NOVEL NEXT Chapter 401 - And His Body Hits The Floor
In the end though, the worst part was that this was a poison from the abyss and so his poison resistance did basically nothing. Jason had guessed this sort of thing would happen and could only be thankful that the harness Lily was in blocked out the poison. While the poison itself might not have been exquisite quality and the Dretches were a much lower level than him, it was made to work against their fellow demons.
Not only did this mean that it was made right off the bat to work on less than physical beings like what Jason was becoming. It was able to affect all kinds of powers, even ones from other dimensions, and break through immunities. After all, Demons are famously immune to poison. Suffice it to say, Jason's skill wasn't quite up to the task. Though he was thankful that he found these specific weaknesses of the skill against Dretches instead of more powerful outsiders.
Of course Jason wasn't exactly capable of doing anything about a poison specifically made to get through his immunity since this was likely a trash grade poison. However, observing how it attacked his Energy and worked against his void was going to be educational. After all, until now the poisons he had experienced were specifically meant to work against a flesh and blood body. They only worked on him because the System kept trying to shove his body into that particular box.
Though as the Dretches begin to chip away at his health, one point of damage at a time, he notices that the System isn't trying to revert his inner void back to being flesh and blood. This made sense to him as the poison was after all capable of actually targeting his void. That wasn't the actual reason, but it was what he assumed.
Still, he could focus on the poison later. As it was, he needed to finish off the Dretches before they could chip away his HP. While there were less than ten of the things now, they were all attacking with both claws and bites which was quickly adding up as faint red lines and dots began to be left all over his body.
So Jason simply switched to using both hands. Yes, the poison cloud did reduce his strength, but that just meant he had to go for the easier kills by crushing their throats or busting their organs. Sure, many demons did have otherworldly bodies that could take such things, but Dretches weren't one of them. Despite their chaotic origins, they were a lot more like normal terrestrial beings than higher tier demons.
Now using both hands, the number of Dretches quickly fell to zero and Jason was left with a good twenty or so seconds left on the poison cloud itself. Or rather, that is how long it would have lasted. It could of course be dispersed by wind or other similar things, but he had other plans for it.
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After all, how often did you come across a multidimensional poison that didn't actually deal damage? Well, demon summers basically had it on tap, but Jason wasn't going to head back for more nor was he tempted to give summoning them a shot. So this was likely to be it for the near future.
To him that meant he could waste a single bit of the stuff and the only way to keep it around was to take it all for himself. With the poison being a summoned effect though, he wasn't exactly capable of storing it in a bottle or some such. No, to keep it around the poison actually had to be in a being and capable of pulling on their various powers to stick around.
Good thing all the uses of the skill had overlapped. From a tactical standpoint this wasn't the most effective use as it wasn't like the poisons effect could stack with other instances of itself, even if from other Dretches. So Jason could only thank his lucky stars that he was the only target and the poison was concentrated on his location as he started to speed up his cultivation cycle.
The Energy lines began to move faster and faster as they exited his core, flying to all corners of his body until finally they broke free of his physical form and spread out all around him. As he pumped more and more of his Energy into this the cloud of his Energy threads finally managed to encompass the entire area of the poison cloud.
Not that the poison cloud stuck around long. This cloud of threads Jason had extended out were a part of his actual self and so all that poison quickly glommed onto the threads and as he once again slowed down his cultivation, the poison got pulled into his body as they receded. Then Jason's body fell to the ground.
Because guess what, while the effects of multiple poison clouds didn't overlap, directly absorbing the stuff into your body overruled that particular quality. So there Jason lay, laughing to himself as he realized that the overdose managed to reduce his strength by so much he literally couldn't lift a finger. This was especially funny to him as right in front of his eye's there was a System message.
{+5 Strength}
That's right, he had gained five entire points of strength, likely most of that coming from the second part of the battle, and it still wasn't enough to move with. So since he was a wee bit stuck, Jason focused on the only thing he could do something about, all that poison now swirling around in his body and what a learning experience that was.
Before, other poisons hadn't really looked all that strange. They would show up as lines and try to do stuff to his own lines. After seeing this poison though, the others all looked clumsy. Most obvious was the fact that the poison didn't take on the shape of lines, likely because while under the Systems rules, it was still its own thing. Instead the poison appropriately took on the form of a cloud, a large mass of the poison suspended as closely packed dots of power. Not liquid, yet made up of liquid.