[NR] Chapter 374 - All In The Right Hand (Patreon)

As Jason focuses, there doesn’t seem to be anything happening at first. Despite this, he waits, dealing with venom not exactly being the best time to rush things. Then the System finally turns its back on what he is doing and his insides revert to being a void.

The venom, once contained in his stomach, spills out into his body. This prompts the System to try and reassert its version of what is natural but it is already too late for that. Even as the System is reinstating Jason’s flesh and blood, venom has spread to the rest of his body like gas trying to fill a vacuum, though some of the venom does clump together.

All over his body Jason could feel bits and pieces go numb or freeze up. Yet despite this, the venom was unable to truly affect him no matter what the System tried. The venom was unanchored and floating free. Jason felt that with a simple thought it could be banished from his body.

That would have been a waste, though. This was basically everything Jason had hoped for. Normally, when being affected by poison or venom it would fight back against his attempts to analyze it. Now, though, it was like a microorganism on a microscope slide, all ready for him to observe in depth.

So that’s just what he did. Jason picked out one particularly dense patch of the venom that had stuck around in the stomach region and got right up close to it. This starts to shine a light on why the System is so hell bent on forcing a normal body onto him when such things are involved.

Without a magic element, none of them would do anything to him. This makes sense once he thinks it over more. Elementals and similar are famous for needing magically infused poison to work and in a sense, Jason has been turning into a similar sort of being. A void or Energy elemental of sorts.

This venom because it started in a place that the System considered as not needing to affect him, was showing the true colors of his body. Jason was slightly troubled by this because he was somewhat attached to his body. That, however, could wait for the future. What mattered right now was to use this chance to familiarize his body with handling this type of venom.

A task that ironically was harder than usual. In a normal circumstance, Jason would be fighting the venom which allowed him to see it at work. Right now, the venom is just sort of floating there. Sure, some of it is causing problems, but that is more along the lines of accidentally brushing up against his lines instead of actively hurting him.

Still, that meant he could simulate it attacking him. All he had to do was force the venom to come in contact with his lines. Though Jason switches to a portion of the venom that had drifted down to his right hand. No reason to give the System a chance to paralyze his heart or lungs.

One numb hand later and Jason can tell his venom resistance is ticking up. In fact, he can sense the venom elsewhere in his body start to break down. This was not what he wanted, though. There hadn’t been much in the sip he had taken but Jason didn’t want to waste a single drop.

Sure, these spiders weren’t exactly a threat to him, but having a better resistance to the stuff against either a swarm of small spiders or one of the truly big spiders would likely be vital at some point. Besides, paralysis tended to be one of the worst kinds of poison or venom to be hit with. It meant whatever got you planned to keep you alive while it did something to you.

With that in mind, Jason stops pushing the current clump of venom into his strings and starts to gather the rest of it. This wasn’t fast, but it was quicker than the stuff was being digested by his body and the larger the clump of venom the slower it dwindled. Soon enough, he managed to gather as much of the stuff as possible and pushed it all into his right hand.

At this point, there was so much venom there that Jason didn’t even have to actively push it into the threads. The venom just naturally collided. Beyond just colliding, though, it also was being disassembled. In the same way that it had been devoured by his body, except the lines now started to be an active participant in the situation.

Soon enough, the small amount of venom that Jason had consumed was used up and curious how much he had improved, he pulled up a before and after for the venom resistance.

{Venom Resistances -

• Trash rank paralysis venom resistance - Immunity
• Trash rank non-damaging venom resistance - 25 > 65%
• Trash rank venom resistance - 12 > 32%
• Low Normal rank venom resistance - 2 > 6%
• Normal rank paralysis venom resistance - + 21%
• Normal rank venom resistance - + 1%}

The results were a little odd, at least to Jason’s eye. Sure, gaining resistance to normal rank venom was nice, but why did his low normal rank resistance have such a small increase? To him it didn’t really make sense and so he was tempted to consume some more of the spider venom.

Despite how tempting this was, Jason held off. He had other plans which would require a herb or two to complete. This shouldn’t be too hard, plants with the effect of paralyzing those who ate them aren’t exactly rare. Though mostly because it is more targeted at bugs and small animals for whom the poison isn’t so benign.

Jason shakes his head and stores away the venom sacs before setting off. The road is long and time isn’t going to wait for him. The next danger zone is close by and doesn’t have spiders in it which if anything, would make it less likely to encounter another arachnid ambush.