17. The Plan Begins

Astra was sitting right next to me. He was close enough for me to smell the medicine and poison. ' I guess the attacks are getting worse '

This reminds me that after this exam, a few days later, Astra will go to the chaos world to hunt. Back then, he made sure to slip away unnoticed, but the assassins still somehow discovered him and went after him to the other side.

Astra killed all the assassins but was seriously injured and was slowly dying. Luckily, he was saved by a group of hunters that was passing by.

Before I could wonder more, I was given a test paper, which I started writing on. This time, it took me a while. I did it in the end, and as I stood up, wanting to hand over my paper, Astra stood up, too.

' I guess he still had time to study even when he was attacked by assassins. ' The reason he didn't skip grades was because he wanted to stay here as long as possible.

I handed my paper over as I was exiting the classroom, I glanced back and saw Astra at my tail. I wonder how he was before he was forced to become like this.

I le out a long sigh as I know there is no point in wondering over such things. Not to mention, he was still mentally drained from just deactivating them. It wouldn't have happened if I could control it more. I also need to understand how they work.

But before I could think about how to practice, I heard my stomach growling. That's all I needed to make my decision.

I went back to the marketplace, and before getting food, I walked around and looked for mentality restoration potions. It took me a while to find them. When i did, I bought a lot of them.

After I was done, I chose a cafe that i found in the corner of this marketplace. It was quiet, and the cafe wasn't hosting many people. It was perfect to test out my eyes.

I drank the mentality recovery potions, and it did wonders. It was worth the money, alright. Firstly, I tried not to see everyone's true color, as it was too draining. After a while, I was able to just see the color and hear the thoughts of the once I chose to.

I drank another mentality recovery potion as it was indeed very tiring. I stayed there for the whole afternoon, and I was staring intently at everyone. I think I stressed out the workers there as well as their costumers. They were giving me the looks when I was leaving.

Next day...

I woke up cleaned myself. I cleared my space ring of anything I did not need. I went to the marketplace, like always had breakfast, and got everything I needed poison and antidotes, water, and food. I also brought a lot of medicine and a healing kit.

The information about Astra came from the very hunters who saved them, so naturally, I investigated them too to see if they are by any chance related.

They were out hunting as a party to bring back corpses of chaos, monsters, and sell them. They were quite ordinary, so I let them go after they spilled the beans.

I went to the Merlyn guild as they are from there. Their party consisted of 5 people, a tanker, a damage dealer, a magician, a healer, and an archer. Thayre captin was the archer. I saw her talking to her team for a while, and after that, they were heading to a dungeon.

I followed them from a big distance and even useing my shadow cloak to hide in the shadows. I would rather not risk anything as this plan must go perfectly.

When the night came, they took shifts guarding, but that didn't stop me from going there. I used my cloak to get there unnoticed while the crows feathers blocked any noise from escaping.

I headed to the healer and used the poison for disturbing the natural flow of mana in her. I couldn't use normal poison because for a healer, it shouldn't be a big problem to get rid of normal poison.

I used the same poison at the magician just to make sure I poisoned all the water that wasn't in their space ring.

On others, I used Sarin. It's a tasteless and odorless poison. It's a paralysis poison. I didn't add much since I needed to add other poisons as well.

They won't die right away since they are considerably strong. But it won't take long either. After all, I still need to get to Astra.

They made a camp so I can guess they will be staying here. With that, I fell asleep in the shadows. The next day, they went hunting, and they didn't notice that they were poisoned luckily. Every time they came back, they looked more and more tired.

One day, when they were leaving, I decided to follow in shadows from a distance. They all looked tired even when they got to sleep. I guess that's thanks to my poison. They noticed that they were somehow unwell but didn't know what to do, so they just brushed it off as a sickness and took a healing potion.

I accounted for this, and it's ok. The poison speeded too much. Even if they used a mid grade healing potion, it won't get rid of the poison. But if it was just a flu or something like that, then it would. The potion only managed to stop the effects of the poison for a while, giving them the illusion that they were fine and it was just some flu or something like that.

After a few hours of fighting, the effects of the poison came back even worse. The healer was the first one to cough up blood and fall to the ground.

The magician was trying to help with healing magic even if it wasn't his specialty. When the magician tried to use magic, the mana in him gave him an internal injury, causing him to end up in the same state as the healer.

The worst part is that they were in the middle of the battle. I saw the team leader looking at her teammates, but the next second, she looked away and tried her best to support the tank and the damage dealer.

' Smart woman ' If she decided to help her teammates now, the tank and the damage dealer would fall, and she would get attacked by the chaos beasts so she decided to get rid of those first with the help of her remaining teammates.

I shifted my attention back to the battle happening in front of me and saw the damage dealer was about to dodge an attack from one of the chaos beasts when he started to lose the control over his legs that are going limp thanks to my poison.

The damage dealer did not evade in time and got a hit. He fell to the ground, and the monster continued its attack. He was saved by his captain.

They didn't last long as the tanks body also started to go numb, and he fell to the ground with his shield.

The first chaos beast was held down by the archer in hopes of killing it and then getting to the other monster that was holded by the tanker. The archer knew he didn't have a chance now, so she started running away in hopes of escape.

She soon fell down to the ground, not being able to stand like the rest of her comrades. She already figured out that she was poisoned and drank healing potions.

If no monster was to come and kill her, she might survive when the poison wears off. Unfortunately the one who cost all this finnaly showed himself.

Ash didn't say anything and just came close to the woman laying the ground. " Why ? " She said with half closed eyes and a weak voice.

Ash still didn't say anything and pulled out his dagger, and with a fast and precise slash on her neck, he ended her life painlessly.

Everything that does not have a soul can be stored in the space ring. He stored her body in there and went back to the two chaos monsters feasting on the corpses of the woman's fallen comrades.

When he got close to the chaos, monsters thay were about to attack when he dropped the corpse of the woman on the ground and used his shadow cloak to get away without a trace.

Ash needed the monsters to eat the woman so no traces of him would be left to find.