Chapter Nineteen

Arden climbed to his feet and scanned his surroundings. If he couldn’t sense the poison attuned mana, he would have thought it was a colorful paradise. It was so colorful it was almost blinding.

Having grown up in a desert filled with shades of brown and gray, it was overwhelming, but that didn’t mean he didn’t keep his guard up. He tried to raise his spear only to remember he left it leaning against the tree, as it was impossible to climb with it. Then he reached for his bow, yet found it was also missing.

Confused, he glanced down at his wrists, half expecting his Ortus bracelets to be missing too, but they remained. The only difference was they shined a dark green, the color of poison, and were flashing.

An era long past (Legacy).

Survive the ancient forest below a forgotten civilization and uncover its secrets. You have encountered the resting place of one of the first. Seek out the others. Maybe one will find you worthy.

Time Limit: 4 days, 16 hours (Paused)

Survive Halima’s Playground.

Trial begins in 58 seconds.

Halima’s playground? That must be the name of the first who sent him this place. His eyes snapped to the time until trial, then quickly scanned his surroundings, looking for any clues to what the trial would be.

Unfortunately, other than a rainbow of plants, all of which radiated poison mana, nothing clued him in. All he could do was prepare himself the best he could and hope the trial didn’t throw too much at him. It wasn’t the first time he dealt with an unknown trial. His parents loved to give him random trials. Sometimes he woke up in the morning in an unknown location with zero clues of what he needed to do.

With those experiences in mind, he retreated to the center of the small grassy clearing and dropped into a fighting stance, hands raised, legs tensed, ready to move at a moment’s notice just as the timer ticked to zero.

Confusion reigned as nothing happened for several heartbeats. Well, not nothing, but it definitely didn’t feel like some trial. The ambient mana spiked, filling his body with warmth, but not much else.

His mind warred between checking what the warmth did and keeping his attention focused outward in case something attacked. This war continued for several minutes, which he knew because the timer continued to tick, this time up rather than down.

As time passed, nothing jumped out at him. It seemed like he was alone in the beautiful rainbow garden. After another scan coming up empty, he gave in to the temptation of peering inward, but only for a moment. At least, that was his intention.

A peek internally told him only poison attuned mana flowed into his body. The unusual part was the mana didn’t flow to his core, instead it flowed past it as if it didn’t exist. Upon looking deeper, he found it bolstered his soul tether, causing the dark green poison attuned strands woven in to become more pronounced.

Worry hit him as he didn’t want to ruin the balance but upon watching it for several seconds, he found the strands weren’t overtaking the other stands. Instead, they strengthened the poison stands that already existed.

Good thing he didn’t break through the bottleneck to grade one. Once the tether connected to his mana core, he couldn’t change it. At least not for a while. He heard rumors later steps in his cultivation required him to do something to his soul tether.

Unfortunately, information on how to reach past grade one wasn’t made available to him.

When he asked his parents, they wouldn’t tell him. They kept saying he would learn when he needed to. Based on how his cards leveled by inspiration, there was probably some downside to knowing beforehand.

Though he had no problem leveling his wood spike. Maybe that was because he didn’t know for sure it would level like that. He definitely needed to find some answers once he left the cavern.

Suddenly, his attention snapped to his surroundings, but upon finding nothing ready to attack him, he relaxed. Only to realize he didn’t have any of his weapons. His gaze gravitated to a tree with reddish-gray bark and a large canopy of green leaves. Upon approaching it, he spotted a bunch of small green fruit.

Like everything around him, it radiated poison attuned nature mana. He eyed several branches within reach, tempted to break them off to create a weapon, but something told him that would be a terrible idea.

Instead, he scanned the base of the tree, finding a few small branches laying on the ground. He bent down to pick one up, but the moment his hand contacted the branch, pain shot through his hand. Eyes wide, he inspected his hand to find boils spreading up his forearm.

He stumbled back, a whimper escaping. His poison resistance card kicked in, fighting back against the poison. It stopped its advance at his elbow, but wasn’t making much progress in pushing it back. Pain continued to radiate through his arm, but compared to his time in the pond, it was nothing.

Fear in his eyes, he retreated to his start point. The only free section of grass. Afraid to touch anything, he stood where he was while watching the boils gradually dissipate. Helped along by his poison resistance, but mostly from the natural dissipation of foreign mana. If it wasn’t for his poison resistance card, the boils would have covered his entire body within seconds.

