The Reborn Witch had a nice 'Tea Time' with the Dragon Queen today-Chapter 33: I Reject My Vampirity, Demond! (1)

"That witch is indeed a pain..."

Manasseh gritted her teeth, her hooded figure moving swiftly through the shadowy streets of the Town of Rouen. The cold gust whipped at her cloak, bringing with it whispers of fear and uncertainty through the alleyways. She knew she was being followed, that witch's stunt for arrivng so quickly on the scene is no mere coincidence, she thought. Her instincts, honed over centuries of survival, were screaming at her to be vigilant. The feeling of eyes boring into her back was now unmistakable, and she couldn't shake off the sense that she was being herded like her massacred clans facing the hero.

"Think...what 'logic' does this...tracker follows?"

There is no weakness that is not embedded within a 24-hour automated tracking. Her silk told her that it is indeed not a 'rune' magic on her body, her noble instincts as the strong could not detect a wide-range global magic that watched her from afar. That leaves only one option: familiar, or something akin to a familiar, following her even admist the street.

The unsettled crowd murmured around her, as Manasseh took a deep breath. The incident's aftermath had not gone unnoticed by the townsfolk, who now cast suspicious glances at every shadow that fell upon the cobblestone's runes. Even with her appearance changed now, her red hair dyed black and her skin a shade paler than usual, it is useless if that trick was already found, and her presence monitored by another which she could not detect.

...is this the end? Another futile struggle by her kin, desperate to leave a bloody mark on history, only to cower and scattered like snow dusts again? She mused as she reached the edge of town, her eyes scanning for any sign of pursuit.

...no, her scowl grew fiercer. It would not end here, she vowed to herself. Her eyes fell upon a stray cat, its fur matted with the dirt of the alleyways. Its mana was faint as if almost nonexistent, and the creature looked up at her with curiosity in its eyes.

Then, Manasseh's mind turmoiled, back to when she first 'glanced' from afar the incident, back to the interrogation at the entrance. The witch has confessed she could recognise 'Alice's mana', as if she could see through the intricacies of the silk. Could it be...that her tracker is the same? That it operated based on the same logic?

There was no one now besides them, except a few beggars and the cat, whose eyes shone eerily under the moonlight. The creature's pupils dilated as it took a step closer to her, its tail flicking in excitement. The witch's words played in her head again, and the cat's innocent gaze suddenly seemed too knowing.

Read lat𝙚st chapters at fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓ Only.

Manasseh kneeled down and stroked the cat, enjoying the fur's texture under her fingertips. The 'eyes' behind her watched the interaction, as a twisted smile playing on her lips.

The process will be...painful, but necessary. Manasseh glanced at the cute cat, frowned upon inflicting such on this bundle of furs, then her wanton gaze moved to a nearby begger to her right, leaning towards the wall, his eyes empty as if helpless before the unfairness of the world.

"You will have to do." Manasseh's finger stretched out, as string of silks slithered from its tip, moving with a life of their own towards the beggar, whose eyes grew wide with terror.

Ironic. A powerless beggar only could find himself struggling when all is about to be lost, when all that he had was his life, whose history she herself would not wager even against her own centuries of lives, would be the one to be used. The first life she took was with an experiment to test the limits of the newly found silk, and even with the decade-old experience, she could never be used to such a chilling sensation for the dead.

The silk string crawled up onto the his toe, slithered up his trembling leg as it wrapped around his thigh, then his chest, his neck, tightening, constricting his breath. The beggar's eyes bulged out, as the string reached his neck and strapped into his ear hole, his muffled screams piercing the quiet night air.

Manasseh narrowed her eyes jn pain, her mana now seeping into the beggar's mind, searching, rearranging, twisting. The beggar's body convulsed as his eyes rolled back into his skull, his mouth foaming with saliva. She felt the familiar pulse of a foreign power, the tracker's signal growing weaker as she rewrote his very essence. It was a risky move, one that could attract the witch's attention if she wasn't careful, but she had no other choice.

...no this is not enough. Manasseh chuckled tiredly, as she stroked the curious cat one last time, before her other hand reached for her undead heart, before plucking through her robe, rib cage, then her lung, and finally her heart that didn't beat for a long time.

