Alec moved without thinking. His arm flew up as soon as he registered the snake's target.

With flawless accuracy, Alec pinpointed the needle's trajectory and blocked it with his hand.

Casting a spell required thought. Since he didn't think, it was irrelevant.

The needle punctured the center of his palm, sinking in a fifth of the thickness of his hand.

Alec slowly turned to look at it. He hadn't felt it hit, but he was still sure he caught it.

'Oh no.'

He could already sense his hand start to lose feeling.

'Is there anything…?'

Alec quickly scanned through everything he had read about the Paratrellian Spit Snake.

'Is there an antidote?'

Faster.

'There might be countermeasures?'

Faster.

'Is there anything useful in the area?'

Not fast enough.

'I need more time.'

Alec's blood ran cold. He couldn't move his hand anymore. He couldn't find anything useful.

The poison needle was the Paratrellian Spit Snake's one method of hunting. It wasn't weak enough to fail. The poison could be beaten if one spent years building a tolerance to it.

There were herbs that slowed metabolism and strengthened the body's immune system. The poison slowed down, and the body's defenses sped up.

Time slowed to a crawl.

However, that was a method devised with the snake's home habitat in mind. The ingredients necessary weren't something Alec could find nearby.

Even if they were, the poison would spread before he could find and mix them.

'No, Victoria can freeze my hand.' He could stall.

'But for what?'

Alec looked at the poisoned hand that was barely visible behind the walls of translucent text.

Just then, something else caught his attention.

Maura was mid-step toward him. That alone wasn't what made him look twice. It was the fact that she looked like she was about to fall over. But she wasn't moving. Even her hair hung in the air behind her.

'Oh.'

Alec realized on an instinctual level.

It was [Reader]. He could stop time when reading.

His vision and his mind worked, but that was it. That was all he needed to read.

He couldn't cast magic or move a muscle.

It was useful, but right now, it only delayed the inevitable.

He did not have an answer. The poison would spread through his body as soon as time started moving again.

If a stage two monster couldn't overcome it, neither could he.

'Gluttony, maybe?'

'No.'

Gluttony increased his metabolism, but he hadn't developed the skill enough for it to digest poison injected through his blood. If he had eaten it, things might have been different. But he hadn't.

'Am I screwed?'

'Wait a minute.'

The poison would spread and kill him.

If it didn't spread, it wouldn't kill him.

'Good thing I have some mana left.'

He had continuously searched for a solution while he thought, but in the end, he didn't find anything to replace the one he had come up with.

As soon as he resolved himself, time started to flow again.

The next moment, Alec drew a spell formation. Although it consumed a large portion of the mana he had left, it was a relatively simple spell. Despite the disarray of Alec's mind, he completed the spell in a matter of seconds.

A metal blade flashed. Then, a hand dropped to the ground, accompanied by the metal construct of Cleave and a spray of blood.

"Mmngh!" Alec clenched his jaw so hard it felt like his teeth were about to crack. He pounded his remaining hand against his thigh while clutching the stump against his stomach.

It was good news. The pain was proof that the poison hadn't spread that far yet. It was confirmation that he wouldn't die.

That didn't change the fact that it hurt like someone had just cut off his hand.

Blinking away tears, Alec slowly raised his head and looked at Victoria.

"Do you mind?" He held out his stump.

The sight shocked Victoria out of her shock, and she nodded silently as she cast a simple Freeze. She controlled her mana so that it would only freeze the stump until a layer of frost slowed Alec's blood circulation and stopped the bleeding.

"Thanks."

"Alec!" Maura cried out.

"Are you insane?!" Ticka questioned.

Madelynn used her dagger to cut a piece of fabric from Alec's shirt and wrapped it around his stump in silence.

They had trouble understanding what had just happened. One moment, the snake had been on the verge of death. One and a half moments later, Alec's hand was on the ground by his own doing.

"Are you alright?" Nia asked. The answer was obvious, but she didn't know how else to express her concern.

"I…would have been better if the infirmary didn't gatekeep all the recovery spells."

Victoria's eyes narrowed slightly at his words. No one noticed since they were all looking at Alec slowly sit down against the closest wall with his stump raised.

The others exchanged glances. There wasn't much they could do for Alec right now. But they could at least take his tag and switch it with one on the wall for him.

Once they were done with that and all of them had new tags, Maura and Madelynn helped Alec to his feet. They supported him on their shoulders back to the surface. Losing a hand after acting as bait against a third-stage monster was tiring. Who could have guessed?

On their way back up, they noticed that two of the other hallways had sounds of battle coming from them.

The snake had gone straight through the central hallway, killing the spiders in its way, before setting up camp in the ceremonial hall.

Were they lucky or unlucky? They didn't have to fight the spiders. They even got clues as to what they were dealing with.

But if they had fought the spiders instead, maybe one of the other groups would have made it to the ceremonial hall first. One small change could have made such a difference.

Maura couldn't help but look at the bloody cloth wrapped around Alec's stump.

She owed him her life.

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