Primordial Sage: Plight of Immortality

Once he realized who, or rather what, the troublemaker was, he decided to finish the operation.

He looked into the little girl’s stomach and found another tree of these centipedes.

They were just around the length of a finger, but it was enough to cause a big problem inside the body.

Once he successfully extracted all of them, he started to heal her body.

But her body was weak, and the injuries caused by the centipedes were quite serious.

Fortunately, Illyan had a solution. He started to concoct medicine on the spot with the new herbs he brought.

He then took out one of the vials used by the acolytes and used a pipette to extract a drop, which he put inside the concoction.

He had already done some experiments with the thing and decided that distilling it like this would create a good substitute for a medicine for normal people.

The contents inside the vial were too strong by themselves, and Illyan was unwilling to waste a high amount, but this solved the problem.

Of course, he wouldn’t waste it on everyone. Only when people were dying and he could save them with this.

Nobody wanted to be treated by physicians who failed at some point.

The fewer people who died under his care, the better credibility he had as a physician.

Once he finished the concoction, he started to apply it to the places that were injured. Seeing the immediate reaction, Illyan nodded to himself.

Then he stitched the incision before turning to the father.

“She should recover in a few days. Don’t feed her anything during that time since her digestive system needs to recover.” Illyan then waved his hand, indicating they could leave.

The man kneeled on the ground and cried.

“Thank you! Thank you so much!” The man kowtowed and then took a pouch, taking all the money he had.

Illyan took some but left the rest. The man wouldn’t be able to pay off the drop of the vial with such meager money, so taking everything he had only for him to die by starvation wasn’t the best course of action.

The man was even more thankful, seeing this as he cried…

……..

Several days passed.

Illyan was slowly recovering and already felt his strength rising. His muscles got leaner and were also more elastic. He also felt that his veins were more prominent on his body when he flexed his muscles, making him wonder if it was because of his strengthened blood.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have much time during that period to train as there was a serious problem going on in the town.

The centipede epidemic began!

Several people visited him daily because of abdominal pains. He could only surgically cut them out while looking for a medicine that would solve the issue.

Watching the woman who was lying on his surgical table and was unconscious, he started to open her stomach with an expressionless face.

He usually found from three to twelve of these creatures per person. He had to look deeply for them each time as they were cleverly hidden.

But this time it was different.

The rustle echoed as sudden pain was felt on his little finger.

“Hmm?” Illyan was surprised that the centipede attacked instead of hiding but didn’t hesitate to neutralize it. However, the centipede this time was crazy as it writhed trying to bite him again.

But in the end, it ended up in a jar as he put it away.

He looked at his finger and noticed the small droplet on the verge of dripping off his finger.

Another close look made him see another color in the wound.

‘Poison, huh.’

He took a universal antidote just in case and continued the operation.

However, another twist happened as several blurs flew out of the abdomen trying to reach him.

Or rather, his wounded hand.

‘Are they after my blood?’

Illyan’s quick thought process made him realize the crux of the matter as he caught them all in one swoop.

Once he did so, he hurried to sew the woman up and send her away.

Then, he returned to the laboratory to carry the jars of centipedes to a hidden room.

He had already collected 86 of them and was sure this wasn’t the end of it.

That, however, gave him some margin for error as he started to study them. He dissected several of them to understand them better.

If this did not end soon, the entire town would be contaminated.

And him being a physician would not have time to do anything other than just treating these people.

So, looking for a culprit and creating some kind of medicine would be for the best.

He already knew that it was probably one of the acolytes who was in the town.

Aziro and Ezekiel were also options, but considering the strength of the individual centipede, it was improbable.

They grew in strength as they consumed the flesh inside the people they parasitized while leaving the dead cells behind, which he had to surgically cut out later on.

However, the growth was limited. Firstly, the normal mortal couldn’t nourish a magical beast to a high level. Illyan guessed that either the centipedes were wasted on the mortals or that they were simply a naturally weak species.

When he tried to vivisect one for the first time, it exploded into a dark mist that tried to corrode him. But the power the explosion gave off was at most at the first stage. The same applied to their venom.

Only the higher number had a chance to be at the level of the acolytes.

But now, as he was putting the new jars inside the room, he noticed that one of them grew thicker in a matter of seconds.

He looked over to observe it. It was the one that bit him.

Its vitality was growing at a visible pace as it writhed incessantly inside the jar.

Sighing, Illyan put the other jars away and drew blood on his fingers with a flick of his nails and opened the jar.

He was careful not to let the centipede fly away. The thing, albeit big, was extremely light and when it jumped, it could glide through the air at high speed.

The moment it smelled the scent of the blood, it began to screech, trying to lunge at him.

But with Illyan’s superb reactions, he caught the creature while letting some of his blood drip inside its mouth.

It shivered as if from pleasure.

Illyan’s eyes glittered as he put it back inside the jar and waited.

A quarter of an hour later, the centipede grew several new segments on its body and grew so much thicker that it almost didn’t fit inside the jar.

But just as Illyan wanted to take it out, the creature exploded inside the jar, shattering it into many pieces!

The shards of the glass flew everywhere as Illyan’s arms and face got hit by several of them.

Looking at his wound-covered hand, he started to remove the shards expressionlessly one by one.

Once he was done, he started to research the liquid left after the explosion.

After several hours, he found a reason.

‘The body vessel’s limit of vitality was exceeded to the point of explosion…’ This new discovery confirmed his thoughts about the creatures being inherently weak.

The experiments continued as he tried to find the exact limit that the creatures could withstand.

After killing dozens, he found out that four droplets of his blood were enough for them to reach their maximal potential. Any more and they would literally swell until they were torn apart from inside.

However, this time Illyan didn’t let the liquid just splash everywhere and collected most of it.

