Supreme Magus novel Chapter 3543

There would have been no clue about the purpose of the alchemical device if it hadn’t been left active. With a hum of mana and the whirring of gears, the machine produced what looked like a pill.

It emerged from a metal nozzle and gently rolled onto a silver bowl, where a handful of fresh alchemical pills lay.

"Toxin bullets." Trion recognized them. "We must have raided the building while the production of this batch was already underway."

"There are only a few here." Varegrave said. "The Alchemists must have grabbed the rest and come to fight us. Yet this room is too empty. Where are the ingredients?"

Lith found the answer behind the third door and luck had nothing to do with it.

"By my Mom, no!" Solus’ blood froze in her veins and the battle-hardened soldiers fared no better.

Her words went unnoticed, everyone was too busy cursing out loud or clenching their weapons to care.

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The room was over three meters (6’7") high, twenty meters (66’) long, and five meters (16.5’) across. Comfortable padded chairs were lined up along the room, with enough space between them to move comfortably.

It reminded everyone of a packed conference hall yet instead of richly dressed nobles there were naked people strapped to the chairs. Tubes went from bags of fluids and nutrients into the bodies of the prisoners via intravenous drips.

They all groaned and cried, their faces twisted in a perpetual grimace of pain and despair. Snot and drool covered their chests as they struggled to keep breathing. Yet none of that was as ghastly as the enchanted tap protruding from their abdomens.

Despite the Emperor Beasts’ care and ointments, the margins of the skin were red and inflamed due to the open wound. A shiny indicator over the faucets marked when the internal build-up of toxins reached life-threatening levels.

"Please, tell me this is not what I think it is." Solus clenched Lith’s arm, refusing to use Life Vision or access the Eyes’ data.

"I’m sorry, Solus." There was nothing else he could say.

Emperor Beasts had true magic, but that gave them no edge in a discipline like Alchemy. Even Kugoh, the best among them, had nothing of Hatorne’s genius and even after reading her notes, he had failed to find a way to synthesize the toxins without breeding the parasites.

On top of that, Hatorne had designed both the synthetic and bio toxins to self-destruct when exposed to air. It was hard to confirm any kind of progress when your creation dissolved in thin air before you had the time to examine it.

The only solution he had found was to breed the parasites inside a living subject. Once the victim was filled to the brim with toxins, they could be extracted and kept safe inside special vials like those Lith had used back in Kandria.

They weren’t easy to find, but there was little the black marker couldn’t provide if you had enough money.

Lith checked the room with the Eyes and discovered that each row of prisoners had been infested with a different parasite. Fire, light, air, and darkness parasites killed their host quickly, but once removed, the hosts would recover quickly.

Water and earth parasites reproduced slowly and their effects too were easily reversible once removed.

The anti-mana parasites, however, were a completely different beast.

They spread slowly, were difficult to remove, and once their numbers exceeded what a host’s mana could feed, they would drain the mana core directly.