Little Mia, Big Talents

Inside the room Jia Xiu was temporarily staying in at the inn.

Margaret had already left. She had shared all the information she possessed with Jia Xiu, and after failing to persuade them to use a hide-and-seek strategy, she chose to trust them for the time being.

She left the decision in Jia Xiu's hands.

Now, Jia Xiu was devising tactics with his two companions, who had almost no real combat experience.

"My idea is that offense is the best defense. We need to suppress Gudrian until he has no energy left to attack, then weaken him with disease. Finally, Ram, you'll finish him off in close combat. Of course, the actual execution will be far more complicated than that."

Jia Xiu patted Ram's forearm, which was thicker than his own thigh. As expected of a blacksmith—what a build. It would be a waste not to use him in close combat.

Ram scratched his nose. "But boss, Ram has only hammered iron. Ram has never hammered people."

"It's fine. Hitting people is easy to learn. You're used to using a hammer, right?"

"Ram can use tongs too."

"Then let's stick with the hammer. Bubu, I'm giving you a very important task."

"Bubu is here!"

It sprang off the bed with a smack and saluted. Knight Bubu stood at attention.

"Give Bubu the mission."

"From now on, you'll be Ram's sparring partner. Teach him how to fight."

"Understood, boss!"

Jia Xiu turned to Ram again. "For the next few days, learn how to fight from Bubu. You don't need to learn any particular techniques. Just figure out how to hit it. If you can hit Bubu, you can definitely hit Gudrian."

He refused to believe the examiner could be more agile than Bubu.

He did not want Ram to learn techniques because he doubted Ram's ability to understand and learn them. Even if Ram could learn them, he would not master them in just a few days. Better to follow his instincts.

"Bubu is so small. Ram is afraid of breaking Bubu."

"Bubu isn't afraid!"

"No, we're training with our own people, so don't hold back. I know you're fast, but trust me—Ram will somehow manage to hit you a few times in some bizarrely miraculous way. So wrap the hammerhead in cloth, and add counterweights to the handle to imitate a real hammer."

After arranging Ram's training, Jia Xiu turned to Mia.

"Now tell me what poisons you can make people suffer from."

"I know lots of them," Mia said proudly. "I can make people's scalps itch. When they scratch, it's like snowing."

"Can dandruff really count as poisoning?"

"I can also make the spaces between people's toes itch."

"Can it itch badly enough to rot?"

"No, but I can make the insides of people's ears itch too."

"Does everything you know stop at the itching level?"

"Not the ear one. The ear one can cause hearing damage and pus to leak out."

"That one's not bad. What else?"

Mia gave an embarrassed smile. "There's nothing else."

Jia Xiu drew a deep breath, then slowly let it out. "Do we have different definitions of 'lots'?"

Mia rubbed her hands together, lowered her head, and said softly, "I can grow poisonous mushrooms too. As long as I can make him eat them..."

"Didn't you grow up in a druid village? Why did you only learn this much?"

"Well, most of my energy went into studying mathematics. Math is so great—interesting and beautiful."

As expected of a mathematical genius. She had effortlessly said something that would make most students want to hit her.

"After I came to the city, I was busy writing papers for people to earn money. But I learned druid spells for controlling spores very quickly. As long as I observe a spore, I can master how to control that kind of spore in a few hours at most."

"What did you say? You can observe spores?" Jia Xiu was profoundly shocked. "Do you see them as a hazy cloud, or...?"

"Not as a cloud. They're individual things. Some are round, some are oval, some are long with one end big and one end small. Some have lots of little ones connected to them. But I don't think all of those are spores. Grandma taught us wrong."

Listening to Mia's description, Jia Xiu was filled with respect.

What had he just heard? He had heard a druid describing fungal cell morphology.

Had the druids produced a Leeuwenhoek?

"How do you observe them?"

Jia Xiu was no longer merely hoping to pass the exam. He was looking at a project with an incredibly high ceiling—and a vast amount of experience.

"All the druids in our village can do it. Microscopic Vision can magnify our sight. I can magnify things around thirty times at most. The elders in the village are much better—they can magnify things a hundred times. The elders said that as druids of the Spore Society, how could we not understand the things we pursue? So every druid in our village has to learn Microscopic Vision."

Mia's explanation left Jia Xiu utterly astonished.

His stereotype of druids had been shattered. Instead of slightly radical, mystical nature conservationists, they were a group with scholarly rigor and a serious commitment to seeking truth.

Were all druids like this, or was it just their village?

"Why didn't you ever tell me you could do this?"

"Is it important?" Mia was a little confused by Jia Xiu's excitement. "I thought only we liked observing spores."

"Have you ever seen things that look similar to those shapes, but are many times smaller?" Jia Xiu pressed.

He meant bacteria. When it came to making people sick, bacteria offered far more options than fungi.

"I thought there might be even smaller things too, but even when I used Microscopic Vision through a magnifying glass, I still couldn't see them. Maybe I'll be able to once I become as skilled as the elders."

"You can use Microscopic Vision together with a magnifying glass?"

"Of course."

Jia Xiu ran a hand through his hair. Incredible. Microscopic Vision was a spell based on optical principles.

If it could stack with a magnifying glass, then it could stack with an objective lens of even greater magnification. Microscopic Vision could serve as the eyepiece, and a simple microscope was born.

It might be simple, but its magnification would be no joke.

To turn the Spore Society into a "Bacteria Society," all they needed was an objective lens with enough magnification.

Thank goodness for his old biology teacher, who had loved slipping interesting little anecdotes into lectures.

When teaching about Leeuwenhoek, the teacher had also explained how to make a Leeuwenhoek microscope.

That important invention, which had kicked open the door to microbiological research, was actually not very difficult to make.

Especially now that they had a craftsman like Ram.

"Wait here. I'm going to buy some things!"

After saying that, Jia Xiu immediately headed to the nearest laboratory supply shop and bought a whole bundle of glass rods.

Glass was not a luxury in this world, because mages who studied the fire element had solved the problem of precisely controlling high temperatures.

Their original goal had been to design more damaging spells, but the spells they eventually created were applied to production instead.

Honestly, they were much more useful this way than for dealing damage.

Jia Xiu returned with a bundle of glass rods and cast a Constant-Temperature Flame Arrow to heat them.

Once the glass softened, he slowly pulled it into thin glass filaments, snapped them apart, then reheated the broken ends to form tiny glass spheres.

Before long, he had made a whole pile.

He lined them up in front of Mia.

"Come on. Pick one with enough magnification."

At the same time, he had Ram make a small frame to hold the lens, with a thin needle in front for placing specimens.

Jia Xiu scraped some flakes of skin from his finger and stuck them onto the needle as the first specimen.

Mia activated Microscopic Vision and leaned closer.

"Can you see clearly?" Jia Xiu asked anxiously. Since nothing had been stained, the cells were nearly transparent.

"Not very clearly, but I can sense that every one of them is different. There are so, so many kinds..."

Well, high perception really was convenient.

Jia Xiu asked the more crucial question. "Can you control them?"

"I think so. But with my abilities, I can only control these... what should these be called?"

"Bacteria."

"Fine, that's their name now. I can only control them within five meters at most. It'll be hard to use them in actual combat, right?"

"Small problem. Creating an opportunity for you to use them is my job. Now, let's find somewhere with the most sick people."

It was time to prepare a disease "package" for Gudrian.