Chapter 45: [Arc 1] Chapter 37: The Poison-Knot of the Emperor

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EXP has reached the required amount.

Individual [Reha Zera] has reached LV14

Life attributes have been recovered.

All basic attributes have increased.

0.3 skill point(s) acquired.

EXP has reached the required amount.

Individual [Reha Zera] has reached LV15

Life attributes have been recovered.

All basic attributes have increased.

0.3 skill point(s) acquired.

Conditions satisfied.

Acquired title [King Maker]

Through acquiring the title [King Maker], skill [Teaching LV1] is obtained.

Through acquiring the title [King Maker], skill [Judging Eye] is obtained.

Karma value has risen

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Okay, okay, that's well and good, but I don't have time to think about that right now! That freaking T-Rex mashed up the dungeon wall! And to make things worse, right where I had hidden my secret weapon!! And said weapons identity will now be revealed! But first, take a look at this:

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Race: Emperor Kodokumo 

Rank: B-

Type: Spider Monster

Element: Poison, Curse

A monster that governs over the Kodokumo spiders monsters. A 2 meter high spider, with a black body, decorated with a purple human skull mark on its back, golden eyes, deadly claws, and matching fangs.

Named by the Migrant explorer and monster researcher, Yusuke Tabihito, the first humanoid to discover the species, in the Velantas forest.

This spider is the alpha male arachnid of the forest. Its venom glands contain venom so potent, it has developed its own curses. Yusuke Tabihito theorized that an Emperor Kodokumo is the result of countless fights between regular Kodokumo, resulting in one specimen with abnormal toxicity, resulting in an evolution to a superior species.

Due to this theory, Yusuke Tabihito decided to name the species by combining the names of Gu poison and spider in the language of his home country before arriving in Terra Sol, which is respectively, Kodoku, and Kumo.

As one can guess from the name, the Emperor Kodokumo has both the Poison and Curse attributes. This doesn't make it a threat to humanity though. The Emperor will only harm those who are a threat to the Kodokumos and will spare those who ignore the smaller spiders. The discovered specimen will also overlook harm done to Kodokumos if they were the ones who initiated the battle.

A spider with a heart that does not fit its vicious attributes and appearance. The Emperor will not make use of said attributes to harm the forest it lives in. It's quite opposite, it will regulate and control those who have the same, or similar to, its own powers, and take them as its subordinates. It will command how much game its subjects can kill, all to make sure the forest's ecosystem won't collapse due to its poisonous inhabitants.

The Emperor does not only use its iron claws on its subjects, but it will also kill anyone it identifies as an enemy of the forest. The specimen discovered by Yusuke Tabihito was confirmed to have a karma value of a positive 200, with several guardian-type titles to boot.

Due to all of the points mentioned above, the Velantas forest has been designed as a Nature Area, which shall not be harmed by human hands.

This was abolished when the forest was destroyed by the desertification of the Venezalia region, destroying the forest and all life that lived in it.

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Okay, ignoring the obvious Japanese Migrant who gets mentioned here, for what reason do you think I'm showing this to you guys? Some of the more clever ones should have guessed it already, but this emperor spider is my parent!

I'm not joking. Before I went to explore the Console tunnels, I went down to the underground lake again, to look for remains of the monster spider that was blasted by the dragon boss. My idea was that a monster amongst monsters should have some decent venom to use. There was the possibility of all its venom had dried up by then, but I was lucky.

Its head had survived the blast and hadn't rotted away by the time I came and salvaged it. That's what I call B- rank quality. Since the lake had no other spider monsters, or remains of them, other than this guy and the dragon, the only possible candidate for being my parent is this guy. Am I a royalty then? Not of any country, I want to be part of.

With the venom in hand, err, in potion bottle, I returned to my lair and started to experiment in how to revive the Emperor Poison, as I decided to call it. That part was easier than sneaking around the dragon boss. While we're at it, let me do a little venting.

Do you know how hard it is to stealthy look after the remains of a spider monster when an even more monstrous dragon is sleeping in the lake just beside you?! And I had to resist the urge of popping that stupid snot bubble it made when it was asleep, are you an anime character or something?! And if you're gonna sleep so peacefully, do it underwater so I don't need to look at that stupid face of yours, dammit!

