Medicines come in many forms in this world of ours. From herbal baths to pills made by expert Alchemists using a variety of ingredients. These ingredients can be anything from common grasses to extremely rare parts from powerful Mana Beasts. The most common forms of medicine are medicinal pills which contain a highly concentrated mixture of ingredients that can bring about a variety of effects at a very fast pace; these effects range from the simple healing of wounds to increasing the rate at which someone can absorb Mana. Herbal baths work slower but cause less complications because of this, though one does have to be careful to get the mixture of herbs right as many of them are poisonous if used incorrectly.

Excerpt from Telram’s notes on Medicines.

It had been a week since Aran had taken Telram hunting in the forest near Palamar for the first time and since then Telram had mostly been training with Gerry as they tried to figure out just how much his body had changed since forming the Soul Contract with Jai. The first time he sparred with the puppet Gerry had given him he had smashed one of the limbs right off in an instant, something which didn’t really surprise Gerry who had heard about him and Aran carrying the massive carcass of the Iron-fanged Bear home between them, something which no ordinary cultivator at Telram’s rank would’ve been able to do.

Even Aran had been amazed by the strength that his son had shown, even he hadn’t done much better dealing with the weight than his son despite the large difference between them in how powerful their cultivation was leading to Telram admitting that he was using a Body Strengthening technique. He didn’t tell either of his parents that it was a technique that he had created himself however and tried to brush off the massive boost in power as something that happened because of his new bond with Jai, something that wasn’t entirely a lie. His technique had evolved dramatically since he and Jai had created their Soul Contract making his body far more powerful than someone at the Third Layer of the Core Formation Stage should be even if they cultivated a dangerous Body Strengthening technique, at least that was what Telram thought, he hadn’t asked Gerry this as the older man had been more interested in studying the bond between him and Jai.

But today was another hunting day and Aran was tracking down what appeared to be a small group of Blue Mountain Deer, which like most of the weaker Beasts that Aran hunted used speed and agility to avoid predators while Telram set some small wire traps in the area they had found the Moss Rabbit last time, Telram didn’t know if they would work as he had only read about these in his previous life but he hoped that with this he would be able to contribute a bit more than some herbs to sell and helping his father carrying home whatever he and Willa managed to hunt down.

Other than the Redstain Berries which were an ingredient he didn’t really know how to use safely he had kept most of the herbs that he had found that were actually useful for cultivators and under his mothers instructions had proceeded to use them to make a Herbal Bath which Lily had told him would help him recover from the changes that had occurred to his body.

After using the Herbal Bath Telram had felt as though a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders, he had obviously been pushing himself to hard again carrying home the Iron-fanged Bear earlier when he hadn’t fully recovered from making the Soul Contract with jai and he thanked his mother for helping him with the herbal mixture that he had used making a mental note to find out more about medicines, which were something that he had been putting off due learning about due to the comparisons he had made with various drugs and steroids from his previous world.

Jai watched interestedly from the spot where he was lying as Telram continued setting up the traps which were basically just loops of wire that hung a few centimetres off the ground which as unsuspecting animal could poke its head through trapping it in place making the loop tighten around its throat and trapping it in place causing the animal to struggle against the trap tightening the wire further and eventually strangling it. Jai hadn’t seen these sorts of things before and wasn’t sure if they would work but it that Telram seemed to think this was a better idea than simply hunting things himself as Jai knew that he was strong enough to do even without helping him.

Jai yawned as Telram continued to work, beginning to wash himself, while it had been interesting to watch Telram to work at first what Jai really wanted to do was hunt something properly, the way he would when his mother was around.

Sensing the blur of emotions coming from his partner Telram looked up, “You alright Jai?”

