Fabre in Sacheon’s Tang

Jeokwol had my big sis on her back, and we were hanging from Cho as we chased after the woman.

The woman in armor didn’t seem to find the armor heavy at all; she was sprinting at full speed with it on.

‘Is that some kind of Magic Treasure too?’

The most common misconception people have about armor is that since armor is heavy, of course anyone wearing it will be slow.

But armor is a form of equipment that distributes weight evenly across the entire body.

Even if you actually put on armor, it doesn’t slow a person’s movements that much.

You can tell that just by looking at insects wearing armor.

Even friends like stag beetles or rhinoceros beetles, with thick, solid shells, are incredibly agile when they fly.

However, no matter how well the weight is distributed, it would be hard to keep running like that.

Even if the weight is spread out, you still feel that weight in full, so while you can burst into speed in short movements, running continuously while wearing armor requires a lot of stamina.

So of course I couldn’t help but think the woman’s armor had to be some kind of Magic Treasure.

From what I’d heard from Zihwa, Magic Treasures were items you could attach passive or active skills to, like in an RPG.

If it had a skill that lightened the weight, then it wouldn’t be impossible to wear it and run like that.

Feeling impressed, we were fiercely chasing the woman from the sky while the human-race cultivators chased her on the ground.

“Stop!”

“Stop right there!”

It was in that instant when the cultivators behind her shouted loudly for her to halt.

A small light began to sparkle on the woman’s wrist.

Her wrist gleamed with a blue glow.

It was only a small light, but it shone distinctly in the darkness.

It looked like light spilling out from something like a bracelet, and for a moment, the woman’s running steps faltered.

Her stride slowed slightly as she checked her wrist.

That single instant of hesitation divided her fate.

The end of that instant of hesitation was ruin.

It was a very brief, truly subtle hesitation, but that fleeting hesitation must have been a huge opportunity for the cultivators behind her, because they instantly closed the distance.

The cultivators were using some kind of movement art that felt more like a shrinking-the-ground technique than simple light footwork; whatever they did, the distance shrank in a flash.

Soon the man at the very front barked out a shout and fired a fireball from his hand.

“The lord may be eating this, but this won’t be enough to kill it! Karmic Fireball!”

From the man’s fingertips, a blazing ball of fire formed and shot rapidly toward the woman’s back.

The woman was shocked by the sight and rolled her body to dodge, but the fireball suddenly curved and followed after her.

‘Hey! I haven’t even checked yet—if she gets hurt, that’ll be a problem!’

Whether it had some kind of heat-tracking function or not, I was startled by the fireball that moved to follow her and hastily fired off a gust of wind.

Gun Hye-rin had told me not to step in unless it was a venomous creature, but I couldn’t just let her take a serious hit before I even confirmed it.

—Siiiing.

—Boom!

The fireball struck by the gust of wind exploded in a spot perilously close behind the woman.

From the blast, the woman tumbled forward, and the fireball’s flames spread wide in all directions.

She avoided a direct hit, but as the flames spread everywhere, they licked at her body with flickering tongues.

She’d probably suffered burns, but that was fine.

With Moji and Soji around, that much could be healed quickly.

I immediately asked Cho for help.

‘Cho! Fly past, just grazing that spot there!’

‘—Chururup. 『Got it, Dad!』’

Zihwa had said to only step in if it was a venomous creature, but I’d already stepped in, and I couldn’t just sit back and watch anymore.

I’d been wondering why they were chasing her, and it seemed they were trying to feed her to their lord, so if I pretended not to see, she’d probably get dragged off and turned straight into a pill.

I quickly dove down with Cho, just as we were about to snatch the woman up from the spot where the flames had cleared and shoot back up—

The woman who should have been where the flames had receded was nowhere to be seen.

‘What!?’

Did she have some kind of instant-movement method that let her escape in a flash?

In that baffling moment, something glittered amid the smoke and ash.

In the place where the flames and smoke had scattered, something shining caught my eye.

I focused my keen sight on that glittering object, and what emerged from the spot where the flames had vanished was a snail the size of a fist.

A single snail with a beautiful shell, black and orange mixed together, came into view.

‘Could it be a snail spirit creature!?’

I had my hand out to save her, and when I realized what she really was, I felt a faint twinge of disappointment.

Because most snails are non-venomous creatures.

But just as I reached out to grab it—

I realized that the operculum sealing the opening of the shell was unusual.

The structure that blocks the opening of the shell in gastropods like snails and conch is usually called an operculum, and this operculum wasn’t a solid piece—it was covered in small scales.

‘Where have I seen that kind of operculum before? Oh!?’

My internal venomous-creature encyclopedia flipped rapidly through my mind with a shrrrrk, and in an instant, the snail’s identity flashed into my brain as if it had been driven in.

An operculum layered like scales.

No, a gastropod.

Among all gastropods, there was only one kind whose gastropod foot had scales like that.

‘This guy! It’s a scaly-foot snail!’

The scaly-foot snail was a gastropod belonging to the {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} Neomphalina group, in the family Peltospiridae, whose English name was Scaly-foot gastropod.

A legendary snail that lived at hydrothermal vents in the Indian Ocean at depths greater than 2,400 meters, right next to volcanic zones.

What I’d mistaken for an operculum was actually the ironclad scales covering its gastropod foot, a metallic armor created by the only creature on Earth that formed armor made of pyrite and magnetite.

The reason these creatures looked so unusual was because of their main habitat.

Their habitat was the hydrothermal vent zones of the deep sea.

To protect their soft, vulnerable foot, to shield themselves from the hot hydrothermal fluids, toxic chemicals, and predators,

they directly create their shell and scales out of the iron sulfide they ingest.

‘It really was worth coming to the Cultivation World! A scaly-foot snail spirit creature!’

