CH44: Lord Jormungandr!
***
CH44: Lord Jormungandr!
Aside coming back home to pay my respects to my parents, I also had another reason for coming back.
I wanted... no, needed to summon the {World Serpent} from the blessings of Lord Jormungandr here in Pryford town.
I had unlocked all both blessings of Lord Jormungandr a few days ago.
*
[Blessing of Lord Jormungandr.]
-Poison Master
-World Serpent
*
I had a good grasp of what {Poison Master} did.
[Poison Master]
Type: Spirit-type Blessing.
Remark: Lord Jormungandr is the progenitor of all poisons. He loves granting beings the power of poisons. Host has earned his interest. He wonders what Host can do with the power of poisons
Effect 1: Immune to ALL your poisons.
Effect 2: High resistant to ALL poisons.
Effect 3: High understanding of poisons and poisonous substances.
-
The interface was clear about its effects.
The third effect was actually the most important effect in my eyes. I have a good understanding of poisons.
Thanks to {Poison Master}, it felt like I gained a systematic knowledge into the general characteristics of poison.
All poisons in the world can be characterised by this system and hence, it was possible to deduce the effect of any solitary poison I came in contact with.
But that wasn't all.
I could also deduce the likely effect of mixing different types of poisons together to create a more complex poison.
It was like cooking in a way. I already knew the tastes and flavours of the individual ingredients so I could guess how a meal would taste after I combined all the ingredients together.
It was this effect which fed into and somewhat created the first and second effects, which were the one who stood out at first glance.
{Poison Master} feeds back into my special constitution to create a body adaptable to poisons. My body could alter itself based on the understanding of the poison introduced into it.
I was immune to all the poisons that I create with my hand because I would have an almost complete understanding of any poison I create. In that case, I would know how it worked and how to nullify its effects.
If a poison I create is introduced into my body, if I wanted, my body functioning could shift in a way to annul its effects based on my already complete understanding of said poison.
This was how {Poison Master} made me immune to all poisons I create.
On the other hand, thanks to the systematic knowledge from the blessing, I can deduce the effects of any poison I come in contact with, this includes poisons I'm poisoned by.
If I were ever poisoned, my body would use the knowledge now ingrained in it to form a countermeasure to the effects of the poison.
If this doesn't annul the poison entirely, it would at least buy me enough time to come up with a solution.
This was where the second effect, High Resistance to All Poisons, came from.
For a blessing of a somewhat mystical entity, it worked in a scientific manner.
If I didn't know better, I'd think Lord Jormungandr was a legendary pharmacist who had created a universal system for learning about poisons.
What I especially like about the {Poison Master} blessing was the fact that the knowledge it gave me could be used in Herbology.
As I said before, poisons are just one side of the same coin with medicine.
Aspirin is in fact a poison to numb the brain's sense of pain. However, it is used as medicine for headache.
Hence, Aspirin can either be a poison or a medicine.
In that light, ALL poisons in the world can find use as medicine. It was just a matter of creativity.
If a solitary poison doesn't work or its effect are too potent to use alone, I can combine multiple poisonous substances to cancel out effects I don't want until I get the efficacy I want.
{Poison Master} not only made me a master of poisons, but of medicine as well.
My body shivered in excitement at the thought.
*
This brings us to my second blessing {World Serpent}.
-
[World Serpent]
Type: Incarnation-type Blessing.
Remark: A snake incarnation born from Lord Jormungandr's dominion.
Effect 1: Summon an incarnation with a world in its stomach.
-
I figured the {World Serpent} would summon a snake-incarnation of Lord Jormungandr. In that case, the snake should have a bit of the Spirit's abilities from its dominion.
I couldn't help recalling the bio the Interface gave me on him and some other info I gained from recieving his acknowledgement.
-
[Lord Jormungandr]
Title: The World Serpent.
Role: Patron
Spiritual Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
Remark: The serpent so big it swallowed a world into its belly. It is the progenitor of all poisons. It is the Patron Spirit of all snakes.
-
Lord Jormungandr was a neither a good or bad Spirit. It's main interest was in the study of poisons. It just so happened that he grew so big that his world could no longer contain it. So, it left the world to venture to other places.
However, it continued to grow bigger and bigger that it was a world onto itself.
As you'd expect, he made himself many allies, but a lot more enemies. People were subconsciously afraid of anything different or they couldn't understand.
Jormungandr was a new breed of Spirit. It was vastly different from most Spirits who took on humanoid or known quadrupedal beast forms.
It was the first 'snake' known in the existence and so the Spirits found his form revolting. The few allies it had, could look beyond this and see the person within.
However, most others couldn't and they tried to kill him.
Jormungandr had no choice but to defend itself with its poisons, which was an unknown method at the time.
He ended up killing a lot of people.
People began fearing him, leading him to earn his place amongst the most powerful and respected Spirits.
Jormungandr later returned to his home world to leave his progeny to grow and propagate its knowledge on poison.
While none of his progeny grew to his immense size, they managed to break the confines of their world and spread to other worlds... bringing with them the spread of snakes and the use of poisons.
The Jormungandr's progeny noticed that reptilian creatures were more talented than others in the use of poisons so they focussed their attention on teaching it to them.
Eventually, this changed the landscape of nature. Previously easy prey became difficult to deal with thanks to their poisons.
Many powerful entities couldn't seat still and eventually sparked a war to wipe out all snakes and poison users.
This war eventually escalated to a war involving these entities' patron spirits against Jormungandr who had to defend its progeny.
Some of the enemy Spirits had the idea of destroying the problem at the root. They decided to destroy the world that gave birth to Jormungandr and the dominion of snakes.
Fortunately, the Spirit found about their plans and returned to the world before they arrived. However, he knew he couldn't face all the Spirits alone while defending his home world.
