97 The Necromancer and the Priestess 29

"How is research going?" El asked from his seat in the room that the dragons lent them. He was reading a book, his mask set aside and wearing his glasses.

On the other hand, Yin Mei was on the bed, also reading, her book raised high above her head. Her face was scrunched up as she focused, seeming to be thinking hard. She finally groaned and placed her arms down, book on her chest. "Terrible. Very terrible." She flung the book, and El caught it perfectly.

She then proceeded to roll around the bed multiple times. "What do I dooooooo~" She said, before stopping, her hair now a mess.

El set the book down on the table in front of him. "It's already been a month since we've been here. How about we-"

"No." Yin Mei rejected, already knowing what he was going to say.

El had on a wry smile, knowing she was already going to say that.

She was so close, she knew it. The solution was certainly in her hands already, she just wasn't quite able to grasp it.

"General," A voice said, and the black haired advisor poked his head into their room, obviously having something to report.

El didn't want to disturb Yin Mei, who had fallen back into her thoughts, and so stood up, switching his glasses out with his mask before following the demon out.

The walked from the cave outside, to a distance away, before stopping. "What is it?" El asked coolly.

"I've already contacted our secret troops. General, are you sure...?" The advisor trailed off, his face showing slight unease.

"Sure about what, Kiel? That senile old man isn't worth the effort." El said coldly, waving his hand. "Unless you're having doubts?"

"N-no," The demon shook his head.

"Maybe it's because you used to be human that you're so soft. I thought that Celes would be happy, so I brought you back to life, but... after all, you're a failure." El said. Perhaps because of the illness he had been infected with, or some other outside reason, but this person here was no longer human after El had raised him up from the dead. He was not quite a real demon either. In other words, he was a failure. His appearance had changed to the point that Celestina couldn't even recognize him, while he also wasn't able to use magic at all, and his physical strength was the same as a human's. But, El still kept him as an advisor, perhaps partly due to sentiment.

Kiel lowered his head, a slightly bitter expression on his face, but it quickly disappeared.

"Anyways, it's good for you to just do as I say. The current demon king was never worth serving in the first place. Weak and pathetic." El said.

Kiel nodded, but he was curious. El had never had the interest in a coup d'etat before, so why now? What had happened to cause the sudden change?

The two continued talking for a while more, meanwhile, Yin Mei back in the room had changed locations to the seat that El had been sitting in. "That guy actually went and left while I was thinking. Such a terrible person!" Yin Mei grumbled.

She stuck her hand in her pocket, to pull out a candy, but she felt a smooth round surface of something else. She paused before pulling it out. It was that marble that Kai and Rosella had brought back from their treasure hunt. She had just stuck it in the pocket of her robe and forgot about it.

She had also forgot to ask the two where they had found it.

She set it on the table, rolling it back and forth with her finger.

Hmm. It was really pretty. Actually, looking at it like this, it kinda looked like a hard candy. Though it certainly didn't feel sticky like one. Man she was hungry.

She lay her head down, staring at the item.

Staring, staring, staring some more.

She really wanted to eat it...

So she did. She popped it in her mouth, bit down, chewed a few times, and swallowed.

And it tasted really good.

Like a burst of some sweet, fruity syrup like flavor of some kind - it was a taste that she liked the most in the world. How peculiar. She wasn't expecting that.

Or rather, why in the world had she eaten it in the first place?

Then, there was a sharp pain coming from her stomach, and with a cough, blood began seeping out of her mouth. She felt her stomach getting weirdly... cold? What the hell? She pulled up her clothes, and her stomach was turning into stone.

Firstly, how did that get digested so quickly. Secondly, this was spreading way too fast. And thirdly, although she was glad that she had finally found the cause of the dragon's illness, wasn't this kinda bad??

Or rather, it was spreading way to fast for comfort! She wasn't like dragons that could survive with her heart turned to stone! She quickly put her hand over her stomach, and closed her eyes, seeing her body like through an X-ray.

She wiggled her fingers, and strands of light appeared, drawing out pieces of that strange marble, turning it whole again in midair. It bounced onto the ground and she disregarded it, instead focusing on returning her body back to flesh. A bead of sweat rolled down her forehead, her brows furrowed in pain.

The blood that seeped from her mouth dripped down onto the ground.

Only after a long while, who knows how long, did she finally fall to the ground, exhausted, but healed.

That marble was too strange. It had some sort of weird magic about it that almost made it impossible to catch with her magic vision. Only when she had adjusted it slightly, and because she had known what she was looking for, did she manage to extract it from her body.

In addition, why had she eaten it in the first place? There definitely had to be some sort of mind manipulation magic at work there.

And how did this little marble turn her body to stone anyways?

There were many unanswered questions, but the good thing was that she wasn't dead, and she had discovered the cause of the mysterious stone illness.

Though... Yin Mei leaned up against the bed, wiping the blood away from her mouth. Shit... this may be hard to fully recover from...

Her mana felt sluggish. She could practically feel it leaking out from her. She had definitely injured her magic source. With her magic source damaged, there was no way that Yin Mei herself would be able to heal it...

