Effect: Deadly basilisk poison in its purest form. Deals 2 damage per second to any victim and significantly reduces attributes. The duration of the poison depends on the amount injected. A full injection will be effective for 30 minutes.
Note: Basilisk venom is rumored to only have one cure, Phoenix Tears.
Note: These rumors are outright wrong, and the reports about its lethality are true, but greatly exaggerated.
“Heh, not bad! I’ll cut them out and bag them all! Not 100% lethal, sure, but even if you inject only 10 out of 100 charges, it lasts for 3 minutes. That’s 360 damage—pretty much lethal to any human,” Alex says as he excitedly but carefully starts removing all the fangs from the basilisk.
“The corpse looked like a bust at first, Alex,” Rishi says, inspecting the body, “but I found a few pieces of meat and some skin that are still unspoiled. Most of it’s unranked, so not even worth picking up. But some of the meat’s so far gone it actually raised the grade because of that. It’s similar to a bioweapon—we need to be really careful.”
After stashing all the fangs into his inventory, Alex takes a closer look at the rest of the corpse. I see… Let’s take what we can. I want to check out the rest of the chamber.
“It might take a while,” Alex comments before turning to Rishi. “You prepared knives, right? Since this was supposed to be your task? Give me one. I’m nearly immune to poison—I can extract what we need a lot faster.”
“Thank you!” Rishi says, genuinely relieved to avoid the grueling task of butchering the basilisk with his terrible physical stats. He tosses Alex a knife and adds, “Might as well keep it. It wouldn’t even work properly if I used it because of the requirements. Besides, I owe you anyway.”
[Butchering Knife]
World: Monster Hunter
Quality: Deep Blue
Type: Knife
Required Stats: STR - 8, PHY - 6
Durability: 50/50
Damage: 10-20
Effect: Can cut through nearly anything if enough force is applied.
Note: Handed out to new hunters by the Guild.
“Nice, I needed something like this! I’ve been using my damn [Sword of Pluto] to butcher things before… it worked, but the results weren’t exactly great,” Alex says with a grin.
Why do I have the feeling he never planned to use it himself? Alex wonders. Nah, I’m overthinking it… let’s get to work.
… … …
Beads of sweat roll down Alex’s face. It’s taken him 2 whole hours to cut out everything the system judged to be valuable. He had to use Nen, specifically Shu, to increase the cutting power of his [Butchering Knife] from time to time.
His final spoils:
- 7 pieces of [Basilisk Meat (Small)]
- 5 pieces of [Basilisk Meat (Medium)]
- 3 pieces of [Basilisk Meat (Large)]
- 1 piece of [Basilisk Meat (Huge)]
- 21 units of [Basilisk Skin]
- 4 units of [Rotten Basilisk Meat (Small)]
- 1 [Rotten Basilisk Heart]
- 1 [Basilisk Horn]
- 10 [Basilisk Bones]
“That’s huge!” Alex jokes with a smile, looking over his haul as Rishi returns to the corpse.
“Yes… it is?” Rishi replies, confused, wondering why Alex felt the need to point that out.
“...”
“Anyway, the skin varies between Light Green and Light Blue quality, and the meat’s even rarer, starting at Green-quality for the smaller pieces and going up to Blue-quality for the huge one. The Bones are just White-quality, but the Horn is Deep Blue as well! The heart, though, is Light Purple. I can’t believe we got so many rare items just like that. The rarity alone is insane, but I don’t know how to use these items just yet… maybe we can turn them in to Hagrid for contribution points? Might count, maybe before that, we ask Menchi,” Alex says, thinking aloud.
“Give Menchi the option to pick first, or I fear things may end badly for you. We’ll find out later. I’ve got some good news, though. I think I found a bunch of pipes leading out of here. If I read the walls right, all of them are behind doors that you’ll need to open,” Rishi says. “Also, the deeper parts of the chamber have some other doors. I think there’s more down there than what’s mentioned in the books, which makes sense. This place is supposed to be for the heir of Slytherin, and let’s be honest, you can’t achieve much with just a basilisk. Follow me and see if you can open them.”
Rishi tries to act calm, but the excitement in his voice is hard to miss.
Alex starts to grin, catching some of that excitement. What else is hidden down here?
They walk toward the deeper rooms behind the giant statue in the central part of the chamber, and Alex begins to open a door.
“OPEN!” His voice combines with Mustrano’s and he feels the door reacting.
As the sound of unlocking mechanisms echoes through the chamber, Rishi and Alex exchange a satisfied smile.
[The Castle is warning you]
“You see that too?” Alex asks, glancing at Rishi.
“Yes, I do… but I’m tempted to ignore it,” Rishi replies, a bit of defiance in his voice.
“Fine. Let’s go! Fuck the castle—I’ve never heard of it fighting anyone directly,” Alex says, shrugging.
Rishi pulls a stone out of his pocket and throws it into the room. It lands without issue.
However, the moment they step into the room themselves, an invisible force slams into them, knocking them back hard. Both of them hit the ground with a heavy thud, and another system message immediately appears.
You have taken 21 damage
[The Castle is warning you]
Alex winces as he notices Rishi bleeding from his mouth. Damn, he’s way less armored than I am and has way lower PHY too. I don't think he can handle much more of that.
“...I think it’s better to give up for now,” Alex says after a moment. “The door should close again, and besides me, there shouldn’t be many people who could enter anyway. We need a plan.”
Rishi wipes the blood from his mouth, and stuffs one of Menchi’s dishes into his mouth, and pauses for a moment. Then, with a calculating expression, he begins to speak:
“Let’s see…”