The Reborn Witch had a nice 'Tea Time' with the Dragon Queen today
Chapter 71: I Rejected the Villain’s Potion and Bet My Life on a Duel Against the Vampire Goddess! (Sorry, Dragon Queen!)

Chapter 71: I Rejected the Villain’s Potion and Bet My Life on a Duel Against the Vampire Goddess! (Sorry, Dragon Queen!)

"...are you stupid? E-even a toddler knows not to drink from strangers!"

Selene’s mudded breath spit black blood on the soil and bubbled shades, as she pointed at the ’obviously-not-suspicious-mysterious-person’, it would seem Demond’s manga collection has taught her well in the most unexpected ways that would have Alice groaned in tiredness.

Coriel’s smile twitched, her scientist arrogance weirdly hurt as if she was compared to a generic dark-power vendor, before she merely explained. "You should know. This potion is from your mother’s blood. Close your eyes, and you should feel her mana coiling in the vial."

The young Druid blinked, scowled, then blinked again, then scowled again. "Really?"

It seemed the subject was hesitant, so Coriel tilted her head, the smile now cracking with a hint of irritation. "Do you need me to prove it for you?"

Upon observing the shaded smile, Selene glanced away, the blood surging to her brain dampened in front of a (dragon’s) pressure that she could not comprehend. "Uh-uh...okay, I’ll do it."

Selene closed her eyes, the Druid’s rooted senses tingling as she stretched the roots outward, the vial echoing...screams? Screams...whispers...murmurs...for forgiveness, for release, for desperation, mixed in with the familiar greens she knew all too well.

The blood splurged from her throat as she gasped, the vial containing too much of a malice for her to bear. "What...what the hell is that?"

"Your Mother’s Mana, as I’ve already told you." Feeling the convesation was drifting back to track, Coriel’s smile finally stilled back to the a calmness she was more comfortable with. "It’s cruel, isn’t it? But cruelty begets forgivances and griefs into manifestation. Your mother’s mana is feared by this land, feared by the runes carved, it is how the runes obeyed her instead of rebelling against her."

The shocking explanation coursed through her sunken mind, the runes below glowing out as if sensing the vial’s years worth of hatred, descecrating their prides into literal pieces. Selene frowned, her violets reflected from the small green vial that housed the Rouen’s fate, as she asked carefully.

"So...if I drink this, if I have some of Mother’s mana inside me, I will be able to use the runes?"

She caught the bait. Well, it is not exactly a bait since it is her objective to make her drink it in the first place. Coriel nodded with a satisfied curved eyes. "Exactly. You are a smart child, so you know how to weigh the town’s fate against your own, right?"

"..."

A silence grew between them, as Coriel frowned. She watched as the child coughed blood, scowled, loosened her brows, slacked her shoulders, hardend her shoulders, heaved in bloodied breaths. All in 5-second worth of action sequences, a miracle that should be recorded in the lab, if not for the next line that followed after.

"Yeah, nah."

Coriel’s emerald eyes flickered, the usually graceful, merciful pupils now thinning into slits. "Then maybe I am mistaken, are you willing to put the whole town in danger?"

"Listen, I don’t really get how drinking this vial would make me...well, immune but..." A hestancy belied her gasping voice as she sensed Coriel’s slight tinge of anger, as she muttered. "But...you don’t really need the vial to activate the seal, right? My mother would not have made this mistake."

"Because her cruelty can be measured to none, my child." Coriel spun a lie despite she could ’see’ fully well how the vampire weaved itself out of this World. "The seal was based on an individual’s strength of will. According to my calculation, you will not be able to endure thousands upon thousands of whispers rushing in your-"

"Okay, Imma do my own thing then. Thank you!"

"...ha?"

Selene immediately turned away from the confused Coriel. Clutching her stomach, she pulled out her sword as she opened the scroll, watching as the fabric slowly sunk above the hollowed sigil, before plunging her sword into the sigil.

Dozens...hundreds...thousands and millions of voices clattering for escape, her mind now a prison that could afford no longer any prisoners, as Selene screamed hatred from her bloodied breath. Coriel gazed dazely at the foolishness of the young Druid, even more when Selene shouted.

