A week.

It had been a week since Elsana and Lannayin had their fight about the issue. Lannayin didn't visit the place again, but Elsana's annoyed murmuring whenever she returned from a meeting from the City Lord's manor showed that they were still at odds. Elsana wanted to leave the city, and Lannayin wanted to stay and fight.

The frequency of the meetings and the intensity of their arguments suggested that the situation in the city was getting even worse. Leaving the city was the smart choice.

Yet, I stayed. Elsana loved the unique brand of stress management I had introduced a lot. Whenever she returned from a meeting, she dragged me to the bedroom, where we had one of our night-long sessions where I kept her relaxed, and she talked about her cultivation troubles.

I had to admit, the risk was worth it. With the System constantly multiplying the results, I had excellent gains. First of all, my Apothecary abilities had reached an absurd level. According to the System Returns, I was already at Perfection for ordinary medicines, and reached Major Accomplishment for the essence medicine refinement.

Something that was supposed to take years of dedicated training.

At the same time, I managed to swindle a shocking number of recipes and other books, which were all multiplied by the System. I even managed to get better versions of the five martial arts, the quality of the books reaching the Profound Low-Grade.

That way, whenever Elsana was away, I practiced the five arts. It increased my combat ability significantly. Yet, since I avoided making a breakthrough, I still managed to maintain the high multiplier.

Another weirdness of the System. The more I used it, the more I started to realize that the mysterious Divine being didn't put much thought into my punishment.

I wasn't complaining.

In addition to working on the five arts, I did my best to work on the martial arts I had called Forest Dance. Since the people of this world treated martial arts schools more seriously than nationality, using others publicly was not exactly a smart idea. Though, that wasn't the only reason I had worked hard on it while staying locked in my room.

All five arts were focused extremely on striking first and striking hard. Not a bad strategy considering Muscle Reinforcement allowed people to hit hard enough to kill others in one hit, but without a matching defensive capability. Since only rare few people were able to reach Skin Refinement and improve their defensive arts, the popularity of the strike-first arts was inevitable.

However, my situation was a bit different. I had both the Essence Massage technique, and the matching apothecary abilities. I didn't need to punch someone's heart out. A jolt of Essence to the right Acupuncture point would be enough to temporarily disable someone.

Or, permanently destroy their martial cultivation if they angered me. For something that essentially granted superpowers to people, Martial Cultivation was surprisingly fragile.

I wanted to develop that ability, because I still didn't know how I felt about killing, despite how commonplace it was in this new world. Even imagining it was squeamish. I'd rather destroy their cultivation and leave them alive unless I had no other choice.

Though, I doubted that they would actually treat it as mercy. Everything I had seen until now showed that they would prefer to be killed … but it wasn't my problem. Ultimately, I didn't want to kill people for my own mental comfort.

What a weird new world in that not being a serial killer or ruthless conqueror could be treated as a character flaw. A significant one…

"… your soup tea is getting cold, young master," the servant reminded me from his position, pulling me from my thoughts.

"Sorry, I was just inspired to write another poem," I said, ignoring the sneer that he thought that he kept hidden while I took the teacup … and my thoughts came to a screeching halt.

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The tea was drugged.

I still drank the tea. I wasn't afraid of the drug in the slightest. It was just an ordinary sleeping drug that would put me unconscious, but it would only work on an Initiate. With their essence active, Muscle Reinforcement martial artists could disable it relatively easily … and with the apothecary knowledge that I collected, I had about a dozen methods to disable it.

Unfortunately, the problem wasn't the drug, but the fact that one of the servants actually dared to indirectly attack me. Not for a moment, did I think Elsana approved it. Not only she didn't need to use such tactics to take me down with our closeness, but she would treat a simple drug like this as an insult.

She was very stringent when it came to the quality of the products she used. The drug they used with the tea was not only low quality, but also it wasn't even refined using the Snow Blossom method — which I was able to identify easily thanks to my greatly improved Apothecary abilities.

