Perseus POV
"Let's say I am, go on, Trevor, who's this background character?"
"His son and Ellie are engaged, both of them are among the poisoned." Trevor answered, "Besides, background character? You think that you're a protagonist of a story or something?"
"I am."
"Do you know how many lives you can save with the antidote?!" The noble said furiously while keeping his voice low to not disturb the patients.
"You do realize that the poison was made based on the wishes of you guys, right? Y'all were the ones that asked for an incurable poison. Now, Trevor clears the room, I need to heal these guys without being watched."
"You people are so selfish!" the guy continued, "Always hanging on to the fact that you're more powerful, share it with the rest of us, people's lives and the world's fate are at stake. And yet you withhold it from us? This is unforgivable! Your selfishness knows no bounds!
"What's the point of protecting the secret of your people, what makes you so superior? It's nothing but a coward's excuse to be heartless. A true leader would put others above themselves, especially in times of crisis!"
"Look, do you want me to save them or not?"
"It'll be faster if you share the recipe instead of just letting one person work on it against time that we're running short on!"
"The moon god gave us the antidote to keep you guys in check and not use the poison recklessly, and you want me to go against that?"
"Gods aren't perfect! They-" Trevor then just closed his mouth and cleared the room and ordered everyone to leave.
I can still hear the screaming and shouting outside, and it seems that many people shared the sentiment as my enhanced hearing can hear all the gossip they're spreading.
I admit, our village is indeed selfish, but we can't give it out carelessly to keep them in check if they got both the poison and the cure, they're gonna go wild with it, and our village will be perceived as even more of a threat since they're not sure whether we'll spill the beans or not.
We'll be of less use, and I rather not have a war start out any time soon, the antidote gives us the upper hand for now. I took out the premixed bag of the herbs used for the antidote and mixed them on-site using a mortar and pestle. I can sense eyes watching me, but I didn't care too much.
I dyed some of the ingredients and altered some of them to look different with my illusion skills, meaning that they won't be able to make this antidote even if they're spying on me.
I had Buddy who just arrived to point me to the people who were short on time and I treated them first. The antidote took a long time to make every time I ran out, and for the record, I totally didn't mix something in the antidote that can help me later on. *wink wink*
After I finished treating everyone, I put all the leftovers in a jar and gave it to Trevor. They won't be able to reverse engineer it even if they tried, they need to taste it or smell it if they want any chance since it can be acidic if touched by any living thing, but the antidote will be poison to those who aren't poisoned by the HKP, aka the hero-killing-poison.
Not as deadly poison as the HKP, but...well, let's just say that they won't be learning anything from it, Jerah made sure of everything. Heroes have shown signs of power crazy, so he made countermeasures early to make sure that heroes won't be the next disaster after the elimination of the demon lord.
I think he made a countermeasure against my village as well by making our people less fertile than everyone else, so despite being stronger, we're limited in numbers, and no matter how much our population increases, we'll never grow fast enough to catch up.
I have a counter to that though, Dawn has sometimes been nicknamed a goddess of fertility, and it has been confirmed by Dawn herself unless she gets a permanent magical surgery to make her permanently sterile...so if I have a child with her, I can counter Jerah's curse through our child...
Yeah, let's not dig too deep into that, the only reason that this solution exist was that he never thought that he'll separate from Dawn and he never thought of someone else getting with Dawn.
If you're wondering why I asked Dawn that, I didn't, she brought it up herself, kinda scary in a way since no amount of birth control methods, unless permanent, will not work on her.
I then went to see the captured members of the anti-magic cult, they were left alive, but with the hatred they faced from everyone, once this ends, no one can guarantee their lives unless half the heroes are against killing them.
I then picked up on something interesting, a conversation between Trevor and the earlier noble as I walked around.
"...Do not presume to lecture me on judgment! You have no idea what it is like to see your people suffer and die, while you stand there, holding the solution in your hand!" the noble hissed, "Convince him, you're his business partner and acquaintance, you can convince him, and get the antidote."
"We're winning the war, and our relationship is currently friendly with the village, Perseus is a very influential figure there, if we anger him despite his refusal, his village will be as well." Trevor replied, "I can get it, but at the cost of hostility."
"His village is weak, they have low numbers, even if one of them can take 10 of us, if we tire them out, and plus the demon slaves we will get after the death of the demon lord, they have lived long enough, the influences of the gods have ruled long enough, it's our time to eliminate them, and we will then take the fight against the gods, where we can finally rule after in peace."
Created a Ko-fi account: Any dono is appreciated:
ko-fi.com/perseus_silver