54 Laugh while You Can

I prepared the pot for the antidote. It required 100 milliliters od water, and I had to wait for it to boil, before anything else. When the water began boiling, I made the flame a bit smaller. This was for the water to stay hot, but not overboil the herbs. I then threw both Lilith Petal Flower and Olivian Berry inside. The proportions were 80 and 140 grams respectively. This had to cook for a few minutes, before I would mush those herbs inside the pot. At that stage, I closed the lid, and let that boil for a while. With the antidote ready, I extinguished the flame, and let that cool down a bit with the lid open.

When the antidote was warm to touch, I could now use a sieve to remove any dregs. In the end, I received about 120 milliliters of antidote. This was enough for one person, and depending on how well I did it, it would last from as little as 10 minutes, to as long as an hour. The stronger the antidote was, the more poison it could burn and absorb. Of course, If I stayed too long inside the poisonous cloud, the antidote wouldn't be enough. I would need to either drink another, or leave before the antidote expired.

After I took care of all the cleaning, I repeated the same process two more times. Having some additional antidote was a good thing, just in case. After that, I continued my training as usual. I decided increase the difficulty a bit more, and attempted to control two puppets with one hand. My fingers were much more flexible than before, but not enough for me to control the puppets. I didn't give up though, and continued like this. With time, my fingers would naturally adapt to those weird patterns. 'I wish I had six fingers on one hand though...' I thought.

The problem was that, as Humans we had five fingers on each hand. This was an odd number, and therefore not compatible with two puppets. two fingers for one puppet, while three for the other. It was off balance. I changed my hands often, not to get used to one hand alone. After all, I needed to be able to do that for both my hands. As to why I didn't use two more puppets with my other free hand, the reason was simple. I could barely focus on two puppets, another two and I would go nowhere.

As for my Art of Stealth training, I tried improving my skills as much as I could. I trained all the time pretty much. Whether I worked at the Workshop, or walked on the streets. I trained all the exercises and utilised everything I learned to weave those things into my daily life. With time, I would be able to do those things without even thinking about them.

Other than physical training and medicine or poison making, I read the Great Scriptures of Evil Medic each and every day. I was able to completely memorize three more recipes, with a grand total of 41 recipes. There were another 37 recipes left in the book, that I still had to memorize. This though, wouldn't happen very soon. The recipes took me longer and longer to memorize, thanks to the sheer complexity of each recipe.

The days slowly went by. Nick didn't visit anymore, he was getting worse and worse with each day passing. On the bright side though, I had all the poison and antidote ready. All that was left, was to carry out the plan. 'I will need to wait for good weather. I hope in a day or two, the weather will clear up, and I can finally erase this village from existence' I thought. Another reason I had to hurry up, was due to the merchants. They would arrive in about two weeks, while I still had to make my daggers. This alone would take some time.

Because I had five bottles of the Cloud Haze Poison, I changed my plan a bit. I would set up a sort of star formation around the village. With that, the poison should have no problem affecting anyone inside. The only problem I might get, would be the lumberjack Jack. He lived outside of the village, and the poison might just miss him. 'I will need to take care of him personally, just to make sure' I thought.

There were some other good news as well. Shelly finally woke up from its slumber, and seemed to be full of energy. I asked, "How do you feel Shelly?". The turtle was very happy. I asked out of curiosity, "Did you improve anything? Don't tell me your weight is what you improved". Shelly looked at me as if it was wronged. Well it was technically true, the turtle weighted more which could suggest the "improvement". It shook its head, and showed me what exactly improved.

I was shocked again, when I saw Shelly run around. The speed Shelly displayed, was a bit slower than mine, but still. That kind of improvement... It was something I would never expect. "You are indeed a lot faster. Good... turtle?". Shelly stopped and rubbed its head on my leg. I patted it a few times while saying, "I wonder how much you will eat now, since you became so fast?". Shelly again looked at me with watery eyes. 'I mean, this guy is a gluton... Ah whatever' I thought, and cheered Shelly up. "You can eat as much as you want. When we leave the village, there will be loads to do. We will travel, see new things, and experience the wonders out there". Shelly nodded, and made more noises. 'Yea, it's hungry alright' I thought. This was still the same Shelly I knew.

I took Shelly to the river, and let it hunt for its own food. This time, Shelly ate a whopping ten fishes. 'Knew it, it will eat a lot now' I thought. I stood there for a while, and watched Shelly play around in the water. Until I heard someone appraoching. When I turned around, I was surprised to see that it was Rand. I smiled, "Never seen you here before. Came to relax a bit?". He replied rather sternly, "I can't prove anything, but I still think you were the one who did something to my desciple. If you have nothing to hide, let me search you". I extended my hand while saying, "Go ahead. I had nothing to do with that desciple of yours. Search as much as you want, and then bugger off. I'm tired of those accusations".

He was stunned by my openness, and actually didn't search my body. This was actually good, because I had a few daggers hidden in my clothes. I could just kill him on the spot, the village would follow soon anyway. He replied, "Whatever, maybe I'm overthinking stuff. That turtle of yours, its weird. Where did you get it from?". I smiled, "This guy? I found it near the river. It liked me, and started following me, so I took it as my pet". He turned around, and replied with a laugh. "You should cook it for some food, turtles are quite delicious". 'Yea, that is probably the last time you laugh Rand' I thought.