The dragon's harem

The brider twitched once and died, quickly starting to freeze in the unforgiving cold. The fight had ended, and the monster was dead.

Arad took a few steps away from the brider, and Gojo looked back. “It’s over.” He waved his hand for Liliana and Haru to approach. They can’t stay here for long, since other monsters would start showing up.

Liliana approached with Haru, and the two stood there. One of them looked at the brider, and the other only gazed into the empty sky, as if seeking to understand something.

“Can we get its poison gland?”

Liliana was physically stronger than most humans, but she was still too weak here. Her main skill set lies in her command skills and siege weaponry. The next best thing she could use is traps, and sadly, she didn’t have any useful tools for that here.

It was sometimes strange and baffling to see her or Jack spawning traps in the middle of combat like magic, and many people couldn’t even wrap their heads around how those two could create traps like that in the middle of combat.

The answer was specialized tools, write releases, hook boots, and spools of oiled steel wires, and a lot of planning and training.

Liliana, for example, usually wore high heels even in combat, which didn’t make sense. Until one would realize what she had stored in those boots.

The heel worked like a nail gun and a sewing machine all combined into one and controlled by small pads wired to her toes. That way, she could run around and set wires on the ground at the same time.

Her right foot was usually prepared to set tripwires, and the left one was to nail spikes into the ground for whatever reason she fancies.

She also had loads of poison vials and spiked brews hidden all over her body. She even had a sack made from monster membrane turned into a small pouch and filled it with high-grade healing potions, then shoved it all the way up into her rear end. That way, she always has a full-health boon ready.

Activation was also simple, she either gets smacked hard enough to crush her organs, which will cause the sack to burst and heal her. Or, she’ll stab herself right where the sack is to heal, or… if she were paralyzed or badly injured, the sack would burst and heal her in a day, since the membrane is always getting broken down by the colon.

This was just the tip of what Liliana usually would have to augment herself and set her traps. But here, she had nothing.

Yog brought her butt naked right out of a bath, and even her emergency healing sack had already burst naturally. She was fully disarmed, and so, now she was looking at the brider’s poison gland, sack, and threads as her new tools.

Cutting the brider into pieces and extracting everything she needs would take a bit of time and expose them to more risk. Gojo didn’t waste a lot of magic burning the brider with lightning, but that didn’t mean they could just risk another monster attack.

On the other hand, it was hard to leave Liliana unarmed like this. Right now, she can’t fight effectively, and the best she could do in this fight was carry Haru back to safety.

With her raw power, she could try to engage directly in fights like Arad, but she isn’t fooling anyone. Arad is the only one crazy enough, and with a battle sense sharp enough to actually brawl with monsters, she was nowhere close to him.

That’s why, if she is to be useful with more things than just being a scout, she needs to get armed, and this brider promises to give her a small edge.

Gojo looked at her and then turned toward the brider. “Depends on how fast we could…” He froze, seeing Arad already hacking at the brider’s abdomen to pull the poison gland and sack.

He giggled. “Not wasting any time, let’s get to it then.” He conjured a knife from stones and threw it to Liliana. “You’ll help as well. Let’s get it done quickly.”

They extracted several things from the brider’s corpse, and to each was their use.

The poison gland itself could be boiled and used to create a lingering poison, and in some cases, even create an inert poison that requires an agent to activate.

In the brider’s case, the poison gland was a pair of organs like kidneys, each of which created a chemical, which would get dumped into the poison sack and mixed to create the deadly paralyzing poison of the brider.

Extracting them wasn’t hard, and now Liliana could create some lingering and inert poison.

The poison sack was akin to a bladder, and extracting it was much harder than the glands, requiring a delicate hand due to the thin membrane.

Sadly, even though the sack was big enough to carry liters of poison, it was now almost empty. The brider did try splashing Arad with its poison right before getting killed, so it was expected. Still, Liliana managed to get about a quarter of a liter of poison.

The fun part is that the poison was neurotoxin, where just one drop is enough to kill a hundred people, so a quarter liter was still too much poison to use.

That neurotoxin directly attacks the nerves and paralyzes muscles. But in high doses, it can paralyze the lungs and even the heart. It was a lot of fun, but sadly, any monster killed by it can’t be used as food, unless they want to spend a few days stuck in the toilet.

Of course, poison wasn’t all the fun things they got from the brider. Reaching up its back hole, they pulled a massive lump of white and sticky goo, which needs to be pulled apart, stretched, and woven into threads.

The brider’s silk was a lot of fun because while it was extracted like dough, when stretched, it quickly dries into durable threads, and then, it can be turned sticky by either rubbing it with water or poison, both of which Liliana now had a lot of.

She’ll probably dilute the poison with water and use it to slow monsters down. It would be more useful in that way, because it won’t be potent enough to hurt their stomachs if they end up eating what she slowed down.

Then, it was a bit risky, time-consuming, and extra, but she had Arad and Gojo break the brider’s lower fangs for her. The ones in the human mouth were too small to be useful, but the fangs in the brider’s lower mouth were at least two inches long, which was a lot.

Two inches was huge, especially for something that’s going into someone else’s body. She’ll use two to create war picks, and two for something else.

That was all that Liliana could use and extract with their current lack of tools, but this was enough to allow her to fight. Not today, but starting from tomorrow. She’ll need time to craft, plan, and prepare those new toys of hers first.

It was time for her to gear up.