Then there was the task of dismantling the venom glands. It was here I decided to buy the [Dismantling] skill, to minimize the risk of failing to get the glands. Sure, the skill is useful and all, but did my first skill in my plan to kill the dragon boss needed to be [Dismantling]!? Even I have some honor in me, you know? The only problem of dismantling then was the smell. I mean, I've worked on (eaten) monster corpses before, but not ones who were in the middle of degenerating. Bleurgh, just remembering the smell gets me nauseated.

Back to my explanation. It was easy enough to revive the Emperor Poison, but there were two problems. You already know about one of them: the dungeons purification abilities. Even the Emperor Poison would have to raise the white flag to that.

I think the reason the Emperor Kodokumo lost to the dragon, must be that the dragon had the support of the purification function, along with its purification magic. All the poison and venom that would be spread all over the lake was negated, forcing the Emperor to rely on brute force to attack the dragon.

A case of where the one with the good match-up, ended up with being the opposite. Sure, the purification magic alone is a threat, but the dragon doesn't have any magic-support abilities. It will end up as it did with me before I got the talent skill. The dragon will need to use all its mental resources to focus on the magic rune, leaving it open to any attacks.

That's the first problem. The second problem is the amount of poison. I've only been able to make a cauldron of Emperor Poison. That would normally be more than enough, but the dragon boss is, well, a dragon! There's no way just a cauldron will be enough against that guy. He's at the same size as two Virts for Pete's sake!

My original plan was to lure the dragon into eating the poison somehow. That's not gonna work now. Why? Because the whole mixture fell into the river! Let me go back in time, just a minute ago, so that you'll understand how this happened:

---

Holy crap, it cracked the dungeon walls?!

The T-Rex just demonstrated the potential of another combo-attack with the skills [Heavy Bite] and [Explosion Attack]. Unlike the breath attack, where it used the heavy force from its bite skill to increase the flames generated from [Explosion Attack], now he made use of both skills at once, for one deadly bite.

Yup, that's gonna leave more than a mark on even Sent. Heck, even the hydra turtle wouldn't get away with more than a scratch. But that's my chance.

When the T-Rex is storming forward to use the bomb-bite attack, he's leaving his mouth wide open, in lots of different meanings. Now that I'm right beside Virt at the moment, in stealth mode, I may add, and in position to launch the counterattack. If I know Virt's habits as good as I think I do, he will wait till the T-Rex is just too close for comfort, then dodge it. Glad I didn't teach him about chicken races.

The T-Rex stormed towards us, mouth open and ready to bite. When Virt jumped away, I threw the special Flashbang spell I had prepared, straight into the T-Rex's mouth. If it detonates inside that big bloke, there'll be fewer people catching on that I had a finger err, leg, with this.

*bang*

A muted explosion came from the T-Rex's stomach. Right afterward, it started to cough blood, heck, isn't there some coming out of its eyes, nose, even its ears?! Note to self, never use Flashbang for internal damage.

As for the reason why the T-Rex took so much damage, it must be the force of the Flashbang. The bang does not only creates strong light it also makes that ear-deafening sound and massive impact. With all these, Flashbang changed from being a spell that disturbs the opponents' sight, but also their hearing, and sense of touch.

Now, think what would happen if the impact-part detonated inside a living being's body. The force of the explosion would scramble their insides, damaging their internal organs. One's VIT-stats doesn't matter if you can't fortify your insides after all.

*thwack* *thump*

And while I was wondering if the internal damage would be too big for the recovery-skills to cover, Virt just had to play the hero and decapitate the T-Rex. Jokes aside, that's a good choice. Having the T-Rex recover from that would be more stupid than this dungeon is damp. It would be on guard for any new attacks aimed at its mouth, and to be honest, I'm sick and tired of that guy. It's good to finish him off once and for all when you have the chance to.

*Crumble, crumble* *rumble, rumble, rumble*

Hmm? What's that? Ah, the wall is crumbling, say what!?

*Splash*

Hey, wasn't that... oh crap!!

