Baby System: I'm the Beast World's Only Hope!-Chapter 279: Episode 277: Failed Attempt

"You are fragile now," Torian rumbled, his voice a deep, vibrating tremor against her spine. "I don’t think you should stress yourself too much."

His massive arms remained locked around her waist. The White Tiger wasn’t trying to be controlling; his feral instincts were simply in absolute overdrive. The sudden realization that she was carrying his cub, combined with the lingering scent of the sea clinging to her skin, made his beast violently opposed to letting her out of his sight.

Roxy’s heart warmed at the sheer, desperate protective streak in his blue eyes. The anger she had felt on the cliffside toward Caspian felt a million miles away, replaced by the grounding reality of her pack.

She reached down, gently prying his thick fingers apart just enough to turn around and face him.

"I know you are worried, Rian," Roxy said softly, resting her hands flat against his broad chest. "But this is exactly what I need to do. If we don’t figure out this cure today, there won’t be a safe world for this cub to be born into. I promise I won’t overexert myself."

Lies.

Torian’s jaw clenched. He looked at the doorway where Syris was waiting, then back down at her stomach.

"If you are still worried," Roxy offered, giving him a reassuring smile, "you can follow me. You can stand right there and watch me work so you know I’m safe."

Torian let out a heavy, resigned exhale. The tension slowly bled out of his thick shoulders. He finally released his iron grip on her waist, nodding once. "I am not leaving your side."

"I didn’t expect you to," Roxy replied. He is so grumpy.

Thanks to the ginger and mint tea Kaelen had prepared, the sudden wave of nausea had completely settled. Roxy felt steady on her feet again. She turned and walked down the hallway, Torian following so closely his shadow practically swallowed hers.

Syris led them to the heavy iron door at the back of the Manor. It was the room Roxy had explicitly designated for Syris to study and experiment with poisons. The air inside smelled sharply of dried herbs, sulfur, and sterilized metal.

Workbenches lined the walls, covered in glass beakers, mortar and pestles, and various Beast World flora.

Roxy walked over to the main table. Tanith, still in her emerald snake form, had slithered out from Roxy’s collar and curled securely around her neck, sleeping peacefully. The toddler’s cool scales felt nice against Roxy’s skin, keeping her grounded.

Torian immediately dragged a heavy wooden stool over to the corner of the room. He sat down, crossing his thick arms, his dark eyes tracking every single movement in the lab. He was the ultimate, immovable bodyguard.

"Let’s begin," Syris stated, all traces of his usual amusement gone. He was entirely in his element now.

He absolutely loved this room that she had prepared for him.

Syris walked over to a lockbox on the counter. He opened it, using a pair of iron tongs to carefully extract a small, pulsing rock. It was a corrupted mana crystal harvested from a feral beast that Zarek’s scouts had intercepted near the Southern Swamps.

The crystal was a sickly, rotting grey, pulsing with the aggressive, heat-seeking infection of the Wither-Rot.

"The Rot consumes active Surface magic," Syris explained clinically, setting the infected crystal on a stone slab. "It burns the core until the host goes feral. We need to shut the core down entirely without killing the host."

Roxy untied the leather pouch at her hip. She carefully withdrew the two vials.

The first was the Venom of the Blue-Ringed Kraken. It was a clear, shimmering liquid that looked deceptively like pure water. The second was the thick, pitch-black abyssal ink Nerissa had given her.

"The venom is the paralytic," Roxy said, setting them on the table. "Nerissa said the ink is the key to making it safe for Beastmen. It bridges the gap between abyssal magic and Surface biology."

"Understood," Syris nodded. He picked up a glass dropper. "We will test the ratios on the corrupted crystal. If it works, the Rot will freeze, and the crystal will return to its dormant state. If we fail, it will shatter."

I am only glad I could make this place close to modern thanks to the system and the system shop.

Roxy held her breath as Syris went to work.

Attempt One. Syris extracted a single, microscopic drop of the Kraken venom and mixed it with two drops of Nerissa’s ink in a small dish. The two liquids resisted each other at first before swirling into a dark, stormy grey. Using the tongs, Syris carefully tipped the dish, letting a single drop of the mixture fall onto the pulsing, infected crystal.