So, leveraging his immense size, Jormungandr swallowed the world to defend it with its immense body.
After doing this, he realised a new way to teach his enemies a lesson they would never forget.
For daring to scheme to attack his home world, he would retaliate by also attacking theirs.
Jormungandr went to the worlds under the dominion of the enemy camp and began swallowing them one after another. He would digest the Primal essence from devouring those worlds and feed it to his home world, which he kept safe somewhere within his body.
He did this many times until his enemies learnt the error of their ways. They no longer had the will to fight.
The last straw which broke the camel's back was the arrival of the entire Household of Loki. A group of powerful Spirits no weaker than Jormungandr himself.
And when they worked together?
Their power was unrivalled.
The war ended with the enemy camp conceding defeat.
Jormungandr spat out its home world, but it was now more powerful than ever before. Similarly, the Spirit had also grown strong. It had even earned a new legend which would become the symbol of its power.
Jormungandr, the World-devouring Serpent.
Or the World Serpent for short.
-
The Patron Spirit's brief history was sent to my mind along with his blessings. It gave me an idea what to expect from its incarnation.
I expected the incarnation to be a snake, obviously right?
It should be good with poisons. In that case, it should be a big help when developing new poisons or medicines.
But the trait I was most interested in was the world it would have in its stomach. I was excited to find out how big it would be.
Immediately after getting back to my house within the elite camp a few days ago, I excitedly tried to summon the incarnation, but then, I received a notification from the Interface.
[Notice: Do you want to summon the {World Serpent} incarnation of Lord Jormungandr.]
[Y/N]
[Alert: Once summoned, the incarnation is bound to you.]
[Alert: The grade of Incarnation summoned, and thus its world, is dependant on the summon gate opened.]
[Alert: Summon gate is dependant on the level of energy present in area of host.]
[Confirm: Does Host still want to continue with summon?]
[Y/N]
I resolutely clicked on No.
The ambient Energy (mana concentration) in the DoomMane Guild was high, even in Landrose city which had a high mana concentration compared to everywhere else in Bayveth. However, it wasn't the place with the highest mana concentration that I knew.
So, I declined to summon the incarnation until now.
My second goal of coming to Pryford was to go to the place with the highest mana concentration I knew.
The Mana Vein hidden away by my parents!
After confirming Navia was asleep, I entered the study and locked the door behind me.
I opened the secret passageway hidden behind the bookshelves and made my way down into the labyrinth tunnels.
Eventually, I arrived at the door which insulated the Mana Vein from the world.
I walked through the door with excited steps.
I didn't know if it was just me, perhaps because it's been a while since I'd been here, but the mana concentration seemed to have increased.
The Vein Core also looked a little more... vibrant?
There were certainly more Mana crystals than I remembered. The previous Low-grade stones had grown to Mid-grade Mana stones.
Within three years, the value of many mana stones have increase from 1,000UC (Low-grade) to 10,000UC (Mid-grade).
Indeed, the value of Mana Veins increases the older they are. Unfortunately, humans didn't have the patience, and perhaps lifespan, to wait for that to happen.
Mana Veins were mined as soon as they were found.
Fortunately for me, this was my private mine. I could leave it to grow as long as possible. Besides, it's not like my personal consumption could make a dent on it anyway.
I opened my Interface and selected to summon the {World Serpent} Incarnation.
[Notice: Do you want to summon the {World Serpent} incarnation of Lord Jormungandr.]
[Alert: Once summoned, the incarnation is bound to you.]
[Notice: High energy environment detected. Does Host wish to sacrifice this environment to summon the highest Supreme-grade Incarnation?]
[Y/N]
"What is the benefit of the Supreme-grade incarnate?" I asked.
I had to see if the benefits would outweigh the price.
Alas, things weren't going to be that easy.
[Answer: Unknown!]
"What?! You don't know anything?!"
[Answer: The information about the Supreme-grade incarnate was not uploaded into the Interface's knowledge bank as it was not expected that the Host would unlock its conditions. Host was never expected to be able to summon more than a Top-grade Incarnate.]
I fell into a dilemma. I wasn't sure what to do.
"Then, what is the benefit of the Top-grade incarnate?"
Even if the Interface didn't know anything about the Supreme-grade incarnate, there was nothing stopping me from deducing some clues from the benefits of the other grades.
[Checking... Please Standby...]
[Checking failed!]
[Access denied!]
"Huh? Why? I thought you said this was the highest grade you had access to. Why is it denied now?"
[Notice: Interference from Patron Spirit, Lord Jormungandr, detected.]
[Lord Jormungandr has closed off access to benefits of each grade until Host chooses a grade to summon.]
[Notice: Lord Jormungandr's eyes are on the Host. Patron Spirit is watching with interest.]
[Message: Life isn't that easy, boy. There are times you have to grope in the dark.]
[Message: What will you do? Will you risk the benefit in your hands for an unknown power? Or will you play it safe and keep the benefit in your hands? Now decide, boy!]
I felt a tyrannical aura from the message.
The aura released from a mere message was enough to leave me stunned. It made me wonder how powerful Jormungandr really was.
It felt strange to me.
Loki was the head of the household of Loki. He should be the strongest in the household. However, I didn't feel anything from him when we spoke before I was sent to this world.
Was he really the strongest in the Household? Or did he perhaps have a better control of his strength?
I shook my head and brought my mind from my thoughts.
I looked at the message again.
"You're my Patron Spirit. Why are you making things difficult for me?" I sighed wryly.
However, in that moment, I had made my decision.
(To be continued...)
AUTHOR'S NOTE.
What do you think he decided?
Would he take the risk?
Do you see Leo as a risk taker?
What do you think?
See you in the next chapter!