The rest did wonders for the young woman. She finally had time to just laze around and restore her vigor. She was even pleasantly surprised her partner turned out to be an excellent chef as well. It was, as the boy had learned, a mistake to show off his skills.
Since then, she had pestered him for every meal. Once she had tasted perfection, she could no longer be satisfied by a quick simple lunch.
"Come on, I will get you your bugs after, just one more steak. I am starving here." She begged and bargained.
In the end, the boy gave in. It was always better to keep a dangerous woman happy and well fed, less their hunger turns to anger, and you have the misfortune to happen to be in her way.
He wasn't in the mood to play around with mushrooms again, so he just steamed some wild vegetables and cooked the boar meat over a slow fire.
Once the bottomless hole that was his partner was filled, they were off once again. For the next few weeks, they would scout out the forests for bombardier beetles. The boy didn't know if he could extract their isocyanates, or if he would pass out from nausea, but he had to try.
"We could ask the army for help, they sent out scouting parties regularly." Diana proposed.
The boy shot the idea down. Soldiers only looked for food, usable materials, and treats, and he doubted they knew about the use of his bugs. Even if they agreed to help, they would treat his research subjects ruffly, which might corrupt the data.
And even if they weren't complete barbarians, and Ciaran highly doubted the possibility, it would be worthless if he wasn't there with them.
They could take a detour as technically speaking, their first task would have its deadline extended from three months to six. But even so, they couldn't play forest detectives for too long.
"They need water, or at least a moist environment to lay their eggs. Let's check all known bodies of water." And he rushed ahead.
Ciaran thought he would need at least a week to find a nest, but to his surprise, it only took four days. The nest had millions of little bugs, ready to be harvested, and the best part was, they were not even Rank Zero.
He caught one, and tried the extraction, before he even tried to filter it through his body, he felt a burning pain in his whole body.
The process had to be done while the specimen was still alive, and extraction from a living being was a lot harder when compared to the same process applied to milk.
The pain was excruciating and crippling. He did his best to push through it, but one drop entered his body, and the screams came out.
The boy stopped and clawed his arm open, so the substance could be cast out quicker.
Diana was badly startled, and she quickly grabbed him and dragged him away. During their escape, he passed out, which only served to confuse and worry the girl even more.
Two hours later Ciaran woke up, but he was too dizzy to stand up.
"You look like shit. What happened back there?" She asked
He tried and failed to sit up, and she had to help him lean his upper body to a tree.
"I miscalculated. It appears I am not just extracting their body fluids, when I make contact, I am messing with their souls, and there is backlash. I had luck they were just regular bugs, if they were any stronger, I would be dead." He said and sighed.
She sat next to him and took in the information.
"The plan is off, I wouldn't be able to do this even if I was at your level. Hell, even if I was a Rank Five Mage it would probably be impossible." He said with annoyance painting his face.
All the time and energy they had invested were wasted, and it was all thanks to his incompetence.
The Wind blew over them, it was warm and strong, making them feel as if they were being hugged.
"Don't worry Granny I am neither weak enough to let one failure drag me down, nor am I petty enough to blame you for it." He said as the wind kept pushing the two together.
The girl was majorly creeped out because even if she couldn't understand or even feel her grandfather's magic, she could at least tell it was magic. But this was different, it was like the wind, the naturally occurring wind was pushing them together.
"She wants you to console me, as she doesn't have permission to." He explained, and she only had more questions after that.
Nevertheless, she gave the boy a tight hug, and a smack on his head right after.
"No more suicide experiments. Are there safer options we could try?"
He sighed and shook his head.
"No, to create our own we would need a real lab and a more experienced chemist. This was a gamble to begin with, as the isocyanates from the bugs would probably be incompatible and unusable for our purpose. If we want proper irradiance we would need to buy them, and they are only sold in major cities, and not to just anyone."
He was now able to just barely able to get up.
"The only thing I can think of is if we were to make a deal with a high-ranking person, to sell soap for some, but no sane person would agree."
The wind blew again, this time leading them in a certain direction.
Ciaran rolled his eyes, the old woman was the most dangerous thing he had ever come across. Just because she was helping him out, didn't mean she had his best intentions in mind.
"Just whisper in my ear, just loud enough Diana can't hear, and tell me straight." He demanded, and to his surprise she did. She told him straight what she was leading them to, no cryptic messages, and no tricks, not as far as he could see.
He sighed and sat back on the ground. Then he took out some meat and gestured to the nearby sticks.
"I will need to be at my peak to deal with that annoyance, and you need to understand that I hate doing this." He said, slightly annoyed.
It took him two whole days of rest for him to be back on his feet. He wanted to be a hundred percent ok, but impatience won in the end.
They ran at a stable speed, not too fast, but they weren't taking it slow either. On another day they reached their destination, one of the strongholds. It was one of the smaller ones, newly build even, but it was a stronghold nonetheless.
"Are you sure we can bargain with them, remember we are currently nobodies." She asked him, a bit
worried. If the commander in there wished, they could detain them for a month.
They were already massively behind schedule, if they lost one more month, things would really get ugly.
The boy shrugged and just walked forward.
"Halt, identify yourselves!" A soldier shouted at them.
Diana came forward and presented her identification as a Ranger. They opened the gate for them, but the soldiers were still surrounding them.
Part of it was because Ciaran had insisted they have a hood over their heads. He said it would be necessary for a more likely success of his plans.
She wanted to remind him that his plans were why they were in a mess, to begin with, but then again, his plan, if successful would guarantee the biggest amount of survivors.
"Tell the old man I came to say hi," Ciaran said, and Diana almost stumbled to the ground.
Even if he knew the commanding officer, high-ranking military personnel tended to take their duties very seriously.
"Rony, behave we can't – "
Before she could finish her sentence the Brigadier General, who was responsible for this stronghold came crashing down from his watchtower.
She was about to take a battle stance, but he was already upon them. He crashed into the boy and tackled him to the ground.
"CIARAN, YOU UNFILIAL GRANDSON, DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW MUCH GRANDPA MISSED YOU." The old man cried his heart out.
The soldiers, who were used to the theatrics of the Clades family, didn't even flinch, and just went back to their regular duties.
The old man was rubbing his old, bearded face against his grandson, while tears of joy ran down his face.
The boy expected a lot. Mainly a speech about how he was disappointed Ciaran chose a spider as a familiar, or maybe how he ran away from army duty like the plague. But this, this he did not expect. What had him even more confused was his irritation, stemming from the fact Diana was watching them.
"OK, seriously what the fuck?" She just blurted out, not being able to take it anymore.
The boy barely got out of his grandpa's clutches, and looked her in the eyes.
"I wanted to surprise my grandfather, so I did my face for maximum emotional impact. Diana, meet Edward Clades, the recently promoted Brigadier General, and the man we will be negotiating with."