[Voidknight Ascension] Chapter 55: Poison. it’s What’s for Dinner

Author Note:

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“That’s the bad news,” Sam said, leading Matt out of the tent and into the misty night. “You see that dark shape over there?”

Matt could make out the edge of the island clearly in the low light.

In fact, he could make out everything very well. Disturbingly so. Without further prompting, he turned around in a full circle taking in the tents, the boulders, and realizing just how tiny this “Skyshard” was.

I wonder if I have freakish, undead level strength?

His attempt to pull up his Status sheet was interrupted by Sam’s cat sauntering out of the tent with a small pouch in her mouth. She walked right up to the pair of them and dumped out some strange contents onto the ground.

The first was a cluster of red leaves with interesting designs. They looked suitably Fantasy for Matt’s tastes, though he doubted they were anything but pretty weeds here.

There couldn’t really be anything as simple and straightforward as a health potion, right? He’d have found one by now. With all the loot he gained, at least one must have been in with the rest of the gold and jewels.

The law of averages practically guaranteed it!

And yet, no poison antidotes that would have spared him, no health potions to delay the inevitable.

And if you had gotten them, you probably would have died a different way. Face it, Matty, you owe your life not just to Sam, but also to that poison that slowly whittled you down. Change one thing, and everything else changes.

Stupid butterfly effect.

Matt stooped down and picked up a bunch of those red crinkly leaves.

[Red Herba]

(Alchemical Reagent) (E-Class)

(★Common)

Rejuvenating herbs with an abundance of Blood Mana, while in their raw state they will recover HP the effect is greatly diminished due to the number of impurities in the leaf.

Color me wrong, Matt thought. There actually were HP-improving items here. If only he had—no, he wasn’t going to go down that road.

Forge ahead, Matty, don’t look back.

Besides, the [Red Herba] wouldn’t do anything for him now. He couldn’t recover HP normally, and he guessed healing potions no longer worked on him, either.

That didn’t mean they weren’t useful, just not directly for him and his undeadness. Everyone else around him needed standard forms of healing.

Presuming none of them were an altered Lifestate like him. He wasn’t sure what was going on with Raiko. Maybe she was a ghost, and he wasn’t the only odd one out?

In a way, not needing health potions was a good thing. It made him more valuable, because he didn’t need to take up resources. In fact, his hunger was just a sign that his HP was low.

He pulled up his Status sheet and was glad he wasn’t a classical rotting corpse, because his jaw probably would have unhinged and his eyes popped out.

His HP had substantially increased.

As it was, Mages had pathetically small amounts of HP. He had, last time he checked, around 58 HP. Now, with the [Undead Fortitude] bonus, he had a ridiculous 195. Given that his current HP was a laughable 3, it explained his severe hunger.

Perhaps that wasn’t much in the grand scheme of things, or compared to higher leveled physical classes, but for a level 3 Mage, that was huge.

He probably had more HP than anybody here, unless Sam and his ghost friend managed to level up several times more than he had.

Which was hard to believe. Every fight would leave them with less HP than before, and it endangered them tremendously. There was no telling if you would get a permanent injury, like losing a leg, breaking an arm, or even twisting your ankle from the next fight.

The question was, was it an upfront hefty bonus or would it continuously increase in large amounts over time? He was keen to find out.

Although to do that, he’d have to fight monsters.

Shivering in revulsion, he hoped he would never see another spider again. Small or giant.

That was one of the worst things about living in Hawaii that nobody ever told him. The only thing worse than the spiders everywhere was the army of highly aggressive centipedes.

He looked at Sam, then Sam’s cat. Please don’t smell delicious, please don’t smell delicious.

Matt took a tentative sniff and… was pleasantly surprised that despite the rain he could smell them both quite well and that neither smelled like steak and potatoes or something equally delicious.

Noticing the attention, Komachi perked up and went over to Matt for some pets.

Okay, Matt thought, no cravings for human flesh or brains. Good. He reached down and patted her back gingerly, just in case he had freakish strength.

Which he did not. In fact, based on how his hand was easily pushed away from Komachi’s back as she arched it, he felt uncomfortably sure that the cat’s Strength was higher than his own.

[Spud Beans]

(Item) (F-Class)

(★Common)

Part bean, part potato, these are either chock-full of potent poisons or deliciousness. For you, perhaps neither, perhaps both.

Matt wondered what everyone else saw when they examined the [Spud Beans]. It seemed slightly specific just for him. What else would that last line mean but something to do with him being able to eat poisonous things?

“Why does food have rarity on it?” Komachi asked, puzzled.

“That doesn’t bode well,” Raiko said. “Might mean greater buffs, might mean… as you get higher in level, you need higher rarity food. That’s not even touching on the implications of its Class rating either.”

“Doesn’t matter for now,” Sam said, eyeing the dirt covered bundle. “Food’s food.”

Just as Sam reached down to the bundle of [Spud Beans], Matt smacked it out of his hand. When Sam gave him a curious look, he blurted out, “They’re poisonous.”

“How can you be sure?” Sam asked.

“I’ll show you.” Matt scooped up the beans and shoved them into his own mouth. As soon as he did, he could feel the poison in them seep and filter into his mouth.

It was like biting into a juicy peach, except poisonous. Only, for Matt, poison was good and instead of melting the insides of his mouth, he began to recover a surprising amount of Health.

From just a handful of [Spud Beans], Matt gained roughly 25 HP, and it kept going up.

It was hard to describe. The closest thing to his mind was eating fizzy candy like pop rocks. Of course, the dirt and bits of rock were something he had to spit out… but they were surprisingly zesty and flavorful all the same.

