Primordial Sage: Plight of Immortality

"Another of your weird acquaintances, I see. How unpleasant." Aurelia shot him a disgusted look for a second before she turned back to Illyan.

During the entire conversation, she never stopped moving her hands as she prepared the medicine, mended some of his broken bones, and alleviated his frostbite.

Meanwhile, Ezekiel, who was still in his disguise, felt the corner of his eye twitch as he cursed in his heart.

'Little bitch, if it wasn't for your dad… Haah, this really isn't worth the effort of even being mad.'

Looking at the stubborn lass, he sighed in annoyance.

"Well, well, how unrestrained. I guess daddy never hit you, did he? Wouldn't that make you quite spoiled?" Ezekiel said with a feigned tired expression as he slowly came closer to Illyan.

"Woe is me," Aurelia muttered with an expressionless face.

However, Ezekiel could see that she was just taking him lightly as she continued what she was doing.

"You are really—Jamal…" Just as he wanted to say more, a chilling voice behind him called his 'name.'

Ezekiel groaned as he lifted his hands overhead.

"Sorry, my friend. You know what I am like. Teasing little kids is my passion," Ezekiel said with a grin.

Then, without a warning whatsoever, he flicked his nail against Illyan's hand, causing a small nick on it as a droplet of blood flowed out.

The movement was too quick, and Aurelia didn't even perceive what had happened until she saw him putting his finger into his mouth with a bit of curiosity.

Brynjar was looking at him intently, which made Aurelia realize what this was about.

She showed a disgusted expression as she took out a certain bottle, uncorked it, and poured its contents on the nick Ezekiel had caused.

Ezekiel, whose face contorted into weird expressions mixed with curiosity after tasting Illyan's blood, saw what she did and frowned.

"What are you doing?"

"Disinfecting the wound so that he doesn't get infected by you," Aurelia said with contempt as she looked at him.

Ezekiel's brow twitched once more as she was getting on his nerves.

"Interesting. Then why does his blood taste so weird? Did you give him something weird?" Ezekiel asked as he rolled his tongue against the palate of his mouth with a pondering face.

"What a strange thing to say as a physician, Sir Jamal. You would expect that someone who studied medicine would know that much." Aurelia rolled her eyes with visible disdain in them.

"Aurelia, speak."

However, this time, before Ezekiel could say anything, Brynjar spoke with a forceful tone.

"Haah… You really brought an apprentice only for me to need to diagnose him anyway, heh. The patient was surviving in the mountains for a week. That is very difficult without any preparations," Aurelia explained languidly.

To not freeze to death, a normal person would either need a way to isolate the freezing cold or create a big enough fire to keep himself warm.

Both are difficult to do in these mountains. Fire would lure the trolls to his place, which would end in death for most people.

On the other hand, the best way to keep themselves warm in this situation was to find a good shelter and use the snow wall as an insulator for the heat inside.

But that would only slow down the inevitable.

A week would be impossible to survive in that situation.

But Illyan 'managed' to do so.

"Sir Kaoran ground several herbs to create a heat-insulating paste that covered his body and kept his body warm. But the remains are old, so these herbs were probably on him before he left the city, and he used them in the situation to keep himself warm," Aurelia said slowly as she pointed at the green smudges covering some parts of his body.

"That doesn't explain my question." Ezekiel scoffed at her with an annoyed expression.

"Don't interrupt me when I'm speaking, you ignorant fool. The smudges are already dark and are crumbling if you rub them. He probably used it immediately, and its effect degraded over time. If he made the paste perfectly, it could last around two days if the skin absorbed most of its medical essence. That's when I used my grandfather's blood test and found out that his blood was affected by a certain poison."

"Huh, poison?!" Brynjar narrowed his eyes as he clenched the hilt of the saber he had strapped on his belt.

He remembered that both Vanda and Varel had said that they managed to poison the intruder.

So would that mean…?!

"It was a weakened version of Blood Heat Poison," Aurelia said curtly, but her eyes flashed with mischief for a second.

"Huh?" Brynjar made an exclamation while Ezekiel's face turned pale for a second.

"Blood… Heat Poison? How is that possible? Wouldn't that make your blood rise dangerously and cause the flow to turn sluggish?" Brynjar asked confusedly.

"He used three main ingredients to create a blend he subsequently gulped down. It seems the poison doesn't work on normal people but just slightly raises the body temperature." Aurelia shrugged, but Brynjar didn't let it slide.

"Did you teach him that?" Brynjar asked with narrowed eyes.

That was one of their highly valued poisons. Teaching it to someone with no blood ties was preposterous!

Since no more than three people in the entire clan could refine this kind of poison, it had to be that damned father of his who taught it to this stupid lass, who then passed on the torch to this random guy!

"No? Why would I teach him this? I didn't even know it had this effect on a normal person. My guess is that he was the one to come up with it or learned it from somewhere else."