The reaction showed instantly.

The corrupted crystal violently combusted, shattering into a dozen jagged pieces across the stone slab. A foul, sulfuric smoke hissed into the air.

Torian shot up from his stool with a low growl, ready to pull Roxy out of the room, but she waved him back down.

"Too much venom," Syris assessed, entirely unfazed by the minor explosion. He swept the ruined crystal shards into a disposal bin and pulled out a fresh infected sample. "The paralytic properties completely overwhelmed the core. If we gave that to Zarek, his heart would stop instantly."

"Try more ink," Roxy suggested, wiping a bead of sweat from her forehead. The room was stuffy, and the pregnancy hormones were making her run hot.

Attempt Two. Syris adjusted the ratio. He used half a drop of venom and heavily diluted it with four drops of the pure abyssal ink. He carefully applied the thick, black mixture to the new crystal.

They leaned in, watching closely.

For a second, the pulsing grey Rot seemed to slow down. The black ink coated the crystal, suffocating the infection. Roxy let out a hopeful breath.

But then, the Rot adapted. The sickly grey light flared violently underneath the ink. The Wither-Rot treated the heavy concentration of Nerissa’s magic not as a paralytic, but as an all-you-can-eat buffet. The infection rapidly consumed the ink, turning the entire crystal into a rotting, useless pile of necrotic sludge.

"Failure," Syris hissed in frustration, dumping the sludge. "The ink alone cannot freeze it. The Rot just eats it."

Roxy’s stomach dropped. She looked at the two vials on the table.

They didn’t have much liquid in either vial. The Kraken venom was barely half full, and Nerissa’s ink was only a few ounces. If they were going to cure an entire pack, let alone an entire continent, they would eventually need a massive quantity of it.

But right now, they couldn’t even get the base formula right. Every failed attempt wasted priceless, irreplaceable abyssal magic.

Attempt Three. They tried adding a binding agent. Syris crushed some local Iron-Wood sap into the dish, hoping the Surface flora would act as a buffer between the abyssal magic and the Rot. He measured the venom and the ink with agonizing precision, creating a pale, murky paste.

He applied it to the third crystal.

The paste sizzled against the Rot. A faint blue light sparked, giving them a second of hope, before it rapidly fizzled out. The paste hardened into a useless, inert crust, while the crystal beneath it continued to pulse with the sickly grey infection. It had zero effect.

Roxy stared at the crusty, infected stone. The exhaustion she had been fighting all morning finally hit her with the force of a physical blow.

"It’s not working," Roxy whispered, her shoulders slumping.

"We are missing something," Syris muttered, staring intensely at his notes. His long fingers tapped an agitated rhythm against the wooden table. "The chemical bridge is fundamentally flawed."

Roxy stepped back from the table. The sharp smells of the lab were suddenly too much. She walked over to the corner of the room and sank into a heavy wooden chair. She wrapped her arms around her stomach, feeling incredibly sad and defeated.

She had gone to the bottom of the ocean. She had faced down leviathans, uncovered the terrifying truth about everything, and got these ingredients. And it was all for nothing.

The vials were draining. Things were bad, and the Wither-Rot was going to reach their gates before they could stop it.

Torian immediately left his stool. The massive Tiger walked over, kneeling in front of her chair. He didn’t ask questions. He simply took her small hands in his massive, scarred ones, rubbing his thumbs over her knuckles to ground her.

Syris remained at the table, his back to them, organizing the remaining drops of the mixture into a glass beaker to avoid wasting them.

Roxy closed her eyes, resting her head against the wall. She needed a break. She needed to think.

Several minutes passed in absolute silence, broken only by the soft, rhythmic breathing of the snake sleeping around Roxy’s neck and the clinking of Syris’s glass tools.

Nobody absolutely saw when Torian had walked to the third failed attempt and looked at it weirdly.

Then after a while, he suddenly gasped and then he turned to Roxy, his dark eyes wide.

"I think it’s working now."