Chapter 3543: Tap In (Part 2)

There would have been no clue about the purpose of the alchemical device if it hadn’t been left active. With a hum of mana and the whirring of gears, the machine produced what looked like a pill.

It emerged from a metal nozzle and gently rolled onto a silver bowl, where a handful of fresh alchemical pills lay.

"Toxin bullets." Trion recognized them. "We must have raided the building while the production of this batch was already underway."

"There are only a few here." Varegrave said. "The Alchemists must have grabbed the rest and come to fight us. Yet this room is too empty. Where are the ingredients?"

Lith found the answer behind the third door and luck had nothing to do with it.

"By my Mom, no!" Solus’ blood froze in her veins and the battle-hardened soldiers fared no better.

Her words went unnoticed, everyone was too busy cursing out loud or clenching their weapons to care.

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The room was over three meters (6’7") high, twenty meters (66’) long, and five meters (16.5’) across. Comfortable padded chairs were lined up along the room, with enough space between them to move comfortably.

It reminded everyone of a packed conference hall yet instead of richly dressed nobles there were naked people strapped to the chairs. Tubes went from bags of fluids and nutrients into the bodies of the prisoners via intravenous drips.

They all groaned and cried, their faces twisted in a perpetual grimace of pain and despair. Snot and drool covered their chests as they struggled to keep breathing. Yet none of that was as ghastly as the enchanted tap protruding from their abdomens.

Despite the Emperor Beasts’ care and ointments, the margins of the skin were red and inflamed due to the open wound. A shiny indicator over the faucets marked when the internal build-up of toxins reached life-threatening levels.

"Please, tell me this is not what I think it is." Solus clenched Lith’s arm, refusing to use Life Vision or access the Eyes’ data.

"I’m sorry, Solus." There was nothing else he could say.

Emperor Beasts had true magic, but that gave them no edge in a discipline like Alchemy. Even Kugoh, the best among them, had nothing of Hatorne’s genius and even after reading her notes, he had failed to find a way to synthesize the toxins without breeding the parasites.

On top of that, Hatorne had designed both the synthetic and bio toxins to self-destruct when exposed to air. It was hard to confirm any kind of progress when your creation dissolved in thin air before you had the time to examine it.

The only solution he had found was to breed the parasites inside a living subject. Once the victim was filled to the brim with toxins, they could be extracted and kept safe inside special vials like those Lith had used back in Kandria.

They weren’t easy to find, but there was little the black marker couldn’t provide if you had enough money.

Lith checked the room with the Eyes and discovered that each row of prisoners had been infested with a different parasite. Fire, light, air, and darkness parasites killed their host quickly, but once removed, the hosts would recover quickly.

Water and earth parasites reproduced slowly and their effects too were easily reversible once removed.

The anti-mana parasites, however, were a completely different beast.

They spread slowly, were difficult to remove, and once their numbers exceeded what a host’s mana could feed, they would drain the mana core directly.

To make matters worse, after Lith counted the anti-mana parasites’ hosts, he noticed they matched the number of weak prisoners he had rescued on the first underground floor.

"Chyrsha?" His stomach dropped before he heard a groan raise in pitch. "Don’t worry, Chyrsha. You’re safe now. Rolam sent us to rescue you."

The woman yelped in pain and joy at the name, a spark of light returned to her dim eyes as she cried milky tears muddied by the high concentration of toxins that ravaged her body.

Chyrsha was a woman in her mid-twenties, with long auburn hair streaked red all over. She was in a wretched state and her skin was taut and pale, but Lith could tell she had been pretty before her capture.

"Rolam?" She whined, her voice barely a whisper. "Is he okay?"

"Yes." Lith said while checking her condition.

Chyrsha’s body was so full of toxins that most of her mana core had turned grey. Only a speck of bloody red mana remained and it fought the invasion like it had a mind of its own.

Because it did.

Lith had long since learned that imagination and willpower were the foundations of all branches of magic but Kugoh had pushed the concept further. While experimenting on the humans after turning them into parasite hives, Kugoh had discovered that the stronger the will to survive, the longer the specimen would last.

Even a non-Awakened could stimulate their mana core if desperate and properly motivated enough. After confirming his discovery, Kugoh had developed a two-stage selection process for future hives.

Those too self-centered or without emotional connections would be used as breeding grounds for the fire, light, and air parasites which had a higher turnover. Those with a strong will and deep bonds would be kidnapped alongside the person they loved the most.

After the imprisonment, Kugoh explained the rules to both the host and the hostage. As long as the human hive lived, the hostage would be taken care of, fed, and protected. If either of them died, the other would follow.

The cruelty of such conditions kept the hostages from resisting their captors and pushed the human hives to fight the infestation with everything they had.

Chyrsha was the living proof of Kugoh’s theory.

Just from a cursory examination, Lith found no plausible explanation of how she could still be alive. Her body was saturated with anti-mana toxins to the point that his breathing technique reached her mana core only because he had placed his hand on her womb.

Her eyes and the veins visible on her malnourished skin were white from the parasites swimming below the surface.

"My baby." Weakness turned Chyrsha’s hiccup into a gasp. "Is he safe? Did they hurt him?"

"He’s safe." There was no time for healing magic and Lith doubted it would have worked.

He took a deep breath and released a soft veil of Origin Flames from his hand. Lith wielded them with the pinpoint precision of a surgical laser, tapping into everything he had learned from Valtak.

The Origin Flames ignored Chyrsha’s flesh, blood, and organs. The violet fire was directly connected to Lith’s life force and acted as his eyes and hands as it cleansed her body.

Lith purified the area surrounding Chyrsha’s mana core first, and then spread the Origin Flames outward. The toxins burned, the parasites burned, and even the acid they produced when attacked burned as well.

The only foreign body left was the tap in her abdomen.

Chyrsha was too weak and Lith was afraid that even the loss of one drop of blood might snuff the little life she had left. He used Invigoration solely to restore her vitality and give her just as much energy as her body could withstand.

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