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And here we are. The wall that the T-Rex boomed to smithereens, was the one connected to my hideout. More specifically, the back room of my hideout, where I hid the Emperor Poison. The backroom is a gorge in my hideout that I hollowed out some more with my thread attacks, then added a big rock to act as a door. It's more of a quarantine room than a back room, truth be told. 

The Emperor Poison is a one-of-a-kind poison, which I can't get my claws on anymore, so I needed to make sure something, or someone, didn't knock the cauldron over. That and the poison smelled like something had died, went to hell, then was returned because it smelled too bad. 

And said poison is now spilled in the river! Damn you, T-Rex! The double level up I got from participating in the battle won't be enough to compensate for that, you hear me! Of course, he can't hear me, he's stone-dead! 

*blob*

Huh? What's that

*blob, blob*

Oi, wait a sec...

*BLOB, BLOB, BLOB, BLOB, BLOB, BLOB...*

There's no way this can be any good!

---

*BLOB, BLOB, BLOB, BLOB, BLOB, BLOB, BLOB, BLOB, BLOB, BLOB, BLOB, BLOB...*

AH! STOP THAT ALREADY!

The Emperor Poison started to bubble up when it got mixed with the river water like it was boiling. It's not that hot, but there are some kinda purple fumes emerging from the bubbles. A chemical reaction? 

I appraised the poisoned river water several times but got 'Emperor Poison' as the result every time. Shouldn't it be 'Diluted Emperor Poison', or 'Watered-down Emperor Poison', or something? The amount of poisoned river water is increasing, without the poison losing any density. It's like some kinda bacteria that are infecting the water, increasing its number while doing so. No kidding when they said it had the Curse-attribute.

To make things worse(?), the poison is flowing towards the spider tunnel, A.K.A., the location of the compressor Console. If this goop is getting compressed and fortified... *brrr*.

This could be some fortune in misfortune, but I'm starting to think this poison will be too rough for even me to handle. 

Virt and the others must have had the same thoughts. While Riri came down to heal Sent, Virt gave Bihamut some orders. Bihamut then started to lead the sahuagins and raptors, even the surviving members of the T-Rex's faction, up the tunnels. Are they planning to leave the dungeon? First time I heard about that.

When all of the herd had left the river area, and Sent's recovery was finished, the dino-trio started to look across the area for something. Are they looking for me? I'm not so sure that coming out now would be a good idea. I don't wanna be blamed for creating that bio-hazard substance.

After the three stopped looking around, they bowed their heads down, as if saying farewell. After a little while, some ten seconds or such, they raised their heads again and began their climb up the tunnels.

... I'm not crying *sniff*. I'm not crying you know *honk*. Those guys, they're too good for me.

I have some unfinished business in the dungeon, but I'll escape as well when that's done. Wonder if we'll meet again? Oh, mustn't forget the T-Rex's corpse. It takes, geh, 100 slots in the storage! I'll empty my Item Bag and just use that instead. There's only remains of frogs and rats in there anyway.

When I was finished with organizing my storage, the poison had enough time to paint half the area in poisonous purple. If I'm not mistaken, the water here will be led down multiple pipes, till they converge into the 13 water-pillars in the area down below. The pillars take that water down to the underground lake, through those 13 fountain pipes that fill the lake. And yes, I've counted. It took some time looking for the Emperor's remains down there, so I've noted down the layout for the place.

*brmb*

What now? I felt some kind of weak shaking in the ground. Don't tell me something else is happening now? I must hurry. I'm not gonna go and fight the dragon boss, but I need to confirm if the poison does kills it. And there's no way of knowing if just killing the dragon will stop the dungeon, so I need to access the dungeon core or whatever it is that controls the whole place.

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Wheeze, wheeze, that's some run. I've sprinted down the middle-layer to the pillar-area. My SP Reinforcement skill reached LV30 thanks to that. It was above LV20 before the T-Rex fight by the way. And what do you think greeted me? The water-pillar-area, now transformed into the poison-pillar-area.

