Chapter 746 Milking Poison
"They don't, what are you? An idiot?" Jack stared back at Arad with an even more dumbfounded face. "People usually think of milking poison."
"Why would you call it milking then? Shouldn't it be poisoning? No, wait…That's a different meaning." Arad thought about it for a moment.
"Well, I don't need the poison anyway. It's readily available… I need something else." Jack smiled.
*****
The next day quickly came, and Arad found himself standing back in the lab early in the morning with half the students screaming, all hidden at the end of the room, and Matilda was laughing her guts off in the middle of the class.
Arad looked at the table in front of him. In a small jar was a large black and yellow spider.
Lucia stared at them, "As Alchemists, you'll most likely need to harvest some ingredients from monsters and animals. Especially when they are rare species hard to come by, you'd better learn to keep them as pets or familiers and harvest what you need occasionally. It's the same as how humanoids learned to keep farm animals."
Arad lifted the spider and stared at it for a second, seeing her running around the jar, seemingly in panic. [This stupid human! Get me out. I'll bite those fat fingers of yours!] She didn't know that he could understand her, as he was a druid.
He shook the jar like it was a cocktail.
"What are you doing?!" Lucia growled, "Don't abuse the spider! They are rare and expensive." She shouted at him.
[What is this human thinking?!] The spider barely stood back. [I'll bite him twice, no! Three times.]
Arad shook the jar again, staring at the spider.
"What did I just tell you?!" Lucia glared at him.
"I don't like this spider. Can we throw it out?" He said.
"NO!"
[Why throw me!]
Arad turned toward the spider, glaring at her with glowing purple eyes. "I only need some of your poison for the class. You're not the one I'm after, as you're too small. So behave, and I won't eat you."
Staring at Arad's eyes, the spider realized she was talking to a dragon, not a human. He was listening to her all this time.
[Sorry, please don't eat me.] She stopped running around.
Arad put the jar back on the table and sat down. Lucia immediately started explaining what they'd do, from how to harvest poison to how the sting feels like a bee sting and how to avoid it.
"I thought you'd be happy to be thrown out, freedom and all." He looked at her.
"Aron! Who are you talking with?"
"The spider."
"Focus on the class and stop fooling around. You're the one getting hurt when it bites you."
"Okay."
The spider turned toward Arad. [Freedom? I only hear prey birds, hunters, and death. I want to live here.]
"Hmm…" Arad stared at her.
[The teachers provided us with a terrarium the size of this room, and they even provided us with live bugs to hunt. We've built a spider heaven, and the only thing we need to provide is our poison. The teachers are gentle, so we don't mind them, but we hate the students as they are rough.]
Lucia finished the course and stared at everyone. "Gently pull the spider in your jar out. Don't worry. They are used to people and won't bite as long as you move slowly and don't squeeze them too hard. So handle them gently."
Half the class stared at their jar, unwilling to even try.
"MOOOOO!" Matilda roared as jumps up, her finger puffing up as the spider rolled on the table. She got stung right on her fingertip.
^That sounded like a cow…^ Arad turned toward her for a second, then noticed Selina putting her head on the table and playing with the spider jumping on her arm.
"You okay?" He looked at her.
"Spiders… better than humans." She replied. Living alone in her closed room for the majority of her life, she had made friends with some spiders who lived in the corner. She wasn't afraid of bugs. In fact, it was as if her feelings were reversed between humans and bugs.
Arad opened his jar and the spider walked out on her own. He extended his hand and lifted her up. The spider immediately freaked out, thinking he was about to crush her, and started biting his finger, but her small fangs easily bounced off his scales.
"Don't worry, I'm gentle and can control my strength well. To a degree." He said.
^Put me down! I don't trust the way you said that! I'll do everything on my own!^
Arad laid the spider down and took the glass tube the teacher Lucia provided them.
"Do you all know basic barrier magic? If not, I'll cast it for you now, but you should pay attention in magic classes, or read on it in the library to learn it." Lucia started walking between the students and watching them either cast the barrier or ask her for help. As she expected, Arad, Matilda, and Selina managed to cover the tube entrance on their own with barrier magic.
"Put the spider's head near the tube's mouth, and it'll bite. You should get a drop or two of clear posion. Don't wait for more than one drop if that's what you got first, that'll stress the spiders." She explained.
Matilda barely managed to milk her spider, Selina did it with ease as her spider didn't even resist. The students were divided into two halves one succeeding and one failing, except Arad.
Lucia stared at him with a dumbfounded face as he held for the tube for the spider, and she bit the barrier on her own to drizzle the poison in. How is he doing that, she couldn't understand. The spiders tolerate the teachers and allow them to milk poison, but this was the first time she saw one of the spiders milk itself.
Today was a sunny spring day, and the heat in the lab quickly rose. One of the students reached toward the window, pushing it open.
"Don't!" Lucia gasped, lunging to close the window as fast as possible.
FLAP! FLAP! From the window, two crows flew in targeting the spiders.
Crows are smart birts, they got used to seeing the spiders brought to the lab and occasionally wait outside on the building roof for it. Lucia had made the mistake of not warning the students to keep the windows closed, or those birds would attack.
What Lucia forgot, is that she has at least one predator in the class.
SPLAS! A drop of blood splashed on the wall as Matilda lunged from her chair. She bit one of the crows mid-air and landed on Lucia's desk, claws extended her ears flipped back. She growled, snapping the crow's spin in half in her jaw that already took the shape of that of a tiger.
She dropped the body on Lucia's desk and started licking her lips and paws as she looked around, growling. "There was a second bird, where did it go?" She quickly saw a feather on Arad's face.
"GRWAA!" She growled, lunging and landing on his table, but barely missing the poor little spider. "My bird!"
Arad looked away. "What bird?"
"You are it! I was going to hunt it, give it back." She growled.
One of the students looked at the crow on Lucia's desk, approaching to get a better look.
Matilda immediately turned around, roaring at him. Her voice shook the whole class, causing the windows to vibrate. That's a tiger's prey, and they are really protective of their food.
Lucia slowly walked toward the window, her hands shaking as she closed it. ^I saw it. He wasn't as fast as yesterday…^ She turned toward Arad with a puzzled face.
^The crow flew straight toward his spider, but in the blink of an eye, he moved his head in the way and swallowed the crow whole like it was a small piece of chicken.^
As a dragon, just like Matilda being a tiger, they are used to mostly using their heads in hunts as their jaws are the main weapons. Out of instinct, Arad and Matilda retaliated at the crow with bites.
^I want to go home.^ Lucia slowly walked to her desk and sat down, seeing Matilda still there, eating the crow.
"We're in school, not in your tribe so get some manners on!" She growled, pulling her hand and erasing both the crow and its blood from the desk with a single wave.
Matilda slowly walked toward her seat with a sad face.
"Since you all finished milking your spiders and nailed the technique a bit, we're going into a joined class in the monster zone to capture demon spiders and milk their poison." Lucia smiled, trying to her mind out of what she just saw. This class is driving her insane, and she would rather not deal with them, especially Arad.
Arad looked at her. ^Demon spiders. The ones Jack wanted me to milk silk from… the poison is quite cheap to get, but the silk is rare due to how hard it's to get from the spiders. But since it's extremely hard, durable, and conducts mana extremely well, it'll be a perfect pair for his mana crystal implant plan.^
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