It wasn't just a guess. This was Illyan's trump card in this situation.

Back when he was still in the Bakur tribe, he had learned the habit of tasting all kinds of herbs, whether toxic or edible, in pursuit of herbalistic knowledge.

The old Kaoran had also approved of this back then, with just words of caution.

However, after months of tasting, the barren land of the north didn't have more herbs to accommodate his needs.

It was at that time that he started to experiment with all kinds of mixes of these herbs.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Some blends made the individual herbs lose their effect, while other blends managed to mitigate the toxin within some of them.

In this way, he managed to find many recipes that were edible despite being made out of poisonous herbs, or create poisons that were strengthened by mixing them together.

However, this one particular blend was the one that the entire Bakur tribe appreciated the most.

A blend that could help survive the harsh blizzards of the Frozen Tundra.

However, its creation wasn't comfortable, to say the least.

Illyan still remembered the pain that went through his veins a few minutes after he ingested the three herbs.

It was so bad that he collapsed on the ground and only focused on enduring the pain. From those moments, he only remembered Zers, who was close by, yelling at him in worry.

Illyan, who was perfectly pretending he was asleep thanks to his \\[Nature Breath Method], which allowed him to make the most natural breathing, chuckled in his heart, thinking about the past.

The poison was an antithesis against people like him who had very strong vitality. The stronger the vitality was, the higher the body temperature rose, and with it, the pain.

It was so high that even he, with his almost unbreakable pain tolerance, almost lost consciousness at that time.

However, the most dangerous trait of that poison was the rise in body temperature. For a normal person, the small difference in body temperature could spell death as fast as lightning.

Obviously, such a problem was alleviated by Illyan's regeneration and even the bits of Cold Energy hidden within the deepest parts of his body.

But the pain remained.

And so, he endured. Endured to the point where bloody tears flowed from his eyes.

Once the pain subsided to the point where he could think a bit, he realized that the more his body regenerated from the poison's damage, the more the poison flared up.

Inspired by this, he tried to go against his survival instinct and forcibly stopped his regeneration, which caused the poison to lose its effectiveness.

When Zers came back with Kaoran, it was already over. However, intrigued, Illyan continued experimenting with Kaoran and found out that this poison was as strong as the user's vitality and that for a normal person, it was completely harmless.

Finding out that the Blood Bearer Gang had an even better version of this poison, he made a plan with Aurelia to 'expose' physician Kaoran's weak physique, verifying that he was an innocent member of society who was just unlucky.

Ingesting the three ingredients before being found while hiding his blood energy deeper within his body.

At first, Illyan thought about using up all of his blood energy before using it, but Aurelia stopped him, saying that the way the poison worked could completely take him down.

'Don't forget, Illyan. This poison feasts on a person's vitality, and blood energy is one of the most concentrated signs of vitality. Once you create even a drop of blood energy, this poison could make you feel the worst pain. Unfortunately, using up the blood energy isn't a solution either. Because blood energy is the seed made out of your vitality, weeding it out would actually expose the deeper essence within you. It is as if you sacrificed the plant's flowers and stem only to expose its hidden roots.'

When he heard this explanation, Illyan realized that he would need to suck it up if he wanted this plan to work out.

Fortunately, he wasn't that bad at pushing his blood energy deeper within his body, where the effect was mitigated—although minimally. The main reason for doing this was to hide the blood energy in his veins rather than to stop the pain.

The pain coursing through his body was actually even worse deep in his guts, where he compressed it to hide it. The only reason he could endure it was that his blood energy was still minuscule compared to the likes of Brynjar, and his suppression of his regeneration was at the maximum limit.

Still, he felt like dying at the moment.

At least he didn't have to worry about exposing himself by showing a pained expression since he was someone who went through a horrific 'ordeal,' right?

Thinking he did his part, Illyan decided to leave everything else to Aurelia.

"He learned this? That's preposterous…! Tell me the truth, Aurelia!" Brynjar growled as he stared at Illyan's head.

Illyan, who had been pretending to be unconscious the entire time, felt the stare and felt indignant.

'But I truly found this out by myself though.' He really hoped this would not be the reason to fall out with this man.

The plan would go down the drain because of this.

"Ah, Father, you are truly arrogant. Knowledge isn't unique to individuals. People manage to learn the same things despite living in different corners of the world. Why would this be a problem? Even if I taught him, what would be the reason? To make someone like him as miserable as me? I am not as petty as you, Dad." Aurelia laughed bitterly.

"I didn't even know that the poison was weak like this. Is that because of a lack of blood energy? Or maybe the life force within it? I guess this was the reason this poison is used as punishment for the traitors of the clan instead of being used against external enemies like acolytes who are weak as twigs." Aurelia laughed in Brynjar's face as she pointed out the clan's deeds.

