Day 2, 8:30 AM
“These slugs and caterpillars are all poisoned, slowly dying from nibbling on my temeronias. The plant attracts insects, slowly poisons them, its toxins making them hungrier, and after they die, it uses their decomposing carcasses as food.” Edna gestures at an oversized blackish cabbage on a stick that stinks like someone’s socks have crawled inside the folds of its leaves and died.
BSD tells me it can be used to treat the loss of appetite and abdominal cramps if ground and served in boiling water as thin broth. The soil beneath the plant is littered with results of eating it fresh. Dead grubs and caterpillars of varying sizes, ranging from the length of a fingernail, all the way to the massive ones as big as a hefty sausage form a small mound around the stem.
“What do these caterpillars grow into?” I indulge my curiosity, a world of infinite rain should have trouble fostering insects like butterflies, and as expected, Edna looks at me like I am stupid.
“Into bigger caterpillars. The mutated beasts wormlords controlled had maws bigger than my hut. That’s the reason I find the church’s castles so laughable. Their petty rock formations may keep the regular mutated fauna outside, but a fully evolved three-maw destroyer can bite its way through solid stone with little difficulty.”
“What is a—”
“Stop talking. You said yesterday you used your chicken abominations to level up, I see no reason you can’t use a meaty clowex as a substitute.” Edna points at a particularly big, particularly nasty slug-like thing grazing on the temeronia’s leaves.
Since it is not a plant, my skills only confirm that the creature is called clowex.
“Can I just pick it up? What do I do with it?”
“It’s a clowex,” she says, as if that should explain everything. “It suffers from an ingested poison, and it’s been exposed to it for days now. You just need to provide an antidote.”
My medical knowledge does not help explain how to detoxify a slug half the length of a human arm. However, I do know that a poison meant to be swallowed is unlikely to harm me when I simply touch its victim.
“Right.” I grab the slimy thing and pull. There’s a wet pop, and I can see the patches the clowex had grazed on. They have more jagged edges than what I recall slugs leave in their wake, so I turn the pale-green creature in my hand, revealing a pair of thin, long slits filled with countless tiny barbed hooks. Even in the dim light of the rainy day, the bits of black cabbage leaves are obvious against pale flesh and white teeth.
The clowex’s double jaws mill them industriously, and I realize just how strange this world’s fauna is.
What is this world even called? And how do you cure temeronias poisoning?
‘Clearia,’ my brain answers the latter question, and I even remember passing the plant whose name and properties I did not know until just now. I hate how BSD messes with my brain and thought process.
“What is this world called?” I ask while turning around and heading for the hut’s entrance, a voracious slug in hand. Clearia is good at nullifying the effects of most common plants, and competent gardeners grow them within easy reach. That is the knowledge I did not have until a moment ago, and now it feels like it has always been there. Disgusting.
“Everrain,” Edna answers my question and follows behind me. “Where are you going?”
When we discussed my level up condition last night, I paid attention to several details. The patient must be one that has suffered from poison for at least a day or two for me to consider it prolonged, and while there is no direct indication of it, I need to cure the patient, almost certainly alone. Knowing what kind of a bastard BSD is, that probably means every step of the way, including coming up with a treatment and doing all the trivial labor.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“I’m going to ruin one of your clearia shrubs. You have eight, so one should be an acceptable loss for science.” Edna does not object, so I keep walking towards her healing herbs.
“I have over seventy clearias, and how do you know what a clearia is, but not what a clowex is?”
“Fyoor had Advanced Herbalism, but nothing which would help me distinguish between creepy crawlies.”
“Clowex aren’t creepy,” she defends the disgusting slug with more zeal than I would’ve expected. “As for treating—”
“Edna, I will have to ask you to refrain from giving me suggestions about healing the poison. Even if my methods are wrong, there are plenty of bugs on that temeronia.” I am about to ask why the bugs only munch on the outer leaves instead of devouring the whole thing, but the information immediately enters my brain on its own.
Temeronias only have three layers of soft edible leaves, the buds beneath are as tough as rock, inedible both to insects and humans. With my brain answering my own unasked question, I change the topic.
“BSD filling my head with answers to my questions is like a violation, but I recall how it used to correct my movement whenever I employed physical skills. Does the Guide do that too?”
Edna nods. “That happens when someone acquires a new skill through leveling up, but they get used to it eventually. The skills you acquire with practice don’t work that way.”
They do, but the manipulation is more subtle. You only notice it if you try to do something wrong intentionally.
I reach the nearest clearia and dump the clowex on it. The mollusk, probably, makes tiny slurping noises before I hear it tearing at the leaves.
“There, now we wait.” I say, gazing at my “patient,” and then another thought crosses my mind. “Are clowex allergic to clearia or is it poisonous to them?”
Edna shakes her head. “If you put obviously poisonous food before an animal, they won’t eat it. Your solution should work, clearia cleanses most poisons, including temeronia. We just need to give it a couple hours.”
So, I have a couple hours to kill. “Do you have a staff, or a long, straight stick? Any other weapons?”
Edna raises her eyebrow, such a familiar gesture, but the playful smirk is nowhere in sight.
“I have magic. I need no weapons. But I have plenty of poles for my garden, why do you need one?”
“To recover some of my combat skills, Fyoor was as able to defend himself as a sickly child, given his strength and obvious lack of physical activity. How did he even survive in the wilds?”
“He healed people who lacked the money to pay the church’s healers. You could chop wood for him, bring him food, or anything else. He hardly left his hut unless he went deeper into the forest to gather herbs.”
A foolish way to live his life, relying on others with no power of his own, but I guess not everyone expects hostility and death lurking behind every corner.
“You must have an ax, if you chop wood.”
Edna waved a hand, and a log resting beside her hut’s door snapped cleanly in half.
“Never mind. Do you carry them, or does magic solve that as well?”
“I could use magic, but negating gravity is expensive, and rarely worth the effort. It’s easier to carry them.”
Gravity. They have a word for gravity. Arborean civilizations, in the previous world I reincarnated in, had made next to no scientific advancements, and I offered none. Turning that lush green world into a replica of polluted Earth seemed like a crime. These people, however, have explored the secrets of the universe. Unfortunately, I have no idea how much physics, mathematics, and chemistry I have forgotten.
“I would like to make myself useful to you,” I continue the conversation without skipping a beat, analyzing my thoughts and options even as I speak completely unrelated words. “I can carry heavy loads and do other menial labor you require.”
As expected, Edna gives me a slow shake of her head. She already has plans for me, and I can hardly blame her. I would foster identical plans for me if I were her.
“If you really level up by curing the clowex, your one job will be to study to become a mage and level up in that class.” Her voice is measured, but I can hear the greed and longing behind the calm facade.
She wants me to blaze a path for her, and given how powerful magic seems to be, I can’t blame her. Again, given the nature of magic, the odds of her teaching me how to sever wood with a wave of my arm or how to summon head-sized balls of flame seems close to zero.
If I let things go the way she intends, I will become her slave, and then, once she no longer needs me, she will silence the liability.