Joy welled up in my chest that it had been worth coming to the Cultivation World.

Of course it did, because that thing was truly a fantastical venomous creature.

First of all, most snails have venom in their salivary glands.

That’s common to gastropods in the conch family, the whelk family, the volute family.

They possess a venom called tetramine.

Tetramine poisoning symptoms include photophobia, eyelid tremors, diplopia (double vision), headaches, dizziness, and nausea.

In severe cases, you can get tingling in the hands and feet, muscle paralysis, and difficulty breathing.

The reason people say you should remove the salivary gland when you eat conch and things like that is exactly because of that.

But that scaly-foot snail fellow has even larger salivary glands than the others.

Since they live near deep-sea hydrothermal vents, not only is it hard for them to find food, but just surviving isn’t easy, and for them to live, they need a process that weakens the toxicity of the strong chemicals flowing out from the deep-sea vents.

That’s where bacteria come in.

They’re bacteria that reduce the toxicity of those chemicals, and these bacteria live in the scaly-foot snail’s enormous secretory glands.

Because of that, they’re far more poisonous than other gastropods.

Is that all?

This guy has another kind of poison as well, and that other poison is its armor itself.

The iron sulfide that makes up its armor is extremely toxic, so this guy was a very clearly venomous creature with two different poisons.

On top of that, all we knew was that they lived in groups near the hot crater at 2,400 meters in the deep sea, and nearly nothing was known about their habits, nor could you even dream of raising them.

Two thousand four hundred meters below the surface.

Right near a hot vent area where the temperature could soar to 400 degrees in an instant, they lived like tightrope walkers—how on earth were you supposed to catch kids like that and raise them?

That was why, in my previous life too, they were called a fantastical venomous creature.

Because keeping them was something you could only ever dream of, they were called a fantastical venomous creature.

With one of those standing right in front of me, how do you think I felt?

I quickly snatched the guy up and said,

“As expected! A venomous creature!”

And as I shot swiftly into the sky, the cultivator at the front who had launched the fireball raised energy in his hand and shouted.

“Who are you! Who dares covet the city lord’s Spirit Pill material! Karmic Fireball!”

A guy who shouted the name of his spell when attacking like a newbie.

We were probably invisible to them anyway, wrapped up in Big Sis Jeokwol’s powder, but the moment he shouted the word karmic fire, I gathered energy in my fingertips and fired it down onto his palm.

Earlier, his flaming sphere had acted like it was tracking a target, so I thought it might track us even if he couldn’t see us.

—Boom!

The gust of wind I fired slammed into the energy he was gathering on his palm.

As the energy condensed into a sphere, the flames exploded from his grasp and scattered in all directions.

“Gaaaah!”

“Uraaagh!”

The sparks that sprayed over him and the ones around him.

They all screamed in every direction and fell into chaos.

We calmly flew high into the sky and beat a quick retreat away from them.

‘Good work, everyone. I’ll gratefully take Scaly off your hands.’

***

We moved far enough away that they wouldn’t be able to chase us.

Since magic was a field I didn’t know all that well, I had to be on guard.

Because they might be able to track us down.

We’d gotten farther away from the city and now had to figure out how to get to White Night City again with the talisman gone, but being able to obtain a scaly-foot snail was worth the trade.

『“It really was a venomous creature!”

“Did you manage to rescue it?”

“Big Sis Jeokwol covered us and hid us, and we snatched it up in an instant and ran, so they probably have no idea who stole it.”

“You’re that happy?”

“Well, So-ryong has always been like that. By the way, does this Cultivation World have anything like, say, Ten Great Venoms or something?”

“Ten Great Venoms?”

“In the Central Plains, the ten most venomous creatures are called the Ten Great Venoms. Zihwa is one of them too.”

“I don’t think I’ve heard of that? Anyway, why are you asking?”

“Because if they did exist here, So-ryong would go around trying to catch them, so I wanted to ask in advance.”』

I was happily explaining things to my wives as we flew for a long stretch.

“Look at this fellow. Look how lustrous he is.”

As I licked my lips, a cautious voice reached my ears.

“Um, excuse me...”

Spirit creatures usually speak through cries, or the ones without vocal organs transmit their thoughts directly, but this one was unusual in that it had a voice.

If it was a snail, it should have had no vocal organs and should have been sending its thoughts.

“Oh, right. Is there something you want to say?”

Was it a polite one?

Earlier it had been dazed from surprise, but maybe it was going to say thank you for saving it—that was what I thought.

But then it suddenly said something strange.

“Elder, I-I think there’s some kind of misunderstanding... My cultivation realm isn’t that high. That fire earlier, too... I only did that by using a Magic Treasure.”

Without being asked, it started listing off its personal details.

“Ah, I see.”

“Yes, yes, and also, I... I do have poison.”

“Oh! I know!”

“You... you know?”

“Of course! That makes you even better.”

“...”

Scaly confirmed again, as if to make doubly sure I knew he was poisonous.

When I shouted in excitement that I did, the conversation cut off for a moment.

Then he started to sob and finally burst into tears.

“E-Elder... um, the thing is. Huaaah... P-please spare me. I don’t taste very good, and my cultivation realm is low, so my energy isn’t that strong either... Hueeeh... I want to live... I don’t want to die...”

This guy seemed to be under the impression that I was going to eat him.

Hello, this is Erhut.

I’m sorry to have to say this.

Something came up that requires me to go down to my hometown this weekend, so I won’t be able to post an update this Sunday.

I’ll try my best to write on the train, but I’ve become someone who can’t get any writing done without my Rakuraku bed, so I’m not sure how well it’ll go.

I ask for your understanding, and I’ll see you on Monday.

Sorry for the inconvenience.