Pandora Unchained B1C74: Toxic Metabolism

Note: I edited this chapter after posting because the initial chapter didn't quite mesh with my portrayal of Sorin. For one, while Sorin looks out for the common people, he's not completely altruistic. He yearns for vengeance and truth and wouldn't easily give up on that. For another, he's very aware of his own body and would notice something like a rapid breaking of the silver seals in his body while not in an intense combat situation.

I hope this change is well received. 

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Given Sorin's resistance to poison, the river water flowing through the aqueduct was minimally harmful to him. That all changed when he began circulating the Ten Thousand Poison Canon to absorb poison through his skin, directly drawing it into his blood and mana.

Thirty percent. Forty percent. Fifty percent. Sixty! Sorin rapidly drained one section of poison by replacing his stone-melt poison. He excreted the old poison through a trickle of blood into a flask that he placed on the aqueduct's stone wall.

Having finished the purification, he wasted no time jumping into the next section and repeating the poison absorption process. "You should be careful of how much contamination you take in," warned a priest who witnessed Sorin's antics. "Corruption is a dangerous poison. Even us priests have difficulty neutralizing it in high doses."

"Many thanks for the warning," said Sorin. "I know what I'm doing."

"Hope bless," said the priest of Hope, who continued past him downstream of the river.

Having gotten rid of the meddlesome priest, Sorin began the absorption process once again. Unfortunately, he hit a wall in his efforts seconds after he began. This was because his blood had reached its limits and found it difficult to assimilate additional poison and transform itself.

Left with no better choice, Sorin ignored this limitation and forcibly absorbed the poison into his body. This brought the poison well above his tolerance limit but still succeeded in purifying the section of the aqueduct.

By the time he reached the next section, the poison began to affect Sorin. Blood-red veins had appeared all over his body. He ejected what poison he could into one of the many barrels placed on the river's edge, but doing so also removed what was keeping the corruption in his body in check. Fortunately, he still had Lorimer to help him deal with the situation.

While fully ridding himself of corruption was impossible, he was able to concentrate it at certain points in his body, forming small blobs, cists, and blisters that Lorimer devoured to enhance his cultivation. The rat's aura grew increasingly menacing as he broke through to the tenth level of blood thickening.

Unfortunately, that's only a part of the corruption, thought Sorin. A second part remained inside his flesh and bones, striking a tenuous balance with the existing poisons in his body. Mercifully, the same priest of Hope that had warned him appeared then and placed his hands on Sorin. His body was engulfed in a white fire that burnt away the pustules and excess corruptive elements.

"My Lord has instructed me to stay here and purify you periodically," said the priest with a smile. "But there are limits, Sorin Abberjay Kepler. Very few human beings exceed them and live to tell the tale."

"Don't worry," said Sorin. "I value my life very much. But I can risk a bit of long-term contamination and delays to my cultivation to limit the corruption. Otherwise, there's no telling how many people will go mad from exposure in the winter."

He moved on to the next segment, once again absorbing more poison than he could bear. His organs were showing early signs of failure, and puss oozed out from cracks on his skin as he used his body as a conduit to eject the poison from the river.

"Do you not care about your own life?" asked the priest as Sorin concentrated his corruption into pustules once again. "Do you not care about the truth you seek?"

"Bite my shoulder and draw blood," said Sorin to Lorimer, ignoring the priest. "I'm going to force a large amount of corruption back out and into you." He did so, and the priest followed up by purifying him a second time.

With Lorimer and the priest's help, Sorin completely absorbed the third segment's poison and moved on to the fourth. Unfortunately, it became impossible to eject the poison completely. Moving became difficult, and Sorin danced on the edge of unconsciousness.

This was his limit, Sorin realized. This was where he stopped. Four segments is already more than enough, thought Sorin. The mages and Mr. Primrose will take care of the rest.

As was his habit, he performed a full inspection of his body. Organ failure is imminent but is being kept in check by my natural regeneration. Mana and blood contamination is high, but my poisons are currently maintaining a balance. Recommendation: absorb additional poisons to eject corruption. Nurture the hemotoxin in my body to promote its growth and eventual role as my ninth poison.

Having confirmed his vitals, he moved onto his meridians. Though they were strained from all the poison coursing through his body, they were still elastic and free from perforation. Corruption had begun settling into them and was forming preliminary blockages, but those were nothing he couldn't handle with the Ten Thousand Poison Canon.

Sorin also performed a cursory inspection on his Conception Vessel. He wasn't expecting any changes since he wasn't in combat, but he was surprised to see that many of the seals had cracked open. Is it not combat that breaks open seals but exertion instead? thought Sorin. Or maybe challenging my limits like I've been doing with this poison?

