DOOMED TO BE A VILLAIN

Immediately Davies got into the car and shut the door, the temperature inside the car dropped by a few degrees even though no one had put on the air conditioning.

That was bad news.

It meant that the mana had caused enough havoc inside of Davies\'s body for it to be felt outside his body. He was literally already turning into an ice block from the inside.

Melinda immediately recognized the levity of the situation as she was able to immediately detect the temperature difference as her powers were closely related to this particular phenomenon of nature.

She immediately stepped on the accelerator and began driving down the road that led out of the Lecroy family estate as she knew that they were pressed for time.

\'Tick tock, boom,\'

As they drove off, a shrill bursting sound went off and attacked every electronic device in a one km radius with the electromagnetic pulse bomb that Davies left behind being the center of the implosion.

Maybe every electronic device was a bit of a stretch as the pulse only attacked things that could be used for surveillance as that was what it was specifically created for. It was an EMP bomb that only blew up things that could be used for surveillance like security cameras, and audio recording microphones, and for an added bonus it also blocked transmissions from going out of the zones and didn\'t allow the footage to be uploaded via an internet connection, or any wireless connection for that matter.

Due to all these nifty functions and its small size, its range of effect was a little too narrow for anything that Davies would invent. Of course, Davies also had a bigger and even more powerful one, but he wouldn\'t dare to use that right now as it would blow out all the circuits inside of his car as well and he wouldn\'t be able to leave this place.

Melinda who was driving didn\'t notice anything as they sped off in the car, totally ignorant of the chaos that would be taking place in the hall as phones were among the things that could be classified as a surveillance tool.

The phones of everybody in the banquet hall blowing up would have caused quite an uproar and would have been quite the sight to see, but unfortunately, Davies had more important things to attend to so he had forgotten that the EMP bomb would do that much, and even if he remembered it he still would have detonated the EMP bomb.

"Do you have any way to deal with the poison?" she asked, not taking her eyes off of the road as she was doing her best to be mindful of the gradually increasing speed of the car so as to avoid any more accidental occurrences that would make the evening more tragic than it already was. 

"Not really, no," Davies replied without any urgency as if he wasn\'t the one who was dying from poison. He also had not mentioned that he had one foolproof method to deal with the poison because even though the method he had in mind would undoubtedly remove the poison, it would come with some annoying consequences, so he wasn\'t really very hung up on using that particular method and would easily jump on any other method that could solve the poison.

\'There had to be other methods, right?\' 

\'If that idiot Lee Jung could get an antidote, then there have to be other antidotes somewhere, or another method entirely,\' he thought, which was why he didn\'t out-rightly say that he could solve the poison by himself.

"You don\'t have a method to deal with the poison?"

"So, what are we going to do about the poison?" Melinda asked with a troubled voice.

"I said I didn\'t have a method, I never said I was out of ideas," Davies immediately replied with an unperturbed tone that completely confused the atmosphere as to who was poisoned and who was not.

"Oh… so what do you have in mind," she asked after a slight pause.

"Well, first of all, do you happen to have a high-grade mana poison antidote?"

"Something like that should work," Davies asked as that was almost guaranteed to work seeing as how it was what Lee Jung would have given to Melinda if he hadn\'t ended up interfering in the story though he was not sure if the antidote would work with a double dosage of the poison that he had gotten.

Melinda actually took her eyes off the road and stared at Davies after he spoke,

"Yeah, it should work… if you can actually get a hold of one of those," she said sarcastically. 

High-grade potions of any kind were not things that could just be found on the market because of their absurd rarity. It was to the extent that she had only ever seen it at an auction that she had once been invited to and the price tag on it as the opening bid was so high that she did not even try to bid for it in her dreams.

"Well, do you have one?" Davies asked again, not understanding the reason for her sarcasm as he didn\'t know her thoughts, and even if he did, he still wouldn\'t understand why she was being sarcastic, after all the word \'expensive\' didn\'t exist in his dictionary. 

For Davies Lake, as long as what he wanted wasn\'t non-existent, then he could afford it, after all, it was just money.

"Ah, right... you wouldn\'t understand, after all, you\'re… you," only after hearing Davies repeat the question did Melinda finally remember who she was speaking with. He obviously couldn\'t understand the thoughts of people who were poorer than he was, and unfortunately, that was almost everybody.

"You\'ve probably never had to deal with money issues your whole life, unfortunately not everyone is like you and has enough money to buy a whole city should they wish to," Melinda actually became even more sarcastic as she was slapped with the reality of the kind of difference between them and she actually became a little aggrieved. 

It wasn\'t her fault though, anyone who was slapped in the face with the reality that someone who is so close to you can afford to be as whimsical as he/she wanted to be when spending money while you were always worrying about opportunity costs even when you were spending within your means.

"Anyway, I don\'t have a high-grade mana antidote… or any high-grade potion or material for that matter," she scoffed with a little pout as she returned her eyes to the road.

Davies had finally understood her bone of contentment with his attitude, but right now he couldn\'t be bothered to care about something as deep-rooted in him as his attitude towards money. Their ways of thinking were fundamentally different, and it would take him a lot of time to get into that right now… time he did not have.

"Well, can we buy one quickly?" he asked completely ignorant about this kind of thing. He usually left this kind of job to his underlings, so he had never actually bought anything like this, nor did he know where to buy it, or how to even go about buying it.

"Like tonight? Of course not!"

"High-grade potions like the high-grade mana poison antidote that you\'re looking for only appear at auction houses,"

"I don\'t think we have the levity for something like that right now," Davies muttered in realization.

"Exactly… and even if we did, we can never be sure if we\'re going to find the high-grade mana poison antidote as the things that come out during the auction are random," Melinda clarified even further.

"Oh…"

"Also, you don\'t know anyone who has one?" Davies asked again, still not giving up.

"..."

"Not that I know of," Melinda hesitated slightly but then answered, dashing Davies\'s hopes of using the easiest method to deal with the poison.

To be perfectly honest, Davies had expected to not be able to get a hold of the high-grade mana poison antidote despite his ignorance pertaining to this issue. 

After all, if it was so easy to get a high-grade mana poison antidote, then how would only Lee Jung be able to use it to save Melinda and establish a relationship?

At least, for tonight, it would be impossible to get a high-grade mana poison antidote to use.

Davies had also thought about using a medium-grade mana poison antidote, but it would probably be just as hard to get a hold of it, and he also wasn\'t sure if it would be able to dispel the poison as he had ended up with a double dosage of the poison that would require a high-grade antidote to take care of a single dosage.

Seeing that this method had come to a dead end, he began to try to think of another method that could work. He still had some time before he no longer had a choice but to use \'Reversion\'.