--
"Uh oh..."
Boom!!!
It was very fortunate that Cedric isolated this room and covered it with runes and arrays. If he hadn't done that, the explosion just now could've seriously damaged his house.
He peeked out from his cover and sighed, looking at the charred remains of his tools. Nothing survived intact from the impact of the explosion. He groaned as he sent out another request for a new set of tools to be delivered straight to his inventory.
"This pretty much confirms that I need hands-on experience with the real thing first. Blind experiments won't cut it." Cedric removed his lab coat whilst cleaning the mess he created.
It's been a week since they returned home. All of Team Elric was enjoying their vacations in their own way. Cedric spent this time honing his skills; outside of those times, he is either relaxing with his girlfriends or performing experiments like this one.
He wants to upgrade the functions of the Demon Soul Purification Altar by discovering how to purify, or at least mimic, Demon Lord Souls.
Cedric has performed numerous experiments since returning, but none have succeeded just yet. This isn't counting the attempts he made prior to being drafted.
He pretty much exhausted all of his options at this point, which led him to believe that he's missing something crucial—something that sets apart Demon Lord Souls from ordinary Demon Souls. He's convinced that the only option he has left is to somehow get his hands on a Demon Lord Soul and consume it to experience what it's like personally so he can get the spark missing in his craft.
Cedric sighed after cleaning up his mess. He was notified that the tools he ordered had already arrived, but he hadn't taken them out just yet. Instead, he left the lab after turning the lights off, deciding that he had enough experiments for today.
"Oh, come on! Really? Why didn't that work?"
He blinked as he heard Chrissy's loud complaints next door. Frowning, he decided to take a peek. His eyes flashed and his vision warped; following this, obstructions lost all meaning. His vision penetrated walls, and he saw his girlfriend pouting as she stared at the charred cauldron in front of her, filled with a viscuous and skin-crawling concoction.
'She must be testing a new concoction again.' He mused to himself while adoring how she looked.
"It almost worked before." She mumbled to herself, "I thought I just needed to reduce or increase that one reagent to get the desired effect, but it didn't work. What am I doing wrong here?"
She's so focused on her work that she didn't hear Cedric enter the room. The moment he did, he immediately sniffed around and squinted. He inspected the cauldron of poison she's making and pretty much confirmed his guess earlier.
'She's developing the flesh-dissolving poison of hers,' he thought to himself.
This flesh-dissolving poison was inspired by the sight where the insect demons pretty much devoured the Raging Mountain Bull Demon in an instant, leaving only its skeleton. As terrifying as that scene was, her nightmares turned into an inspiration that she just had to create.
Since day one, Cedric has never found her weird. She may have some weird quirks, but at this day and age, who doesn't? Even when he learned about her deep fascination with poisons and toxic substances, Cedric's eyes or expression never changed.
He saw her as a passionate woman. The object of her passion didn't perturb him in the slightest. If anything, he understood where she was coming from.
She initially thought that this was just because he was trying to bed her, but no. Cedric's just as weird, if not weirder than her. He even helped her develop some of her latest and most potent concoctions.
But more importantly, Cedric never saw herself as a 'Witch' or a frightening woman just because she happened to have an innate fascination with poisons. He saw her as a lady and treated her like one. He made her feel special; he cared for and loved her deeply and passionately. His feelings made up for the void that was left behind when her parents abandoned her because of her weirdness.
His love was more than enough to compensate for all the years she spent being lonely and the target of public criticism.
She never stood a chance in the face of her affection. That's why she never even thought about resisting. Instead, she embraced it head-first and basked in it. It's just as addicting as she thought, because she just can't get enough of it.
Huff...
Cedric pulled back from the kiss; his face was a bit flustered. He placatingly held her by the shoulders and kissed her forehead.
"Relax, Princess," he said, and the endearment never failed to make her feel flustered. "We can't be like this in here with your cauldron mere inches away from us. I mean, we're immune to it and all, but I don't think it'd be romantic if we somehow knocked it down and it destroyed the floors of the lab."
Chrissy sighed and replied, "Yeah, that'd be a buzzkill."
She then stood up and secured the lid of her cauldron. Then she stretched for a bit before removing her lab coat and placing it in her inventory. With a mischevious expression, she jumped into his embrace, and Cedric readily caught her.
"Hmm? Not experimenting anymore?"
"No more." She giggled, pressing her body close to him. "Somebody disturbed me and got me riled up. I can't focus anymore. You gotta take responsibility."
"Oh, yeah?"
Cedric squeezed her bountiful behind him, earning him a pleasant mewl from the lady in his arms.
"Yeah. Come on, you're not thinking of leaving me hanging, are you?"
"Oh, I don't think I could even if I wanted to. Not when you're looking at me like that."
"So do it. You can do anything you want with me, sir."
Cedric's eyes glazed with need as he pretty much turned into a streak of light towards the bedroom.