Jai sent back a wave of boredom causing Telram to roll his eyes in exasperation at his partners attitude just before Jai suddenly leapt to his feet a massive burst of anger and worry flooding their bond as something coiled around Telram’s body and began squeezing him with enough force that he could feel his ribs creaking under the sudden pressure, looking down he saw the long scaly body of a snake wrapped around him and he dug his powerful fingers into it in an attempt to rip it off but he couldn’t even budge the powerful coils with the strength he could muster with one of his arms trapped under the powerful brown scaled coils.

“Dammit!” he gasped. scrabbling at the scales as best as he could but even his fingers which had been strengthened throughout his months of practicing his Ferocious Beast Claws Martial Art couldn’t penetrate them.

Jai leapt towards him claws outstretched and slammed into something just behind his back which released an angry hiss and tightened its coils further around Telram as Jai snarled and snapped his jaws shut on the hard scales.

Telram’s vision started to darken as he continued to struggle against the serpent’s inexorable strength when he heard a familiar roar followed by a wave of Soul Energy which flooded the area, the serpent flinched away from Jai’s signature attack with a loud hiss and with its coils now loosened slightly Telram was able to get his other arm free.

Channelling his Mana into his fingers he once again attempted to hurt the beast which still held him trapped and this time he managed to tear bloody furrows along the snake’s body causing it to loosen its coils further in shock and allowing Telram to escape.

Now that he could see the entire Mana Beast Telram frowned, the serpent was a Rockscale Python and had one of the highest defences of all Ordinary Mana Beast, so it was no surprise to him that his bare finger hadn’t been able to pierce its scales. What he couldn’t figure out was what such a rare Mana Beast was doing so close to a human city.

But the python wasn’t going to give him time to figure this riddle out and attacked Telram with a powerful sweep of its long tail that bowled him over as Jai roared again trying to rip through its tough scales with his claws. This time the serpent was prepared for the Soul Energy attack and simply flicked Jai off into a nearby tree.

Telram spat out blood as he dragged himself to his feet, unlike the Iron-fanged Bear the Rockscale Python’s defences were external meaning that his Ferocious Beast Claws were largely ineffective due to being unable to pierce the beast’s scales. In fact, the only Martial Skill that Telram could see being effective against this Beast in his current state was only a theory at this point.

As far as he could tell the snake was a Rank 6 Ordinary Mana Beast which explained why neither he or Jai were able to inflict more than minor injuries at their cultivation level, but due to his inexperience in checking these things he wasn’t sure that his guess was accurate.

“Guess I’ve got no choice,” Telram snarled as the snake turned its attention upon the stunned Jai. The Skill he had in mind was one that used his powerful Soul Energy to disrupt the Mana within an opponent’s body and if he was right injecting some of his own Mana should increase the effects.

Hazy energy gathered around Telram’s right hand as he rushed towards the large serpent which turned towards him with an angry hiss.

“Oh, shut up!”

Thrusting his palm out in a manner reminiscent of his Flowing Palm Martial Art he slapped the beast on the side of its head sending a wave of Mana and Soul Energy into its body. The creature pulled its head back as blood started to flow from its nostrils, the attack had worked almost entirely as Telram had predicted as he could see the ripples in the Mana that ran throughout the Beasts body but the snake was either tougher than he had thought or this attack wasn’t as effective against Mana Beasts due to their naturally high resistance to Mana.

Of course, that wasn’t the only problem of trying to use a Martial Skill like this in combat without testing it first and Telram yelped in pain as the Mana he had gathered in his hand backfired sending waves of pain up his arm.

Jai leapt to his feet savaging the serpents writhing coils as it lashed out again at Telram who managed to dodge the attack with his Graceful Mist Step turning as gracefully as the name suggested and striking out with his palm once more gritting his teeth in preparation for the pain that was coming.

His palm slammed into the tough scales with a dull thwacking sound sending its payload of energy deep into the Beasts body causing its Mana to go into disarray and damage its internal organs. The snake was now badly injured, the first attack had caused the Mana in its head to damage parts of its brain and the second ruptured one of its lungs causing it to go into a panic knocking Telram over as it writhed in pain.