'The fact that it needed to be ingested internally also didn't help,' Illyan thought silently.

If it could be used externally, then hunting down the trolls would be as easy as hunting a deer.

It couldn't really be used for interrogation either since the poisoned person's temperature would rise until they became muddled and died of heatstroke before they could even start talking.

That was the only reason why Illyan never used this poison, except for giving the recipe to Kaoran.

'But now, it is useful.' Thinking about the many things that had happened over the years in the Bakur Tribe, he felt a twinge of longing before quickly dousing it after hearing Aurelia's mocking tone.

"It is really a miracle that a normal person is unaffected by this, and it could be even safer, wouldn't you think? The concentration within his body isn't as high as when the poison is made by us, but it is still enough that even a drop of his blood could make someone with a knight's physique feel uncomfortable for a few hours."

She smirked as she glanced at Ezekiel, whose facial expressions had been changing for a while now.

One drop of blood he ingested truly wouldn't be life-threatening to him. But as a biomancer, he felt the life force within his body flip over. The pain was bad, but even worse was that his life force had a tendency to burst out of his body thanks to his profession as his veins visibly writhed on his skin.

Aurelia smirked as she looked down to hide her eyes that flashed with a cruel glint.

Illyan also felt the aura radiating from him, which made him excited.

"Ah, Sir Brynjar, I see that your daughter is quite experienced. I am not really needed here anymore, seeing her take care of him. His blood, which I checked, seems to be normal, so I will take my leave."

Ezekiel spoke with a forced, expressionless face as his stiffened body moved in a broken way to leave the tent.

"What..? You need to take care of the boy! Hey!" Brynjar called to him, but Ezekiel didn't listen at all, which made Brynjar irritated.

He glared back at Aurelia. "We will settle this later," he said, then left after Ezekiel…

Aurelia sighed in relief, but neither she nor Illyan let down their guard as she continued 'treating' him.

Illyan also felt as if a stone had fallen from his heart as he felt the tension leaving his body. Despite his confidence today, he still felt nervous when meeting these two.

No matter how good the [Nature Breath Method] was at hiding his presence and life force, he still considered himself a beginner, especially in front of Ezekiel.

Fortunately, he was skilled enough for Ezekiel not to realize it from just a glance, while the Blood Heat Poison hid the true nature of his blood.

The credibility of the poison also helped since no one would be able to withstand it unless they didn't feel pain.

But to Illyan, it was barely bearable.

'Maybe I should continue to raise my pain tolerance.' Illyan stopped himself from groaning in pain as some idle thoughts popped into his head.

He thought he didn't need to raise his pain tolerance further since he had lived through misery that very few people went through.

But once again, he realized that stopping meant being left behind.

He could not use his ability to the limit if his pain tolerance wasn't good enough.

……..

Meanwhile, Brynjar went after Ezekiel at a fast pace.

"Ezekiel, what the hell are you doing? What is the result?"

Ezekiel stopped moving but didn't turn around.

"There is nothing of interest about the boy. He doesn't have even a bit of mana. Considering Korin's test he did a year ago, there is no way this man is an acolyte."

"What about blood energy or flow or such?" Brynjar narrowed his eyes.

But Ezekiel just shook his head as he turned around. His face was unreadable as he held his own hand firmly.

"Wouldn't you know best since he ingested that poison? I tell you, the smiling demon had a physique that could fend off my flesh puppet and even send pressured slashes from the swing of his sword. If the poison this brat ingested was truly a weakened version of Blood Heat Poison, he would cry like a little bitch, no matter whether he had blood energy, flow, or aura."

Ezekiel said slowly as he clenched his hand even more. If Brynjar had been more perceptive, he would have noticed that the hand he was holding was actually trembling a bit.

But Brynjar's mind was elsewhere.

"I see. Then once we get to Winterfrost, I will tell one Elder who can concoct this poison and use it on someone. If the blood has the same taste, then it will truly be poison…"

"Are you a fool? You want to make me taste this shit again?" Ezekiel's brow twitched while Brynjar flinched at the outburst.

Seeing this, Ezekiel growled as he turned around, leaving Brynjar.

"Prepare proper reimbursement. If I am not satisfied, I will gouge your eyes." Ezekiel said without turning back.

Instead, as he went forward, he took a pristine white cloth and tied it around the little finger of the hand that had been trembling a moment ago.

Then he took a knife and put it against that finger.

Splash

Without hesitation, he cut off half of it as he quickly covered it with the cloth.

However, the severed finger inside the cloth started to wriggle in his hands, spurting growths all over its surface as if tumors of cancer had infested it.

Ezekiel stared at it with a grim expression.

'What an unpleasant poison. Thankfully, it was just a drop of that brat's blood. If it were a proper dosage of the real deal, I would be in trouble.'

Ezekiel thought gloomily as the life force, which had been more turbulent than ever, finally calmed down as it settled…