Sovereign of the Karmic System

For the following five days, Daniel gave one list after the other to the chairman of the poisonous rose, which in turn, would delegate the task to one of her agents. A few hours later, the agent would come back with the items that Daniel had requested.

At first, the young woman believed that Daniel was following a specific recipe, but then, she had ended up ruling that idea out of her mind. The reason for that, was that if Daniel already had a completed recipe, he would not be giving her multiple lists separately, and would instead give her a single one with all the ingredients he needed.

In her mind, only one possibility remained. He was using a terrifying amount of items to conduct his tests.

The fifth day, the seemingly endless succession of lists had finally ended, and instead, the chairman received a visit.

*Knock Knock Knock*

"Come in." Said the young woman while fixing her dress, and trying to appear presentable. She was wearing a beautiful and spotlessly clean red dress, which was much more than she had ever worn for Daniel, whenever he would come to visit her.

The door opened, and behind it, Aeron and Daniel appeared.

It was immediately clear to Daniel that the current attire of the woman was not in his honour, but that did not mean that it hadn’t surprised him.

The two quietly entered, and after bowing politely to the young woman, he said "Milady, you look beautiful."

The young girl was happy, but not flattered by Daniel’s compliments. She bowed politely in response, and invited the two in. After the two sat on the chairs placed in front of her desk, she said "Master Hiel, helping you out this time, was not a trivial thing to us.. But I am glad we were able to find every item that you have requested. May I assume that you have completed your research?"

A big smile appeared on Daniel’s face, as he said "I did, and I am ready to make my demonstration."

The young woman beamed with joy, and without wasting anymore time, she took a small green bead out of her spatial ring, and shattered it in between her fingers. She then hastily walked in the middle of the room, along with the black thorn that was, as usual, standing next to her as she looked at the empty space in excitement.

Daniel and Aeron stood up as well, and joined the woman in the middle of the room.

Moments later, a two meters tall green portal opened in the area in front of them. This portal gave the impression to be corroding the very space on which it had been opened.. Consuming it into wielding to whomever was going to walk out of it.

From the portal, a single individual walked out.

This individual was a man of about thirty years of age. He was dressed with black and green clothes, and had a lean figure.. But his attire, was not the most impressive detail about him. His facial features were sharp, even when in a relaxed state. His two naturally green eyes were closed into two horizontal slits, and gave the impression that the lights were hurting them.

Overall, while slightly less manly and more feminine, this man was handsome enough to be worth comparing to Daniel, who while not receiving as many looks from enamoured young women wherever he walked, would always stick to people’s mind quite often.

The moment this man appeared, the young girl’s body straightened as an arrow. From her expression and behaviour, Daniel, Aeron, and the black rose, were able to see that she was extremely infatuated by him.

"L-lord Joa, this is the researcher of which I have talked to you about. Master Hiel." She said nervously, before turning towards Daniel, and adding "Master Hiel, this is Lord Firer Joa. He will witness to your demonstration.

"It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Master Hiel. Your previous feat was truly impressive. I can’t help but be in awe by your talent." Said the man with a honeyed tone.

Daniel smiled politely in response, but internally, he was on high alert. The red colored number above this man’s head, was amongst the biggest he had ever seen, and considering the power that this man possessed, it was obvious that he had spent many millennia doing atrocious things.

"My pleasure Lord Joa." Responded Daniel while nodding politely.

"Welcome, Lord Joa." Said the black thorn from the side, before being promptly ignored by the man.

Daniel noticed the way the man treated the loyal black thorn, and immediately thought that this man deserved his negative karma. While all of them had done terrible things for the sake of experimenting, they did not do it for pleasure, or at least, not all of them.

For the last month, Daniel had spent his time along with many poison masters, and while their action had caused the deaths of an incalculable number of people, they were not intrinsically bad people.

Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the man called Firer Joa.

Noticing that Daniel had disliked the way the man had behaved, the chairman interjected by saying "Now that we are all here, why don’t we get to the demonstration?" She then turned towards Lord Joa, and while opening a spatial portal in front of her, she added "Please, this way."

Daniel, Aeron, the chairman, the black thorn, and Lord Joa walked into the portal, and when they arrived on the other side, they they ended up in one of the empty floors of the large building. In it, only large pillars were present, but not a single piece of furniture. A few alchemical instruments were placed on the floor of a large platform which was placed in the very middle of the room.

This room was dedicated to the evaluation of the aspiring thorns, and would be used by the various families who wanted to submit their poisons to the chairman. If interested in seeing a demonstration and partial explanation of how the poison worked, the chairman would then make the senate reunite in this room to witness to it.

