Beginning the Refinement Process

"This is no laughing matter!" Sternly rebuked Erik. However, the redness of his face coupled with how he was shifting his eyes just made the entire situation all the more hilarious to Jack who erupted with even more raucous laughter. "Young master Hare!" He complained, seeing his first condemnation had gone unheeded.

"Forgive me, forgive me." Jack struggled to say amidst his laughing. He wiped a tear away from his eye and almost guffawed when he saw Erik's ashamed expression. "Really, I'm sorry. But I'm curious, what drug did you use, Uncle Jadelere?"

"A mix between a love drug and an honesty decoction which makes the person intoxicated blurt out whatever crosses their mind and…"

"This is hardly the time for this!" Interrupted Erik as he banged the armrest of his seat.

Jack and Jadelere exchanged a glance full of hidden meanings. They both leaned back in their seats and turned their faces in opposite directions. Erik snorted loudly as he fumed with anger at both of their shameless posturing.

"As I was trying to say, young master Hare," He added after taking a moment to calm down. "this is an organisation whose entire purpose of being is to scout the land in search of remnants of Heaven realm martial artists and exploit them. If they're responsible for the poison, then we can only assume there is one such remain in the vicinity of this city."

"That, of course, if we believe this Dr Seon's words." Interjected Jadelere.

"I don't see why not." Replied Jack. "Firstly, there was no lie in his eyes. Secondly, there was no conceivable reason for him to mislead me. Thirdly, if a tomb was found that belonged, let's say, to someone beyond the Heaven realm, then I can scarcely believe that the Church wouldn't spare no effort to secure it."

"Aye, there is truth to your words." Nodded Erik. "If something like that were truly found around here, then they would stop at nothing to claim it. My only concern is that there are no records of such a discovery either in the past or in recent times, and it's reasonable that we would've been the first ones to hear about it; which ultimately leads me to question the veracity of these claims."

"Actually…" Commented Jadelere. "There may be one such tomb nearby…"

"Explain yourself." Jack's eyes sharpened.

"Well… And bear in mind that this happened many years ago, just around the time you were born…" Jadelere fidgeted with his cane and his eyes darted around nervously. "There was a time when we had some… incidents… and a number of people died…"

"Get to the point."

"Well, survivors told of a cave in the mountains and of a creature that came out of it." Jadelere hardened his resolve and told the story. "Ichabod hired a hunter and had him rid the city of the plight. Thing is, a few days later, Ichabod made those few of us who knew of the matter swear that we would never mention the existence of the cave to anyone. I didn't think much of it at the time; actually, I never even thought about it again until now."

"Are you suggesting that cave is the entrance to the tomb?" Questioned Erik.

"I'm not suggesting anything." Defended Jadelere. "I'm merely stating the facts as they are."

"Enough, you two." Jack raised his hand and gestured them to be quiet. "It could be that Jadelere speaks rightly, or maybe he's wrong and the two events bear no relation to each other. Whatever the case, we cannot know without investigating the cave itself and now is not the time to take on such endeavours."

"You're right." Sighed Jadelere and Erik nodded to show he agreed.

"Good." Jack tapped his fingers against his armrest.

"But this changes things."

"In what way, uncle Erik?"

"If it's the Church's archaeological research division, we'll have to tread very carefully moving forward." He said with worry and Jadelere nodded to the side. "Dangerous is an adjective that falls far short from the mark when describing them."

"On the contrary, it gives us more hope." Smiled Jack; to which the other two looked at him as if he had just sprouted wings and started dancing in his undergarments. Jack coughed once because of how uncomfortable those gazes felt and decided it was best to explain his point of view. "Let me put it this way: if we look at it from the perspective of the Church, the plan to poison Groamburk isn't to entirely decimate its population; rather, it's to have the people confined while they perform their excavations."

"Makes sense." Jadelere took another sip of his wine. "And I can see where you're going with this. With the disease devastating the city, they can come over under the guise of saving us or some other codswallop religious folk are quick to fill their mouths with; gifting them with the perfect excuse for their fucking plots."

"Language." Chastised Erik; which earned him a colourful barrage of sentences in several different languages which Jadelere was proficient in. "What did you just say to me?" He asked with his eyebrows raised.

Jack massaged the bridge of his nose with two fingers. "He said 'language is the gift of gods to men and the cornerstone that separates us from animals.'"

"That's… rather poetic." Erik opened his eyes wide. "Did he really say that?"

"No, he described several methods you could insert your own manhood inside yourself."

"Since when do you speak Pthumerian and Eastern Irenian?" Asked Jadelere with extreme shock plastered on his face.

"You have a few books on them." Jack used his hand to stop Erik who seemed ready to pounce on Jadelere and attack him for his insults.

He might very well have if it weren't for Jack stopping him.

"There's more." Jack pulled out the totem he'd discovered between Dr Seon's clothes and placed it in the table between them also as a way to divert the tension. "I also found this hidden amongst Dr Seon's possessions; he didn't know about its existence."