The usual blue pillars have turned into sickly purplish ones, making the whole area purple-colored as a side-effect. The whole place stinks of poison and death. All around the area, you can hear the sound of frogs, spiders, rats, even turtle snakes, dying due to the poison. Why don't I get any EXP for that? Oh wait, it's my poison, but I didn't poison the whole place. It must be something like that. If not, the strongest characters in this world would be the blacksmiths.

I'm getting a bad feeling, so I'll just appraise the place, just to be certain.

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Appraisal Result:

Type: Open cave area

Location: Water-Knot of Glavras

Terrain effects:

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Oi, stop the clock! What's up with the terrain effects, they broke big time! The original effects are turned off, while Emperor Poison has turned into an effect! Was the poison so strong, the other effects got taken out by it? Don't tell me the whole dungeon will start to melt due to the crazy toxicity! *Gehugh*

W-what was that. I started to cough up blood all of a sudden. Did I get attacked or-

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SYSTEM MESSAGE

Proficiency has reached the required amount:

Skill [Poison Resistance LV39] has become [Poison Resistance LV40]

0.3 skill points obtained.

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Or I was poisoned! The damn terrain effect is affecting even me! I ran back into the tunnels, where the poison didn't reach yet. Kinda like a safe zone.

No wonder even the turtle snakes go down to that when someone who has resistance to poison gets affected by it.

Then, I can't reach the underground lake then? I could use the Pure-life Turtle Pills, but I only have 10 of them, just above an hour and a half. Even the weakest ones can shut off 80% of pollution effects, and the best ones can mitigate a whopping 95%! Not that I'll be able to make them anymore when the dungeon falls since the turtle snakes will get exterminated.

Maybe I should just leave this place and hope that the poison will break the core or something? Nah, this is too important to ignore to check if it's killed for good. But, I don't wanna use my pills. They have to fetch a fortune based on the right buyers in human society. Like, some high-ranking Adventurer party that needs to explore some poison swamps.

*CRASH*

Whoa! Where did that come from?! I know it came from the ground, but that's not what I'm asking about! What I wanna know is, why did a huge stream of water blow up from the ground, and crash into the center pillar?! The pillar?!

Oh crap, it collapsed! Now there's one less pipeline that feeds the underground lake with poison! That water-stream, was it the dragon boss? It looked like the kinda breath that a water dragon would use. But to think it could break through the bedrock forming the dungeon floor. And to hit the target straight on!

The small quake from before must have been a practice shot or a shot that carved away the parts of the dungeon that was in the way. The dragon-boss must have gone from trying to purifying the poison, to stopping the poison flow by force. Talk about making a drastic move. I've stolen the right of the dungeon's purification functions, so the dragon must be stressing right now.

This is bad. If the dragon completely stops the supply of poison, it can use its purification magic to clean the poison. Not sure if it has the abilities to something against this poison, but you can never be too sure. And once it's no longer in pain because of the poison, it can start on repairing the dungeon, ruining all my hard work! 

Tch, I didn't want to do this. I REALLY didn't want to do this, but I need to buy the poison sometime before it can kill off the dragon. Then, I need to re-activate the purification functions before I kick the bucket along with the dragon. If my theory is right, the dragon should be weakened, not only its HP, but in all of its stats, removing that crazy power Reinforcement I saw it had that one time, and replacing it with a debuff instead.

Okay, if things go right now, I'm gonna be able to crash this stupid dungeon to dust, along with the dragon boss, while keeping Virt and the others out of harm's way. I may even reach my max level again if I'm lucky. Then, make sure I'm prepared. I'm currently safe here in the tunnels, and the dragon needs some shots before it can reach the remaining twelve pillars. First off, my stats:

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Nameless 

Race: [Reha Zera]   | Level: 15

Karma Value: -111

Skills: 34

Titles: 13 

Skill points: 2.7

Main Class: Assassin LV14

Sub Class: none

HP: 95/99   | MP: 317/317   | SP: 143/143

STR: 100   | VIT: 52   | MAG: 141

RES: 106   | SPD: 240  | DEX: 242

INT: 120   | LUC: 150

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SKILL LIST

Ability Skills: [MP Reinforcement LV18] UP2 [SP Reinforcement (Small) LV31] UP12

Attack Skills: [Assassination Arts LV23] UP1 [Steal LV2] [Poison Bite LV31] 