Ahh, but she was too tired to think of anything right now...

She closed her eyes, her consciousness fading.

Damn, mind manipulation or what, she would definitely never put just anything in her mouth again... food poisoning aside, it was definitely a first to experience being turned to stone because she ate something strange...

When Yin Mei next woke up, El was sitting beside her, with the rest of the group crowded around. A new face, a woman with wavy white hair, was talking to El.

"Her magic source is severely damaged. It'll take quite a long time to be treated, and even then, it's hard to say if she can ever manage to use magic at the same level that she had been before," the girl said, noticing that Yin Mei had woken up. "How do you feel?"

"Fine," Yin Mei said. "A little weak, and my magic flow is... but aside from that, there's no issues," Yin Mei added on honestly.

"To be expected." The woman nodded. "I'll go write up a prescription, so until then, stay here. Don't get up from your bed."

She left, leaving Yin Mei alone with El and the others. "What in the world happened?" El said coldly, and Yin Mei could tell that behind that mask he was fuming. He was very angry. She recalled that Yao Heyan was almost never angry, but the one time he had been was when she had been gone to play with some underworld gang and had gotten herself shot a couple of times...

What can she say, they were messing with her family, so she obviously had to go "play" with them a little, right?

The result was that Yao Heyan had been sulking for the next week. Of course, he still obediently paid her visits at the hospital, but he refused to talk to her and had constantly been wearing a sour expression.

This reminded her of that time.

"I figured out the cause of the illness the dragons have been suffering from." Yin Mei said, avoiding the question, her eyes not meeting El's.

El's brows furrowed from underneath his mask. "Don't avoid the question."

Rosella was standing on the side, a worried expression on her face. "Leader..." She said, also wanting to know what in the world had happened. All she knew was that the demon beside her had found Yin Mei collapsed on the ground, unconscious.

Bringing her to the dragons, she didn't think it was anything serious, but it was actually extremely serious. Her magic source was injured! If there weren't dragons, this would certainly be an incurable problem that could potentially result in Yin Mei being unable to use magic ever again, or just very simple and weak magic.

"Well, you know the marble that we looked at? The one that Kai and Rosella brought back... I was looking at it and got the sudden strange urge to eat it..." She trailed off, looking away again.

"So you ate it?" El's voice was very cold.

"Maybe?"

El was speechless. "... Was it some sort of magic?" This was all he could think of. Although Celestina was a little bit foolish, she wasn't a total idiot. There was no way that she would put something that strange in her mouth, right? So he decided that there must be some outside powers at work here.

Yin Mei nodded. "And shockingly enough, my body started to turn to stone! I quickly extracted it and healed myself, but after all, being turned to stone is a little..."

El sighed, taking her hand in his. "Don't do something so dangerous next time."

On the other hand, both Rosella and Kai had pale faces, Rosella's more so than Kai's. Because Yin Mei had been talking in the human language, they could clearly understand what she had said. "I-it's my fault." Rosella couldn't help but say. It's because she had found that object and given it to Yin Mei that she was like this now!

"It's not," Yin Mei immediately said. "It's no one's fault. Actually, this is good. You found what I wanted you to find."

"But-" Rosella began to protest, but was interrupted by Yin Mei.

"No buts. It isn't your fault, so don't blame yourself." She said firmly, and Rosella fell silent, a bitter expression on her face.

Kai didn't say anything, but equally felt like he held the blame for this situation.

"Where did you guys get that marble?" Yin Mei asked, and Rosella quickly answered her, as if trying to make up for her blunder.

"They were in one of the dragon treasure hoards that the dragons let us take a look at. Apparently they're occasionally found in the magic stone mines nearby here." Rosella said.

At this time, the white haired woman came back, giving her a box of potions and a prescription, along with instructions to come visit her every week for treatment. She predicted that it would take two decades before her treatment could finish...

Yin Mei: ...

So, the option was to stay here for two decades and receive treatment, and the other option was to just be unable to use strong magic again.

Oh... and also have a shorter life span. With her magic source injured, then she would be reduced to the lifespan of an average human.

Two decades was too long. Yin Mei's face hardened, and El could immediately tell what she was thinking. "No!" He said loudly, and everyone turned to look at him. "You're staying here and getting the treatment."

Yin Mei looked at him with a slightly sad expression. "I-"

He shook his head. "No, you're getting the treatment." He stubbornly insisted.

"But-"

"No!" He refused to hear it.

"..." Yin Mei was silent, speechless. Having an injured magic source was nothing major and didn't bother her at all, so why is it that El was so concerned??

She didn't realize it was because El was different from Yin Mei, who possessed her memories from her past life and knowledge that she would always reincarnate. In other words, her death was never permanent, so she was not afraid of a shorter lifespan.

But El was. El, or more accurately, Azazel, had lived a long time, and still had an even longer time ahead of him, if he completely lived out the rest of his potential lifespan. If Yin Mei's magic source hadn't been injured, then she would be able to live out the same time that he would, but now that it was, she would simply be a blink in his time of existence. Human lives were short and fleeting. He didn't want that.

He wouldn't let that happen!