The flesh-melting demon spider crouched as Sorin approached. Venomous secretions oozed out of its fangs and coated the dozen or so spikes on each of its eight legs. Approaching the spider and applying the first batch of poison would be tricky no matter which attack angle he chose.
He advanced until the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. Any further, and the spider would attack him without mercy. In that moment between life and death, Sorin wondered whose poison was stronger, his or the spider's? A brief consultation with the Ten Thousand Poison Canon quickly answered his question: it was spider's without a doubt.
Mana-infused blood pumped through Sorin's body, delivering energy to his legs and uncoiling them like a spring. He approached the flesh-melting demon spider from the side and swung out with his dagger.
The spider was agile, and it was far easier to rotate on an axis with eight legs than to take the long way around with two. Its mouth opened and shot a web out at Sorin, missing his torso by a bare millimeter. Then it blinked just in time to deflect three poison needles Sorin had stealthily sent its way.
Sorin hadn't expected his trick to work, so he moved onto plan B. The spider's blink meant temporary blindness, and he used the opportunity to cut at the creature's foreleg with his poisoned knife. The knife cut a shallow gouge in its joint between two thick layers of chitin. But unlike the demonic wolves, the spider was unaffected by the poison.
There were two possibilities: one was that the spider was completely immune to his poison, and the other was that the spider's anatomy made it difficult to spot whether or not the poison was working. If it was the former, Sorin was dead, so he assumed it was the latter and continued fighting with everything he had.
He jumped back as the spider's leg swept forward but was unable to avoid getting nicked by the barbs on the spider's leg. A shallow gash appeared on his forearm, and the spider's black poison attempted to melt its flesh, succeeding for about half a second before Sorin's own poisons moved to negate it.
I can't be cowardly, thought Sorin as he sliced at the retreating leg, leaving another small nick on the spider's flesh. I need to take every advantage I can get to win this. If he played things safe, he would die. The only chance he had was to take some risks.
The spider dove in to bite him with its two venom-laced fangs, but Sorin avoided them by rolling beneath the spider's belly. Eat poison! he thought as he slammed up with a poisonous palm. The spider shrieked as his palm hit and jumped up from the ground.
Sorin dodged as best he could but was unable to avoid getting nicked by the barbs on the spider's legs as it jumped up. The spider moved in to bite him when it landed, but he slashed upwards with his dagger and cut off the tip of its mandible. The spider shrieked and retreated momentarily to reevaluate him.
The fight with the spider made Sorin appreciate how valuable the Ten Thousand Poison really was. The canon's strength didn't lay in its ability to control poisons but rather in its ability to assimilate other poisons. He wasn't immune to poisons, as they would still affect him, but their effects would gradually decrease as his body got used to them and finally began to secrete them.
Sorin's dagger moved ceaselessly. It was one weapon against two or three potential legs at a single time. That wasn't even mentioning the creature's deadly mandibles, which, wounded as they were, still reeked of deadly poison.
I can't… let myself… get… It was only when his surroundings began to spin that he realized that the spider's poison had unknowingly begun to affect him. The dizzy spell threw off his reflexes, rendering him unable to avoid two more shallow cuts.
Too slow, thought Sorin, backing up. He tumbled to the ground but managed to avoid the spider's descending leg just in time. At this rate, it'll corner me and land a bite. Then I'll be as good as dead.
The main issue, Sorin immediately identified, was the difference in their cultivation and the sheer quantity of mana the spider had to draw on. The herbs in his pack and the healing ointments he'd brought were useless. In fact, it was questionable whether Haley could even save him.
The only way I can win is to take a risk, thought Sorin. My mana isn't assimilating the poison quickly enough, so I need to speed things up. The spider moved in to bite him once again, but this time, Sorin didn't roll beneath it but stepped back. At the same time, he crouched and picked up the sharp venomous mandible tip he'd cut off earlier and threatened the spider with it.