Magic Skills: [Light Magic LV21] UP1 [Shadow Magic LV32] UP1

Crafting Skills: [Thief Tool Creation LV8] [Assassin Tool Creation LV5] [Poison Synthesis LV30]                                                              [Medicine Synthesis LV30] [Thread Synthesis LV30]

Active Skills: [Stealth LV14] UP1 [Shooting LV21] UP3 [Ghost Step LV11] UP2 [Bloodlust LV5] [Thread Control LV50]                           [Ultima Thread LV22] UP1 [Thought Acceleration LV33] UP2

Passive Skills: [Surprise Attack LV30] UP3 [Acrobatic LV15] UP1 [Magic Talent LV14] UP2 [Poison Reinforcement LV2] NEW  [Battle Continuation LV2] [Dismantling LV18] UP1 [Parallel Minds LV1] [Auto-Mapping LV2]  [Language Adaption]

Resistance Skills: [Poison Resistance LV41] UP3 [Paralyze Resistance LV25] [Heretic Immunity]

Perception Skills: [Magic Sense LV24] UP1 [Sense Foe LV21] UP2 [Appraisal LV8] [Judging Eye] NEW

Leadership Skills: [Teaching LV1] NEW

Racial Skills: [Albino] [Demonic Storage LV20] [Transformation LV13] UP2

Elements: [Lesser Light Element LV17] [Lesser Dark Element LV11] UP1 [Shadow Element LV21] UP2                                                        [Poison Element LV2] EVOLVED

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[Title Page]

[Demon]  [Giant Killer]  [Daredevil]  [Poison User]  [Mysterious Serial Killer]  [Thread User]  [Monster Slayer]  [Beast Slayer]       

[Pinch Breaker]  [New Hero]  [Medicine User] [Fear Bringer] [King Maker] NEW

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2.7 points, huh. I can't think of any new skills that'll help me now, not any skills on LV1, I mean. It's still not enough for auto-regeneration skills, so I'll save the points. Maybe I can do a Deus Ex Machina, like the berserker, or the turtle party, or the T-Rex from before. Getting a new skill that turns the tide! Eh, probably not. Those guys didn't succeed, so there's no guarantee that I will. If they did succeed, then I wouldn't be here today.

Then there's all the new stuff. I knew about [Poison Reinforcement], but what about these new ones? I got them with the title, but I don't get why?

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Title: [King Maker]

Acquisition condition: Trained an individual to become a king of its people, without taking any glory for the feat.

Effects:

Description: A title given to those who have birthed a king of justice.

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Is this some kind or rare title? There's not many chances you get to play Merlin for some wanna-be Arthur, and make him a real king. And I got my first Leadership Skill. I kinda get the effect, but to be sure:

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Skill: Teaching

Skill type: Leadership skill

Effect:

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Huh, so I'm some kinda master teacher now? I won't sprout tentacles or something? I want some supersonic speed if that's possible. I don't wanna have some strange weaknesses though.

But yeah, I kinda deserve this one after all that hard work teaching the dino-trio and the other guys that came afterward. And what about the second skill? It doesn't have a skill level, and from the name, I would say it overlaps with [Appraisal].

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Skill: Judging Eye

Skill type: Perception skill

Effect:

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So, I can see if the target has some strength in them, kinda like a weakened [Appraisal]. To compensate, the skill can't be blocked. Of course, I need to see the target for it to work. If they're hiding out of my sight with some skills, the skill won't work. And if there's someone who can block [Appraisal], then I won't need any skill to tell me that guy's bad news. It could be used to find out if the guy is just some punk that can hide his status though. Not helpful in this moment, but it's free. Can't complain.

*Crunch*

Now then, the first Turtle Pill is eaten now, 9 left. This isn't the time to develop some elixir-syndrome, so I need to eat one to keep the effect going. First, let's check if I take any more damage. Slowly, out of the tunnel... I'm fine! The combo of the pill and my resistance manages to negate the Emperor Poison! At least, to the level of just irritating my skin. Skin? Ah, you get what I mean. Time for some dragon slaying!

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