Sometimes life surprised her, but not this time: Omilaena could see how all this was going to go.
She had been working on her own training when she heard the next splash, followed by laughter. When she looked up she saw that Kai was pulling himself back up to balance on the reeds again. The Cryswind elves were doing their best to mock him, but their laughter rang a bit hollower now.
Oh, she could see exactly how it would go. Kai seemed to be throwing himself into it wholeheartedly, even viewing Heruul Cryswind as a rival of sorts, and she wondered if he really didn't see. There was an odd humility to him, perhaps a sense of his own unworthiness beaten into him by his culture's caste system. Perhaps he really didn't expect to win. Or perhaps he didn't think about that at all, reserving his entire mind for the training.
After one week at the oasis, he was already moving confidently across the reeds while sparring. What he didn't see, and the elves were avoiding thinking about, was that some of their weaker members no longer tried to challenge him - because they'd lose. And this was without Kai revealing any of his monstrous abilities.
Instead they sent out their stronger fighters to knock him into the water again and clung to their sense of superiority. Omilaena had seen countless groups like these, smugly confident and remaining stagnant. Whereas Kai was truly superior to them, driving ever upward until he surpassed them.
How long would it take... two months? Omilaena made a bet with herself that it would be sooner, but then returned her focus back to her own training.
She uncovered one of the jars she'd been given by the Sandflower elves and inhaled the green smoke within. It was a muscle relaxant that could be used for healing at low doses and became lethal in larger quantities. Many thought the Heart of Poison was a limited ability, but truthfully all poisons varied by the dose. So long as she took care to fully understand each poison as she absorbed them, she could gain full usage of their traits.
The Heart of Poison throbbed harder within her.
Soon she set aside the relaxant, which was basically just warm-up for her. Her real test that day was a vial with a sealed stopper. The poison within was colorless, odorless, and almost invisible. As soon as she opened it, the gas tried to escape, so potent that it could have made everyone in the surrounding area sick.
On a previous day Kai had asked her more about how her abilities worked and she'd needed to think through her explanation. In some ways, a Heart ability was very similar to cultivation, in that it built up a core of power. The first difference was that it required chakra imbued in physical matter, which was just a difference of substrate, but the more subtle difference was the skill factor. Qi cultivation involved more specific techniques and couldn't be done by intuition, then the formula flipped: all qi could be used in similar ways, while chakra cultivation required more precise skills in deployment.
Another splash. More laughter. Kai hauling himself up again. Omilaena didn't let it distract her, because she knew that path.
Once she felt confident in her mastery of the new poisons, Omilaena withdrew a manticore stinger from her bag. She held it in her cupped hands, preparing herself. The Heart of Poison could incorporate chakra-based poisons effortlessly and theoretically absorb poisons of any kind. Conventional wisdom was that monstrous poisons were an exception, since they were based on monstrous powers instead of human energy. No doubt the elves thought she intended to extract the manticore venom and simply manipulate it, as most poisoners did.
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Instead she pricked her finger and fought the venom as it reached her veins. She grimaced in pain, but held on and tried to grasp the power.
Even if it used a different source of energy, manticore venom was still fundamentally a material. It had to be accessible to her or the world was incoherent. Yet it seemed to resist her, burning down her finger, trying to consume her from the inside out.
Eventually Omilaena overcame it, but she wasn't sure if she'd truly absorbed any of the venom or just pushed it out with her normal abilities. It wouldn't be so easy. Kai had already proved there could be one exception to the division between human and monstrous powers, so she'd hoped she could find another. Clearly it wasn't something that could be found with a little willpower.
For the time being the Heart of Poison was at its limit - that was another difference, now that she considered it. Zae Zin Nim was sitting in her qi oasis, cultivating in a very smooth path upward to the limit of her stage. Chakra usually moved in larger jumps but then required recovery time. Ultimately she didn't think the paces could be directly compared, because both depended on sources of power.
Time to switch to training herself as a Lethal Artisan. There wasn't much scholarship at this oasis, so she wasn't going to be outlining any new creations, but she could still work with the rose steel.
Her primary ordeal with it had been absorbing the metal at the beginning, when it had still been nearly molten. Advancing after that point was a much more calculated process involving careful artistry and practice.
It had been a while since she'd worked on her fundamentals, because they'd been more than enough for so long. But fighting against the demon, she'd been frustrated by the limits of her weapons. The bone knives had overcome her needles too easily and it had taken all her strength to get any real penetration with her syringes. Clearly, she needed to get back to work.
Instead of sitting beside the pond, where Kai was still competing with the elves, Omilaena got up to walk. No one bothered her anymore, now that they were mostly used to the new humans. That made it easier for her to bend the rules.
If she'd wanted to infiltrate or spy on the oasis, she could have done it easily, but Omilaena didn't really care about that. Instead she examined the exterior, in particular merchants and other trading groups. Sadly, they didn't have any chakra strong enough to help her - this was a primarily qi-rich area, after all. But she did notice details: this faction wasn't self-sufficient and they lacked forging capabilities.
That day was finally her chance, as she saw a buckle binding the cargo of a wagon snap. Poorly forged from impure steel, she guessed, and weakened by stress over time. A buckle was a humble start, but she could use that as a point of leverage.
"May I help you with that?" Omilaena asked in the local language. One of the traders looked at her as if a bit surprised a non-elf was speaking to him, but then grunted.
"I can do better than that." She examined the buckle, then produced a copy of pure steel. When the trader got it placed onto his strap, he shook his head as if baffled.
"I'll be damned. That's good work." He immediately narrowed his eyes at her. "What do you want for it?"
"For a buckle? Nothing, take it. What I need is a challenge, something they can't make here. I understand you have complex water filters, for example."
"Oh, aye. The elders don't like getting metal from outsiders, so it's always a problem. Listen, we can't do this officially, but I'll ask around..."
As expected, the average elves weren't quite so xenophobic, not even in the Cryswind factions. Even if they accepted the order of their society, on a subconscious level they knew the strongest elves were lording over them. There would be weaknesses she could leverage to move forward.
The buckle was worth less than a full Crest, which was basically nothing. But the next day, Omilaena was contacted by an elf who asked her to repair a knife and the one she made for him was so superior he gave her fifteen Crests for it. Her power wasn't suitable for creating large weapons, so she had to refuse a few requests, but three days later she created an elaborate water filter that was worth almost a thousand Crests.
Selling metal might build up their funds again, but more importantly, testing herself on elaborate new projects would improve her skills. Yes, Omilaena could see exactly how all this would go.