As predicted, the spider feared its own poison and gave Sorin a wide berth. Sorin forced himself to ignore the melting flesh on his hand, gritted his teeth, and then… stabbed himself! He roughly jabbed 14 different positions that mostly conformed to a series of acupoints.
Flesh melted where he'd stabbed himself, leaving large skin-less welts that were expanding rapidly. Red veins spread out from these initial points as his blood carried the poison to the rest of his body,
"Are you insane?" shouted Haley from afar. "This fight is over. Try not to die before I extract you."
"I'll be fine!" Sorin shouted back to Haley. He focused on circulating his mana and used his spiritual strength to urge the poisoned mana into his clogged-up liver meridian in an attempt to unseal it.
Fortunately, the spider was confused by Sorin's actions. It was likely the first time it had ever seen its prey intentionally poison itself, and it wanted to see where this was going. Its cautious nature was what gave Sorin the opportunity to not only fully clear a meridian channel leading down to his legs but also further fuse his combined poisons.
This… is a lot harder than I thought it would be, thought Sorin as he painfully guided the poison. Stabbing himself so roughly with a fang wasn't very precise and, as such, he had damaged his meridians and his flesh. The poison wasn't just seeping into his mana and his blood but his muscles and skin as well.
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Sorin teetered on the brink of unconsciousness, doing his best to guide the venom along its way. Then, when darkness began creeping in on his vision, he suddenly felt something shatter. The clog in his meridian opened up like a dam.
The spider, noticing that something was amiss, moved in for the kill. Yet before it could reach him, Sorin burst forward with a speed that was 20% faster than he'd shown previously. His movements became more elusive, and he was now able to turn much more rapidly.
At this rate, I won't be able to outlast it, thought Sorin, avoiding its attack. I've taken a fatal dose of its poison. That means there's only one way for me to get out of this alive.
He strengthened his resolve and charged at the spider with the fang tip. To everyone's horror, Sorin stabbed it just beneath the spider's jaw, suffering deep gashes on his arms as the spider bit down on him.
His skin began to melt away, exposing muscles, nerves, and bones. Sorin's poisons were doing the best they could to counteract the sudden infusion of flesh-melting poison, but there was only so much they could do against such a terrifying opponent.
"Sorin, you idiot!" shouted Haley. She appeared beside Sorin and took out an anti-venom potion. She tried to shove it in his mouth, but Sorin slapped the vial away and ran towards the stalk of iron-melt cloud grass. The situation was risky, but with risks lay opportunities.
Iron-melt cloud grass was extremely effective against metal weapons items; the moment he entered its range, the buckles and buttons on his pack and clothes melted. Even his dagger began to erode from the fierce, poisonous mana the herb gave off.
But it won't melt flesh, thought Sorin as he grabbed the herb with his bare hands. And it won't melt stone or crystal. He took out a mortal and pestle and quickly made a paste using a small amount of water. He then shoved a handful of crystal needles into the paste and slowly inserted 19 of them into his arms.
His poisonous mana cycled through his three open meridians and forced their way toward a fourth obstructed meridian. Doing so melted a great deal of dead flesh, thereby neutralizing a portion of the spider's venom.
The two poisons also happened to neutralize each other. Sorin knew this because he'd looked it up in the Ten Thousand Poison Canon. The spider had clearly wanted the herb because it could use it to temper its venom and nourish itself to the two-star state.
Sorin's body shook as both poisons, initially resistant to assimilation, became docile lambs. They fused with his mana, then his blood, then his flesh. His dormant blood awakened from the tempering of the two poisons, thickening it by not one but two stages at once. In an instant, he reached the fourth stage of blood thickening.
His body transformed. His muscles regained a portion of their lost life. The two meridians he'd cleared were the spleen meridian (a yin meridian) and the small intestine meridian (a yang meridian).
But Sorin didn't stop there. There was still an excess of external poison in his body that needed to be consumed. He took a handful of needles and ran them along his arm to coat them in his own poisoned blood, then proceeded to pierce 27 points on his kidney meridian and 44 points on his gallbladder meridian over the next few minutes, fully cognizant that every second he wasted would bring him dangerously close to passing out.