The smart thing would be stopping now, but if opening the Conception Vessel was possible, that changed the equation. And not just for opening his own but also for understanding how the seals were opened in the first place.

Few were like Sorin, who could actively monitor their condition. Physicians rarely opened their Conception Vessel, likely because opening it required pressure that very few encountered while practicing medicine.

Sorin cautiously lowered himself into the fifth segment and once again drank in its poison and corruption. As the strain on his body mounted, so too did the strain on the silver seals until, finally, a seal cracked open, followed by a second and a third, sending streams of silver energy that poured into his blood and mana, alleviating his condition somewhat and allowing him to go just a little further.

Once the fifth segment was done and the priest and Lorimer finished their purification, Sorin proceeded to the sixth segment. There, his hair turned white. And in the seventh segment, his eyes took on a sickly green tinge. By the eighth, his bones grew brittle, and three of his ribs fractured. The corruption became unmanageable even with the priest and Lorimer controlling it.

"Sorin Abberjay Kepler, you have done enough," said the priest as Sorin pulled himself out of the water. "If you stop now, it is still possible to use a wish to save yourself. At the very least, you can preserve your life and continue as a mortal physician."

"You're saying that if I stop now, I'll be able to live, but I'll be crippled?" Sorin asked the priest.

"You had hope of coming out unscathed if you'd listened to my advice earlier," said the priest in a stern tone. "But you declined my advice, so here we are. Life is the only thing you can hope for now. For giving Hope to so many lives, I believe there's a good chance that my Lord will grant such a request."

Sorin knew the risk to his life was real, but he'd known it when he'd decided to continue despite reaching his limits. By pushing himself, he'd unlocked all but one last silver seal, and his instincts told him that breaking this seal would be a game changer and reverse the entire situation.

"There's no difference between living and dying if I go back to the way I was before," said Sorin, shaking his head. "So I'll continue as before."

"A human cannot withstand additional poison," said the priest of Hope. "This is not my opinion as a priest, but a revelation from my lord."

"Then I'll have to become something more than human," said Sorin.

Though he was willing to risk his own life for a breakthrough, others were a different matter. He grabbed the fattened Lorimer, who was now brimming with corruption. "You've eaten enough for now. If you keep on going, you'll lose yourself to Violence." He tossed the rat to the priest, who caught it with a deft hand. "Keep an eye on him, will you? I've got work to do." Then, laboriously, he dragged his body over to the next segment.

The tenth river segment felt like a bucket of ice water, fresh from the Mages Guild, courtesy of the many ice mages practicing their magic in the warm summer weather. As a physician, Sorin could tell that his body was on the verge of shutting down. His mana was showing signs of losing control, and it wouldn't be long before he lost consciousness and never awakened.

Yet he also felt the strain in that silver seal and the resonance with the rest of his body. The Ten Thousand Poison Canon trembled with joy every time a seal broke, and likewise, the corruption in his body quivered in fear.

Sorin, therefore, urged the Ten Thousand Poison Canon to drink in the corrupted poison in the river, knowing full well that should he fail, there would be no saving him. His consciousness began to fade when, suddenly, he felt something inside him shatter. He grinned as he felt his gamble paying off, and the last silver seal broke. Mana flooded his conception vessel, dyeing his blood and mana with a potent silver hue.

The fresh injection of mana filled Sorin's body with warmth and vitality. His blood was reinvigorated. His mana thickened. His body underwent an earth-shaking transformation.

Corresponding to this change, a vast whirlpool spread outward from his body, expanding to the river and adjoining earth and sucking out a familiar substance – the poison corrupting the outpost's water supply!

Poison poured into Sorin's body without reservation, pushing him to the brink of failure a second time. But the sudden influx and his thickened mana broke the balance in his body, forcing his eight fused poisons to suddenly fuse with the ninth.

The moment it fused with his poisonous mana and blood, Sorin instantly became aware of its properties and the way to cure it. Furious Blood Invasion Poison. One Star Poison. Produced with the mixed blood of Blood Invasion Bats, Furious Demonic Badger Mice, and Crimson Blood Rats.

Sorin wanted nothing more than to inform Mr. Primrose about this critical information, but before he could do so, he felt something else in his body shatter. His mana flow once again changed as his belt meridian was forced open, completing his meridian network. All primary meridians and the seven out of eight meridians permitted by the gods were now fully functional, bringing Sorin to the peak of what a blood-thickening cultivator was capable of.

This power… thought Sorin as he reached out to the vortex surging from his body. A stream of information appeared inside his mind.

Heroic Ability: Toxic Metabolism.

