Alcott pulled a large potion from his magic bag and threw it to Gojo. "The antidote. The poison isn’t potent enough to kill you or Arad, but it should at least give you a bad week. This will get rid of it in minutes."

Gojo caught the bottle and gave it a look, seeing the faintly glowing silver liquid splashing inside. He could spell several different herbs, toxins, and tens of spells, each crafted with extreme precision as if driven by mad obsession. "Claug really wants to beat Arad, doesn’t she?"

Just by seeing the antidote, Gojo could tell how much effort Claug is putting into her poison, and that was honestly terrifying. If one drop of this poison leaked into the sea, it would cause a natural disaster. This poison was alive; it multiplies rapidly and consumes mana for that. The only reason it can’t kill him or Arad is that their blood is too cursed to sustain such a microscopic life.

In short, the poison was just a liquid with bacteria living in it, and those bacteria consume mana to multiply and produce several different toxins based on the environment they are in. It cannot survive in a void dragon’s body due to how radioactive they are, which is what Gojo noticed.

If Claug just manages to produce a strain that is resistant to radiation, this could turn her into a real threat to all void dragons. The fact that she is just an Ancient Green drakaina, and one who is bad at magic, is horrifying. It only made Gojo fully realize that to dragons, age itself only matters for raw stats and power. If a dragon has what it takes to be a menace, they’ll be a menace even as a wyrmling.

If someone had wronged Claug in this world and wronged her hard enough for her to snap, then she could easily end up breaking everything like Gamond did. One plague after another, one incurable disease after another, the Plague Witchdoctor would quickly wipe out all life, and no one would be able to stop her.

It was then that he noticed something in the antidote, and he almost broke it instead of drinking it. That was the horrifying part about Claug. The most disturbing of her traits. This antidote and the poison flowing in his body were constantly sending faint mana signals out, and Gojo was 100% certain that Claug was watching and recording them, using everyone who touched the poison as test subjects to improve it.

He was right, as back home, in Claug’s lair, she was in her draconic form, sitting on a mountain of gold and jewels. In front of her, nine glowing crystal orbs floated. One of them showed Gojo’s face, one showed Alcott, and the rest showed different dragons that she infected. The kobolds serving her were all scribbling numbers down on slabs of stone, while a maid stood silently on the side.

"He noticed... but the calming agent worked. He didn’t dispose of the antidote. I should make the signals fainter, and the calming agent would stay. If it worked on Gojo, it should work on almost anyone else." She spoke, and her eyes flashed with green light.

The maid looked up at Claug’s titanic, muscular draconic body. "Will it work on Arad? I know Gojo is older and stronger, but Arad is... how should I describe him?"

Claug shifted her massive neck and looked down at the maid. Just that stare almost made the maid, who was quite familiar with Claug, shit herself. The smallest of Claug’s fangs was twice as tall as her, and just a single puff of her breath could infect her with a million deadly diseases.

"Arad is... a menace, a rabid, unhinged, nightmarish existence. He always forces any plan made against him to fail; that’s why he is a menace. He is rabid because that’s how he acts when pushed to the limit; he is a violent, aggressive, extremely active, and irrational beast. He is unhinged because no matter how good he looks and acts when calm, no atrocity is beneath him if he needs to; you saw it when he started massacring an entire city in cold blood when facing Eris. And he is a nightmarish existence because all of those things together make fighting him feel like living through a never-ending nightmare." Claug looked back at the orbs. "Even if I manage to kill Amaterasu, I won’t be certain my poison would work on him."

The maid gulped. "He isn’t even fully grown yet." She was right; Arad is still just an adult void dragon, and he is this powerful and uncontrollable. "I can understand why you dragged me here."

Claug giggled, but that sounded more like an engine struggling to start. "When he reaches his peak, there will be only two places. To be with him, or against him. We already have world powers, and I bet you that Arad would end up as something greater -let’s call them universe powers- the beings capable of destroying the entire universe. Amaterasu, Kali, the other primordial..." She shifted her head and looked at the maid.

"This stays between us... Kali is even nastier than us dragons; she will never let a normal man stand in front of her, let alone have his way with her. The only reason she spreads her legs so happily to him is that she believes he will one day be stronger than her." She waved her hand, and the kobolds brought several large cauldrons.

"I cannot lag behind." From her massive golden hoard, she started pulling several tiny boxes and handing them to her kobolds so they could start working on the next version of her poison. At this point, calling it poisons or toxins seemed wrong; it was a disease, a highly infectious plague. Claug was determined to take Arad down one day, and for that, she had to create something that the universe itself cannot solve.

Mere experiments were already becoming useless, so she had changed her goals from trying to find the best combination of bacteria to breeding new ones with better traits. She was purposefully forcing the bacteria to multiply and evolve, trying to create something that cannot be countered.

She needed it to endure high temperatures, cold temperatures, the vacuum of space, last without food for decades, survive radiation, and be able to adapt and multiply even in the deadly cursed blood of Arad.

But back in the north, Gojo and Alcott finally reached the weapon shop after having almost caused a second disaster. Gojo still felt a bit sick and salty after getting caught by his father, but he didn’t let it get to him as he pushed the shop’s door open and called with a smile. "Is anyone here!? We’re looking for something special?"

The young woman sitting behind the desk inside the shop stood and gave him a long look. He was tall, well-built, and had white hair and stunning blue eyes. "You’re looking for me?" She leaned over, trying to push her chest a bit out and maybe seduces him. He was probably the best-looking man she had seen in the past three years, and she was looking for someone to settle down with.

But in the next moment, she froze. The insignia on his shoulders was the royal crest of the kingdom, and it was made of pure gold. It took her a second, but she quickly remembered the painting she saw in the city’s hall... that beautiful face, glowing eyes, carefree smile. This was no man, but the white king himself. What is the king himself doing here? In this shop out of all the palaces? If he wanted a weapon, he could have just ordered it or sent some of his men.

Gojo looked at her for a moment and smiled. "Well, now I’m looking for you. What’s your name, pretty girl?" He took a single step and appeared behind her. "Decent build, quite fit, and most importantly, an enchantress."

Enchanters were rare, very far between. They were a different kind of magic users; instead of casting spells, they imbued mundane items with magical effects. The process itself is slow, exhausting, and can even destroy the item if done incorrectly, so learning it was costly.

While her father created the weapons, she was the one to enchant them with magic. Even though she could only use basic enchantments, she was quite proud of her work. A knife that holds its sharpness a bit longer, a cast-iron pan that food doesn’t stick to.

None should be impressive enough for the king himself to seek. They were literally standard enchantment that any newbie could learn.

He must be after something else to come here in person, and she had already started flirting, it would make her suspicious if she stopped now.

^I already shot my shot and I’ll keep trying. I don’t care if I’ll end skinned alive by Queen Liliana, it’s her fault for letting him come here to be.^ She slowly pushed her hips back at his waist.

"I’m pricey."