The Tentacle Conch and the Invisible Poison

The leader raised the conch shell above his head.

Saturated with internal energy, the conch began to pulse with violent force.

Several long tentacles writhed and crawled free of the spiral shell. It was as if a seed had germinated — as if purple vines were bursting into hyper-growth from a shell that had become their seed-pod.

The shell cracked under the speed of that growth. The tentacles lengthened further, surpassing a meter. Then the conch's mouth split with ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a harsh tearing sound and yawned wide open.

The leader turned that gaping aperture downward and slowly settled it onto his head like a crown. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠The whole process looked as though the conch were devouring a human skull — the trailing tentacles flicking like tongues, the shell's maw swallowing its prey whole the way a snake engulfs a meal.

Crunch. Crunch.

A grotesque sound of chewing rose from his head. At last the shell sealed completely over the leader's face.

What remained was something no longer human — a man's body crowned by a conch.

Screee.

The conch-man turned his head toward the Orthodox fighters. Even though he should have had no eyes left to see with.

Hyukryeon Wiseol and his companions went rigid with horror. It was the look of people who had just witnessed something beyond the edge of comprehension — something they had never heard of, never seen, never even imagined. Shock and a crawling dread settled over them. No one moved. Cold sweat ran down every face.

Then the leader interlaced his fingers, neat and careful. The pose was almost prayerful. Or perhaps a formal address. What was he asking? Probably…

O Magic Conch. May I kill everyone standing before me?

…

And as if in answer, a dry voice resonated from within the shell.

The next instant, the conch's tentacles shot down the leader's arms and legs. They wound around his limbs the way vines strangle a tree. Some of them bored into his body like a nervous system, flooding him with power; others layered themselves over his limbs as external muscle, reinforcing every motion.

Biometric augmentation, pure and simple.

The leader raised both tentacle-reinforced hands.

Kuuuuuuuuum…

A wide-range energy drain. A technique he could only now unleash with the conch's aid. It hauled in internal force from every direction — the natural energy of the world itself.

"What—?!"

Hyukryeon ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Wiseol reeled. He felt his body's internal energy listing toward the conch-man, the way ocean tides are pulled by the moon's gravity.

"An energy drain of this magnitude? At range?!"

This was the cultists' final mutual-destruction measure: offering up their own flesh to fuse with the conch — a fragment of Hernesh's body.

"We have to put him down before he charges any further!"

Karina's voice cut sharp through the air. She forged a heart-sword from her rapier's hilt and charged, repeating the same form as before.

KWAAAAAAAAAANG!!!!!

She rocketed forward in a straight line toward the cult leader, a roar of force in her wake.

The leader lifted one hand toward the rapier.

KRAAAAAAAAAANG!!!!!!!

The impact was colossal. The rapier struck true — but the point of contact was the leader's palm. The blade drove straight through the hand and into the arm in a single clean line.

It did not pierce through. Because it failed to exit, the full force of the blow remained trapped inside the body rather than dissipating outward. And yet the reinforced flesh did not burst. He seemed to feel no pain at all.

Instead, he pushed his hand forward. The rapier sank deeper into the arm, on and on, until his fingers closed around the hilt.

CLENCH!!!!!

"Y-you're insane…"

Karina's voice shook.

Shhhhhhk!!!!!

In that same breath the tentacles coiled around the leader's hand and arm shot out, stretching in an instant to wrap Karina's wrist.

"No—!"

Hyukryeon Wiseol saw what was coming and shouted, but he was already too late.

The tentacles activated their energy drain — a far more perfect drain than any human body could perform alone.

"Gyaaaaaaah!!!!!!"

Agony ripped through Karina as her internal energy poured out of her hand at terrifying speed, as if a dam had burst.

She tried to yank free, but the grip was iron. The tentacles crushed her hand the way a constrictor coils around its prey.

No! My internal energy—!

She screamed the words inside her own skull. At this rate, every last scrap of it would be gone in moments.

Fortunately, Hyukryeon Wiseol was already there.

Slash!!!

Clang!!!!

His blade carved through the tentacles. He seized Karina and vaulted backward, putting distance between them and the leader.

Freed, Karina staggered and gasped for air. The hand that had been drained trembled violently with residual pain; raw constriction marks scored the flesh.

Grgrgrgrgrgrgr.

The tentacle conch pulsed again, rough and hungry. The energy it had just stolen became fresh nourishment. The tentacles lengthened by half again.

"Th-that thing!!! Close combat is useless against it!"

She was right. The moment anyone closed in for a melee strike, they would become fuel for the drain — and the creature would only grow stronger.

What do we do?

Hyukryeon Wiseol's thoughts churned in confusion. Then a voice from behind cut through them.

"I… I'll finish this…"

"Bernoulli?!"

"I'll use… a poison art…"

"!!!"

Bernoulli stepped forward, resolve hard on his face.

Yes. If it was a poison art from a direct descendant of the Sichuan Dang Clan — if it was that terrifying poison he carried — then this could end.

"I'm counting on you… Bernoulli!"

Hyukryeon Wiseol's decision was instant. Supporting Karina, he cleared the field at once. They had to get clear. That poison art was a wide-area technique.

The moment the two of them were gone, Bernoulli's shout rang out — nothing like his usual timid speech, but a full-throated cry of force.

"From this moment forward!!!!!! I will use a poison art!!!!!!!"

The first rule of manners among poison artists who handle the deadliest toxins: never spend a poison art unless it is absolutely necessary. This exists to prevent easy slaughter.

The second: before deploying a poison art, declare it at the top of your lungs. This exists to spare the innocent.

Bernoulli's poison was a legendary extreme toxin. He observed both rules without fail.