The process was slow and painful, made much more so by his delirious state. His hands shook with every needle, but he persisted in using them to guide the poison in his system toward obstructions in his body.
The direct infusion of poison shook up the debris that had accumulated in his once completely open main meridian channels. By using a sudden surge of mana from every cell in his body, he was able to force open a tiny channel and clear away obstructions in two additional meridians. The channels widened as he circulated his mana, slowly but surely neutralizing the aggressive poisons in his blood.
Minutes later, he'd fully neutralized the poisons. What remained nourished his blood and his starved body. His damaged muscles and nerves began to repair themselves at a steady rate, and his internal poisons, now the product of four poisons, slowly replenished themselves.
***
It was several hours later when Sorin opened his eyes. His clothes had rotted away, as had his pack and his dagger. The others were sitting by a fire just at the outskirts of the clearing, a fair distance from what was left of the iron-melt cloud grass. A small pack had been placed not from his location.
Sorin grabbed the pack and donned a fresh set of clothes, courtesy of Lawrence, who was of a similar build. He then grabbed what remained of the cloud grass and sucked up its poison, then did the same to the demon spider before cutting out the one-star demon core on its head.
Only then did he move towards the campfire where his companions were roasting what seemed to be demonic wolf meat over an open flame.
"Stop right there," said Haley as he reached the outskirts of the camp. Sorin swung his dagger out by instinct, shattering an item mid-flight. To his surprise, a cleansing cloud erupted around him and melted away the blood and grime from his skin. "If you're going to continue being that disgusting in the future, you should probably carry some clearmist vials on you. Otherwise, there won't be any teammates willing to take you on."
"You mean…" Sorin started.
"You obviously passed," said Haley. "You did something incredibly stupid and risky, but you didn't put anyone in danger. And most importantly, you won.
"Sometimes, adventuring is about making the right gambles at the right time. You sought an opportunity to break through in battle and then used the fact that you were lethally poisoned to absorb a second poison and make yourself stronger. Who can fault you for that?"
Sorin relaxed when he heard her words. "And here I thought you were going to punish me for slapping the antidote away."
"Oh, I'm still going to punish you for that," said Haley. "You like messy and dirty things? How fortunate. The guild's outhouses happen to need a heavy cleaning. Unless you're not up for the challenge?"
Sorin shuddered but resigned himself to his fate. "I'll accept the punishment."
"Smart man," said Haley. "Now come on over and eat up. We collected those wolf corpses and roasted one of them while you were cultivating. You ever had roast wolf before, rich boy?"
Sorin wanted to say he wasn't rich, but he was so hungry he directly dove into the food. The rest of the group began to pester him with questions about the fight. That included Vetner and Janice, who'd failed the examination. It was during this conversation that he learned that his once blue eyes had turned bright green.
It was evening when they finally returned to the Adventurers Guild. The streets were dim, and an eerie silence clung to the city like a wet blanket. A few of the city guards patrolled the streets, but they were just a formality; the outpost was practically lawless at night.
The door to the guild opened as they arrived. "G-Guild Master?!" Haley exclaimed as a large man with a stern gaze and a chiseled jaw walked out. "I thought you were on vacation this week."
"I was," said the guild master. "But unfortunately, one of your charges has given us a great deal of trouble." He pointed to the five other examinees aside from Sorin. "You five, please come back tomorrow to collect your scores and your badges, assuming you've earned them. As for you, Sorin Kepler, someone from your family decided to pay us a visit. I'd very much appreciate it if you tagged along and cooperated with the guild on this matter."
"Relax," whispered Haley into Sorin's ear as she pushed him forward. "The guild might have political ties with all big clans but have no doubts: we protect our own."
Sorin steadied his breathing and calmed his mind. "Of course, Guild Master. Please lead the way, and I'll do my best to clear up any misunderstandings."