Erik took it and examined it closely, clearly intrigued by it but also mentally swearing to himself that he wouldn't forget Jadelere's words. "There's a few formations hidden very intricately within this. Extremely discreet. There's a tracking formation imbedded deep within it as well as another one I'm not familiar with at all. Whoever did this is a master craftsman." Praised Erik.

"I concur." Remarked Jack. "The second one you mentioned is an observation array which records the vital signs of whomever it's bound to. There is also a third, and final, array which works as a relay that sends the information to a receiver across large distances."

Erik took in a deep breath of cold air. Despite his many years of expertise in the field of array formations he had only been able to perceive two of the three formations in the totem after carefully scrutinising it with his spiritual sense and yet Jack had been able to correctly detect and identify all of them. Nonetheless, he quickly accepted the fact because he had long discovered Jack's heaven-defying talent with regards to formations that far surpassed his own.

"In which case, this is truly the work of the Church." Added Jadelere from the side. "Abyss take us, I'm starting to really loathe you and your brilliant mind for deductions, Jack."

"You love me, and you know it."

"Go fuck yourself." Said Jadelere in fluent Pthumerian.

--

After that, Jack requested that Erik allow him to use his pill refining cauldron which he always kept inside his room. Under normal circumstances, he would never allow Jack to just casually use it but the urgency of the matter warranted its use.

Jack took the cauldron and went to his workshop turned training centre and locked himself up in his meditation chamber; not before applying all restriction, concealment, and killing formations to ensure he wouldn't be interrupted.

He pulled out the pill refinement cauldron from his storage ring and wondered at its exquisite craftsmanship. It was made of an unknown solid black material and it had nine dragons coiled around it in a pattern depicting their various flights soaring through the skies. Without even sending his spiritual sense into it, Jack could already tell that it was a superior piece of equipment that boasted mighty effects.

According to Erik, he had obtained it after painstakingly clearing the formations in the treasure chamber pertaining to a series of remains from an ancient civilisation after being commissioned by the royal family to do so. As the formation master in charge of releasing all the restrictions in that chamber, the royal family had allowed him to choose any one object within it. He chose this cauldron without a second thought.

From just a glance, Jack could see that Erik's choice had been the right one.

Jack also pulled out a parchment with an inscription on it that he'd previously prepared for the refinement process. The inscription was an array which instantly summoned a flame of the most powerful kind. Jack's intention was to use this flame to kindle the cauldron and use it to refine an antidote to combat the poison and then have Jadelere use his connections to spread it amongst the common populace of Groamburk.

Before beginning with the refinement process, he meditated for an hour to bring his mind to an optimum state. Once he was calm and ready to proceed, he activated the parchment which instantly burst in bright blue flame that burned with a level of heat strong enough to sear through stone as if it were mere paper.

It was a good thing that he'd chosen Klaus' workshop as a spot to refine the antidote and not the Hare manor, otherwise just this flame alone would have been potent enough to burn his house to the ground. Not for the first time, Jack marvelled at the strength of this workshop's construction and wondered about Klaus' true origins.

Whatever the case, he pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind and pulled out the vial of Dr Seon's blood from his storage ring and poured its contents into the cauldron. The dragon's eyes lit up as the blood within the cauldron began refining by burning away the impurities within it. This was an unexpected benefit because Jack hadn't expected the cauldron to begin doing this without his influence. Needless to say, this highlighted that the cauldron was no ordinary object.

Jack sent in his spiritual sense and directed the refinement process with utmost care into destroying the remnants of poison and the blood itself, wanting to leave behind the antidote which had been injected into Dr Seon.

The process took a long time and it required Jack to concentrate to the utmost in order to not lose control of the flame's heat and end up destroying the sample completely. After an unknown period of time, Jack grinned because he had succeeded. He slapped the side of the cauldron and a pure lapis lazuli coloured liquid emerged from the cauldron.

Jack frowned.

The amount of liquid was only equal to the size of a thumb and its purity was subpar at best. In other words, he couldn't use it as an antidote no matter how much he wanted to.

He clenched his fists and gritted his teeth; but he refused to give up. He pulled out the needle covered in poison which he'd extracted from his mother from inside his storage ring and took a series of deep breaths.

He had a plan B, but it involved doing something extremely dangerous, and extremely stupid.

Jack hardened his resolve and pierced the needle right into his carotid artery, injecting the poison right into his bloodstream and sending it straight into his heart. This wasn't the same as being infected by another person; what Jack was doing was putting a concentrated amount of it directly into his most vulnerable spot, severely endangering his life. However, Jack knew that if he didn't do this, there was no chance of him developing an antidote in time to save lives; and even if his actions had a success rate close to zero, it was still more than what he currently had.

Thick beads of sweat formed on his forehead as he felt a ball of magma flowing within his veins and hammering his heart.

Jack's eyes turned blank and his teeth almost cracked from how hard he was grinding them. Nonetheless, he refused to black out because he knew that would mean certain death.

Jack fought back against the poison.