This liquid was extremely acidic, so he had to prepare bottles that would withstand it. He was then trying to understand all of its properties.

Since the centipede was venomous, the black liquid also became a strong poison. Not nearly strong enough to take down the likes of Ezekiel, but it could have an effect on Aziro, who had a weaker body.

He even touched the liquid to check on the acidic level and found out it could slightly burn him. So, another step was to taste it. He always wanted to find something that could speed up his ability growth.

Taking one of the bottles up to his mouth, he drank it all at once.

“Ew…” The taste was anything but pleasant, but the taste mostly faded away soon since his taste buds were literally melting.

Soon, the bubbling sound was emitted from his stomach.

“That was disgusting.” Illyan then sent his Mind Power to observe the result.

The liquid was acting violently but was gradually digested. This caused the poison to spread to his entire body, but he quickly regenerated any damage it caused.

What was good to mention was the fact that the centipedes were energy and nutrition dense. He could almost feel his body scream in delight despite being also destroyed at the same time.

His Mind Power didn’t feel much vitality radiating from the liquid despite the centipede devouring his blood. Now, he knew why it was so. It nourished the centipede’s body.

Seeing this, Illyan went to try a new experiment with another centipede. This time, however, he didn’t give it his blood and just let it detonate by itself.

Once the creature exploded, he collected the liquid and swallowed it.

“Hmm…” His eyes shone. Not because the liquid was better. In fact, the effects were minimal. The poison was weaker, and the nutrition was nothing special.

But that meant that as long as he fed the centipedes his blood, he could grow his little farm to create poisons and devour the rest.

He felt like eating those would allow him to continue using [Blood Feeding Technique] at a higher rate.

Of course, for that, he would need to find the man responsible for this. After all, he didn’t know how to take care of them…

However,

that had to wait as Illyan didn’t want to cause any other problems before getting a little stronger.

.........

Two weeks passed by.

Illyan still continued treating his patients to get more of the centipedes, and the entire town fell into chaos during this time.

Unfortunately, the mayor didn’t say anything as he watched his people suffer.

The people began to be desperate.

It was at that time when Vael came up with the serum that made the centipede leave the bodies.

Despite being retired, he was still much more experienced than Illyan and after ‘borrowing’ some of the jars from Illyan, he created this medicine.

This made the townsfolk unbelievably grateful as they shed their tears for the man. He even gave the serum for free since most of these people were poor.

Illyan, on the other hand, focused on his training. He had already condensed the second drop of Mind Power and was ecstatic.

His mind got even clearer than before. Of course, it wasn’t as enormous a difference since he already had one drop before. The more drops he would condense, the lesser the feeling would be.

But Illyan didn’t care. Patience was the key.

Illyan also noticed that his countenance was smoother. It felt as if the [Blood Feeding Technique] in combination with his innate ability made him reconstruct his body bit by bit.

Normal people would not notice, but Illyan with his Mind Power did.

The feeling of progression was exhilarating.

At this moment, Illyan was planting new seeds that he collected while taking away the herbs he needed for the Spiritual Taming Food. He collected all the parts when he was outside and just had to plant the herbs inside his garden.

But it was at that time when Illyan was dealing with the centipedes and so he thought of a brilliant idea.

Since the blood was tempting for all beings that were greedy for this vitality, then plants should count too, right?

Dripping the blood on one of the seeds, it soon turned into a seedling.

Illyan felt as if his life was overturned.

Since then, every planted herb was fertilized by a combination of Vael’s fertilizer and Illyan’s blood.

Some of the herbs even grew within a few hours!

Thanks to that, he could start concocting the Beast Taming Supplement every day to consume.

And together with the sudden inspiration, he combined it with the centipede’s liquid to drink.

Everything went smoothly.

.........

Another week passed by as Illyan visited the library a lot. He was still far from reading all the books inside and wanted to fill his blank spaces with information.

Whenever he felt he was at his peak state, he would go forage the herbs and temper his body and techniques inside the hot tub.

When he came to the manor, he tried to breed the centipedes, albeit with failure. Because of that, he slowed his consumption of them and prepared to look for the culprits.

In truth, it wasn’t that hard to guess the reason for this happening. All of the acolytes were running around doing their own stuff.

Just that was enough to understand they would be part of the expedition too. As for what they were preparing for…

Illyan doubted it was because of the trolls. Yes, they were dangerous, but not threatening if you weren’t dumb.

So, Illyan feared that there would be another clash with Ezekiel deep in the mountains. Maybe, he would not be alone.

He investigated and found out that Ezekiel was actually known around as the Great Bandit who had been mugging everyone and everything in the vicinity for the last two decades.

It made him wonder why a man like this was living this way.

However, Illyan didn’t continue thinking about it as he slowly sneaked throughout the town.

He quietly left his manor while hiding his presence, donning Arwen's robe.

Under his hood, a hideous face was revealed with a bald head.

He didn’t waste his time during these three weeks and was looking around for the ones causing the centipede problem.

In the end, he found that there were three insect breeders in the midst of the acolytes’ group.

He didn’t have to look hard as they were traveling often beyond the walls after Vael came with the treatment.

Illyan could deduce that they were looking for another food for their insects.

He watched them going around for a week now.

Whenever they came back, a strong stench of blood wafted out of them even though they tried to hide it.

So, he decided to go after them. Even though the treatment was created, people still suffered from time to time and were visiting him daily. It was pretty annoying, to say the least.

‘Maybe introducing myself as a physician wasn't a good idea.’

Shaking his head, he traveled to the abandoned part of the wall and started to climb it.

There were all kinds of cracks covering it, so it was no problem for him to get over it and jump down on the other side.

Once he employed his [Nature Breath Method], he went in the direction of the three acolytes with a cold glint in his eyes.