"Ah-ah! Fuck! I should have taken the vial!"

Tears rolling down her cheek as she endured the million whispers. Why, they asked? Why should they protect them, they asked? Why would they go against their ancestor, they asked? Why would they deny their own vengance when the last of their kins were killed, they asked?

...the last of their kins? So that meatshield is dead? A pounding frustration came to Selene, of regret? Of desperation? Of absolutely nothing but wraiths, of course!

"How dare she dies without even tanking a hit from Uncle?!" She screamed towards the sky, her grip whitening, tightening, veins protruding as if they will bubble out blood from Selene’s rage and sorrow at her meatshield’s loss. "And you! All of you! I don’t give a shit, but do you think your so-called betrayer is really here to save you? Of course not! She’s merely here to toy with the World after you split her in tiny pieces, you retards!"

The runes glowed again as if sighing. Selene’s lips coated and marred by black bloods as she received another whisper. What would you have us do? What exploitation would you have our corpses do that would no longer sully our final moments?

"Is it really corpses if they can think so clearly...ugh, anyways!" Selene, in her high andrenaline, stabbed further into the scrolled seal and sigil, her blackened blood and tears pooling a riverfall into the fountain, corrupting the clear waters yet never chipping away her resolution.

"Let us bet then, you damn morons!" Selene smirked a curve so high that Demond would wonder if she is the same child who was so socially inept she talked with flowers. "Lend me your strengths not to fight, but to have a proper arena! Your Queen against ours! No hostages, no bullshits. If she triumphs, it’s the vampires’ win, v-vice versa...ah, anyways, you hear me, vampire? It’s a challenge god damn it!"

Selene didn’t know back then, but vampires were always prideful creatures, and upon listening to Selene’s implication that their own Queen, the strongest of them all, needed measly ’hostages’ to challenge the Dragon Queen, all of the whispers turned into hisses of rages. Bring it on! They screamed. Watch your tongue, stupid humans, the one who will regret is you.

The seal and sigil finally pulsed, beckoned by the calls of the vampires, as they spreaded leylines from the tip of Selene’s sword, covering the fountain as a massive circular formation towered over the central street. Selene glanced up in wonders, her hazy mind trembling at the green sigils colluding with one another, as the slicing air finally smoothened, the blood moon now curled up before disappearing into space, replaced by the blue moonlight she knew all too well.

Selene smiled as she felt the bile of bloods in her throat finally subsided, before she rolled her eyes and fell onto the ground, but not before Corial caught her unconscious form before she fell.

...how unexpectedly splendid. The scientist’s lips curled themselves up, no longer a manipulated expression as she found only genuine impressiveness. As always, a scientist’s thesis was nothing before a human’s will, and her sister is always right in that humanity would only bring in endless ’potentials’, endless ’possibilities’.

Ah...she wants to bring Selene to a dissecting table now and peeled away to reveal her thoughts. Perverted, widened eyes sprinkled endless curiosity once again for the Young Druid who defied expectation, her perversion unmatched and uninterrupted, until a voice abruptly called for her.

Ah, so it’s a mere Dragon who dares to use my summoning as her own.

Coriel narrowed her eyes, the earlobes dripping blood as they were forcefully burrowed a voice that is as authoritive as her sister. The scientist’s heartbeats loudened. My summoning, that voice said...it means the Sovereign knew it is her who manipulated the gargolytes?

It seems you take me as a fool who would not learn to trace mere manas. Shall I teach you how your own mana functions?

Then a taser crawled through Coriel’s spine as she yelped in pain, the sensation of having a thousand centipedes crawling into bones, limbs and arms unbearable. She widened her eyes in surprise. Those centipedes...are her warped mana, tainted through her links with the gargolyes, interrupted and remeld as her destruction.

She gritted her teeth as she plunged into her stomach, before swiping out a chip within. The connection between her and stone statues finally waning, her breaths gasping as her wound slowly healed itself under the Dragon’s mana, whose roars were subsided from the soverign’s tinkering. Her eyelids shut themselves as her mind was overwhelmed, the mana still bubbling as it tried to recover, before a mumur echoed in her lingering sanity.

Foolish Scientist of Taboos. There is no knowledge without consequences, no control without the resolve to lose it.