Chapter 53: A Tangle of Vines and Poison – Arianna

  The group started moving in a random direction, picking their way slowly through the dense jungle. It was harder than she expected. The foliage was thick, the hanging vines were endless, and the roots of the giant trees twisted through the ground like an army of snakes. There wasn’t anything even close to a proper path — just raw nature, alive and loud in a dozen shades of red, orange, and pink.

  As she passed under a particularly thick curtain of hanging vines, Arianna had to suppress a shudder. She couldn’t help thinking about the objectives they’d gotten from the system — and the monsters they would have to face. She remembered them. Too well.

  They had been disgusting.

  Her old suspicion flickered up again — the idea that Earth’s and Avaria’s media had been influenced by the System long before it officially descended. After all, so many monsters they fought here looked eerily similar to the ones from old books, games, and movies. And some of those monsters had... inspired certain types of "literature" too. Unfortunately. She knew from Cassis that Avaria had been no different.

  Her thoughts were cut off when a prickle ran down her spine. A monster — ahead.

  She looked at Cassis instinctively and saw that he had noticed too. Their Awareness feature had already reached Intermediate rank, and it was showing. Neither of them said anything out loud yet — Camden, Liam, and Luke in the front hadn’t spotted it.

  Before she could send a warning, the thing appeared. It shuffled out from behind a thick cluster of bushes: a walking flower.

  It was about the size of a large dog, moving awkwardly on what looked like thick, thorny roots twisted into legs. Its "head" was a wide bloom of pink leaves, shimmering slightly, and glittering yellow blossoms jutted out between the folds, releasing a fine mist with every step. It looked almost pretty — if it weren’t so obviously wrong.

  Camden, Liam, and Luke reacted fast, their swords flashing. Nadine and Helen held position behind, ready with their bows, but it wasn’t necessary. The three swordsmen tore through the walking flower without much effort since it was only F-rank. The monster collapsed into a heap of torn petals and sap.

  But Camden was injured. Arianna hurried up to him, noting the thin line of blood on his arm where a thorn had scraped him. She took his arm in her hands and pushed her mana into the wound to heal it — and immediately felt it.

  Something was off.

  Of course. This was Rezon. Poison was almost guaranteed.

  The wound wasn’t dangerous yet, but she knew she had to act before it got worse. She could just pour her heal spell into him and brute-force it out... But that would burn her mana reserves fast — and there was no telling how long they’d be stuck here. Better to figure out a solution now. She wasn’t too worried about her mana reserves right now, but if she had to heal every little scrape then it would tap her out and they’d have to stop more often for her to regenerate some mana.

  They called a short break so she could experiment. And experiment she did. Failure after failure after failure. At one point, she almost gave up and just healed Camden the old-fashioned way. But she gritted her teeth and kept trying. The poison’s mana was strange — tangled and slippery.

  She couldn’t even properly differentiate its type, just that it was different from Camden’s own mana and her non-elemental mana.

  Then an idea hit her. If she couldn’t heal the poison directly... maybe she could catch it. She shaped her non-elemental mana into a net — a delicate web designed to trap the foreign mana crystals. Carefully, she spread it through Camden’s wound. The net snagged the poison’s mana, little by little, and she pulled it out like a fisherman hauling up a catch.

  And it worked. Once outside the wound the poison mana broke apart and vanished into the atmosphere.

  The system chimed:

  [Congratulations! You have learned the spell: Isolate Poison.]

  Arianna grinned, more proud than she wanted to admit. When she announced her new spell the others clapped her on the back or called out congratulations. Camden, who had been her guinea pig, looked genuinely relieved.

  But Cassis blinked at her, surprised. When she raised an eyebrow at him, he messaged her privately. "In the other timeline, healers had a spell called Antidote. Your Isolate Poison... seems like a weaker version with a bit of a different effect. Maybe it’s a precursor? Maybe the healers developed it later?"