The serpents tail thrashed as fluid filled its remaining lung, it knew it was dying and now all it wanted to do was take the ones who had injured it so badly with it.

Barely dodging the thrashing coils Jai leapt towards Telram who was gasping in pain from the second use of his incomplete Skill and the blow he had taken to the head. Grabbing his fallen friend in his powerful jaws the young tiger leapt back outside of the snakes reach just as Willa and Aran made it into view having heard them fighting.

“What the hell?!” Aran shouted upon seeing the writhing serpents four-meter-long body. He immediately recognised the species that the Mana Beast belonged to and immediately panicked seeing his son being carried unconscious in Jai’s jaws.

“What happened?” he asked eying the slowing body of the Rockscale Python warily. Not only was this species known for its strong defence, but it was crafty as well and he wouldn’t put it past the Beast to pretend to be dead until they let their guard down.

Jai looked at Aran exasperatedly, how exactly were they supposed to tell him what happened when he couldn’t talk and Telram was still suffering from the recoil from his incomplete technique and the subsequent hit he took to his head.

“Alright, alright stop looking at me like that,” Aran grumbled as he walked over to check on his son while Willa checked that the snake was dead by picking it up a bit below its head and whipping her head back and forth like a terrier.

Seeing a large gash on Telram’s head from where the snake had struck him Aran pulled a medicinal pill out of a small satchel attached to his belt and fed it to him.

“He should be fine now,” Aran sighed as Telram blinked in surprise as his head suddenly stopped ringing, courtesy of the pill his father had given him.

“Ugh, what happened?” he groaned blinking owlishly to clear his blurry vision as he looked around at the worried faces of the others.

“Well if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say you killed that big ass snake over there,” Aran suggested helping his son to his feet. “How did you do that by the way?”

The Dragonscale Python was an opponent that even Aran would’ve had some difficulty with if he was unarmed and he didn’t know of any Martial Skills that Telram could use that could inflict more than minor injuries upon the dangerous Beast.

“I might have used something I shouldn’t have,” Telram admitted showing his father the palm of his right hand which was a dark purple colour due to the recoil of using an incomplete Skill the way he had destroying most of the blood vessels in his hand, strangely it wasn’t hurting as much as it should which led Telram to guess that some of the nerve endings had also been destroyed by the backlash of channelling large amounts of Mana through his hand without adding in methods to prevent such damage. The Skill had worked rather well but it would be a while before his hand had healed enough that he would be able to practice using it again, let alone completing the Skill but now he had something that might eventually become one of his most powerful skills.

Seeing the damage to his hand Aran’s face paled as he recognised the symptoms of overusing Mana within the body, if left untreated this sort of damage could leave Telram’s hand crippled for the rest of his life.

“What the hell sort of Skill did you use!?” he shouted roughly grabbing at the injured limb to get a better look, to his horror the damage went almost all the way up to Telram’s elbow. If damage this bad wasn’t treated they would probably have to cut the arm of completely or the damaged cells would spread further throughout his body.

“An incomplete one,” Telram gasped as a jolt of pain ran up his arm. “It’s supposed to use my Mana and Soul Energy to disrupt the Mana in my opponents’ body, ironically creating injuries like this. This was the first time I’ve attempted to use it.”

“Doing that is extremely dangerous, there’s a reason that there’s a whole building set aside for research into Martial Skills!”

“I didn’t exactly have a choice now did I?!” Telram shot back causing his father’s mouth to snap shut.

There wasn’t anything that Aran could say to that, he knew that if Telram hadn’t used that Skill he and jai would probably both have been at least badly injured if not killed before he and Willa had arrived.

Breathing deeply Aran told his son that they would have to go and get treatment for his injured arm.