Even after the boils disappeared, he remained where he was. What was he supposed to do? This had to be some sort of test, but what was it testing him for? He had poison attuned mana but other than his poison resistance card he couldn’t make use of it.

In fact, resistance cards were useable by anyone. They had more potency with the poison attuned, though.

Was he meant to poison himself? What if he touched something deadly?

An idea formed, prompting him to inspect the surrounding plants. He sensed the poison attuned mana radiating off them. To be safe, he looked for the weakest of the bunch, which turned out to be a patch of three leafed green plants.

Against his better judgement, he touched the plant. An itchy rash instantly grew on his hand. Unlike the branch, his poison resistance stopped it at his wrist. His mind screamed at him to itch the irritation, but he held off.

Despite his limited knowledge of plants, he knew it would be a bad idea to itch. It could spread the poison to other parts of his body. At least it wasn’t painful, just annoying.

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Within minutes, it pushed it back, then removed it all together. After taking a few deep breaths as he banished the phantom sensation of itchiness from his mind, he touched the plant again, this time with both hands.

With both of his hands covered with the rash, he found it almost easier to quash the need to itch. Still, it wasn’t easy. All he could do was sit and mediate trying to keep his mind off the sensation. Soon his poison resistance pushed the foreign mana out, but a quick grab returned it.

This time, instead of simply letting his poison resistance take care of it, he focused inward, attention directed at the foreign mana. The dark green poison roiled in his hands. Unlike normal mana, it didn’t enter his vein network, but instead affected the hand itself.

Curious if he could force it into his veins, he grabbed at it with his mental hands. It resisted at first, but already weakened by his poison resistance, it took a few hands to tear it free. Once it entered his veins, it fell under his control, just like ambient mana.

More inspiration hit him, prompting him to push the mana back out of his veins. It followed his wishes, now almost eager to follow his commands, but just as it left his veins, it dissipated, too weak to do anything.

Undeterred, he grabbed the plant, allowing a larger dose of the poison mana to enter his system. This time he attempted to grab ahold of it immediately. It fought against his control, breaking free of his mental hands several times before the combined force of his poison resistance, which now felt much stronger, and his mental hands wrangled the foreign mana under control.

He pulled the mana into his veins, then immediately pushed it back out, trying to reestablish it. Unlike the previous attempt, the mana took hold, reigniting the rash, though it was far weaker than the initial outbreak.

As he returned his attention to the outside world to grab some more mana to play with, he caught sight of his flashing bracelets. Knowing what it meant, he eagerly opened his Ortus menu and checked his flashing Poison Resistance card.

Poison Resistance (Rare) Level 3

Type: Resistance

Affinity: Nature

Attunement: Poison

Effect 1: When in use, a passive draw on mana will provide poison resistance. Must be in the user’s passive hand to function.

Effect 2: When infected with poison, the user may attempt to siphon the poison into their mana veins to take control of it.

Effect 3: User may apply poison to specific parts of their body.

Did that mean he could actively fight poison? Once he took control of the mana, the effects on his body stopped. He needed to do more testing.

A glance at his quest timer showed fifteen minutes passed since the start of the trial.

For once, he may have time to practice. At least he hoped he had time. Maybe there was some secret thing he needed to do, but as far as he could tell, there was nothing but poisonous plants surrounding him. Like the forest, it was silent.

He stiffened. Just because it was silent, that didn’t mean there wasn’t something ready to ambush him. He couldn’t just cut off his senses of the outside world. As much as he wanted to put his full focus on experimentation, he couldn’t.

That didn’t stop him from touching the three leafed plant once more and attempted to grab control of the poison. Instead of focusing all his attention on it, he tried to split his attention to maintain awareness.

This proved much harder than he thought as his mental hand coordination plummeted. As usual, he wasn’t deterred though.

The first attempt proved a failure, as his stronger poison resistance eradicated the foreign mana before he could grab control of it. He tried again immediately. While actively scanning his surroundings, he worked his mental hands around the foreign mana. This time he got ahold of a portion of it before his poison resistance crushed it. With a yank, he pulled it into his veins.

However, when he tried to reestablish the poison, he lost control of the mana, causing it to dissipate. That didn’t stop him from trying again. With eyes searching for threats, he poisoned himself again. Because of his practice, it was much easier to pull the poison into his veins, giving him more poison attuned mana to work with.