  He didn’t sound sure. Honestly, neither was she. Back then, they hadn’t paid much attention to other Awakeners’ abilities. They’d had enough trouble just keeping Cassis alive. She shrugged. He was probably right. Isolate Poison, as it stood, could only pull out small amounts of poison — and only if it hadn't already spread too far. Still, it was better than nothing. If it came to it, she could always fall back on a full Heal spell. Or the Patron Shop, if things got bad enough. For now, she had a new spell to train.

  Though it would be interesting to watch how her Heal spell got rid of the poison. Maybe she could get some new inspirations from that.

  They resumed their journey, the three warriors in front hacking away at thick vines and bushes to clear a path. The deeper they went, the stranger the jungle became.

  They ran into a few more lone monsters. A blue frogman, its rubbery skin shining wetly, darted at them from a stream and lashed out with its long and sticky tongue — but Luke skewered it mid-leap while Liam took that opportunity to behead it. It had been as tall as Arianna but could easily jump 7 metres to attack them. Later on a bald but otherwise shockingly colourful bird dive-bombed them from above, only to get shot down by Nadine and Helen working together. And at one point, a snake bigger than a grown man — with heads on both ends — dropped from a tree straight toward them.

  If Cassis and Arianna hadn’t sensed it and shouted a warning, someone might have been crushed. This prompted Arianna to think more about her Awareness feature. She could sense the movements of the mana particles in the atmosphere. Sentient and sapient beings disturbed those particles because they also emitted mana in tiny quantities.

  Her Awareness and Mana Manipulation were a high enough rank to influence each other. But how did Cassis sense these monsters? She knew for sure he didn’t sense their mana. She’d have to talk to him about that. If they could learn each other’s ways of sensing monsters their Awareness abilities would grow. She shook her head sadly. Just why did she have to push all these interesting ideas to the back? She never had time to experiment and research. Soon. She’d get to that soon, she promised herself.

  The party at the front pushed deeper into the jungle. It was getting harder to move now — the trees thickened, vines tangling low, every step a battle against the environment itself.

  Arianna stiffened. She felt them before she saw them — over ten monsters, creeping into position, trying to surround them.

  Cassis must have sensed them too, because he immediately shouted a warning. "Form up! Nadine!" His voice rang with authority, and Nadine reacted instantly, sending out the party invite to them.

  Finally, some real action. Arianna wasn’t too worried about conserving her mana for healing anymore. Isolate Poison didn’t use much. And even after buying basic defensive sets for all seven of them, she still had 5100 CP left. Plenty to buy a stack of small health potions if needed. And if she was hit during battle, she could get some mana through her Force Absorption.

  First, though, she summoned her Water Shield and used Body Reinforcement. Now, she wasn’t just a squishy healer anymore.

  The round shield materialized on her arm, translucent but solid, a swirling spiral of water currents spinning slowly inside it. It shimmered in the hot jungle air, catching flashes of red and orange from the foliage around them.

  She hoped Force Absorption would work through the shield too. Taking hits with her body would probably be ok with Body Reinforcement on, but she also wasn’t sure if Force Absorption worked together with it. She really didn’t want to take attacks unprotected. It would hurt. She’d do it, if necessary, but she wouldn’t like it.

  She stepped quickly into position beside Helen and Nadine. Cassis had already taken up the other side of the two archers, forming a loose line. Helen and Nadine both shot her confused glances — after all, she was supposed to be the healer, not the front line.

  But Arianna just grinned at them. Her class was different now. She could fight, too — and it made sense to cover the archers, who were much more vulnerable.

  Maybe Cassis had thought the same way, since he hadn’t stayed glued to her side. It made her feel... strangely warm. He was treating her like an equal partner, not someone he had to constantly protect. Granted, those F-rank monsters weren’t really a threat to her anymore since they felt weak level wise but he was trying. And that counted a lot.

