Chapter 447: A Poisoner's Work

Omilaena was having a good day, despite the screaming and thrashing. Maybe even because of it.

The others wanted fights and challenges, but all she really needed was time to think and enough raw material to work. As lazy as her time spent sitting and thinking might seem to outsiders, it had led to greater advancements than simply training wildly or killing enemies over and over. Yes, not really for her, but that would come in time so long as she boosted her partners.

Or in this case, random others. Hence the screaming.

Her project of the moment was definitely Physique in all its forms. It was a strong edge against all the E-rank cultivators, it was Kai's unexpected advancement, and it was Zin Nim's primary trouble. And as simple as muscle and bone should be, Omilaena still felt that there was far more she could learn.

She finished her musing and looked over the edge of the pit, where Cragrila was crying out in pain at the bottom. Her entire body arched upward as crystals pierced her skin from within, then it recoiled wildly in a shape the human body shouldn't take, shattering some of them. It had been like this for a little while, and as painful as it seemed, it felt like something was shifting as well.

Though she looked indifferent, Omilaena actually hoped that she hadn't miscalculated and killed Cragrila. It was easy to discount people from Deadwaste, but her experience with Kai had proven that they were far better raw material than most admitted. Cragrila might be a bit less impressive, but her accomplishments on such a benighted continent were impressive enough.

Suddenly all the screaming ended... in death? Omilaena lowered her goggles and took another look, discovering an intact soul within the completely still body. She hopped down to look further and Cragrila began to stir again, pulling herself up to a seated position.

"I feel..." Her voice was ragged from all the screaming and she coughed a few times. "I think it's over."

Originally the Krysali woman had been a boring enough example of her kind, but that had changed. She had dutifully been injecting liquefied crystal into herself in Omilaena's absence, so she had attempted something new. Now Cragrila's skin shimmered with a crystalline pattern and it looked like her fingernails, which had been torn off in the thrashing, were growing back as crystal. Her thin shirt was soaked in sweat, revealing the gemstone that emerged from her heart.

"Do you feel like you're about to explode into crystals?" Omilaena asked.

"Not... not anymore." Cragrila rubbed at the crystal set into her chest. "Was that a possibility?"

"Hahaha, of course not. But more importantly, take a look at your soul."

<

Name: Cragrila

Total Power: 441

Crystal Cultivation: 9999 (125)

Crystal Dantian (+10)

Acid Cultivation: 1000 (50)

Physique Level: D-0 (200)

Crystalline Blood (+20)

Soul Level: 6 (36)

>

The end result was a satisfying verification of Omilaena's theories. She hadn't been able to alter the fundamentals of crystal or acid cultivation, but she had added a Crystal Dantian and Crystalline Blood to her soul, and the ordeal had pushed the woman over the edge to D-rank Physique. Still weak overall, but much better than before and with room for growth.

"I... I'm a Diamond Crystallier." Cragrila stared down at her hands in shock.

That was quaint, but Omilaena smiled anyway. "If you keep it up, you can become even more."

"Whatever you want. Any injection, I'll take it. Any ordeal, I'll endure it."

"Your determination is admirable, but I think that's about the limit of what you can support now." Omilaena patted her on the shoulder. "If you figure out how to train those new aspects of yourself, you should be able to grow further. For a start, try doing crystal cultivation on your new dantian, but you'll have to figure out the details for yourself."

While Cragrila thanked her again, Omilaena hopped out of the pit. That was one successful experiment, but it was only a step forward in her overall mission. Her ultimate challenge would be to figure out Zin Nim's Blackblood Physique and find a solution, if one existed.

Figuring out crystal-integration had been based on theorizing about the sub-types of cultivation. Omilaena didn't have enough experience with Classes, and she had no basis for starting on whatever the Supremacy aspect was, but she was getting better at enhancing Physique and Soul. The problem was that Zin Nim's form already seemed to cover those things in full - this wasn't some idle experiment, it was something that had been developed over centuries on Cloudspire.

As she moved back through the camp, Omilaena ended up glancing over the other Krysali. They were worth maybe one cultivator squad, she guessed, and couldn't stand up to any of the heirs, much less patriarchs. Still, she could boost them a little if she needed more experimental subjects.

"Can you give me another syringe of qi?" Nirka appeared beside her, half-gasping as if she had been running.

"Alright, but this is the last one." Omilaena concentrated some qi into a syringe and handed it to her. The other woman clasped it thankfully, and more importantly got out of her way.

Nirka had tried to learn Cloudspire cultivation with the locals, so she was the control group. She hadn't had much luck, no thanks to Omilaena. Personally, she felt no real jealousy and didn't particularly care - if anything, it amused her to think about Kai banging the other woman. But Zin Nim's jealousy was all-consuming, so Omilaena didn't go out of her way to help.

No one else interrupted her before Omilaena reached her partner, who was cultivating inside the ship. She had always been least comfortable in groups, even when she fought during the revolution. Currently she sat cross-legged, focused on absorbing her qi into her body, though of course she opened her eyes and smiled when Omilaena entered.