It was an outside attack.

The servant didn't even bother hiding his elation as I finished the tea. "S-something is wrong," I murmured less than a minute later, and collapsed down.

I wanted to see exactly what he wanted to do.

"It's done," he called, and four guards entered the room, each wearing the unique armor of the Snow Blossom Apothecary, but two of them, I had never seen before.

"Very good, our lord will reward you nicely," one of the unknown faces said, while the other grabbed and lifted me easily. I let that happen, using the contact to measure his cultivation.

Peak Muscle Reinforcement stage.

It surprised me. The foreign support part was inevitable, as no servant would dare to attack a guest without someone high ranking arranging for it. Yet, when he drugged me, I assumed it was one of the jealous apprentices behind it. There were several that watched me with jealousy while I 'attended' their precious Master, so they had the motive.

Sending two Peak Muscle Reinforcement martial artists was a different matter. Significantly so. Naturally, Lord Eirto was the biggest suspect, but not the only one. The city politics was complicated enough that maybe it was someone else who had the idea of blackmailing Elsana by kidnapping her lover.

I didn't care much about who was the responsible party as much as the next steps I should take. I could shout and alert the guards to the situation. My kidnappers were strong, but not strong enough to deal with all the guards.

The compound had more than a dozen Muscle Reinforcement experts that guarded the compound, and they should have been able to defeat the two even without my help. But, the presence of the two guards changed the equation.

I had no idea how many of them were actually aware of what was going on, or would actually fight against two experts to save me. With my reputation as a coward who lived off a woman, I was hardly a beloved figure.

More importantly, there was another issue. Why now? What gave them the courage to kidnap someone from Elsana's house despite the great disrespect it implied?

Maybe it was time for me to leave, at least temporarily. Kidnapping gave me an excuse to disappear for a moment.

In the end, I continued to fake unconsciousness while my kidnappers used a servant entrance to bring me away … which confirmed that I did the right thing by not shouting. In the middle of the day, this entrance should have been very busy. Instead, it was empty, showing that the number of collaborators was significant.

They put me in a carriage. One of the kidnappers took the driver's seat, while the other stayed with me. I was planning to wait until we were out of the city. After all, wilderness was the best place to deal with a victim. At least, I expected them to bring me to the slums.

But to my surprise, our destination was the exact opposite, right in the middle of the city. Not good. I needed to act. I wasn't afraid of dealing with the kidnapper in the privacy of the closed carriage, especially when his guard was down.

I wanted to learn who ordered it first. It would change the way I dealt with them. "W-what's going on…" I muttered as I opened my eyes, looking dazed.

"You angered someone you shouldn't anger, little boy," said the kidnapper gleefully, which was good enough as confirmation.

"W-who?" I asked, slurring badly while wanting to make sure. He just smirked and didn't answer. "Don't tell me that pathetic bastard lord of yours," I added.

"How dare you insult Lord Eirto, you pathetic waste," he growled in anger, not only confirming the identity of my kidnapper, but also putting himself in a very dangerous position. He grabbed my throat, but I grabbed the back of his neck, my grip ineffectual enough for him to ignore.

Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said for the small burst of essence that I pushed out of my finger, destroying one of his most critical acupuncture points. It was a delicate operation, which required me to hold my finger there for five seconds.

Which, in combat terms, was an eternity, but he was too busy strangling me happily to even register the risk until he felt his power disappear. "Good night," I said, and he collapsed.

I stayed in the cart for ten more seconds, utterly destroying his cultivation while I pulled one of the curtains slightly to wait for an opportunity to sneak out.

I didn't want to deal with the driver while were on the middle of a crowded street. Instead, I waited until we were in an alley before I opened the door slightly and dashed into it.

I was prepared for a mad chase which might have forced me to escape. Luckily, the other kidnapper was too confident in their success to watch the carriage carefully, and I easily disappeared into the alley.

I needed to decide what to do next.