding it.
And that wasn’t really desired.
That would be a different poison, and Michelle might do it as an experiment later. Definitely not when she was trying to recreate a poison from Mavreth.
Another important thing to watch out for was that the corroding concoction wouldn’t be too weak. If it couldn’t break through the slime or the vein, it would be basically useless.
But there was one good thing about the poison. To create it, Michelle didn’t need to use any soul energy. She just had to mix the herbs under the right temperature for a long enough period of time in the right order.
Of course, that didn’t mean the poison would be easier to make, but at least there wouldn’t be any explosions upon failure.
"Apothecary, it is..." Michelle closed the book she had just finished reading, put it away and picked up the notebook where she wrote her notes, and the list of herbs she needed to buy.
Except the corrosive herb, Fadewrath Orchid, all the other herbs were quite ordinary, with no special effects.
But when Michelle went to ask for them, the one in the apothecary wasn’t a disciple but a teacher. And he was able to guess how the herbs would react when mixed together.
Knowing that Michelle was under Mavreth’s wings, he didn’t really want to intervene, especially since Mavreth was basically a poison maniac, but he still decided to warn Michelle. "Don’t directly touch it if you mix them together."
"Yes, Teacher!" Michelle nodded as she paid and took the packed herbs. Once again, she had enough to fail a few times while making the poison.
But she had the feeling she would succeed much quicker than before since she wouldn’t need to keep part of her concentration on her soul and spirit energy.
As Michelle left the apothecary, the teacher couldn’t help but shake his head. The last student who had asked for Fadewrath Orchid had ended up with scars all over their body and blind in one eye after their cauldron exploded. He hoped Michelle wouldn’t end up like that.
In her room, Michelle sat on her bed, wondering where to mix the herbs. She had the feeling her cauldron wasn’t really a good idea.
That was when her thoughts wandered to the small cauldron Mavreth had given her.
It couldn’t really work properly in the area, but Michelle didn’t want to use it for its ability to gather the surrounding spirit energy. What drew her attention was its size.
"It won’t hurt to try..." she concluded. The cauldron was just a bit bigger than what she needed, so it was nearly perfect for trying to make the first batch of her poison.
Placing the cauldron on the ground, Michelle summoned her soul energy, creating black fire, Soul Fire, under it to heat it up to the desired temperature.
Then, she did something she hadn’t done for a while.
She summoned forth the Ice Fire. She couldn’t use it because it ran on spirit energy, and using it could give away that she possessed Spirit Soul Blood. That was highly unwanted.
But after using the room for a while, she noticed that it was like a small fortress. As long as the door and windows were closed, no spirit energy, soul energy, or shadow essence could get out.
In other words, as long as she retracted the spirit energy before opening the door, no one would find out about her Spirit Soul Blood. A very useful skill.
Michelle didn’t know whether only her room was like that or if others were like that too, but she didn’t really care. At the moment, all her attention was on creating the poison.
Deep in her mind, she was hoping a bit that she wouldn’t succeed first try. Because if the poison itself was that easy to make, altering it to attack exactly where she wanted would be basically impossible. Otherwise people would have already done it.
But if it wasn’t that easy to create the poison itself, it would make more sense for no one to be able to alter it to make a new version.
Retracting her hands from the cauldron, Michelle had the two fires continue burning under it, one heating it up and the other cooling it down. That way, she could keep the temperature somewhat steady.
Of course, she couldn’t use it when making the poison, because the two extreme temperatures could clash and cause trouble. But while preparing the ingredients, it was completely fine.
So she picked up the first herb and started chopping it up, then another and another. Another set of herbs ended up ground up, and from another the juices were squeezed out. The last few herbs were left whole. Everything was neatly separated, nicely in order of how they would be put in.
As for the Fadewrath Orchid, Michelle unwrapped it only after putting on gloves which wouldn’t stimulate the orchid to start corroding, and put it in a small pot to absorb water.
Until she finished making the slime mix, the orchid would stay in the water.
Finally, it was time to mix the herbs.
Retracting the Ice Fire, Michelle put in the first herb—the cut roots of something.
They sizzled on the hot surface and started shriveling and wrinkling up.
When they looked like the faces of old people, Michelle picked up one of the small bowls with the juice of a herb. Pouring it in, she made sure the intensity of the Soul Fire wasn’t too much and the liquid wouldn’t evaporate too quickly.
One by one, Michelle added in the herbs, changing the intensity of the flame to make sure they mixed properly.
Within the small cauldron, she didn’t even have to bother that much with mixing it all. She just used a random hairpin she had to stir it every now and then.
When the concoction was mixed together, Michelle waited for all the liquid to evaporate until it became a small ball within the cauldron.
It looked quite ugly and could visually pass as a poison. But in reality, it didn’t have any remarkable effects. It could just turn into slime at contact with some liquids, one of them being blood.