Chapter 345: A Complicated Procedure
Chapter 345: A Complicated Procedure
Mako had never tried to activate the system interface with his eyes closed as the thought never even crossed his mind.
Why would he activate the system interface that basically operated through his vision and thoughts with his eyes closed? It was something completely illogical.
However, as Mako was concentrating on his poison aura and had just begun injecting poison into Bill's system, a notification popped up in front of his eyes that rocked his world.
[User's poison is too strong]
[User has inflicted critical damage to the target body]
[Remote Emergency Healing has been activated]
[Please do not remove contact with the target body in order to maintain Remote Emergency Healing]
[Healing Pills inside the target body's system will expedite the healing process to stabilize the target body's condition]
[Time Until Stabilization: 20 minutes]
[Premature interruption of Remote Emergency Healing may result in death of the target body]
The system recognized that Mako wasn't using his ability to harm an enemy and began monitoring Bill's vitals as soon as he made contact with his arm.
The poison ability was immediately stopped when Bill's condition went critical. The system activated its Emergency Healing, rapidly draining Mako's energy points to counteract the poison's damage, keeping Bill's organs alive while the healing pills in his system fought the poison.
Mako had used his mutant gene to have greater control over his poison aura, but he didn't anticipate that the increased power would make the poison too potent for Bill's weakened body.
Now, Mako had to ensure Bill's recovery before removing his hand from Bill's arm. Fortunately, he had enough energy points to sustain the healing process.
After the initial panic of almost killing his friend, Mako began worrying about how to explain the situation.
The others, including Bill, were unaware of what had just happened. If he simply let the system heal Bill without injecting the poison, he would face a barrage of questions.
Standing still for several minutes was already suspicious, and if he told them he couldn't inject the poison because it would have killed Bill, they would ask how he knew that.
Bill had only felt pain for a few seconds before the system intervened and with his body temporarily paralyzed he couldn't feel much to begin with, so he had no idea whether the poison was actually injected.
Mako, lacking medical experience, couldn't explain the situation without exposing the system, as he had no way of knowing Bill's condition himself. He also couldn't tell them Bill was going to die or that he healed him, as he didn't possess any healing abilities or skills, making it highly suspicious how he would know about Bill's near-death state.
Knowing this, Mako had only one option and that was to figure out how he was going to successfully inject the poison inside his body without making his body worse.
While the system did its thing and continued to heal Bill, Mako put his brain and intelligence points into overdrive as he thought of many ways in order to get this to work properly.
He realized his first mistake which was to activate the poison mutant gene as he still lacked control over his actual poison and couldn't control its potency yet.
After realizing this he knew that he would have to inject the poison while his ability was still at level one; this would significantly reduce the potency of the poison, but he would lose the precise level of control he had with the mutant gene active.
With the mutant gene active, Mako was able to essentially map out the body using his aura as he moved the poison around, but with the ability still at level 1, Mako would be injecting the poison blindly as he had no control over the precise location of the poison inside Bill's body.
Mako wasn't comfortable injecting the poison blindly and secondly, he still had no idea how Bill's body would react to the weaker poison. There was still a chance that the weaker poison would also be too much for Bill's extremely weak body to handle.
So now he had to solve two problems, figure out a different way to accurately map out Bill's body so that he could inject the poison into his system accurately and find a way to make sure this time the poison won't be strong enough to inflict critical damage.
Sweat dripped down from Mako's forehead as he kept on thinking.
He first checked out the Shop tab to check and see if he was in any luck and there was a poison skill book for sale, but unfortunately, there was nothing of use in the Shop, Daily Shop, or Discount Bazaar.
He was admittedly quite pissed as almost every time the shop would refresh, he would receive items that were of no use to him according to his build, too low of a level for him to use, or too expensive.
Rarely would he ever get something that he was actually in need of that was within his budget and of a high enough quality or tier like the time he was able to purchase the crystals containing the poison ability which he used to save Angela.
After exhausting his options to find a way to control the potency of the poison, Mako shifted gears completely.
Instead of looking for a way to control the potency through the aura himself, what if he was able to somehow dilute the poison or make it so the body absorbed the poison in extremely minimal doses and not all at once?
Thinking down this path, Mako finally had a breakthrough which he quickly consulted with the system using the "Ask" function before implementing.
He could use water!
He could use water as an inert medium to coat the poison so that the poison would be inside a protective bubble and wouldn't interact with Bill's body at all and he could freely move the poison to where he wanted to without any complications.
He checked the Shop for any water ability books or crystals but unfortunately, he was disappointed once again; however, it was then that he got a lucky break which was in the form of his newest tab.
The Mana Skill Tree!
One of the branches of the Mana Skill Tree was manipulation and the first skill he could unlock was to learn how to manipulate water through his mana alone.
[Would the user like to spend (1) skill point to learn Water Manipulation (Stage 1)?]
'Yes!' Mako replied with no hesitation.
[Congratulations!]
[The user can manipulate water through their mana equivalent that of a level 1 Water ability]
There were multiple IV drips full of saline and healing pills that were being injected into Bill's body so now Mako had a source of water as well that he could use to deliver the poison.
With Mako now having a way to safely deliver the poison into Bill's body without causing additional damage, he now just needed a way to figure out how was he going to transport it accurately inside his body.
Luckily the solution to this problem wasn't as hard thanks to all those intelligence points he kept pumping to make sure his intelligence never lagged behind any of his other attributes and a very strong ocular skill.
He would first activate his Energy Sensing skill to be able to sense all the nerves sending electrical signals throughout his entire body and then he would make mental notes of all twists and turns he needed to make inside Bill's body in order to reach the accurate position.
The human body is so complex that Mako couldn't hope to remember every single pathway and direction of every single blood vessel, but if it was only a singular pathway that he had to memorize, then it was possible for him to remember it well.
With his plan set, all Mako had to was execute.
After waiting around for Mako to make a move for almost ten minutes now, some of his friends were growing impatient including Bill as well; however, before they could do anything, Mako's hand began to glow green again, but this time his eyes remained closed.
Bill once again braced himself as he thought he would experience pain again, but this time he didn't feel anything at all.
Mako went to work as he first used his Energy Sensing to map a suitable location for the poison and then used his poison ability he created a small blob of weak poison and coated it completely with a small layer of water.
He then pushed the small bubble carefully through Bill's body, relying on his memory to guide him to the correct location.
Once he was satisfied that he had placed the bubble in the correct spot, he double-checked it by reactivating his energy sensing to be absolutely sure.
After he was satisfied with his checks, Mako used his mana to command the water bubble to
make a small hole in the bubble which began to slowly leak out the poison into Bill's system.
Since Mako was unsure of whether Bill could survive even the weak poison, this was the countermeasure he had come up with as thanks to all the lessons with Rose, Mako had a slightly better understanding of mana and could now add very simple and precise commands to a very amount of mass that he could already control.
He had tried this in practice where he managed to make a very small pebble that he could control with his Earth ability to crack down the middle not by using the ability itself, but rather through passing on a command to the pebble with mana itself.
He did that same thing here as he first commanded the water bubble to simply retain its shape
even after he had stopped influencing it directly and to have a tiny hole through which the poison could leak out very slowly.
The group watched carefully as all they could see from the outside was Mako's hand pulsing green from time to time as he still stood completely still with his eyes closed.
After Mako had placed several drops of poison inside Bill's body and the system had
confirmed that Bill's body had recovered and could now support itself again, he finally opened his eyes and removed his hand from Bill's arm.
Mako was completely covered in sweat and he barely had a thousand energy points left after
all the complex things he had done using multiple abilities and techniques.
"It's done..."