Chapter 34: I Reject My Vampirity, Demond! (2)
"Alright, Demond. Aaaah."
"Aaaah...yeah, no."
"Come on, Demond. Don't be shy."
"In the first place..." Demond smiled wryly, as she wobbled with discomfort on the dragon's thighs before the mansion's dinner table, the food inching from her lips. "This is...uh, I have no words."
Right when they returned to the mansion for rest, they were led to the dining hall, where a sumptuous feast was laid out before them. Selene remained behind in the guild for investigation, and Lady Adil...as she stated, 'make use of the corpse and the plant human' she just captured. So, the dinner hall was filled with a peculiar silence, except the whimpering witch against the dragon's tail, whose tip tickled her cheek mercilessly.
"Ah?" Demond frowned, her connection with her created 'familiar'—the 'tw**ter' bird—has 'seen' shades of reds thinning, thinning again before fading, notifying her how Manasseh's mana weakened, not by slightly but a lot. "Adrei, something's up with the tracker. It's gone haywire, it's like she's hiding her mana, or..."
"Oh?" Adrei's brows furrowed, setting down her fork she just used for feeding her wife. The dragon's tail stilled as she leaned back into her chair, her gaze shifting to the door, as if expecting Manasseh to crash through it at any moment. "What's the status?"
"...dead?" The witch's voice was a mix of shock and disbelief, as she stared at the silent bird on the other side, the faint blue now nothingness among the abyssal vision. "This can't be it...no no, the mana scent is faint, too faint...ah, I see what's happening."
Demond sighed, the frustration boiling beneath her witch's hat, the bird's news was not what she wanted to hear. "It seems she's found a way to mask her mana, or she's found a way to replace it with someone else's, but...I specifically tailored it against her mana so it couldn't have lost her, unless..."
Sensing her wife's unease, the dragon once again wrapped her arms on her waist, her thighs spreading open for the witch's comfort. "Unless?"
"Unless she somehow...stitched Alice's mana into her veins...damn it, could she be etching my daughter's mana for a mere cloak?" Demond murmured, her eyes glazing over as she pondered the implications. The idea was ludicrous, yet the sudden drop in the tracker's signal intensity pointed towards such a possibility. She had already discovered Alice's power in action, and if Manasseh had managed to impel it into the very essence of her mana, the tracker would be rendered almost useless.
"What an absolute carelessness, coming from none other but this old mage...It won't help much, but I'll recalibrate my bird to Alice's mana specifically. But if her mana is really mixed, I'm afraid it could not recognise unless I directly make contact with her once more." A frowning Demond's eyes narrowed in thoughts, a groan escaping her as she leaned back to sink into the dragon's cushions, her hands supporting her head. The implications were dire, the admiration a former old mage would have had at such a taboo, ingenious transformation is now buried under layers of panic, for the implications of the true danger lurking underneath that merchant Manasseh.