Killing the Asmodeus Serpent.
....
[Ace POV],
I was about to open the door to the room I wanted to enter using the antiquated door knob when I realized it was locked.
"I need a key," I muttered, scanning the room for anything that could assist me in opening the door.
Though Anna was slow, in my opinion, her enrollment in a 'Royal Academy' indicates that she is not stupid and completely useless.
If she was useless, it only meant that I had been carrying a burden all along.
Fortunately, she wasn't one or entirely one.
When she saw the door was locked, she went back upstairs to look for anything that could help me in this situation, while I continued my search for anything that could help me open the door, but it was ultimately futile.
I was about to return upstairs to look for anything that could help me when I noticed a still wet Anna panting down the stairs with a bunch of steel keys in her hands.
I gently snatched the keys from her grasp and began testing them one by one in an attempt to find the right one that would fit in the keyhole.
After wasting time trying various keys to find the right one, a key finally fit into the keyhole and the door slowly opened.
I entered the room quickly and observed the familiar room for a while looking for what I wanted.
I remembered the owner of this building as I looked at the familiar lab filled with old and new technology equipment.
A man I respect or think I respect because I'm not sure how I feel about him.
But I know it's not a bad sensation.
A man who was better than some of the greatest scientists out there and who taught me a lot, but his love for ancient technology, in my opinion, slowed his progress in new age technology, but even with that, he was still better than some of the best.
To think that the very technology he adored and forced me to learn is what might help me today, while the advanced technology I preferred did not even help in the events that were unfolding, but instead became a burden.
I knew him because he was a friend of my mother's, and because of his low-key demeanor, he preferred to keep a low profile.
Only those at the top could communicate with him and contact him.
And because his building was close to my school, I came here frequently.
His name was Gustav Steel.
Looking around the lab and seeing no one, I realized that the door outside was opened in the first place because everyone had to have left when the strange phenomenon occurred.
Humans were the most curious, despite their fear of the unknown.
So it's not surprising that no one was present.
'But for Gustav, it would be beneficial if the location he was swapped to did not immediately rain down monsters on him,' I reasoned, walking to the location where the old age chemistry lab equipment and materials were stored, as I pondered how the very technology that humans relied on had become a burden to us in our hour of need.
Time to move on to a new era, it seems.
As I entered the lab's storeroom, I went straight to where the chemicals were kept, with Anna close behind me, looking for something that was widely known to the old age as something that could kill a snake or, better yet, one of the snake's best enemies.
I'm not sure if the chemical I was looking for will work on that significantly bigger snake outside, but it should have an effect on it.
I was looking for Calcium Cyanide.
Calcium cyanide is a white powder that smells like almonds. It is used in the production of stainless steel, the leaching of ores, as a fumigant, insecticide, and as a single-dose poison.
It was dangerous to consume directly for a human, but it was a deadly poison for a snake.
According to Gustav, calcium cyanide is a good chemical for killing snakes that take refuge in burrows, and there are several gases that sometimes work in fumigating dens in the old age, but for me now, it was more like a treasure.
Ca(CN)2 is the formula for the inorganic compound calcium cyanide. It is the calcium salt of hydrocyanic acid. It is white solid, though the pure material is uncommon.
Simply put, it was a lethal poison for snakes.
I grabbed two pack bags containing Calcium cyanide while wearing a lab glove I found in the corner and asked Anna to do the same.
Apart from that, I also took some other reagents and chemicals too.
After Anna had finished, I dashed out of the storage room to the underground relaxation center with a swimming pool.
Upon arriving, I threw the calcium cyanide packs on the ground before heading to the pool and poured the reagents and chemicals I had collected earlier into the pool to set its temperature to the highest.
According to Gustav, the people of the old age used this method to occasionally kill snakes.
Hot water.
However, it is not entirely reliable because the snake may not die immediately, but it will shave its skin, which is sufficient for me.
It's not like there aren't any insecticides that can kill an adult snake in seconds, but where will I find them in a place like this?
And if I do find one, will I see a massive insecticide spray large enough to tank the snake outside?
If someone made a spray that big before this strange event, he'd probably be taken to a mental hospital to check on his mental health, with doctors occasionally asking him if he needed help.
All I could do was try to heat the pool up with this solution I roughly made with the reagents I brought.
NaOH+HCl⟶NaCl+HX2OΔH=−56200 Jmol
This was more or less it but it didn't matter since the pool started to show reactions.
So that's that, and this is me using whatever I can think of thanks to Gustav and the Primordial Chronicles not giving us any advantages like it wanted to see what we could do on our own.
While the pool was heating up, Anna and I poured the four-pack bag of calcium cyanide into it.
Fortunately, they were big enough for just one to cover the entire pool, and we used four.
As I watched the chemical spread slowly, I told Anna to hide as I ran back up to the locked upstairs door.
When I arrived, I found a deformed door with a snake head in the middle and walls surrounding it.
When I saw this, I knew there was no time to waste and immediately used the walls beside me to forcefully scratch my hand, creating a nasty wound from which I barely felt anything except the part that it really itched.
It also hurted a little.
With blood dripping from my injured hand, I ran back downstairs, making my way to the pool while making sure traces of my blood were on the floor on the way back.
Because Gustav needed some things to be transported down to the underground center, there was plenty of space everywhere, so I wasn't concerned about the snake not being able to enter what I had planned for it.
As I was running when I abruptly stopped due to a steel pole I noticed by the side of a wall.
I struggled for a while before I was finally able to pull the steel pole from the wall while using both of my hands, and it took some time to separate it from the cables inside of it.
After that, I ran back to the relaxation center and went straight to the pool, dripping some of my blood into it before going to the other side of the pool and holding the steel pole with both hands, waiting for the Asmodeus Serpent to appear.
I assumed Anna took my advice and went to hide because I didn't see her anywhere.
That's great.
'Perhaps this is one of the advantages of not being able to feel a lot of things,' I thought as I shook my head.
I've always wanted to be able to feel something deeply or any emotion, good or bad.
I was thinking about this when I was interrupted by a loud noise upstairs that sounded like something was being destroyed.
With this, I knew the Asmodeus Serpent had destroyed the door and was following the trail I had left behind.
And, speaking of feelings, the indescribable feeling I've been experiencing since the start of this whole thing is the first time I've ever felt something so intense.
I'm not sure what I felt, but if I were to compare it to the various feelings I've read and how they feel;
I think I was feeling Anticipation and..... Excitement.
.....
Author's Note: After reading this chapter, you'll realize that the planet in this novel is similar to Earth, but it's called Planet Spe instead of Planet Earth.
While it has similarities to Earth, they are not the same; after all, this world is more advanced than Earth, and it is still pure fantasy.
As a result, common sense will not always apply here.
Anyway, if you keep reading, you'll see what I'm talking about.
Remember, this is not Earth; at most, the 'old age' in the novel is old Earth and many years have passed since then, and that is the world we are reading about now.
Thank you for reading!!
...