Poisoned and Pushing Higher
Camibarez's hemorrhagic blood magic had landed squarely on target.
The Scorpion, crashed onto the sandy ground, writhed in agony as blood sprayed from every part of its body.
"Kgh!"
But Simon's condition was deteriorating rapidly as the poison spread through him, his complexion turning gray by the second.
"Simon! Are you okay?"
He was far from okay, but he forced himself to nod.
"It's trying to run. Let's finish it off right now."
The moment Simon said this and reached out his arm, the monster whipped around. At the tip of its tail, a chitin plate split open and a dense cloud of toxic vapor burst out with a sharp hiss!
With no time to dodge, Simon took the poison cloud head-on. The toxic vapor was already surging toward Camibarez, standing a short distance away.
We can't both get poisoned!
At least one of them had to stay healthy enough to make the antidote.
Simon swept his arm roughly, and a piece of the Skeleton's bone armor shot over like a beam of light, clamping onto Camibarez's body and shoving her backward.
"Kyaa!"
By a hair's breadth, the toxic vapor swallowed the spot where she'd been standing, while the bone-armored Camibarez went flying off into the distance and collapsed to the ground.
"Hah—hah!"
Simon panted harshly and looked ahead. With Camibarez jolted by the impact, her Blood Threads had snapped, and the Scorpion — freed once more — was burrowing into the earth to escape.
"Cami...!"
Simon dropped to one knee and shouted.
"Chase...!"
"Simon!!"
Finally unable to hold on, Simon crumpled to the ground.
Camibarez, who had been about to give chase, rushed back to him in alarm and knelt at his side.
"Simon! Stay with me! Please, Simon!"
Tears welled up in her eyes. Simon forced a smile to reassure her, then moved his hand.
"...Let's collect the poison first."
"Ah — yes!"
The Scorpion hunt could wait; the antidote had to be made right now.
She fumbled out her antidote kit in a panic and pressed something like oil-paper against the gash on Simon's arm. The paper drank in the poison, turning green as it soaked it up.
"Keep it pressed down, please."
Her voice trembled sweetly.
Simon collapsing had thrown her into confusion and worry, but even so, she did what a necromancer should — acting strictly by priority.
If I make the antidote, Simon will be safe!
Fortunately, the toxic vapor hadn't fully dispersed yet.
Even while lying poisoned and prostrate, Simon pulled a Skeleton out of his subspace, took a sheet from his own kit, and handed it to the summon.
Untouched by the toxins, the Skeleton dashed straight into the poison cloud, coated the paper, and returned.
"Cami, here... the vapor's components."
Unlike the exhausted Simon, the Skeleton he controlled through thought moved with remarkable crispness.
"Th-thank you."
She accepted the paper from the Skeleton with both hands, reverently, and laid it down on top of the kit box.
"With this... I've collected samples of both the blade venom and the vapor venom."
"Si-Simon, you should rest now!"
"I'm fine."
Poisoned or not, his mind was clear, and the undead moved at his whim.
Even as she treated Simon, Camibarez kept glancing anxiously around. There was no telling when or where the Scorpion might strike again.
"We — we should get somewhere safe first!"
She stuffed the antidote kit into her subspace, wrapped her arms around Simon's waist, and slid her arms under his knees.
Then, with a mighty heave!, she tried to lift him.
'...Haha.'
But it was simply hopeless — the difference in their builds was absolute. The posture was catastrophically unstable.
Shaking with the effort, Camibarez endured it by channeling jet-black through her body.
"I — I'll save you, Simon!"
Step by trembling step, she staggered forward. Watching her strain and groan her way along, Simon let out a faint laugh despite the poison clouding his senses.
"...Put me down, Cami. I can walk."
Above all, the position he was carried in was pure torment. At this rate, his spine would shatter before the poison finished him off.
"How are you going to walk in that state?!"
"There's a way."
Simon broke down two Skeletons and attached them to his own body. Full-body bone armor.
The true worth of bone armor lay in its reinforcement effect, like an exoskeleton suit. Simon's flesh went limp and sagged, but by controlling the armor with his thoughts, he slowly raised himself upright.
He took one careful step, then another — and almost immediately got the hang of it, striding along briskly.
"Let's go, Cami."
Camibarez stared blankly after him from behind as he walked in his bone armor.
...Simon is really something.
Poisoned by a lethal toxin, on the verge of blacking out at any moment, facing a situation where one wrong move could kill him — and yet Simon was calmly analyzing the situation, devising a solution, and moving without hesitation. He looked tremendously capable. Grown-up, even.
Hmm.
Simon, for his part, had a headache brewing. He'd considered sending Camibarez off and secretly using divinity with the recording pendant laid on his chest.
My current Cure can't neutralize the venom of a 5th-Grade Danger monster.
Among white magic, there existed a healing discipline that dismantled poison and other status afflictions — the Cure spell. But Simon had neglected his Cure training in favor of focused practice on Heal.
Professor Byulya's toxicology classes had given him a measure of resistance to poison, and he'd trusted in that. Looking back now, it stung a little.
...Call it selection and focus. Nothing to be done about it. For now, I'll trust the toxicology antidote.
Crossing the desert, they made it into the relative safety of the forest.
Simon lay in the grass, controlling only his Skeletons, while Camibarez was buried in the work of brewing the antidote.
Her toxicology grades ranked among the very top of the class — her best subject after Hemomancy — and the gap between her scores and Simon's was considerable. When it came to antidote preparation, Simon had no choice but to lean on her.
