At first, Jason’s luck wasn’t all that good. While no more spiders ambushed him, there weren’t really any herbs along the way, either. This was honestly to be expected. After all, even if this was the path less traveled, it wasn’t the path untraveled so others would have picked anything at the side of the road.
It is only once he gets into the next danger zone that things start to appear again. Even then, it is only the lowest of herbs. That and a bunch of fruiting deer. A strange body horror version of a deer. Their antlers look like branches with a few fruit growing on them. The type of fruit is random and not even internally consistent. The same deer could have a raspberry, apple, and a banana at the same time.
The only problem with them is that they aren’t fruit. The looks are only skin deep and under that are massive tumorous growths. A nasty defensive measure that burst when threatened, spraying a large area with corrosive blood. The only good thing about them is that they are generally peaceful. In fact, this area was a danger zone purely because the fruiting deers leader had managed to get past the third bottleneck and kingdoms tend to mark any beast with power greater than the average as a danger.
It was in this area, next to a fallen tree, that Jason found what he wanted. A trio of small brightly colored flowers. In an area bloated with herbivores, such delicate flowers existing in the first place was honestly quite odd. That is until Jason examines them.
{Peaceful Rest Petunia
Description: A beautiful flower with a secret. The petals contain a mild muscle relaxant.}
Jason snorts, this isn’t exactly what he wanted, but it would do in a pinch so he pinches the flowers off as close to the flower as possible. The rest of the plant did have a few alchemical uses. He just didn’t want to deal with that. As is, the petals need only be refined by heating them to extract the poison. A task that a campfire is more than capable of handling.
With the three flowers in hand, the rest of the day moves along quickly enough. With the day over and the campfire roaring, Jason goes to do just that. Of course, something needs to hold the poison once extracted, so he uses one of the small wood cups he had picked up for just this sort of occasion. The only thing Jason is missing is something disposable to smash the flowers up with and an oddly shaped rock steps up to fill the task.
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Now ready to play around with it, Jason ends up settling down for the night a bit early. Sunset is still an or so away but he can’t help himself. Plus, he doesn’t exactly want to be playing with poison in the dark. First things first though, dinner!
Though that has more to do with having to prepare his tools. After all, trying to warm a wood cup over the fire isn’t exactly going to go well and so needs to be soaked first. Now with that out of the way, Everything is ready and so Jason begins.
The first step is to extract just the petals. A little harder than usual as a petunia’s petal situation is one solid mass. Still, Jason isn’t exactly too bothered about getting every last bit of the poison, so uses a bit of a rough chop to remove the petal structure from the rest of the flower head and then extracts the pistils. Then the petals all go into the wooden cup.
With them now prepared, Jason uses the odd shaped stone as a pestle and grinds the flowers into as smooth of a paste as he can manage. Next goes in just enough water to cover the paste. He isn’t 100% certain that the poison in the plant is water soluble, but petunias are in the same family as tobacco, which is so he decides it should be fine.
Another mix with his rock and the brightly colored solution goes near the fire to warm it up for a few minutes. Not too hot, just enough to help extract all of the poison from the flower goop that is settling on the bottom of the cup. Once that is done and the mixture has had a little bit longer to settle, Jason pours just the now clear water into his metal drinking cup. One quick analysis later and everything seemed to work as the liquid showed up as a diluted normal rank poison.
From there, Jason adds in the rest of his spider venom and after a quick stir, downs the mess in one gulp. This, of course, doesn’t go quite the same way that it did with just the venom. Right away, the System cares about this because the poison is meant to be activated by consumption. The only catch is with how diluted the poison was.
The poison definitely wasn’t meant for bringing down something as big as a human and might not have even worked if something like a rabbit ate only one of the flowers. So as much as the System might want to keep an eye on Jason, it doesn’t really have a leg to stand on and soon enough the poison and venom are both released into Jason’s being without the limits of biology holding them back.
Now all that remains is the hard part. Convincing the System that his body really should be treating venom and poison as the same thing. In theory, that should be true as long as everything stays mundane. Of course, Jason would also like to convince the System that mundane poisons and such just don’t work on him, period. But that would be a bit of a reach, so for now focuses on how the paralysis venom and the muscle relaxant poison are acting within him.
