"Nice work, everyone. That was hard." Maxwell raised his hand while walking toward them.

Vera raised her eyebrows as she saw Maxwell was limping. It looked like his right foot was injured. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Don’t worry about it. After some fixing, I should be fine." He nodded.

"His shin got stabbed earlier." Christopher came to them, giving more information. "There were too many of them earlier, so one of them managed to reach us and stab him in the shin."

"It’s fine. I’ve been using my light element to help me walk, so once we treat the external injury, I should be able to recover naturally." Maxwell waved his hand.

Vera nodded, feeling relieved. Then, she glared at Ruka. The latter looked down, knowing she had made a mistake.

Surprisingly, Vera didn’t say anything to her. She might have made a mistake, but Vera wasn’t heartless enough to humiliate her in front of other people.

She had already warned her earlier, as if acknowledging her team’s mistake that might endanger another team. As for lecturing her, she would wait until they reached their accommodation.

However, she was still too proud to apologize to Ellia.

Ellia said, "We’ve taken down the people there. We should go to the mall right now. There should be a few of them left, but they’re not a threat anymore."

"Yeah. I saw one of them bringing the case into the mall, so we should retrieve it. The only problem would be the other group." Maxwell nodded in agreement. "You guys should go. I will catch up later."

"No." Auric said as he looked at his injury with a serious expression.

"Auric?" Milinda and Ellia were confused.

"Excuse me?" Vera frowned.

"Oh, you’re excused. I mean, you can go. I will stay here to treat his injury..."

"I can do that myself. You don’t have to worry about me." Maxwell waved his hand. "Thank you for the thought, though."

"Well..." Auric rolled his eyes.

"Hello? Use your words." Ellia demanded an explanation.

"I never thought I would end up entangled in such a mess..." Auric sighed.

"I don’t think riddles will help here, Auric." Milinda reminded him that they needed to go to the mall, not play with riddles.

Auric sighed before turning around. "You remember Axel’s case?"

"Axel?" Ellia paused, then realized what was going on. "He’s poisoned?"

"Poisoned? Me?" Maxwell pointed at himself.

"!!!" Vera frowned and checked his injury. "Poison? Did the enemy use poison?"

"I’m not sure." Maxwell shook his head while Christopher crossed his arms, not knowing anything because he was too far from Maxwell at the time.

"Try to release your energy around your foot. You will find it heats up, but that’s not the only thing you will feel. Your foot will also become stiffer."

Maxwell was flabbergasted. He wanted to prove Auric wrong. If he had been poisoned, he should have been down long ago.

Yet, he managed to move around just fine. Although he had barely used this leg all this time, he thought it would be fine to just patch it up and let it heal naturally.

So, he released his power to show that he was fine. "See?"

Vera wanted to say something to Auric, but Maxwell suddenly gritted his teeth and clutched his foot. "Khhh..."

All the adrenaline from earlier had left his body, so the pain became much more apparent. He realized that this pain wasn’t coming from the external injury.

As Auric said, he felt his foot was burning. He tried to move his foot, but he realized he couldn’t move it at all, as though it had become locked in place.

"Ahh..." Maxwell was enduring the pain.

"Max?" Vera frowned and placed her hand on his shoulder.

"He’s poisoned. You should know about Axel Aheron’s case."

"Axel Aheron!" Vera gasped. She obviously knew about the sole heir of the family. "I heard he got a tricky poison, but he managed to cure it."

"He was poisoned by a poison containing two elements. You need two elements to fix the problem at the same time, or else the other will flare up." Ellia explained the situation.

"For Axel, it is linked completely with his own element, preventing him from evolving. If you have a plant element, you will probably experience the same thing. Fortunately, you have a light element. This poison won’t prevent you from evolving, but it’s tricky to remove," added Auric with a calm expression.

"!!!" Vera had heard about Axel’s situation, but she had never heard the details. She never thought the poison would be this tricky. "How do we fix him?"

"I gave Axel the same answer. You need two evolution masters working together to weaken the two elements within the poison at the same time or get the strongest person in this country to fix it for you," Auric answered.

Maxwell was speechless. "It’s that tricky? How could I find two evolution masters who can combine their strengths?"

"On the plus side, it won’t stop you from evolving. Because your element is not affecting the two elements within the poison, even if you evolve, the energy won’t be able to flush out these two elements."

They were speechless. Ruka was frozen. If the condition were as Auric said, it would mean that she wouldn’t be able to evolve anymore the moment she was inflicted with this poison.

Ellia frowned. Auric should be able to fix him. In that case, why was he making a big deal out of it?

Because it was targeting someone with a plant element, they needed one evolution master with the wind element to suppress the earth element within the poison and one evolution master with the water element to suppress the fire element.

That was normally what happened. But the idea of this poison was to have the earth element strengthen the target’s plant element while the fire element would suppress the target’s plant element.

This time, Maxwell had a light element. In other words, the earth element poison strengthened nothing.

To get rid of this poison, the evolution master would need a plant element, but this energy would be suppressed by the fire element poison.

Hence, the solution wasn’t wind and water elements. Instead, it was plant and water elements.

