“Good stuff. If I can make Gavin Clark hallucinate from poisoning, then I should have a chance to escape. But how do I use it?” Logan Carter racked his brains. The vampire Gavin Clark wasn’t stupid—on the contrary, he was extremely shrewd and would never willingly ingest mandrake poison.

Unable to think of a solution for the moment, Logan Carter opened the other bottles and continued inspecting the potions.

After opening five bottles, he found another special potion. This one had a very unique smell—a faint fishiness mixed with astringency. A word popped into his mind: “Sea urchin grinding liquid, contains scopolamine, used to treat glaucoma, can also neutralize mandrake poison... wait~~wait~~”

A flash of inspiration struck Logan Carter like lightning.

“Mandrake poison, sea urchin grinding liquid, a bottle of red wine, musk balm, and my alchemy talent... I’ve got it!” Logan Carter thought of a reliable plan.

No sooner thought than done!

He immediately grabbed the wine bottle and pulled out the cork.

‘Pop~’ The cork came off, and the fragrant aroma of wine instantly filled the air. This bottle of red wine was a real treasure, called ‘Moonlight Night’, worth 100 Lant per bottle. Sir Laplace couldn’t bear to drink it and just kept it in his son’s alchemy lab as a decorative showpiece.

“Splash~ splash~”

Logan Carter tilted his hand, pouring the wine onto the wooden boards without a hint of regret. Soon, more than half the bottle was gone, and the alchemy lab was filled with a rich aroma of wine.

Vampires have extremely keen senses—their noses are even sharper than a dog’s. Logan Carter did this to use the alcohol to mask the scent of mandrake poison in the air.

But that wasn’t enough.

Logan Carter then grabbed the musk balm from the wooden shelf. This stuff was pure fragrance, very common in noble households and wouldn’t attract attention.

He brought the balm over to the candlestick on the table and warmed it up. As the temperature rose, the musk scent volatilized much faster, and the air became thick with its aroma.

‘The wine aroma will numb the vampire’s sense of smell, and the musk is similar to the scent of mandrake poison—it should confuse the vampire’s judgment.’

After finishing these preparations, Logan Carter picked up the mandrake poison, gritted his teeth, and drank it all in one go. He quickly hid the bottle, then grabbed the red wine—there was still a little less than half left—and took a big swig, washing the taste of the mandrake poison from his mouth.

His opponent was a vampire who surpassed humans in every way—calling him a superhuman was no exaggeration. Dealing with someone like that, no amount of caution was ever too much.

After drinking, Logan Carter tucked the bottle of sea urchin grinding liquid into the inner pocket of his cotton robe, then quickly walked over to the chair by the table and sat down. He calmed his mind, using his alchemy talent to sense the state of his own body.

Mandrake poison doesn’t care who you are—once it’s in your stomach, it starts to take effect. If he didn’t use alchemy to intervene, the vampire might not even have a chance to suck his blood before he succumbed to the poison himself.

Soon, Logan Carter sensed the mandrake toxin in his stomach and intestines.

‘Huh? Strange, my elemental perception has gotten much stronger—at least twice as clear. Could it be because of the toxin in my body?’

This change surprised Logan Carter.

He could very clearly feel a very cold, evil, airflow-like thing rapidly passing through the outer walls of his intestines and stomach, entering his blood vessels, and quickly spreading throughout his body.

When the concentration of this evil ‘airflow’ reached a certain level, the hallucinogenic effects of the mandrake poison began to manifest in Logan Carter.

Logan Carter felt numb all over, his head heavy and feet light. Everything he looked at appeared with multiple afterimages, which kept morphing into all sorts of strange things. The world seemed to be slowly spinning.

“It’s about time. The mandrake poison has spread throughout my body, and there’s enough toxin in my blood now. The hallucinations mean the toxin has started affecting my nervous system. If I want to survive, I have to control the spread of the toxin—otherwise, even with an antidote, I’m done for!”

Real-life poisoning isn’t like what you read in martial arts novels—no matter how far the poisoning has gone, the moment the antidote arrives, you’re instantly back to normal as if nothing happened. In reality, once the toxin enters the body, it rapidly destroys tissues. If too much time passes, it causes irreversible damage. By then, even if you remove all the toxins immediately, the person is basically finished.

“My elemental control should be able to reduce the harm of the mandrake poison.”

Logan Carter closed his eyes, focusing all his attention on the evil cold current.

Mandrake toxin isn’t well-behaved. It doesn’t just seep into the blood—it tries to break into other bodily fluids as well. It had already invaded the lymph, and a tiny amount had even crossed the blood-brain barrier, entering Logan Carter’s cerebrospinal fluid.

That was why Logan Carter was hallucinating.

Once the toxin accumulated to a certain level, Logan Carter’s nervous system would suffer irreversible damage.

‘Get back!’

Logan Carter gathered his will, extended his ‘hand of thought’, and began driving the rampaging evil cold currents back into the blood vessels.

Something very strange happened—the evil cold currents were like fish caught in a net. Though they still thrashed about, they could never break through the net and had no choice but to retreat helplessly back into the blood vessels.