At least my sense of taste has adapted to what I need to eat, Matt hoped.

“You’re eatin’ em. They don’t seem poisonous,” Komachi said. “Unless it takes time to kick in? Why you do ‘dis?”

Matt’s mind naturally filled in the rest and cleaned up the informal speech, too. Not that he could blame her. She was a talking cat for less than a week. She spoke better than toddlers.

Why are you doing this to yourself, if they’re poisonous?

Raiko was staring intently at him.

Even Sam, whom he generally considered not the brightest, was looking warily at him.

Matt hesitated. He could lie and make up some kind of excuse about a random poison-related trait that let him literally eat poison, but he doubted that’d trick Raiko. And probably wouldn’t even convince Sam.

Or he could just tell them the truth, and hope that the group didn’t throw him off the island.

Better to come clean and get put out now than to stay and have somebody finds out my new secret once I’ve put down roots.

If it didn’t go over that great, he could also share his loot. After all, they did save his life. If he had somehow managed to transform into a necram on his own… he’d be immortal but forever trapped behind that door.

Besides, he’d probably survive the fall from this height.

Holding his hands gingerly up, Matt said, “I have a bit of a confession to make….”

He told them everything. All the events that had taken place after Darren left him for dead, the ogre, the treasure, everything. For once, he held nothing back and held himself utterly open and vulnerable.

If they were going to take advantage of his weakness, he’d rather get it over with now. Rip the Band-aid off and move on.

But to his immense surprise, they didn’t.

“You poor bastard,” Raiko said seriously.

“Dang, you a zombie?” Komachi asked, bouncing on her paws. Was she excited, or was that her second attempt at dancing?

“Obvious question,” Sam said, “but any lingering hankering for brains or flesh?”

“I could go for a steak,” Matt said. He gave a small laugh. “No, Sam. I don’t think I need to eat flesh, it’s just that… I can. But it turns out I can also eat poison to recover my HP. Upside is, I also seem to learn a good amount of stuff about the thing I’m eating.”

Everybody looked relieved but Komachi, who probably didn’t even understand the question. Not that she was stupid, maybe, but likely that the concept of a person eating somebody else was too foreign to her.

He pointed at the remaining [Bean Spuds]. “They’re obviously poisonous, but what they do is necrotic in nature. They wither and decay any organic matter that ingests them. If we had access to an alchemy teacher, or maybe even a poisoner, we could probably make some pretty effective toxins from them.”

“None of us have Professions,” Raiko admitted miserably.

“Or you could eat them and recover your HP,” Komachi said. The look she gave him said she somehow knew how low his HP was.

“Oh right, you’re a Cleric, aren’t you?”

“Pocket healah!” Komachi boasted proudly.

“What happens,” Sam began, eyeing Matt in worry. “If my cat casts [Regen] on you?”

“My HP isn’t high enough to test it out,” Matt said quickly. “But, going by general lore from Earth, it’d probably hurt me instead. You know, casting healing spells on the undead and all usually kills them because of the whole undead part.”

“I… can’t heal everyone?” The Cleric started to groom herself excessively.

Matt felt moved to soothe her. “Maybe you can pick up a poison spell and lob that at me?”

That lifted her spirits. She seemingly forgot what she was doing and just left that drumstick of a leg stuck out in the air.

Wait, drumstick? No, Matty, no! She isn’t food!

Sam, playing the role of protective parent, scooped Komachi up and held her against his armor. The cat cuddled up to him for a moment before slipping into his armor like some sort of furry liquid.

“You mentioned loot,” Raiko said, eyeing him up and down.

Matt did his best not to curse himself. This was a new chapter in his life. He could be a new person, better, happier, more undead-er. Hoarding wealth wasn’t the way to win over Sam and Raiko, and he realized that he wanted to stay with them.

Not just because Sam had saved his life, and he had some weird edge-of-death fever dream about Sam being a personal angel that was trying to save his life, but because he had already seen what it was like to be solo in this world.

And Matt was smart enough to realize that he was not cut out for that life.

“Yeah,” he said, opening his Inventory. “Quite a lot of stuff, neat looking gems, equipment, and a bunch of these strange coins. I couldn’t grab everything. My Inventory isn’t big and it can only hold so much, but if you’d have me, I would like to share the treasure with you.”

“Have you?” Sam asked, confused.

Ah, Matt thought, now that the tables have turned, you’re not going to be the amiable beach bum I thought you were, are you? Fair enough, I probably deserve it.

“He means if we let him stay,” Raiko explained, frowning.

Sam looked utterly confused. “Are you going somewhere? Why wouldn’t we stick together?”

“So long as you don’t injure anyone intentionally,” Raiko said, her tone full of nothing but compassion and kindness. “You’re welcome among friends here. Some across the shattered Shard might regard you with suspicion, but no one is a stranger to change any longer.”

Sam still looked a bit confused. “I carried you out of there. Never crossed my mind to leave you behind.”

Matt clenched his jaw against the odd welling-up of emotion. Was it truly that easy for Sam to accept somebody like him? Not just as his former boss—who hadn’t always been kind to him—but as an undead abomination.

The man acted like it was of no consequence! He could have roasted me over the coals, leveraged everything I have just to stay with them a little longer…. Even Raiko, practically a stranger, is willing to accept me.

As Matt stared, nonplussed, Sam clapped him heartily on the back and ushered him toward one of the boulders where a small unlit campfire was made.

It finally felt like he found a home.