More mana to work with meant a higher chance to succeed reestablishing it. He needed just about all of it as most of the mana slipped from his control, dissipating harmlessly into the air. The little he kept created a small rash far weaker than the original. Still, it was a success and he would build upon it.

Build upon it, he did. He tried again and again, each time siphoning the poison away and reintroducing it faster. Soon it got to the point it was near instant. He beat the reaction time of his poison resistance and siphoned all the poison away, then reintroduced it in random spots along his arms.

Satisfied with his resistance to the three leafed plant, he scanned the surrounding plants again, looking for his next target.

After a few seconds, his eyes landed on a plant with white flowers and white berries about one centimeter in diameter connected to red stems and green toothed leaves.

As he didn’t know what it did, only that it was stronger than the previous plant, he only touched it with a finger. He immediately focused on the foreign mana, but unlike the previous rash inducing plant, the mana shot up his arm and into his heart before even his poison resistance could react.

A wave of drowsiness hit him as his heart slowed. Any focus on the outside world blurred as his sluggish mind attempted to latch onto the foreign mana, but it was to no avail.

Fortunately, his poison resistance kicked in and pushed the mana out of his heart, though it took much longer than the previous plant. Either by potency or unfamiliarity.

As soon as his poison resistance purged the foreign mana, his heart returned to its typical rate. His attention snapped to the outside, scanning the area for threats, but when he found none, he returned his gaze to the plant.

That was dangerous. What if something attacked him when he touched the plant? What was he even accomplishing by poisoning himself? His poison resistance would eventually purge the poison without his input.

Sure, if he mastered controlling the foreign mana, he could purge it quicker, but that involved poisoning himself with countless poisons and what were the chances he faced a similar poison in the future?

What else did he have to do? There wasn’t a goal given to him in this place.

His eyes gravitated toward the tree he poisoned himself on. What if he built his immunity to the point he could hold a staff made of poisonous wood? Now that could be a tangible goal to reach for. Much better than poisoning himself with hundreds of plants and hoping he didn’t die from one of them.

Arden stood and approached the tree. Then sat near the trunk while making sure he didn’t touch any of the fallen leaves or branches.

This was going to be painful.

Arden scanned his surroundings before he touched the branch. Boils formed immediately, but unlike the heart stalling poison, it spread relatively slowly, allowing him to isolate it. Despite its potency, a few yanks of his mental hands pulled the poison attuned mana into his veins.

Though the real test was doing it with his concentration split. Not wanting to reestablish the sores, he pushed the mana out of his body, letting it dissipate into the air.

Said test of staying on guard and grabbing control of the foreign mana turned out to be easier than he thought. It was just a stronger version of the three leafed plant. At least he knew he could handle poison that targeted skin.

Well, within reason. Some poisons may be too potent. He had no desire to torture himself to find out, though.

Now confident he could handle the poison, he grabbed the branch and activated his wood manipulation card.

Or at least tried to.

Without direct access to his mana core, he relied on the ambient mana flowing in, but currently only poison attuned mana flowed in. Not pure nature affinity mana. That meant the only card he could use was his poison resistance card, and that card used mana from his mana core, as it was an unconscious passive activation.

He scowled down at the branch. All that pain was for nothing.

His scowl lessened. Maybe not. He learned the potency didn’t affect how he handled the poison, only the way it acted. That discovery drew his attention back to the field of plants.

If he was careful, he could practice his response to different poison types. Another benefit hit him a moment later. How could he be so stupid? While he couldn’t use his other cards, that didn’t mean he couldn’t learn enough about the plants to recreate their seeds for future use.

Maybe he could bring some along with him too, but that meant he needed to improve his poison response to handle the plants.

Something clicked in his mind as his bracelets began flashing.

Upon opening his Ortus menu, his good mood vanished, replaced with fear and annoyance.

An era long past (Legacy).

Survive the ancient forest below a forgotten civilization and uncover its secrets. You have encountered the resting place of one of the first. Seek the others. Maybe one will find you worthy.

Time Limit: 4 days, 16 hours (Paused)

Survive Halima’s Playground.

First stage time expired.

Beginning the second stage.

Objective: Put knowledge gained into action.

Second stage begins in 59 seconds.