My Life In A Fantasy, Women-Dominated World

Chapter 167: Blood Core

"No... not just my kind. The great elder said this acid is potent enough to even harm the empress..."

Words died in Aaron’s throat. The doubts, the mockery, everything.

Sure, the words of a mere great elder of a single mushfolk tribe weren’t to be trusted.

But... this was the woman who surprised him with her intelligence and brains.

In addition, she wasn’t just any elder, she was the elder of the VENOM tribe.

Even their name dabbled in toxins and poisons.

Surely her words had to be somewhat true... right?

Regardless if this poison was really capable of harming the empress or not, Aaron believed it wasn’t completely a sham.

But after learning about the potency of this black sludge, Aaron quickly removed his blade from the monster’s heart.

The results both surprised and pained him.

In just a few moments of contact, the acid had caused his blade to dull out, chipping at several places while the tip appeared to be dissolved.

It used to be a sharp pointy end once and now all that was left was a flat, jagged end.

He didn’t dare to touch the swordstaff directly with his fingers, but he did summon his backpack and took out an old shirt he didn’t quite like.

He torn it off, using the cloth to wipe off the acid from the blade before tossing the piece in the distance.

Just by a single contact with that liquid proved to him how easily it was devouring the cloth.

But he didn’t give up, using several scrap pieces to completely clean his now damaged weapon.

He could only sigh at the loss, feeling content that he at least managed to find something valuable at its expense.

However he was suffering from a dilemma.

How was he supposed to store such a toxic substance?

Without hesitation, he forwarded the question to Alyssa.

"Sir Aaron I am truly not the most knowledgeable person here, but from my experience in the venom tribe we prefer to use glass or specialized capsules to store potent toxins." She replied in a dedicated tone.

"Specialized capsules?" Aaron hummed.

"Indeed, those are the containers crafted out of the outer layer of narcoshrooms. But making them is very arduous as it requires several levels of processing." Alyssa shook her head.

"Ah then those are off table for now." Aaron sighed before he suddenly remembered about a lightbulb that Claire had placed in his suitcase.

It was to bring home as she had found a few expensive ones in the ruined city during their raid.

So with the motto of ’finders keepers’, she didn’t hesitate to take those.

But thinking of it, Aaron could only sigh an apology while taking out his suitcase from the inventory.

He took out a bulb that was made out of a blue coloured glass, a specialized type of glass that was considered luxury in Solaris.

And here he was, breaking the light emitting part of that expensive bulb to use it as a container for a toxin.

In his defence though, Aaron reasoned that the toxin was much more precious than this useless cosmetic.

Especially in his current circumstances.

Aaron scooped up as much of the black sludge-like liquid as he could, sighing in relief when he saw that the acid wasn’t devouring the bulb.

Once the acid collection was finished, he stored it into the last empty slot of his inventory.

’I didn’t find any blood core in the heart, maybe it’s in the brain?’

Feeling confident about his guess, he stabbed the swordstaff into the skull once again, using it to crack open the bony exterior.

Very viscous, nearly solid brain matter flowed out of the wound.

It repulsed him to no ends, but he toughened through the gag reflexes and began to prod around the skull.

"What are you doing?" The stealth elder asked curiously while looking around her tinted glass cage on his shoulder.

"You will see." Aaron said mildly, tossing a couple more logs of firewood into the campfire to keep it burning.

Just when he was about to lose hope with the search for bloodcore, he felt something hard near his blade.

Ecstatic, he fished it out.

He scooped out his proof of conquest, marvelling at a small red pulsing stone sitting on the swordstaff’s flat end.

Despite being buried under gore and mushed up brain matter, the stone appeared to be spotless.

Not a single drop of impurity was stuck onto it.

Looking at it gave Aaron a mystical feeling, like it contained a portion of the universe’s power.

Aaron looked at the blood core for a few more moments before picking it in his hands and standing up.

He felt nothing from it.

He tried to channel his mana through it but nothing happened.

He tried to absorb it but it showed no reaction.

He hadn’t tried to eat it just yet, but there was no way he was going to do that without any knowledge.

Aaron sighed, forming yet another pocket in his nanotech clothes before storing it inside.

Then he simply kicked the nightcrawler’s corpse into the burning fire, causing it to ignite instantly like paper.

The flames erupted, greedily licking the monster’s flesh, devouring it.

Earlier what used to be a small campfire now became thrice the size.

But of course, such volatile fuel wasn’t reliable because it would get exhausted in mere minutes.

’But... we don’t lack the fuel around here, do we?’ Aaron thought with a small smirk, his eyes scanning the area around him.

Heat was wrapping around him, shadows flickering alongside the flames.

There was no shortage of nightcrawlers in this godforsaken mushroom forest...

And Aaron planned to harvest them properly for all they were worth.

He walked away from the burning fire, leaving the warm solace of the light and willingly stepping into the world of darkness.

It didn’t seem like he was welcomed by the darkness though, as he didn’t even get to take a couple more steps forward before spotting a few more monsters creeping out of the shadows.

Nightcrawlers.

A lot of those.