  Her grin widened when the first attack came. A tongue shot out of the jungle with a wet crack and aimed straight at her — and she met it head-on with her shield.

  The tongue slapped against the water spiral, which redirected the blow almost by itself and she immediately felt the tug of Force Absorption activating.

  Good. The shield was considered part of her.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Another tongue snapped at her from the other side — she barely saw the frogman behind it, only the movement — and she pivoted, catching it with the edge of the shield.

  Around her, the others were just as busy.

  Cassis neatly sliced off one tongue midair, his blade flashing like a flame though he hadn’t used his Elemental Blade yet. It wouldn’t be too smart to use uncontrolled fire in a forest, no matter how humid it was.

  Arianna batted another tongue aside with her mace, feeling a satisfying crunch.

  Helen loosed an arrow almost blindly into the dense foliage and was rewarded with a wet squeak from the frogman she’d hit.

  Liam, Luke, and Camden slashed at the whipping tongues, sometimes getting scratched in the process, but nothing serious.

  The frogmen must have realized their tongue attacks weren’t doing much damage, because they shifted tactics. One by one, they burst from the underbrush, jumping high and fast. It was chaos.

  They leaped from trees, vines, branches — twisting midair, using the environment to fake out their movements, tongues flicking out again and again. It was hard to track them — Arianna’s eyes darted from target to target, trying to predict their erratic patterns.

  She tightened her grip on the shield. Stay calm. Stay aware. One frogman made a mistake. It landed too close, paused to line up an attack on Nadine — and that was all Arianna needed. She charged forward and slammed her mace into it with a wet thunk, beating it down before it could react. It twitched once and went still.

  Around her, the others were dispatching their own enemies.

  Cassis was a blur, using his new Dash skill to zip between trees, taking down frogmen before they could regroup. Helen and Nadine kept shooting, though the fast-moving targets were harder to hit now. Liam, Camden, and Luke fought side-by-side, hacking down any frogman that got too close.

  One by one, the monsters fell.

  The whole battle lasted less than five minutes — but by the end, the jungle clearing was littered with broken bodies and sticky greenish blood.

  The system dinged in her mind, tallying the experience gained. Not much for her or Cassis — the frogmen were low level F-rank monsters, after all — but Nadine gave a little shout of victory.

  "I'm level 8!"

  Camden punched the air. "Level 6, finally!"

  The others looked pleased too — close to levelling, if not there yet. Except for Liam, he wouldn’t get the experience, but Matteo would. She was curious if Matteo had levelled from this fight. Once he reached level 5 it would be his younger sister’s turn.

  Arianna let her shield dissolve with a thought, wiping a bit of sweat from her forehead. She wasn’t even tired yet and though the water shield and her body reinforcement took quite a lot of mana to keep going she was still nearly full thanks to Force Absorption and having her mana pattern active throughout her upper body. Soon, she’d be able to spread it through all of her body.

  The group took a short rest.

  The lower-levelled members needed to replenish their mana, arrows, and health. Arianna moved quietly between them, checking each scrape and cut with careful eyes. As she had expected, the wounds were poisoned.

  Not badly — the poison seemed weak, a paralytic more than a killer — and in these small quantities, it would probably dissolve naturally. Still, she didn’t want to take chances.

  She started with Liam, pushing a thread of mana into his wound and activating her Isolate Poison spell. The poison mana responded the same way it had with the walking flower — sluggish and easy to trap. Arianna coaxed it out in a neat spiral and watched it evaporate into the air. Then she healed the small wound.

  Then she turned to Luke. This time, she used Heal instead of Isolate Poison and paid close attention. She frowned as she watched the process — the healing mana seemed to dissolve the poison particles completely, not by separating them but by... Something else. She didn’t fully understand it yet.

  Is it merging with the poison mana somehow? Breaking it down?

  She stored the question for later and moved on to Camden, then Nadine, then Helen, using Heal each time, watching, learning. Ideas flickered through her mind — tweaks she might try the next time, little experiments — but nothing she could act on yet.