Mana is the essence of the living, and only living, a privilege weaved only by the vampire with this special silk, a limitation cursed to them by the divines for being one of the 'deficient' undead. They do not lack it, but the inability to control their own mana has heen the main reason their kins are weak, even with scriptures of blood magic and a few, mainly the noble's ability to freely lash out mana.

Then, what if she weaved 'Alice's magic' into her own existence? What if she forced her undead heart beating, rewriting the very rules of her existence? The risk is high, the backlash could be fatal, but...tricking the witch must be done, especially when there is already the peacekeeper dragon and the Lady Adil.

"I'm sorry, mother." Apologising once again for disrespecting her clan's identity, tradition and pride, her silk lunged into her heart, as surges of absolute discomfort and pain shot through her body. It felt like a thousand spider legs piercing through her soul, a pain that she had never felt before, even in her worst battles.

Her throat splurged out a cry of agony, the streets grew silent as the beggar's body dropped to the ground, his eyes still open in shock. The cat took off in a flash, disappearing into the night, leaving Manasseh gasping for breath. The pain was unbearable, as if her very soul was being torn apart by the silk's icy embrace. Yet, she gritted her teeth, willing her heart to beat once more, to mimic the rhythm of the living.

The empty street grew quieter as the echoes of the beggar's last breath faded into the night. Manasseh's chest heaved as she clutched her heart, her eyes squeezed shut in agony. The silk writhed within her, its cold embrace tightening, a silent symphony of pain that seemed to last an eternity. But with a final, desperate effort, she felt the rhythm change, the stagnant silence of the night broken by the distant sound of a heartbeat—her own, living, heartbeat, a heartbeat that coiled Alice's mana through her veins, masking the bloody mana with cocktail of mana, mana not quite vampire, not quite human.

Her ribcages cackled with ice, the hero's stolen frosts splattering across each and every inch of her bulging bones, as it erupted into a centipede of utter horror. Her lungs now breathing a frosty fog, as her breath hitched frozen shards in the form of threads of mana, each bearing an edge that tickled her blood vessels. Her eyes spluttered open, gasping, the fogs from her lips indicated the success of this brutal ritual, as the icy fire slipped out of her iris, now blue instead of red.

Even as the pain remained drumming her mind, a crazed, self-defeating smirk curled up from her lips, as the 'eyes' in the shadows grew dimmer and dimmer, until they disappeared entirely. How absolutely...revolting, disgusting. Her undead heart was now beating with the rhythm of the living, her mana pulsing through her body like centipedes crawling all over her skins. The extreme itchiness for food instead of blood scratched against her throat, and she felt as if the next step she took, she would pilk a part of her soul out, from scraping off a part of her soul so violently.

Yet in exchange, 'Alice's mana' is an effective upgrade, her bond with the silk is once again strengthend. Her limbs felt light as she stood up, her eyes now glowing with a faint blue glow, the power of her ancestor's lineage combined with the hero flowing through her veins, now disparaging glitters of frosty, blue bulges. A strange exhilaration came for how her body is more on tune with the mana inside her, the 'control' a vampire should have lacked now comes as natural for the noble vampire.

"Now," Manasseh murmured, exhausted but not defeated. "Let's see how long this trick can last before the witch realizes what I've done. By tomorrow, the runes Adil carved will finally end in wreckage, and my revived ancestor will be given a definite conclusion to the peace she once sought."

She took off her hood, revealing her dyed hair which turned back to blood red, tints of white and blue shimmering within the strands. The blue eyes, coiling with the silk's mana, no longer had the same desperation, but rather a glint of resolve.

She seethed her teeth, as she glanced at the bricks she stepped upon, the ones that were carved Adil's runes. Alice's mana protected the scorching repercussion that would have come with the holy smites, but her hatred did not stop with this 'scarred protection'.

The blue eyes recognised her kins within the the whiteness of the pavement, the hero's mana scowling at the 'last remains' from the Northern Icelands where all has been taken by the hero Alice. The whiteness continued to taunt her, a reminder of what has been lost, what has been not lost, and her final duty as a daughter of the Bloodhound.

———————