Volume 5 - CH 2.10

However, a fact that they actually end up eating something that they have filled with their own poison literally moments before capturing and devouring it was something that I never thought about much until now, but now that this has been brought up, I started ruminating over that particular matter. Yes, snake venom being actually digestible does make a lot of sense, because if it was not like that, then snakes would have also been dying from their own poison after eating the prey that they have previously filled with it to the brim.

However, that is how the snakes of my old world worked, and it is entirely possible that the snakes of this world can be build a little bit differently, but essentially, if their primary method of hunting their prey is through the usage of poison, then I think it would be safe to assume that they are more or less the same as the one that were present on earth, because the possibility of the snakes from this world being this much of an alpha predators that they would have two separate kinds of poison: one for the purpose of hunting and the other for the purpose of protecting themselves from other predators is extremely unlikely.

「Is that so? I am amazed that you happen to know so much, because that is a really specific type of knowledge.」

「I, on the other hand, am not surprised at all. As expected of master, your knowledge truly knows no bounds.」

Roxanne and Sherry were fawning over how much I knew about snakes and, but the truth is that this piece of knowledge was really nothing that special. Moreover, In the modern times where I was originally from, I am pretty sure that something like that would have immediately been branded as the so called 「useless knowledge」 that would not be of use to anyone aside from those who would want to flex their knowledge of random animal trivia at a party or some other social gathering. And besides, that one piece of info about snakes was pretty much all that I knew about them, and that was it. I did not know how to handle poisonous needles or stingers, and I most certainly did not know how to safely remove the venom from the body of the bitten victim without making the situation even worse for them as a result, and that kind of practical knowledge could have been pretty handy on this floor and against the enemies that we had a chance of encountering, but since I do not know how to do that, then the best option for me here is to not dig myself an even deeper grave, because I can already imagine the kind of stares that Sherry would be giving me if I started to boast that I know how to handle poison and poison needles, only for it to turn out that I actually know jack shit about it at the most critical moment possible. So instead of acting like some kinda redneck who stubbornly refuses to stop believing that he is the center of the entire universe, I decided to play my cards straight here and ask Sherry about everything that I might have not known about poison, poison needles and the like in hopes of actually learning something useful about it or the way of how to use it and utilize it either in fusion or some other fields.

「Sherry, if I may, then would you tell me how exactly there Poison Needles can be used?」

「Of course, master. It would be my pleasure! So, what do you want to know?」

「Pretty much everything, but let us start from a slightly different angle: can these Poison Needles be utilized in combat?」

「Yes, they can, and in fact, they can be pretty effective against ordinary monsters, since if you throw such a Poison Needle at them, then you are going to be able to inflict the poison status on them quite easily, and I also heard that some of the Adventurers tend to utilize them in such a way that during the encounter with the Floor Boss they are throwing them at him to inflict him with poison and only then do they proceed to engage them in a regular battle, because that method, which has become widely accepted as one of the basic strategies of monster fighting that has the potential to make certain Floor Boss encounters much easier and shorter than they could have been otherwise.

「So Floor Bosses can also be poisoned in the same was as regular enemies can?」

That piece of info really surprised me, because if my knowledge of modern RPG games has taught me anything, then it would be that most if not downright all of the Bosses in video games would be resistant, or downright immune to most harmful status effects, including poison.

「Normally doing something like that would have been relatively difficult, but if all six members of a full Party would start throwing Poison Needles at the Floor Boss at the same time, than that would have resulted in a considerable accumulation of poison in said Floor Boss for sure.」

「In other words, poisoning the Floor Boss id definitely possible, but you would need a considerable amount of Poison Needles being thrown by a full Party of people, so outside of the probability of inflicting poison upon the Floor Boss has to be relatively low, correct?」

If we assume that a full Party of six people would start throwing two or three Poison Needles at the Floor Boss all at once, then that would give us from between twelve to eighteen stacks of poison and twelve to eighteen chances for that status ailment to proc in the first place, so if you compare these numbers to the ones that a Party of two or three people would be doing on it, then those numbers would really be not as impressive as the ones achieved by the full Party, and I can already guess without even having to ask Roxanne or Sherry that Poison Needles are going to be quite costly, and going bankrupt just so that we could poison a Floor Boss is definitely not something that I would recommend.

「Do these items have any other special uses besides that one we discussed just now?」

「Yes, there is, the one that is used mainly against the kind of monsters from outside of the Labyrinths that do not attack anyone who just happens to wander into their line of sight outright, but rather only do so when they are provoked, or if they feel that their territory has been threatened by trespassers. Now, since the only purpose of the Poison Needle is to inflict poison onto the target that it has been thrown at, such monsters are not going to recognize it as an actual attack that would provoke them to attack the one who threw the Poison Needle at them, and that exploit can give travelling Explorers and Adventurers the edge they need to defeat such monsters roaming the wilds even quicker than usual because of the poison that is going to repeatedly damage them in tandem with the damage from normal attacks that would then be inflicted.」

So, there was actually such a trick that works not only against the monsters in the Labyrinths, but against the ones in the overworld as well? In tha case, does that not make this one item kinda strong in various ways?

「Ah! Now that you started talking about it, I remembered that I used to play with that when I was a little kid.」

Roxanne raised an enthusiastic voice at Sherry’s commentary. So she used to play with such a dangerous thing when she was a little kid? Honestly, I…. I do not know what I should be thinking about it.

「You used to play with it, Miss Roxanne?」

「Not often, but there were a few occasions when I had the chance to. Nowadays though, I think that only aristocrats and wealthy people can afford doing something like that purely as a hobby, because Poison Needles can be quite expensive after all.」

Yeah, that makes sense. After all, Poison Needle is not just a toy or an ordinary commodity that can be obtained just about from anywhere, but a material from a dangerous monster obtained by delving into the depths of the Labyrinth, so of course it would cost a lot of money. If the Guilds buy even something as cheap and common as Kobold Salt, then something useful like Poison Needle is definitely going to cost a hefty amount of money, so naturally it would be a huge waste to simply be using these items as playthings to be throwing at the monsters in the wilds.