There were seven or eight small bottles made of gss on the table, in all sorts of different colors, shapes, and sizes. The biggest ones were more than ten centimeters tall, while the smaller ones were no taller than five centimeters. Each bottle was plugged with a stopper.

  Each bottle had a bel made of animal skin on it, and unknown words were written on the bels in red ink.

  In addition to the bottles, there were also several small rat skulls, a ratman skull, and some unknown materials on the table.

  It looked like the wizard had been using these skulls to create the illusions that System had seen around the warren the st time he'd been there.

  He picked up the ratman skull and used [Perception] on it. He felt a special energy fluctuation from the rat skull, but he couldn't figure out how to use it.

  The same was true for the ratman skulls and ordinary rat skulls that System had discovered previously. As long as he moved the skull, the illusion would disappear, and he couldn't activate it again.

  After tossing the skull aside, System opened the numerous bottles one by one and put them into his mouth to taste...

  He naturally didn't know the significance of the liquids in these bottles to the wizard.

  These were the many highly toxic pgues that the ratman wizard Lance had developed after communicating with the God of Pgues and Curses for more than a decade.

  The effects of the pgues varied, but the vast majority of them were lethal bacteria, and the effects of each were very different.

  Some would cover the victim's body in red spots and lumps. Eventually the spots would fester and pus would ooze out, after which the victim would die.

  Some would cause the victim to gradually become more and more dehydrated. Their body would turn bck and gray. Eventually, they would wither away to nothing.

  Others would fill the victim's brain with fever and delirium, and they would eventually die as victims of their own insanity and delusions.

  These special pgues were strong enough to affect even the pgue-resistant rats and ratmen. If they came into contact with too rge of a dose, even they would most likely die.

  The various effects of these pgue reagents, as well as their usage and dosage, had all been recorded in detail by the ratman wizard in a booklet on the boratory table. It could be said that pgue creation had been Lance's lifelong hobby.

  Of course, his research and development had also been intended to aid in the rise of the ratmen.

  However, System barely gnced at the booklet that Lance had worked so hard to make. After seeing that there were no pictures inside, he'd casually thrown Lance's life's work aside. After all, System couldn't understand any of it.

  He began using his tentacles along with his [Mental Transmission] ability to sense the substances inside the bottles.

  To System, the emotions of fungi were basically all the same. There were countless different kinds of mushrooms, and he could only detect that they were mushrooms when he used [Mental Transmission] to perceive them. Whether they were poisonous mushrooms or ordinary mushrooms, it was almost the same to him. Only the fvor when he ate them was slightly different.

  Simirly, the emotions of bacteria and viruses were basically the same when he perceived them with [Mental Transmission]. All he could do was distinguish which ones were viruses and which ones were bacteria.

  As for how to cssify these bacteria and viruses, System had no idea at all. His [System's Eye] could provide a zoomed-in view of things like a microscope, but his level of magnification was still a bit low, so he could only see the germs very vaguely.

  ...

  All of those reasons compounded together had led System to thoughtlessly consume the contents of the bottles. If he'd known the truth about what he was drinking, he'd have to admit that he was wasting the gifts of nature.

  After he used [Mental Transmission] to find out that there were only germs in the jars, System used his tentacles to pour some of the liquid into his mouth.

  He then drank all of the pgue germs inside the jars, which made his stomach feel a little bloated.

  The pgue germs couldn't live forever, and they needed to be fed regurly. System could detect that they felt hungry through [Mental Transmission]. If the germs were left alone for a long time, they would probably die.

  He certainly wouldn't cultivate the germs, so in line with the principle of not being wasteful, he drank all of the germ-filled liquids.

  If Lance was still alive, he would definitely be both angry and speechless, because even the ratman's natural enemy, the half-snake people, would never escape unscathed from that sort of suicidal behavior.

  But System had no adverse reactions. In fact, he paid careful attention to savoring the fvors of the pgue liquids while he drank them.

  In the end, he could only taste five of the seventeen liquids.

  Four of them were various sweet fvors, three of which were fruit yogurts—peach fvor, orange fvor, and an unknown fvor. The other one was strange. It was kind of simir to a grape-fvored alcoholic beverage. All four of these sweet liquids were delicious.

  System could easily digest and absorb the four sweet liquids, and they also provided a very high amount of experience. Overall, they were much better than eating insect pupae.

  The remaining liquid he could taste was simir to coffee. It was a little bitter, but also very mellow. Drinking it had probably caused some harm to his body, but not much.

  When System cut open one of his tentacles and dripped some blood into the coffee-fvored liquid, he found that the taste became much better. It was now more like milk coffee.

  As for the remaining bottles of liquid, they had tasted like water, and System's body basically couldn't absorb them at all.

  But even the water-like liquids weren't exactly the same. When System drank them, there were still some differences. Some of the water was softer, some was harder, some tasted like tap water, and some tasted like exceptionally fresh bottled water.

  However, because the fvors of these water-like liquids were too light, System didn't pay too much attention to them. He basically drank them all without even noticing the differences.

  However, about ten minutes after he finished drinking all of the bottles full of germs, he suddenly felt something strange happening inside his body.

  To be precise, his throat suddenly became itchy, just like the time when he'd swallowed the slime and his [Corrosive Mucus] had started showing signs of life.

  The emotions of germs were generally weak, and System wouldn't usually use [Mental Transmission] to try to sense them.

  In fact, even if he hadn't swallowed the pgue liquid, there were already some bacteria in his body. If he used [Mental Transmission] to sense the emotions of these bacteria at every moment, it would definitely get annoying fast.

  Now, System discovered through [Mental Transmission] that the bacteria that he'd just swallowed were emitting unimaginably joyful emotions inside his body. It was like they were cheering.

  These bacteria gradually flowed through his body's bloodstream before finally gathering inside the gnds in his throat that could secrete [Corrosive Mucus], as if they had finally found a home.

  Some bacteria seemed to merge with the living mucus in System's gnds, and the fused mucus and bacteria began to swallow some other types of bacteria. They all continued merging together.

  For a moment, the emotions of the bacteria in System's gnds became extremely chaotic. Some were excited, some screamed as they died, some were hungry, and some felt satisfied after eating the others.

  System's throat became more and more itchy. The flesh around the gnds in his throat seemed to twitch again, and System felt an unbearable stinging pain.

  ...

  Ding! The level of [Corrosive Mucus] has increased.

  Ding! The upper limit of [Corrosive Mucus] has increased!

  Ding! Your [Corrosive Mucus] has been transformed into [Pgue Slime]!