  When she reached Cassis, she smiled. No need. His body reinforcement had prevented any injuries, just like hers.

  After the short rest, they formed up and marched on.

  Since the first objective was to kill the Frogman Chief, they decided to head in the direction from which the previous monster group had appeared. The jungle was still dense, though the colours got even more surreal — everything bathed in that strange blend of red, orange, and pink light.

  Soon enough, another group found them. Only five frogmen this time. The fight was swift — cleaner than the first encounter. The team moved more smoothly together, their coordination improving with each battle.

  But just when they began to settle into another rest, Arianna already moving to take care of all the scrapes they had incurred ...

  Arianna froze. Something prickled at her senses. A tension in the air, faint but growing.

  She drew out her senses, flaring her Awareness to the limit, and engaged Mana Sight.

  There — hanging in the air — a mist of tiny golden specks, invisible to the naked eye but pulsing with poisonous mana.

  Those looked like pollen.

  It was everywhere, thickening by the second, surrounding them.

  Her gaze snapped to the source — a cluster of flowers growing from a massive, moss-covered tree. The blossoms were lush and wild, lilac-coloured with swirling patterns, their petals wide and hypnotic, giving off a soft internal glow.

  “Mesmerizing Blossoms!” Cassis' voice cracked through the party chat, sharp and urgent.

  Panic tightened her chest. Breathing in the pollen would be bad — very bad. Without hesitating, Arianna held her breath and shouted a warning through the party chat:

  "Don't breathe in! Hold your breath!"

  But it was too late.

  Camden crumpled to the ground first, his sword clattering beside him. Then Luke followed, and Nadine not long after. Liam and Helen staggered, blinking slowly, fighting to stay upright.

  Arianna sprinted to her unconscious teammates, checking quickly — relief flooding her. They were breathing, but heavily asleep.

  Without breathing, Cassis and Arianna charged toward the cluster of flowers. Liam and Helen stumbled after them, clearly on the edge of collapse.

  The pollen wasn’t just inhaled — even contact with exposed skin seemed enough to cause the effect. Arianna cursed silently. They needed to get rid of it — fast.

  Cassis was already at the base of the flowers, slashing violently, severing stems and slicing through the thick underbrush. Lilac petals and glowing pollen burst into the air with every cut. But he was also slowing. The pollen were working on him, just slower since he was higher levelled than the others and had Body Reinforcement going.

  Arianna, heart hammering, pushed mana into her Isolate Poison spell, trying to capture the floating particles.

  It was harder this time.

  The pollen was designed to linger outside the body, clinging to the air itself.

  The spell struggled — but slowly, painstakingly, she gathered the poisonous mana into tight a whirling cluster next to her.

  The air around her cleared — a small safe zone.

  But when she looked at the clumps of trapped mana, her heart sank. Unlike before, the pollen particles didn’t evaporate. They remained stubbornly whole, swirling and glowing.

  Right. These were made to exist outside a host. They're stable.

  Neutralizing them by drawing the poison out of the body was one thing. Destroying these pollen outside it — that was another. They had to cut the source completely and then burn or disperse the lingering pollen manually.

  Cassis finally hacked down the last of the Mesmerizing Blossoms. A final spurt of pollen burst out from the shredded vines and hit him squarely in the face. He staggered, visibly struggling. Helen and Liam weren’t near him. They had succumbed to the poison hallway between the Mesmerizing Blossoms and their other teammates.

  Arianna’s heart clenched. She watched Cassis through a growing haze of drowsiness, her own limbs beginning to feel heavy.

  No—!

  Alarm jolted through her, cutting through the sleepiness. She shoved her hand against her chest and pushed a Heal into herself. The warmth of the spell flooded her body, clearing her mind almost instantly.

