Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of Where We Come From

New Course

Several drops of a purple gooey liquid fell to the sand below. Mana turned the limb of the insect equipped with a sting on each leg around the green torches to examine it. In the other hand, she held one of the cysts she ripped off of the insect's face. Before she attacked those things and started swinging she needed to examine these creatures. She needed to understand these primitive yet terrifying insectoid hunters, the magician needed to understand what made them so effective at what they did.

Close to Mana's feet laid a pile of small rodents that Mana impaled with the limb, they weren't dead nor were they even bleeding. The girl wished to understand what the poison was doing exactly before she started digging deeper into why she wasn't affected by it. Judging from the results the magician would also find out just how much time she has to put a plan together, if her friends were indeed captured she needed to know how these hunters feed, do they kill and eat their prey immediately or do they just paralyze it and have some further goals to fulfil with the carcasses of their prey.

So far judging from the delirious and disabled yet hyperventilating rodents it seemed like the poison merely paralyzed the prey and caused excessive fever. Mana was not completely sure why these insects would not kill their prey immediately or how do they actually finish it off once their ulterior goals are fulfilled. She had no time to find out. Understanding the mechanisms that made these things work had the priority...

*****

Meiko's eyelids clapped heavily, it felt similar to how it felt awakening from a heavy beating. Her entire body was paralyzed and the blacksmith felt sticky and hard surfaces beneath her, she wasn't laying on the sand. She knew that smell – it was blood. The genin tried to squirm and shake but something shaped like a rib just dug deep into her back, all of her efforts only made her move a single muscle. Whatever these insects injected into her was very potent...

Sounds of squirming and clacking of chitin shells against the stone and bones took over the place. Meiko's heart started pounding harder, as always she tried to overpower the poison but that was simply not enough. Once again she found herself just a little bit short of sheer power. She was so strong, she yearned to be even stronger and yet she wasn't able to be strong enough anytime she needed to. She couldn't beat that totem-using guy in the desert, she wasn't able to resist the trap of those things and now she'll end up in some insectoid intestines...

One of the insects crawled right up to Meiko, the blacksmith angrily struggled trying to overcome that numbness in her body but nothing worked. She heard some bone cracking sounds to her side so Shimo and Kouta must've been resisting those insects as well.

"I feel my chakra... Back..." Shimo grunted angrily, his voice was filled with pain and made the effort in trying to break free quite clear.

"Yeah, we must've been out overnight, maybe even longer" Kouta agreed, "It's no use, even with all of my chakra enhancements I can't break out... I don't think it can be broken out of with strength alone"

The insectoid's creepy eyes leaned up to Meiko's face. The insect lifted one of its creepy limbs and penetrated one of their cysts with it squirting an entirely different cloud of gas as the chemical compound in their poison reacted with the gas stored in those blobs on their faces, one of pinkish red shades of color. Meiko coughed, her mind was starting to feel hazy, her pupils simply faded from her eyes as her irises were all that distinguished her eye from being completely whited out.

"Meiko! Damn, they must've hypnotized her or something!" Shimo grunted. Another insect crawled up to his face and spat the cloud of gas out into his face as well. The genin tried to reach out and bite into the cyst, defying the gas's effects.