The family leader would then show his work to the senate, which afterwards, would be able to vote on whether the poison was powerful enough, and advanced enough to deserve to be compared to the others.

Most of the times, the votation would end negatively, as anyone was capable of making a deadly poison, but very few could actually contribute to the science of poison making. In the end, only one out of a hundred managed to become an actual thorn, and member of the senate.

Once they all arrived to the middle of the room, the woman pointed at the platform with her hand, and said "Master Hiel, please."

Daniel did not want to waste time, and directly walked in the middle of the platform.

With a wave of his left hand, he made dozens of different ingredients appear around him, before sitting down with his legs crossed.

The chairman, as well as the black thorn, were visibly shocked to see the items that Daniel had taken out. Amongst them, were each and every single item that he had requested, as well as a few more.

Lord Joa turned towards the woman with a narrowed eyes and a grave expression, causing the woman to shake the previous confusion off of her head to make space for worry.

Without paying too much attention to the two of them, Daniel focused on his control over his immortal essence, and started to take care of the ingredients, which similarly to those he had used for the making of the of the Partial Poison Immunity Pill, had to be divided into various groups, and treated differently in order to bring the required effect to the mixture.

Charring, portioning, mixing, dehydrating, and many more methods were used by Daniel all at the same time.

After combining these treated ingredients, he blended them into seven different mixtures, which right after, began to mix with one another once again.

This whole process took more than an hour, and while Aeron and the chairman looked with interest, and the black thorn looked with deep shock, Lord Jao was memorizing the procedure, and at the same time, quietly counting in his head.

He was a member of the Garden of Death, and while he was there to invite Daniel into his faction, he also had another job. That job, was to make sure that the formula would end in their hands, and to evaluate what the cost of mass producing this pill actually was.

His faction had already received the formula of the lower level pill, and while mass producing the pill was slightly expensive, there was nothing they could do about it. Unfortunately, the mid level one was a lot more expensive than he had expected, and the more time he spent calculating, the more restless he became.

They had to spend a great deal of money and effort to purchase every item that Daniel had asked for, and according to the chairman’s report, Daniel was only testing poisons, and trying to come out with an actual formula.. But that, had ended up not being the case. He was actually using each and every object he had asked for, as well as many others that he had acquired by himself.

At this point, the cost of what looked like a batch of pills, had easily reached that of a perfect essence treasure, and while the cost was not absurd per se, the final product could only nurture a small bunch of people, and not an entire army.

But what was even worse, was the fact that this was only a mid level poison immunity, and not a high, or a perfect one.. Therefore, for the Garden of Death, there would be no point in nurturing a massive number of soldier, if any single high level elite from any of the other faction, would be able to exterminate their entire army alone.

While Lord Joa lost himself in depressing thoughts, Daniel completed the process of producing the pills.

The mood of the Lord Joa had only managed to become better after he seeing fifty small pills float in the space around Daniel. These pills emanated a mouth watering sweet smell, and showed a colorful surface which glowed with a purple and green hue.. Looking exactly like fifty pieces of delicious candy.

Lord Joa, which was an elite of the Garden of Death, and was extremely experienced in various types of poison and venoms, was able to immediately recognize each of these pills as the most dangerous amongst all of the sixth tier poisons he had ever seen.. and only lower in power to seventh tier poisons.

"A magnificent job." He said while applauding, and smiling happily at Daniel, which nodded politely, and the chairman, which breathed in and out heavily form sheer happiness. "Master Hiel, how do you consume these pills?" he then asked with genuine curiosity.

Daniel looked back at him, and said "I will show you." He then put most of the pills into his spatial ring, and grabbed the only one left from mid air, causing a few odd looks coming from Lord Joa, the chairman, and the black thorn to land on him.

He completely ignored the looks of the three, and after looking at the Black Thorn, he said "May I have a sample of your poison?"

The black thorn was confused by the request, but instead of refusing, he looked at the chairman, which immediately nodded back in response.

After receiving the chairman’s permission, the man raised his left sleeve, and showed an arm completely covered in tattoos. He then opened his palm and made it face upward. Moments later, the tattoos on his arm started to move towards the man’s opened palm, and formed a small black bead. This bead quickly started to evaporate into a small cloud of black smoke, and move towards Daniel.

In less than a second, Daniel was engulfed by the deadly black cloud.

He took a deep breath of the poison, and at the same time, he put the pill into his mouth, and swallowed it. He then closed his eyes, and quietly waited for the excruciatingly painful effect of the pill to take effect.

Floating next to Daniel, completely invisible to the eyes of anyone but Daniel himself, was the blurry consciousness of Sewah, which was curled up in a fetal position, and into a deep sleep.

*AAAAAAAAAAAARGHHHHHHH*