Rebirth: The Shadow Of Greed

... "Shit... Poison!"

Z felt his body lose strength as he fell on the floor, his body limp with Addison and his goons surrounding them. As he was petrified by the poison, he started having a flashback to his time in the rebellion.

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"Z, this is my second in command, you can call him Mr Smith, though he is more commonly known by his other name, Poisonmancer."

X made the introduction briefly, as she guided Z around showing him the ins and outs.

"For our boss to bring you here and introduce you to me personally, you must mean something to her huh."

The lanky man standing close to 2 meters tall, Mr Smith with a full head of black hair wearing a loose lab coat replied with a smile. He was a man who spoke forwardly, although many people like to mince their words, he believed in straightforward honesty.

X started to blush, as she turned her face away from Z

"Stop it... Z is a very important asset to us!"

"Hahahahha, I'm only joking boss, look at you losing your wit over something like that! I guess the boss of the resistance is still a young girl at heart."

Smith replied with a hearty chuckle. Making fun of his boss was one of the few p.l.e.a.s.u.r.es in his life.

X stomped the ground as she looked over to Smith giving him an angry look.

"Okay, okay! So how can I help you, boss?"

Smith resigned and stopped poking fun at his boss who was getting upset.

"Remember that experimental procedure we worked on with Hirgram?"

"Ahh, the poison immunity body! How can I forget? The man is now immune to almost every poison including most of my own. Is there another labra... I mean, volunteer for the procedure?"

The Poisonmancer started getting excited as he focused his vision onto Z.

"Does Z have a self-healing manifest too?"

Poisonmancer turned to look at Z sizing him up from top to bottom.

"You kinda look a little scrawny... but you'll do, are you good at taking pain?"

"Wait, don't get too far on your own. He does have a self-healing manifest, but he has more than that. He can replicate any manifest that he comes in contact with."

X stopped the excited Poisonmancer from heading too far off the track.

"Well.. that changes a lot of things!"

Poisonmancer started speaking with an increased excitement in his voice going up an octave or two higher than usual.

"First things first, how many abilities can you replicate at one time?"

"At my current level, I can currently do 3, any more than that and I have to discard my previous manifests."

Z replied earnestly, quite honestly, being here in the resistance had opened his eyes to many truths about the real world. He was excited to participate and learn as much as he can.

"Interesting, let's see.. so how does it work? Is it by touch? or just being near someone? can you replicate my manifest?"

Poisonmancer excitedly asked, while trying to get more information out of Z.

"Mainly by touch, right now my slots are at 2, so I suppose I can replicate your manifest now."

Poisonmancer extended his hand out to Z, offering his hand and waiting to see Z's manifest in action.

Z extended his hand and held onto Poisonmancer's hand.

'[Antidote & Venom] Manifest acquired. Remaining available slots '

Zero's senses were dialled to a 10, he felt weird feelings he had never felt in every part of his body. His palms were sweaty, dripping liquid as he held his palm out, occasionally the liquid that dripped was green, occasionally it was blue. He felt as if he was tripping, he felt like his body was super heavy and fell onto the ground.

"I can't control this, I feel like I'm going to be sick."

"Z, take a deep breath and regulate your breathing. My manifest is one that can create different kinds of poisons through synthesis. I can ingest different poisons and mix and merge them, I can also create antidotes for said poisons.

Very interesting… it seems like even though the potency of my abilities has been reduced, the reason why you are getting sick is that you replicated all my poisons at one go, making your body unable to cope with the poisons. For everyone who has abilities manifested, they go start from 0, for my case, I thought I had no manifest until one day I accidentally got stung by a bee, that bee venom kicked started my journey and I started to try different venoms and combinations. In your case, you went from 0 to a 100, with so many different combinations, it's no wonder you would feel sick.

Although the manifest would provide poison resistance, it has to be built up first, right now you have no resistance whatsoever, but thankfully you still have Hirgram's manifest so you should really focus on healing yourself up."

Poisonmancer nodded as he started to explain the situation to Z.

Z face turned pale as he started to think internally,

"Is this place only filled with weirdos? Am I really going to die to some experiment? Oh my god."

Zero started to vomit, throwing out chunks of his lunch and dinner.

"Don't be a baby, you won't die. Focus on my ability, know how the antidote enzymes work! If you can split up and isolate the sources of poison, you can create antidotes for them, when the enzymes heal you up, use your self-healing manifest to experience the way to heal poisons, it's muscle memory. That's the best way."

By this time, Zero was already on the floor trembling, his head spinning and hallucinating as he started to listen intently to what Poisonmancer had to say.

"We developed a special procedure for Hirgram, it was something that leveraged on his healing manifest. So.. I'm not sure if you know, but the human body is a wonderful piece of machinery. In times, when we get sick, they will develop antibodies. The same can be said about ingesting venom and poisons in small quantities, the body will create antivenom to counteract it. Expose it to strong venom constantly and you will create a body that is impervious to all Poisons. Of course, you still have to endure the pain and feel how your body deal with the poison"