Chapter 235: 235
"Ah..." Sighing lazily, Michelle dodged an attack from the black wolf-monster, her purple eyes narrowing. "I didn’t mean to wake you up..." Her voice was somehow apologetic, but she clearly wasn’t being serious. She was aware that talking to an enraged creature wouldn’t help with anything.
So Michelle had to fight again.
When she finally killed the wolf, she had a scratch on her shoulder, revealing her bones, but she didn’t really mind.
The only thing that bothered her was that the smell of her blood could attract more monsters.
To prevent that, she summoned a block of ice around her shoulder. Though it reduced her arm movement, it prevented unnecessary trouble.
For a few more days, Michelle wandered around the city ruins until her beasts returned to her. Though she herself had basically no clue about how long she had stayed in the Fiend Dungeon, they were aware of it and returned to Michelle a day before they were supposed to come out.
Michelle sent them back into the contract space and started walking back towards the hallway from which she had entered the dungeon. It was time to meet up with Mavreth again.
Once outside, Michelle covered her eyes with her hand. Her eyes weren’t used to the sudden light.
But she didn’t need to use her eyes to feel that Mavreth was standing just a few steps away. "How have you been, master?" She smiled a bit when her eyes finally adjusted to the light. The cloaked black figure was sitting on a random stone, clearly bored.
"I see you became a Shadow Master!" Mavreth stood up. "So I should fulfill my part of the deal."
With a turn of his hand, a bottle appeared on his palm and he threw it at Michelle. "Before I can teach you anything, you should learn to analyze that to figure out what kind of poison it is."
"Do I have to do it here?" Michelle glanced back at the gate behind her.
Mavreth shrugged. "You have three days to analyze it. Then, meet me at my office to give me a report about your findings." With that, he threw a pendant at her. It showed that she was his disciple and could go anywhere in the sect.
That meant Michelle could go anywhere to make her analysis.
When Mavreth left, Michelle returned to the sect, going to the dormitory area. Showing the pendant to a nearby teacher, he showed her to a room and she settled down there for a while.
The first day, she was planning to try analyzing the poison in her room. If she didn’t succeed, the second day, she would go to the library.
After locking herself in the room, Michelle sat down by the table and opened the bottle.
A very subtle, nearly unnoticeable sour scent wafted out. It even smelled a bit pleasant.
Tipping the bottle to the side, Michelle let a single pill roll out, her eyes focusing on its shape. It wasn’t in the shape of a tiny ball. It was a bit squished and unsymmetrical.
But that wasn’t much of a surprise.
For medical pills, it was a must to be ball-shaped, even though the shape didn’t change the pill’s effect. But with poison, no one really cared.
Poison was never meant to be beautiful. It was never supposed to attract attention.
Unless someone wanted to pass it as medicine to trick someone into taking it. In those cases, it had to have the perfect shape, taste, and scent. Just a single error could mess up plans and destroy dreams.
Turning it over on her palm, Michelle observed the pill for a while before picking up a small knife. She scraped the pill a bit, letting some dust gather on her hand. Then, she smelled the dust.
It had a different scent compared to the rest of the pill.
Glancing back at the pill, Michelle sniffed the part where she had just scraped it. It smelled the same as the dust.
A gentle sweet scent, characteristic more for medicine than poison.
At least that was how most people viewed it. Michelle had a different opinion.
What was poison to one person could be a life-saving medicine for someone else. Naturally, it worked the other way around.
Also, there was the difference of how the poison or medicine was administered. It could be poison when eaten but medicine when administered directly into blood. Or it could be poison when inhaled and medicine when eaten.
There wasn’t a clear barrier between medicine and poison. And Michelle liked that. That allowed her to bend the rules to her will.
Only a few poisons existed that could never be used as medicine.
Staring at the pill from Mavreth, Michelle was tempted to eat it.
But she held back. She still didn’t know what it did. If it was something fatal, she would be dead.
Still, Michelle doubted a small amount could be fatal, so she looked at the scraped-off dust on her palm.
Putting the pill away, she licked the dust off her hand, keeping it in her mouth until it melted on her tongue.
Maybe because she put so little into her mouth, Michelle couldn’t detect any taste from the dust, disappointing her a bit. Or it was a tasteless poison.
Either way, Michelle decided to eat more since she had yet to feel any effects.
After eating the whole pill, Michelle lay on her bed and stared at the ceiling. It really was tasteless.
That probably meant Mavreth didn’t want her to eat the poison. Otherwise, he would have made a poison which had some taste to be observed.
Or it was meant to be eaten and Michelle was supposed to observe the effects it had on her body.
But even after a good half an hour, she didn’t feel anything. She examined herself, and even asked Nyxaroth whether he noticed any changes, but everything was normal.
"Maybe it affects cultivation..." Michelle mumbled and sat up.
So, for the rest of the day, she decided to cultivate. If she didn’t find out anything until morning, she would go to the library, the poison and medicine sections.
Just as Michelle had dreaded, even after cultivating, she felt nothing change. That could only mean two things.
Either the poison would only activate later and was still dormant somewhere in her body, but Nyxaroth would have noticed that, or it didn’t work as a poison when eaten. The administration method was different.
Going to the library, Michelle wasn’t sure what knowledge the people from the middle realm had about poisons. And she had absolutely no clue about what Mavreth knew. So she had to study a bit on her own.
Having the pendant from Mavreth, Michelle had no trouble entering the library even though she wasn’t dressed as a disciple of the sect. Well, she wasn’t even one.
But when she walked past the disciples, gazes locked on her.
Michelle ignored it and went to the librarian. To her surprise, it was one of the people she had fought in the arena, so he recognized her.
"What are you doing here? Didn’t you already leave the sect?" He was clearly even more surprised than Michelle.
Michelle shrugged. "I made a new bet with him..." She pulled out the pendant Mavreth gave her.
Seeing the pendant, the man swept his gaze over Michelle from head to toe. She didn’t really look that remarkable, so if he hadn’t been defeated by Michelle in the arena, he wouldn’t have been able to understand why Mavreth took her as his disciple.
"What are you looking for?" he finally asked.
"Where are the concoction sections?" she asked.
"Is your new bet about poisons?" the man asked. Originally, he thought Mavreth had taken Michelle as his disciple because of her combat talent, but if she was looking for the concoction section, she must have needed it for the bet.
When Michelle nodded, the man stood up. "Let me lead you. It’s a bit complicated in here."
Walking next to the man, Michelle noticed that the gazes moved from her to him. Glancing at him, she understood why. He definitely didn’t look bad.
Compared to that, she, disguised as Michael Grayson, looked like a plain, frail young man. Except for her long silver hair and purple eyes, there was nothing eye-catching about her.
The man led Michelle to three sections next to each other. One for poison, another for pills, and the last one for elixirs. The latter two sections were only about medical pills and elixirs. The poison ones were included in the first section.
When the man left, Michelle stepped right into the poison section, her purple eyes scanning the shelves.
Originally, she thought she would be lost in the section, but to her surprise it wasn’t that bad. Back when she was in the Land of Exile in the Archduke’s library, it was much bigger. So the library she was in at the moment wasn’t that much of a problem.
But she knew two days wouldn’t be enough to study it all. She had to pick a few books.