"Hello, Omi. I'm not sure I've made any progress."

"This might not even be the right path." Omilaena sat down beside her and patted her knee. "It doesn't hurt you to saturate your body more, since you're just pressing up further against the barriers of your Physique rank. Something may come of that yet, given how Kai broke through suddenly."

"I doubt I can do the same. Can you test me?"

"Sure." Omilaena doubted it would be much different, but she still drew some blood from the other woman's arm.

For a brief time she had hoped that she could isolate the element of power in a person's blood and add it artificially, but it had proven too difficult: strength came from numerous elements thoroughly entangled with a person's body, not some single variable. That said, her futile attempts had made it easier for her to evaluate the level of strength in a tissue sample, for example comparing different Physique ranks.

Based on the materials from the archives, it seemed that Zin Nim would need to do something more than simply increase the concentration of power. Some Cloudspire Physiques involved absorbing new materials, and a surprising number involved tearing the body apart in ways that seemed counterproductive. But in the end, there needed to be some process of fusion, absorption, or purification in order to reach the full potential of the Blackblood Physique.

"I think... I would like something from each of you." Zin Nim spoke up quietly. "I'm not sure if I can absorb Kai's blood, but I would like to try. And if I do that, I want something from you as well."

"Oh really?" Omilaena immediately leaned into the other woman, eyebrows rising. "Anything in particular you want?"

"Something appropriate." Zin Nim managed to speak a line like that with a straight face. "I just... want to feel balanced. And it would be appropriate for our dual cultivation."

"I'm happy to give you some of my blood, and in fact I'll draw some right now. But I don't know if that will work: you have plenty of blood already, and it's charged with that black power, the problem is that it doesn't merge with your body fully."

"I don't know how to do that without destroying the strength of my skin. Maybe there's a secret to it... or maybe I went down the wrong path, and it can't be purified anymore."

"Don't give up so quickly. If we've learned anything, it's that there's more than one path." Omilaena finished drawing a syringe of blood, charged with her deepest chakra, and handed it over. "The work you're doing isn't wasted, you're just missing some final component. It's like water building up behind a dam, and the eventual flood should be impressive."

"Maybe." Zin Nim nodded, but didn't seem convinced, and looked more contemplative than cuddly, much less frisky. Omilaena accepted it with a sigh and kissed her before heading out.

Next she checked on their flower that communicated with Nymidria, but there were no new messages according to the dryads. Nymidria was nearly certain that their disease had spread through the barrier and the Verdant River sect would soon have a very serious problem, but they didn't know when it would be discovered. They couldn't check directly unless they wanted to implicate themselves.

After so much effort at subterfuge, it had actually worked too well. Idiot cultivators still hadn't noticed that their trees were dying. It was virtually certain that the disease would have zero effect on the Loam of the Gods - it was an Insanity, after all - but it could easily destroy the plants they were growing with it.

Just when Omilaena was beginning to think that she had no choice but to do unpleasant physical training of her own, she felt a surge of chakra. Apparently Kai was finally using one of his message seeds. Even though she told herself that he wouldn't use that method if something had gone seriously wrong, she planted her own seed with undue haste.

When the chakra began wafting above the natural flower, she looked through and was surprised to find that she could see not only Kai, but ruins around him. "Huh, I can kind of see your end. What do you need?"

"I could use your expertise. We should talk."

And then he held up, of all things, a bunch of those command medallions. Omilaena didn't care, it was as good an excuse as any.

.

..

.

A few hours of prep, a couple days of travel, and one quick fuck later, Omilaena lay back against Kai's chest in a happy stupor. He'd had obnoxious business to discuss, since he had somehow attracted peasant followers again, but she had insisted. She loved the raw need she could feel in him after they were separated, and without Zin Nim there it was a good time to be rough.

"So you're trying to make the surviving cultivators into an army," she said eventually.

"I don't know if it will go that far." Kai lay back with one hand on her stomach comfortably. "But anything that disrupts the shipments of corpses will impede their plans, whatever those are. It should draw more cultivators out of the defended areas into the deeper south."

"Well, it's your funeral. Or more likely theirs. What did you want with the medallions?"

"I thought you should examine them, see what abilities they have, maybe enhance them."

"I will when I feel like getting up."

"There are a few things in particular I'm worried about." Kai pulled one of the medallions from his spatial ring and turned it over in one hand. "These can explode, rather forcefully. That makes them good weapons, but I can't help but wonder: could they be triggered from a distance?"

"It'd be a huge weakness if they could." Omilaena took the medallion from him and experimented with it herself. "Typically, they shield against that sort of thing. A strong enough cultivator who knew the mechanism could potentially do it from a distance, but that would require so much power that they could just kill in other ways."

"Well, these things are a symbol of resistance here, so I want to use them. But I need to make preparations first."

Omilaena leaned her head back against him, content to be a working drudge for once. With these two, it was worth it. "Tell me what you want," she said.