“Yeah I know,” Telram could see the damage he had done to himself clearly, it wasn’t as bad as his father thought due to him cultivating his Body Strengthening technique. The Mana infused into his blood cells was already starting work on rebuilding the damaged cells even stronger than they had been before, working just as he had designed. However this didn’t mean that there wouldn’t be complications if he didn’t get it checked out, just because it seemed to be working as planned didn’t mean that he could let his guard down, after all it wasn’t like either he or the Mana he was using to repair the damage actually knew much about medicine and if something went wrong it would be very hard to fix.

“Alright then,” said a relieved Aran. “Let’s get what we can from this and get going.”

Working quickly, he used the tip of his hunting knife to cut in underneath the tough scales and remove the snake’s skin which could be used for reinforcing pieces of leather armour due to its strength and surprisingly light weight. He also took what meat wasn’t completely ruined by Telram’s attacks but the internal organs which had a variety of alchemical applications were almost all completely turned to mush, oozing grotesquely out over the ground when he cut away the flesh to get a look to see what he could salvage.

“Yuck,” he yelped wiping his hands on the grass. Even after death the Mana that the snake’s body had contained had continued to destroy everything it touched and even the Beast’s Core, which was located at the base of its skull was damaged, probably from the blow to the head.

From the entire body Aran was only able to harvest a few kilograms of resources causing him to grumble about the amount of money that had been lost. But he would rather his son was alive than the alternative. “Alright, let’s get going.”

Seeing the damage, he had done to the Dragonscale Python had been horrifying to Telram, he hadn’t expected that the Skill would be quite that destructive to living flesh. If he was going to use this technique again, he would have to be very careful, the snake had put too much faith in its scales to protect it and he knew that it would be far less effective against someone who was prepared or had a powerful Soul.

Jai was also troubled, he had been largely ineffective in that fight and because of this his friend had been badly injured. Looking at Telram’s arm which was now tied up in a sling so that he didn’t bang it against anything he promised himself that he would get stronger, so as not to hold his friend back ever again.

Aran looked back at the two who had troubled expressions on their faces and breathed a sigh of relief; it seemed that they were taking this experience exactly as they should, using it to drive themselves to become stronger instead of simply wallowing in the mistakes they had made. For cultivators in this world this was perhaps the most important lesson that you could learn. People in this world either survived through their own strength or found themselves crushed underfoot by someone stronger. Someone like Lord Irian.

Even Aran himself couldn’t completely escape Lord Irian’s influence and had to give up a certain amount of whatever he managed to catch to the guards as a tax. For someone who hunted Mana Beasts this could be a significant amount of money as there were no rules put in place that prevented them from taking the ingredients that were worth the most when sold. Recently he had decided to hide some of the less perishable items outside the city in the hopes that he would one day be able to sell them to some travellers where the guards had no jurisdiction.

They had a decent haul this trip, not only did he have what remained of the Dragonscale Python, but he had also managed to hunt down one of the Blue Mountain Deer that he and Willa had been tracking before she had heard Jai and Telram fighting in the distance and rushed back.

As they approached the city Aran called for the others to halt, he had decided to hide the snakeskin in his usual hiding place due to its high value.

“Just give me a minute son,” he said scrabbling around in the dirt for the place he buried the goods.

“Why?”

“I’ve been hiding some things here,” Aran explained uncovering a large wooden box.

Telram watched with a confused look on his face, this was the first time he had heard of this, he had been wondering why they had come a different way back from the forest but thinking about it he understood the reason that his father was hiding things like this and passed over some of the herbs which would still be effective even if he left them there.

When they were done, they continued on their way with Telram making new plans. Irian was simply causing too many problems for people and while he couldn’t do anything about it for anyone else it would be a simple thing to leave Palamar and live somewhere else. Recently he had heard that there was a small village being set up on the borders of the human kingdoms, somewhere where even someone with as much power as Irian wouldn’t be able to reach them and it was even near to where Gerry said they had found the mysterious stone tablet.

Resolving to add as much as he could to the cache of goods Telram made a decision, as soon as he could get them there safely, they would all be leaving Palamar. Now all he had to do was convince them.