While his second-in-command contacted the Root Branch, Archibald penned a polite letter of first contact, folded it up, and sent the paper bird on its way to the old city of Willowdale. Hopefully the sect grounds were still in the same place.
Archibald’s poor liver wouldn’t get much rest any time soon, as he realized when one of his core disciples requested additional resources to attempt developing a facsimile of the semi-autonomous spinning cutters which Newman had used.
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The third time, visiting another Black Horse Sect branch, this time a small auxiliary in Hadegoke, she was welcomed as a guest. She had announced her arrival to them two weeks in advance. They simply admitted that their tournament wasn’t planned with a visitor like her in mind, and that they couldn’t in good faith put forward any of their strongest members, as they were already assigned brackets. She understood the reasoning; exhaustion from previous fights would jeopardize one’s performance in subsequent ones, and Zelsys herself didn’t want to go into a friendly match with the unfair advantage of her opponent’s exhaustion. It was a small sect on par with the Arkaley Sect, having only twenty-one inner disciples to begin with, though its facilities were designed for at least two hundred; they had clearly lost many members in the war.
As such, she was content to watch the tournament, and offered to exhibit both techniques of the Newman Sect and her own, personal techniques, as a token of good faith. Most of what she showed was either derived from Sturmblitz Kunst 0, or so specific to her that an onlooker wouldn’t be able to copy it; any reproduction would be its own, new technique.
She got the impression that her brief exhibition went over very well, especially the parts where she purposely re-enacted sections of the routine at a slowed-down pace, breaking down what she was doing. As for the tournament itself, she got her own share of amusement from each and every match; even those which were barely a few steps beyond human ability, involving only Fog-breathing and a handful of truly special techniques.
Then, as she drank in good spirits with the sect elder, Reimund Groessin, she felt an interesting burn in her drink. Seeing the elder’s waiting face, she thought to compliment it, to say that she appreciated his thoughtfulness for going so far as to give her sufficiently strong drink.
Before she even finished her compliment, however, she knew that it wasn’t thoughtfulness; she had been poisoned with a substance meant to kill or at least maim her. Whatever it was burned in her stomach, but she used Skin of Bronze to metallize her stomach and her Metabolic Alkahest quickly broke the poison down before any real damage could be caused. After the first few sips, her immunity had been formed. From then on it still burned on the way down, but as it was broken down, she felt an intoxication building up, a vague euphoria of sorts.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Rather than make a scene, she maintained the facade of friendliness and asked for some more. Then, after three glasses, she said she could tell that it was a “reinforced” drink, and asked if she could be shown whatever the elder had reinforced it with so she could get some for herself later. Nervous, confused, and seemingly glad to play along, the Hadegoke Sect’s elder brought out a small bottle ground wrapped in ancient seals written in script she couldn’t read. A Cavernous Bottle.
It lined up with what her own body had discerned from the poison; relatively stable, attacking with lower-order compounds whose efficacy didn’t suffer without particularly specific storage conditions.
She sniffed it. Cloyingly sweet. Pouring some on her finger, she found it to have a sap-like consistency. Licking it, she immediately had to focus on breaking it down, feeling parts of her mouth start to go numb nearly instantly. It was strong, as evidenced by the sect elder’s briefly hopeful eyes followed by disbelief when she licked her lips and drizzled some of the poison into the bottom of her glass. Then, she brought out some Winter Peach Brandy to mix with the poison. Dissolved as such, the bite was taken out of it.
For the next two hours, she tormented the sect elder by using his would-be assassination tool to amuse herself.
“Tell me, my good man - what is the name of this poison?”
“The- It is the Sap of Grinning Death, so it is. It is said to induce euphoria and melt the victim’s organs so that the tree it comes from can eat them.”
“I’ll take it. Consider it a gesture of good faith. If you find any more interesting poisons you wish to give me, I would suggest you do so in the open next time.”
Reimund got the message loud and clear, nodding.
“Before I make my leave… Was it your own idea to be so considerate, or did someone else bring forth the suggestion?”
“It was someone else; I know nothing of who it might have been, they were wise enough to use an intermediary and take precautions...”
He was lying, but not fully. She stared at him, visualizing all the ways she could kill him right then and there, letting the predatory instinct in the back of her head seep out. The man’s own aura was mighty, like the edge of a two-meter-long razor, but this wasn’t a clash - just tacit communication. After a short while, he relented.
“Fine, it was someone from the Root Branch. I was not lying about the intermediary or the precautions, I only happen to be familiar with how the Root Branch likes to operate. They have been doubly careful in communicating with the other branches since their sect grounds are under the noses of the occupationist government. Some of my acquaintances have theorized that the Root Branch may have planned to move out of occupied territory and you shoved a thorn in their eye by claiming the Willowdale grounds. I personally have nothing against you or yours, this was just a matter of fulfilling my duty to the Root Branch.”