Chapter 1205 – Questionable Trip

Jake looked at Meira, but the high elf didn’t look like she intended to say anything as she instead simply bowed toward him. “I believe it’s only proper that I should also leave Lord Thayne to his personal matters. Thank you for the talk. I truly appreciate it.”

“No problem,” Jake muttered, still unsure if Artemis and Meira had shared a telepathic message or if it was just some weird tacit understanding that he didn’t have the ability to comprehend.

“If Lord Thayne does need anything, don’t hesitate to contact me, and you can naturally visit any time if you want,” Meira continued, Jake just nodding along. He still wanted to see Meira’s tower, but he would definitely delay his visit a little to allow things to fully calm down.

Besides, he had left the Sword Saint and the others waiting long enough.

After saying their goodbyes and Meira leaving, Jake reached out to the Sword Saint.

“Alright, I’m done on my end,” Jake said, using his token. As visitors, his Nevermore party members had all gotten tokens of their own to navigate the Order of the Malefic Viper, allowing them to use the teleportation gateways and whatnot.

Of course, it didn’t give them all the capabilities of Jake’s special token that Villy had cooked up. Theirs were better than the regular visitor tokens, though. Jake wasn’t entirely clear on all the details, but they effectively had VIP ones.

Tokens functioned not only as practical tools but also as identifiers. Jake himself, who’d originally gotten a Black Token, had his upgraded to a Dark Green after he was revealed as the Chosen, seeing as it would be very awkward to have the Chosen of the Order’s leader not have the highest level of token.

Due to the special nature of Jake’s, he could change its looks, though, in case he wanted to try to go incognito again… because that had worked out so well all the other times.

In summary, tokens were both symbolic and useful within the Order of the Malefic Viper, with Jake especially a fan of the phone call function he was currently using to talk with the Sword Saint.

“Dare I ask how it went?” the old man asked.

“Surprisingly well, I think?” Jake said, impressed at how smoothly everything had gone. “I feel like things got cleared up nicely, and it was all done without any fighting or deaths.”

“Would it be presumptuous of me to say that I’m proud?” the Sword Saint said in a jovial tone.

“Very.”

“In that case, I won’t,” the swordsman said, moving on right away with his next sentence: “We are currently out buying supplies, but will return within the next few hours… assuming Sylphie can decide on what she wants. Not to mention the King’s peculiarity regarding what he’s willing to purchase. The poor merchants are not having a good time.”

“Should I be worried it might end in violence on your end?” Jake joked.

“I’ll ensure we all return safe and sound,” the Sword Saint chuckled in response.

“Good, see you three soon,” Jake smiled, as the two said their goodbyes and severed the connection, leaving Jake alone in his living room.

Leaning back on the couch, Jake let out a loud sigh, finally letting all the relief hit him. He was glad that everything had indeed gone as well as it had, and even though he knew it was definitely presumptuous to think, he was incredibly proud of Meira and how far she’d come. He’d always believed her “crush” was nothing more than that, and one born from desperation. Meira had been stuck at sea with Jake her only lifeline, but now it seemed like she was finally solidly on dry land.

Deciding he wasn’t gonna dally and laze around, Jake stood up and went down toward his alchemy lab. Once there, he checked through his alchemical ingredients and put together a lot of herbs and toxins he’d need to continue his experimentation.

While the Pantheon of Life had great resources, they still lacked severely in the toxins department compared to the Order of the Malefic Viper. The Order simply had more variety, and with Jake’s overwhelming privilege, he could get whatever he wanted to wastefully experiment with to find the most suitable.

He was still working hard on making his bane poison with the ultimate goal of making a dragonsbane poison. Jake would say his progress was pretty decent, and he already had a few good ideas that he could now carry out once back in the Order. Although he also faced a few challenges.

Usually, Jake tried to avoid following recipes outright, as he preferred to discover things for himself. Also, more often than not, the recipes didn’t necessarily outline the best way to craft a poison. One could always find substitutes and different herbs that did the same thing with very slight variations.

However, in this case, even if Jake wanted a recipe, he hadn’t found any that were useful. His primary problem was that they all tended to use B-grade ingredients. C-grades didn’t really make bane poisons, so nobody bothered to discuss a method for them, resulting in Jake having to experiment and explore more on his own than usual.

His main issue was the three types of moss that were always used as the base for all bane poisons. These types of moss were only found at a B-grade level, meaning the energy within was borderline impossible for Jake to manipulate and control. There was simply a difference in quality and quantity that made it unfeasible.

That meant Jake would have to find some kind of replacement, but it wasn’t as simple as just finding three kinds of moss with similar properties. The reason these three were used as a base was due to how they combined in the concoction, priming the entire thing to absorb all the other required ingredients.

Without that base, none of the other ingredients made much sense, besides a few. One ingredient Jake couldn’t change was the part of the entity or thing one wanted to make a bane poison against. For dragonsbane, Jake would likely need some blood, scales, or other parts of dragons containing just a bit of Records.

Of course, before that, Jake would make a more generalized bane poison. The most important part was that bane poisons were primed against entities with certain kinds of Records, and the better the match in Records, the stronger the bane poison. A scalesbane poison would work against any scaled creature, but compared to a dragonsbane poison made solely for dragons, it would be far weaker due to its emphasis on scope over focus.

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

As Jake was searching through any reading material available, he did come across some mentions of C-grades having made bane poisons in the past, but none had been so kind as to share their ingredient list, something that didn’t come as a surprise. A C-grade capable of making a bane poison had to be a genius alchemist with their own unique set of skills and methods, so a general recipe would be of little use to others. Oh, and most didn’t even consider sharing their recipes. Jake had made a few impressive creations above his grade, but had never once written down a recipe book.

To be clear, Jake wasn’t complaining about the lack of a recipe to follow. He liked the challenge of figuring things out himself, and he even suspected that was part of the reason no one encouraged the creation or sharing of recipes in such scenarios.

The Records and experience gained from figuring out oneself were simply on another level.

Right as Jake had finished ordering all the ingredients he wanted for his upcoming hardcore alchemy session, his token buzzed once more, reminding him that he was waiting for a call.

Taking it out, he quickly answered as the expected person was on the other end.

“We’re returning now… it ended up taking a lot longer than I thought it would,” the Sword Saint said, sounding very exasperated.

“Got it, I’ll be ready and waiting,” Jake responded as he put aside the book he had been reading and made his way up towards the entrance area. It was also only now that he realized that seven hours had passed since he spoke with the Sword Saint last, meaning that, yeah, they definitely had quite the shopping trip.

Not long after, the teleportation gate activated, spitting out Sylphie, the King, and the Sword Saint. Sylphie instantly noticed Jake and didn’t hesitate to fly over and land on his head, all while letting off a loud series of screeches.

“Ree, ree, ree!” Sylphie explained, her excitement evident, making Jake nod.