"I'm starting."
She placed both hands over her chest, took a calm, steady breath, and set to work.
First, she had to hurry with the poison analysis. She laid the poison-soaked paper onto a stack of triple-layered, three-colored sheets.
The poison spread out into each of the three-colored papers, producing new hues.
"...Red paper turning yellow means a neurotoxin on the chemical route."
She opened her toxicology textbook and began analyzing at speed.
"Blue paper turning black is the sodium route. But since the red paper came back chemical-route, in this case..."
Muttering rapidly to herself, Camibarez laid several more papers over the poison samples.
Reading the color changes, she jotted her analysis into a notebook, then dripped in a drop of aqueous solution and pressed a lump of fat from the kit onto the samples to see whether the poison would break it down.
For any poison at all, so long as you could identify its constituent components, a corresponding antidote could be cobbled together somehow.
Meanwhile, Simon sprawled on the ground sent his Skeletons to gather wood and prepared to build a fire.
They brought back branches and dry leaves, piled them to one side, built a support frame, and hung the magic cauldron over it.
"Analysis complete!"
In that time, she had finished analyzing both the blade venom and the vapor venom. She looked back, sweat dripping from her forehead after all that concentration.
"Si — Simon!!"
At some point, Simon had collapsed as though unconscious.
Startled out of her wits, she flung her notebook aside and ran to him. She pressed a hand to his forehead — he was burning with a substantial fever.
"..."
Simon was in danger.
No matter how important the practical assessment was, nothing outweighed Simon's life.
With a resolute expression, she lifted the pendant hanging at her neck and was about to press the button to declare the test abandoned when —
Tap, tap.
A Skeleton tapped Camibarez on the shoulder from behind. Then it drew an X with its arm, took up a quill, and began scribbling a small note in the textbook.
"...Simon."
She crept closer and gently laid her ear against Simon's chest.
Just as he'd told her — his breathing was regular, and his pulse still held steady.
"Ah!"
The moment she realized she was pressed flush against Simon's chest, Camibarez jerked her head up, her face flooding scarlet.
"...If it really gets to be too much, I'll press it myself."
Simon's voice drifted up to her then.
"Go. Make the antidote."
"Si, Simon."
Her pupils wavered. After a moment's hesitation, she rose to her feet, brushed the dirt from her knees, and set her jaw with resolve.
"Ju — just wait a little! I'll be right back!"
"Mm."
Camibarez picked the toxicology textbook up off the ground, tucked it into her belt, and set off running through the forest, breath heaving. Loosening the sealing magic circle on her abdomen a touch, she activated the Ursula family bloodline as well.
The way Simon has always saved me!
She surged forward atop the jet-black.
This time, I'm going to save Simon!
Reading the shapes of plants and grasses at a glance, she harvested antidote herbs, plucked flowers, packed them neatly into a basket, and stowed it in her subspace.
-Grrahk! Rrark!
Interlopers appeared.
Hound Dogs, staples of this forest, came snarling toward Camibarez — but she was far too busy picking antidote herbs to care.
With one hand she yanked up an herb; with the other she swept her arm back over her head and fired a Blood Bullet without even looking.
BOOM!
The struck Hound Dogs yelped and scattered.
"Next!"
She flipped open her textbook.
"Werewolf spleen. Are there even werewolves in this forest?"
Brewing a 100% perfect antidote in the field was impossible. She had to track down ingredients that produced at least similar effects.
-Kishit! Kit!
This time, a pack of goblins emerged.
"Out of the way!"
Camibarez unleashed her blood magic in a frenzy, laying waste to everything around her.
Overwhelmed by her ferocity, the monsters retreated. Other goblins tried to rally a pursuit, but the rest held them back — that human is insane, they seemed to say.
However, a commotion this large always carried a risk:
-Grrrrr!
The odds of an alpha showing up rose accordingly.
The master of this forest — a massive bear, the Crimson Bear — barred Camibarez's path.
"Move!!"
Camibarez screamed, her eyes blazing crimson.
As a murderous wave of jet-black boiled up from her body, the Crimson Bear's expression turned sour and — astonishingly — it slunk quietly backward.
Found it!
In the meantime, Camibarez dashed over and tore free the white camellia — a crucial antidote ingredient — stuffing it into her subspace.
Simon! Please hold on!
Hmm.
Simon — drunk on poison, drifting in and out of consciousness — had stumbled onto a new training method.
In this half-lucid state, he could actually feel the inner workings of his body and the flow of his jet-black with far greater depth.
Perhaps Byulya's classes had meant something after all: the elements within his body were actively resisting the poison. As his body adapted, antibodies seemed to be forming, little by little.
In this state, Simon could control the elements fighting off the venom. They pressed in on the foreign matter and began driving it toward one side.
Over here.
Simon gripped a short sword in his hand and sliced a small wound into his abdomen.
Cure.
He could feel the poison neutralizing rapidly. Simon sealed the cut with Heal, then set to work battling the toxin itself.
Lying around just because I'm poisoned is a waste of time.
The higher stage of Blood Poison — Byulya's ultimate goal — was something Simon was awakening on his own.
And on top of that, training in the Cure arts he'd so long neglected.
Getting poisoned makes for good training, huh. It's actually kind of fun.
Addiction to effort, one might call it.
As if to spite every trial thrown at it, Simon's body was being ground down only to climb to an even higher realm.