Nevertheless, Auric still needed to reveal his water element to fix him. He wondered whether he should do it.

He realized that the poison was similar, but it was different. In Axel’s case, it was fire and wind, so only one element was directly linked to the poison, which was Axel’s earth element and the poison wind element. The fire element was there to mess with the treatment.

This time, the poison completely pinched the plant element from both sides, which made the situation trickier.

"The poison is evolving..." Auric muttered.

"!!!" Ellia didn’t completely understand what he was talking about. She didn’t say anything to avoid revealing Auric’s element.

"So, am I going to become limp from now on?" Maxwell looked at Auric in horror.

"If it can’t be treated... we might have to amputate it..." Christopher frowned. "It’s located on your shin, so you might be able to walk again with a prosthetic..."

"Are you crazy? That means my career will end." Maxwell gritted his teeth.

Vera frowned. "What are we going to do now? We need to bring him to the hospital right away... No, wait..."

Vera turned to Auric. "Why do you know about Axel’s condition? Now that I think about it, you have multiple elements... Don’t tell me you were the one who treated Axel?"

Auric shrugged, not denying it.

"Can you treat him?"

"Don’t you know how much that guy paid him?" Ellia pointed at Auric. "You should probably ask Axel about it."

Auric just grabbed her finger and lowered it. "Nah, it’s fine. I will treat him. Plant affects fire, wind affects earth."

"You sure?" Ellia raised her eyebrows.

"I don’t mind. We’re able to finish this mission because he lured a portion of the enemy group with Christopher. Unless you don’t believe that this is your current condition, I don’t mind if you go back first and check with all the evolution masters you know in case you think I’m talking nonsense."

"No... That’s..." Maxwell couldn’t say anything. Part of him didn’t want to believe him. Still, he indeed felt two different sensations.

Auric turned to Ellia. "Rather than the poison in his foot, I’m much more annoyed by the fact that this mission has turned out to be bigger than we thought. Don’t you understand by now what kind of thing they bought from the other group?"

"Ah!" Ellia was too focused on Maxwell that she forgot about this. "The case they got from the other group contained this poison?"

"Most likely. The vials might contain similar poisons." Auric nodded. "In other words, this kind of dangerous poison has now been in circulation. Aren’t we basically poking a hornet’s nest with this one?"

"..." Ellia and Vera’s expressions darkened. If this were truly the case, they had indeed screwed up. If they had eliminated their targets one day prior, they wouldn’t have to witness the transaction.

This time, there was simply too much trace for them to remove. They even killed the group that distributed it. And with that kind of dangerous poison and the group’s strength, it was clear that this group was nowhere near the biggest.

"This is a clusterf—" Ellia covered her mouth, restraining herself. "...excuse me."

"She has a fucking point." Vera couldn’t contain herself.

Auric suggested, "So, why don’t Christopher and Ruka find the dagger that injured him? It will be a piece of evidence. Maybe we can find more poison from other people’s bodies. Meanwhile, the rest of you should head to the mall and finish the job and secure the case. I will stay here to treat him."

They were a bit too overwhelmed by the matter that they didn’t even realize that a freshman had taken charge. Then again, who would care about it at this point?

Vera agreed with the suggestion. "Christopher, Ruka. You go."

Christopher and Ruka nodded at the same time as Christopher led the way. Milinda pressed her earpiece to send a message. "Arina, I need you and the boys to search for their belongings. They might contain some suspicious poison, so secure the evidence and be careful."

Ellia was wondering what she should do next. The situation looked a bit messy.

If the person behind this poison found out about this matter, they would target them.

Axel’s family was as big as her family. So, if Axel could be hit by such a poison, there was a chance that the mastermind wouldn’t mind killing her despite her background.

That was why the situation had become complicated, as Auric said.

Even if the mastermind didn’t want to pick a fight with Ellia’s family and Vera’s family, the others could be targeted.

She couldn’t care less about the others, but Auric’s safety was her priority. She couldn’t afford the person behind this to kill Auric.

"I guess there’s no way to erase our trace..." Ellia muttered.

"No way. There are so many traces to erase, such as these bodies, the transaction, and even the mission. It’s a mission that has been approved by the two academies and the government. It’s impossible to erase all traces before the person behind this finds out."

Ellia let out a long sigh. "For now, we should finish the mission before thinking about the solution."

Vera couldn’t help but agree. The mess was simply more important than their rivalry, so it was better to focus on fixing the mess first.

Once they left, Auric pulled Maxwell up and brought him to a building.

"Is there really such a poison?" Maxwell asked, while breathing heavily.

"Yes. From what I can see, they might have progressed it. This one is deadlier. If Ruka were the one hit by this poison, she wouldn’t just be able to evolve, but every time she uses her power, she will be tortured by the pain. In Axel’s case, it’s only preventing him from evolving."

Maxwell shook his head helplessly. "This is a mess."

"Yeah. A very big one..." Auric nodded in agreement.

...

A few minutes later.

"Let’s confirm it. Open the case." Ellia nodded to Milinda.

Milinda gulped and carefully opened the case, showing the vials that contained mysterious liquid.

Vera sighed. "Ah shi—"

Vol. 1 End.