  She gasped for breath, breathing in some pollen before she held it again — the air was thick with shimmering, poisonous pollen only visible to her. They had attached to her skin again, clustering in tiny, glowing patches.

  We can’t fall asleep here. We’ll die.

  An idea sparked. Through the party chat she sent a quick thought to Cassis, who had just activated Blazing Body, burning away the pollen trying to stick to him.

  "Take Helen and Liam back to the others! I’ll put up a water barrier and try to clean the area inside. The pollen shouldn’t be able to get through the barrier."

  Cassis gave a short, shaky nod. He gritted his teeth, doused his flames, slung one unconscious teammate over each shoulder, and staggered toward the rest of their party, fighting against the growing pull of sleep.

  Arianna ran with him, the drowsiness creeping back again fast.

  Once they reached the others, she didn’t hesitate. She activated her Water Barrier which brought a glimmering dome made of water around them. It would keep out any new pollen — and hold back any monsters, too.

  Cassis dropped Helen and Liam gently next to Camden, Nadine, and Luke, then immediately reactivated Blazing Body. He sat down cross-legged, meditating, his body blazing faintly, holding the poison at bay.

  Arianna turned her attention to the air around her.

  The others were lying unconscious — but every now and then, she heard distressed moans or saw twitching limbs. Even if they weren’t fully aware, they were struggling.

  That only made her more determined. Once again, she cast Isolate Poison, gathering clumps of the glittering pollen into swirling nets of non-elemental mana.

  But that was only the first step.

  Now came the hard part — how to destroy it.

  First, she tried using a basic Heal on the captured pollen. No effect. It wasn’t alive. Heal simply slid off the netted particles.

  Next, she tried fusing some non-elemental mana into the pollen clusters. The result was worse — the pollen actually grew more dense and toxic under her influence.

  Her lungs burned. She needed to breathe soon.

  Out of ideas and out of time, Arianna decided to try something desperate. She wove another net of non-elemental mana, trapped a small batch of pollen inside — and crushed it with brute force.

  It wasn’t graceful. It wasn’t clever. But it worked.

  The trapped pollen shuddered and winked out of existence, shredded by her forceful mana.

  Relief surged through her. She immediately used the method on the rest of the captured pollen, crushing it batch by batch until the air around her was breathable again.

  Panting, she gulped in a few clean breaths — only for the drowsiness to start creeping in again after a few moments.

  Still not clean enough.

  Another Heal on herself, another wave of clarity.

  Then another round of Isolate Poison, catching more pollen.

  This time, she tried to make it faster.

  Instead of capturing and then crushing manually, she wove her mana into a new kind of net — one that both captured and crushed at the same time.

  The results were instant. The caught pollen was immediately enveloped by her net and it disintegrated soon after. She grinned through her exhaustion.

  With a bit of concentration, she expanded the net to cover the entire inside of the Water Barrier, sweeping through the air like an invisible, crushing tide. Bit by bit, the glittering haze faded. The air cleared.

  Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the Water Barrier’s interior was clean.

  No more drowsiness. No more pollen.

  Arianna dropped to her knees, breathing heavily, and blinked as a series of system messages began popping up. She’d ignored them while she was working but now they made themselves known.

  [Congratulations! Isolate Poison has ranked up…]

  [Congratulations! Isolate Poison has ranked up…]

  [Congratulations! Isolate Poison has ranked up to Master!]

  [Due to your actions, you can evolve Isolate Poison.]

  Excitement cut through her exhaustion like a lightning bolt.

  Without hesitation, she selected Yes.

  A new message appeared:

  [Your spell Isolate Poison has evolved to Neutralize Poison!]

  She smiled, victorious.

  Finally.

  She had a spell that could actively hunt and destroy poison mana — inside and outside the body.

  She turned toward the rest of the party. They were still unconscious, but they were safe. Thanks to her. Arianna sat back, letting herself rest for just a moment inside the glimmering safety of the Water Barrier.