Very quickly, the whole of the Ostrich family was thrown into chaos; most elders had been poisoned and thus tied to their beds.

Even the family head (Jonathan) was unable to escape that fate, no matter how hard he tried.

When it was discovered that the elders who got sick were actually poisoned, Jonathan started obsessively checking his food to make sure he stayed safe, but, what a pity, Michelle wasn’t using food to poison the elders.

That would be way too inefficient in a family as big as the Ostrich family.

In reality, Michelle used a poison that came as small, dust-like particles to be inhaled.

Even sticking to skin could work, but less effectively.

So, whenever Michelle wanted to infect a new elder, she would sneak into the room and scatter a lethal dose over their pillow and bedding.

The dose was so large because she knew it was unreasonable to think someone would breathe it all in.

Some would get stuck in the pillow and bedding, some get scattered around due to wind; so the dose had to be increased for enough to get into the victim’s system.

It wasn’t the most efficient method there was, but Michelle could control who exactly got poisoned and the exact time of their poisoning.

Of course, the elders had servants regularly change their bedding and dust out the pillows, especially so after the information about the poisonings spread among them.

But to make sure that didn’t mess with her plans, Michelle put the poison in the bedding only after the servants were done with their work.

The elders and family head were still able to manage when the healers were taking care of them, but Michelle and Vincent also put an end to that.

Under the cloak of darkness on a moonless night (when the big moon of the world was hidden by thick clouds), they snuck into the pharmacy and destroyed everything the healers were using to alleviate the symptoms of the poison.

Naturally, the healers quickly resorted to new methods, but that just started an endless cycle.

The healers would use something, and the following night, Michelle would destroy it.

After a while, the healers stopped and gave up.

They knew that if things went on like that, even things for treating fatal wounds and such would get destroyed and deaths would appear—not even directly because of the poison, just indirectly.

Of course, the elders wouldn’t like to hear that the healers gave up on healing them, so the healers actually withheld the information from them.

Another thing aside from poisoning the elders that Michelle was doing was dropping hints here and there that made things look like the work of Tobias Ostrich.

For example, one time, she disguised herself as one of his closest servants and started suspiciously sneaking around.

When someone stopped her like that, she ran off, but made sure to drop a vial with traces of the poison in it.

Naturally (though sick from the poison), the elders didn’t remain inactive.

They activated their spies, and soon, the whole residence was full of scouts gathering information and investigating what was going on.

And exactly those so-called elites of the elders fell for Michelle’s clues, as she called them.

Initially, the Ostrich family was in panic, thinking some kind of terrifying force was targeting them from the outside, but when the spies brought back the information about Tobias’ supposed activities, panic turned into rage.

But, being bedridden, the elders weren’t in any place to deal with Tobias, especially since they didn’t have the antidote.

Tobias was the only person they could think of to have the antidote, since they had no doubt he was the mastermind behind their poisoning.

So, the spies were set in motion again, to capture Tobias and have him give them the antidote.

There was just one problem with the plan that neither the elders nor the spies were aware of.

How was Tobias supposed to know anything when he didn’t know anything?

The poor guy didn’t know what the antidote was.

But the spies were dead set on the fact that he had the antidote.

So, the longer Tobias insisted he didn’t know, the cruder and more cruel they got with him.

Michelle enjoyed watching all that, but it was time for her to return to Vincent so the last part of the plan could be started.

The elders needed to be treated.

No matter how rotten they were, the plan at the moment was only to get rid of Tobias, not the elders or the family head.

That was included in a long-term plan of Vincent’s in which Michelle would no longer participate.

The poisoning of the elders at the moment was just his petty revenge for the fact that they didn’t get rid of Andrew Ostrich before he could kill Ana Ostrich.

Because there were numerous opportunities for that, but the elders never even touched him, wanting to use him as a secret weapon for the family (since he was a professional killer).

To start the last stage of the plan, Vincent (like nearly every day) went to see his father and told him he had found a Poison Master who was showing potential to cure the poison.

Jonathan was already desperate, so he agreed to let the Poison Master examine him.

So, the next day, Vincent officially brought Michelle into the residence.

And still, Michelle wasn’t stepping forward as herself.

This time around, she was disguised as Michael Grayson.

She hadn’t used that identity for quite a while, but that didn’t bother her the least bit.

It wasn’t like she was under the watch of anyone and needed to explain who Michael Grayson was.

When Vincent led Michelle into Jonathan’s room, Jonathan was awake, trying to get a good look at who the Poison Master was.

He was surprised that Michelle was that young (as Michael Grayson, Michelle looked a bit younger than she really was).

Michelle briefly introduced herself before proceeding to examine Jonathan.

She was actually doing that only to check just how effective the poison was.

What she gave the elders was the same but weakened poison she had taken before staging her death as Ana Ostrich; the one that made her show symptoms of drowning.

And that was her developing version of the poison from Mavreth that paralyzed her and made her look like she was dead.

Michelle chose that poison because she had been testing it only on herself and wanted to see what reaction normal people’s bodies would have to it.

And the result was quite pleasing, actually.

The dear elders didn’t in the least look like they were drowning, but some choking and gasping for breath was involved.

After examining Jonathan, Michelle asked if she could take a sample of his blood to work on the antidote.

Jonathan didn’t like that idea, but (with Michael Grayson being the last resort since Tobias was keeping his mouth shut) he finally agreed.

After taking and storing away a sample of Jonathan’s blood, Michelle went on to check on the other elders one by one.

And from every single one of them, she took a small sample of blood.

There was quite a number of elders, so it took Michelle five days of waking up early and retreating late at night until she examined every single one of them.

After that, to not make things look suspicious, Michelle secluded herself for a good three days before she came out bearing an experimental antidote.

Apparently, it worked on the poison in the blood of the elders, but she didn’t know if it could work on the elders themselves.

But (reassuring the elders) she assured them it was completely safe and wouldn’t harm them in the least.

With that last piece of information, about half of the elders agreed to have the antidote tested on them, while the other half decided to wait until things were finalized.

Actually, Michelle knew perfectly how the experimental antidote worked.

It would make the effects of the poisoning subside, but not cure the poison.

For a cure, Michelle would need to change the concentration of certain herbs in the poison and alter the amounts.

But that, she was putting off for a while.

If she did things too quickly, the elders would assume it was easy for her (which it was), and they wouldn’t pay her back as much as she wanted.

Because since she was already officially in the Ostrich family as Michael Grayson, why not have them pay her with something good?

Seeing the condition of the elders who volunteered to take the experimental antidote improve, the other elders also agreed to take it, very thankful that it made the choking on their own breaths subside.

At last, they could at least partially return to their functions.

And the first concern was the state of the pharmacy.

After Michael Grayson started developing the antidote, it got raided again (naturally Michelle’s work).

But this time around, there were many more traces left behind, making the elders believe even more that the one behind everything was Tobias.

Because after he got captured, the people in charge of preventing the antidote from being made got sloppier, probably because they had no one to lead and order them.