Description: All toxins beneath the tolerance limit can be metabolized into mana and life force. Efficiency depends on poison compatibility. Excess energy will be stored as lifeforce that will gradually dissipate unless utilized.

Sorin also vaguely sensed that thanks to Toxic Metabolism, the rate at which he could ingest and absorb poisons through the Ten Thousand Poison Canon had greatly improved. It was still limited to absorption by touch or with liquid as a medium, but now, it was so fast that it would only take a second to retrieve all his poisons from a corpse or even a living target.

But that doesn't at all explain why I'm able to absorb so much poison so quickly, thought Sorin. Does my breakthrough have a grace period? Whatever it was, he didn't question it. He immediately hopped out of the purified water segment and into the next toxic segment. The river water was detoxified in record time, as was the poison in the drenched soil leaching through the cracks in the stone-covered aqueduct.

The infusion of poison was too much for Sorin to handle. Fortunately, any excess was quickly converted to life force, which he immediately used to heal the damage to his corrupted body and meridians. As for the corruption itself, his nine fused poisons were much more potent than before. By collaborating with the priest who was purifying his body without reservation, Sorin was able to exterminate the bulk of the corruption at the expense of his mana, which was quickly regenerated by converting excess poisons absorbed from the river into mana and life force.

Sorin rapidly cleansed five more segments in quick succession, after which he started feeling bloated. The corruption in my body is gone now, and so is the excess poison. My life force, on the other hand, is too concentrated. In a sense, I'm 'full' and won't be able to continue until I finish metabolizing the remaining poison in my body. I need… I need to stop.

It was then that he realized that he'd caught up to Mr. Primrose and the mages. The entire group was looking at him slack-jacked. Brimming full of poison, Sorin collapsed to one knee. "I'm fine," he said, holding up his hands when Mr. Primrose tried approaching him. "My blood is poisonous. Don't… don't let anyone approach me. I'm fine. More than fine."

Mr. Primrose didn't take his word for it and inspected his body using his powerful poison mana and spiritual force. "The river segments on the way?" he asked after confirming his condition.

"All cleaned since my starting location," answered Sorin between breaths. "Only the less contaminated segments remain."

"Then we'll continue," said Mr. Primrose. "You rest up, and we'll get your companions to come guard you while you recover."

What seemed like seconds but was likely minutes later, Sorin heard Stephan calling out to him. Lawrence tried approaching him, but Daphne cursed him out and summoned a wall of flame to hold him back.

Sorin's head was swimming. His body was fine, but the spiritual strain was too much. He could barely understand what was going on. But his friends were there, so he knew that he was safe.

Having done everything he could for the outpost and unable to move a single finger, Sorin collapsed on the cobblestone road. He was naked, as his clothes had completely disintegrated, but he wore a contented smile on his face.

***

In an alley not far from where Sorin had fainted, a priest of Hope was grinning from ear to ear. Reverse psychology worked wonders for certain kinds of people and often led to miraculous outcomes.

"I told him a human couldn't withstand that much poison," said the priest with a chuckle. "But a hero can. They're all about exceeding human limitations." The rat in his hand squeaked and demanded to be released, but the priest kept a firm grip. "Are you indignant, little rat? Are you upset at your current situation?" The rat squeaked an affirmative.

"Well, forgive me for not caring one whit about what you want. You're more stubborn than Sorin is, and that's saying something. You say you want freedom, but is that what you really want? Freedom would only bring you years of starvation. Even if you did manage to break through, an Envoy of Violence would surely have come to claim you. The so-called freedom you'd obtained would evaporate like a fine morning mist."

Lorimer squeaked out words of defiance. "You're asking how I know that? I'm sure you've guessed it by now. You might begrudge my little game, Lorimer Prescott Rockeater, but you'll eventually realize the truth: Companionship with Sorin Abberjay Kepler isn't a guaranteed bet, but it's the best hope you'll ever have. Trust me when I say that when it comes to hope and fate, no one knows better than little old me."

The priest then placed the rat on the floor and watched it scramble away. "How terrible it is not to have anyone appreciate your genius. If only the other Seven were a bit more intelligent. It would make this game far more interesting to play." Unsurprisingly, the rat turned around when he heard his words and squeaked out a question. "Who am I? I'm just a normal priest, obviously. No one of consequence." When Lorimer squeaked out that this was clearly nonsense, the priest chuckled. "How could I possibly be anything more than a normal priest, little rat? That would be a clear violation of the Eight Evils Pact."

The rat squeaked uncertainly, then dashed off towards the group of adventurers circling the physician who claimed he wasn't one. "This project is far more entertaining than I expected," muttered the priest. "I wonder how far he'll get before his time runs out? "

The priest had many projects, but they all had one thing in common: their lifespans were dreadfully short.