Invisible Poison.

That was its name — a substance called the Flower of Toxins, without form, without color, without taste, without scent. One of the Sichuan Dang Clan's signature poisons.

Bernoulli was a Poison Child of the Invisible Poison. A human who carried Invisible Poison inside his dantian. An elite of the Dang Clan — the house that ruled over all poisons — Dang Bernoulli Brighton.

His poison art unfurled. Not the cheap imitation arts of market thugs, but a true poison art in every sense of the word.

Bernoulli woke a single pinch of alien internal energy sealed deep in his dantian. An infinitesimal special force, wrapped and insulated under layer upon layer of ordinary internal energy. He never drew it out under normal circumstances. That tiny, sealed special energy was poison-natured internal force — poison qi.

It was not true poison. It was internal energy that imitated a poison's properties. It might share the nature of a paralytic toxin, or the nature of cyanide. To cultivate such poison qi, poison artists trained relentlessly — dissecting the principles of toxins, endlessly reshaping the nature of their internal energy until it matched a poison's character exactly.

They regulated the flow of qi through every channel of the body so they would not die of their own poison. They learned specialized protective auras that defended against the toxins they themselves carried. There were even crude but effective methods of drinking poison, coating the skin with it, and cycling endlessly through poisoning and recovery.

Through such processes, a poison ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠artist stored a single chosen toxin in the dantian. If the toxin was mild — an aphrodisiac, a hallucinogen, something that did not threaten life — it could be allowed to circulate freely through the body without much danger. But a terror-grade extreme poison like Bernoulli's Invisible Poison had to be quarantined in the deepest recesses of the dantian at all times.

So what, exactly, was Invisible Poison?

As the ages advanced, more and more toxins hit their limits. With the spread of Honwongong, humanity's protective auras now blocked and neutralized most poisons. The Sichuan Dang Clan, too, had faced a crisis. Nearly every conventional toxin had gone extinct.

They might have abandoned poison entirely. They did not. The Dang Clan ground on with their research, hunting for a perfect toxin — a poison still lethal even to martial artists.

And at last, they succeeded. They developed Invisible Poison.

This poison has no color.

This poison has no form.

This poison has no scent, and no taste. There is no sensation of contact. The speed at which it spreads cannot be tracked by the eye. It can propagate even through vacuum. On contact it warps DNA structure, making healing nearly impossible. Merely standing nearby is enough to be irradiated to death.

…We've decided to call this radiation.

"It's a radiation explosion!!!!!!!!!"

Bernoulli, Poison Child of Polonium — the worst radioactive substance of them all, atomic number eighty-four — completed the form.

He stacked both hands and thrust them forward. The poison qi in his dantian boiled up, was guided into his hands, and detonated from his fingertips toward what lay ahead.

Hnk.

The detonation made no sound. There was no light. No shockwave. No blast of wind. Colorless, odorless, tasteless, formless. Only the ordinary rush of natural wind filled the canyon.

Then the change began.

Sssssss.

The leader's arms dropped, powerless. The wide-range energy drain he had been sustaining cut out. The tentacles' vigorous pulsing began to falter.

"…"

No scream. No groan of pain. No especially visible change to his form. He stood like that for a moment.

And then…

Thud!!

The leader collapsed to the ground. Unconscious. The parasitic tentacles went slack and limp, motion frozen. The conch shell ceased all function.

Even struck at point-blank range, the aftermath was unnaturally quiet. Still. As if an invisible reaper had come and gone.

A single strike that had blown past the radiation-defense threshold of Honwongong by an absurd margin.

This was Invisible Poison.

Invisible Poison was the general name for poison arts based on radioactive substances — Polonium, radium, plutonium, uranium, and the rest. Among them, Polonium poison qi was uncommon, but it was the most quintessentially "Invisible Poison" of them all. Radium glowed fluorescent; plutonium was a bit noisy.

Dang Bernoulli was a Poison Child, born from the womb of a poison-artist mother. Poison Children develop resistance to their own toxins — but a radioactive substance like Polonium was simply too powerful for true immunity. All he could do was master anti-radiation protective aura techniques to the utmost and minimize the damage.

Even Bernoulli's childlike appearance was a side effect of the poison art. That was why he knew exactly how agonizing this art was. He knew the aftereffects. He had been irradiated more times than he cared to count.

Bernoulli looked down at the fallen leader with a gaze full of pity. A short while later he hoisted the man onto his back and walked toward where Karina and Hyukryeon Wiseol waited.

"It's over…"

"Good heavens…! You actually handled it!"

"Tentacles are living things, so poison works on them just fine…"

"Is the man dead?"

"He's barely hanging on. He's a key witness, so I gave him emergency treatment… but if he doesn't get proper care soon, he'll die."

"Whether he lasts until a hospital is entirely up to heaven's luck, then."

"The aftereffects will be severe. He won't be able to live a normal life… The other cultists probably caught a bit of radiation too…"

"You did excellent work, Bernoulli."

"Ah— don't come any closer… You'll get irradiated…"

After the reunion, they secured the cultists, restrained them, and loaded them into a vehicle bound for the city. The three-person Orthodox squad had no seats left in the car, so they planned to simply run.

"Ah… but… Hyukryeon hyung… earlier, wasn't there one more…? The one who fled ahead by car…"

"Don't worry about that one. He headed for the city. I've already contacted Namgung Hyeong, who's currently working there."

"Hehe… Then that's a relief…"

Their duty done, the Orthodox squad walked slowly out of the canyon. After the fight, they were a little worn; they planned to walk a short while before breaking into a run.

"Ugh… I want to wash up so badly… My clothes are covered in dust… This is so not noble-young-lady of me…"