The second Kal'tsit grabbed her shoulder, Warfarin's entire body went rigid. Her mind raced at a frantic pace, desperately trying to construct a half-plausible excuse to save herself from whatever severe punishment the ancient doctor was about to dish out.
Watching the Vampire freeze like a guilty child, Kal'tsit instinctively assumed the lunatic had cooked up another unhinged scheme during her absence. After all, Warfarin was notoriously always ready to partner with the Doctor to cause absolute chaos around the landship.
But as she thought about it, Kal'tsit realized that didn't make much sense. As reckless as those two could be, they wouldn't have been in the mood to pull a practical joke under the shadow of last night's brutal siege. Even if the Doctor was burning through her last reserves of sanity, she would have kept her sharp tactical focus intact.
So why on earth was this Vampire shaking in her boots like this? Had she simply managed to successfully defend the base, sneak into the blood bank to celebrate, and end up completely plastered on premium plasma?
Yes—at this point, Kal'tsit was completely certain that Babel had secured a massive victory. Closure's relaxed, completely unbothered expression was the ultimate giveaway. If the headquarters had suffered a catastrophic, permanent defeat, the chief engineer would be busy, not casually chatting in the courtyard. That factual deduction was the only reason Kal'tsit was willing to stand out here and indulge these two.
Wait a minute... Warfarin suddenly blinked, a realization popping into her hyperactive brain. I haven't actually done anything wrong over the last few days! Why am I letting myself get terrified to this extreme?
As the gears turned, she realized her intense panic was purely a conditioned reflex. She had been thoroughly scolded and dismantled by Kal'tsit so many times over the years that the doctor's flat, quiet voice had become a literal psychological trigger. The second she heard that specific tone, her body automatically defaulted to total submission.
The absolute tragedy of her existence brought a literal tear to Warfarin's eye. Why on earth had she ever agreed to join Babel in the first place? What kind of ungodly sins was she paying for in this mechanical fortress?
Think back to the glorious days of the past—she was once the highly revered, legendary "Mr. Blood" a prominent medical genius who received deep, unvarnished respect from the brightest minds in the global scientific community. Her future had been blindingly bright and infinitely wide.
And then? Then that mysterious black-clad tactician and this insufferable white Feline descended upon her life, dragging her right back to a homeland she thoroughly loathed, forcing her to get tangled up in a brutal war between royal siblings.
What an absolute nightmare, Warfarin grumbled internally, already constructing a mental voodoo doll of Kal'tsit to poke with tiny straw needles.
Of course, she mentally clarified that it was entirely a blessing doll for her oldest colleague's long-term health. It had absolutely nothing to do with any forbidden curses or superstitious witchcraft. Absolutely not! She was a woman of science, and superstition was beneath her.
She was going to use raw, intellectual dominance to overthrow this Feline's tyrannical regime. One day, she would force Kal'tsit to sit quietly before her, behaving as perfectly sweet and obedient as little Amiya!
"Are you going to answer me... or are you hiding another disaster that occurred while I was away?" Kal'tsit asked, her voice dropping into a gentle, dangerously soft register.
The absolute lack of warmth in that whisper sent a profound chill straight down Warfarin's spine. The fiery spark of rebellion that had just ignited inside her chest evaporated into thin air, leaving a perfectly polite, smiling Vampire standing meekly in the dirt.
"Ah! Ha ha! Of course not! You have absolutely no idea how insanely busy the medical wing has been since you left! I swear on my life, whatever crazy schemes you're thinking of, I haven't touched a single one of them!"
Warfarin spoke the absolute truth, and Kal'tsit's sharp ears caught the underlying implication: Warfarin hadn't participated in any madness, but that explicitly didn't mean madness hadn't taken place.
Still, Kal'tsit chose to let it slide for now. The Doctor clearly didn't know she was back yet and couldn't exactly flee the landship in her condition. She could easily settle those accounts later once the immediate security situation was sorted out.
"Let's start with this clearing. What exactly are you trying to accomplish out here, and what is inside these bags?" Kal'tsit asked, lightly tapping her boot against one of the heavy black vinyl containers. A sharp, grinding sound echoed from within—resembling structural masonry and crushed tiles colliding.
Based on the tactile feedback against her foot, Kal'tsit could tell there was a layer of organic material mixed in with the debris. Her analytical theory was thoroughly confirmed; she simply wanted to hear the culprit state the facts.
"The trash that tried to breach our perimeter last night," Warfarin explained, her tone turning dismissive. "The standard foot soldiers have already been properly processed and cleared out, but these 'clean' ones happened to be old acquaintances from my early days. I figured I'd drop them in a shallow trench right here as a permanent monument."
'Clean' meant these specific hostile Vampires weren't infected with Oripathy—or at the very least, their biological remnants posed zero risk of active environmental contamination. Kal'tsit gave a slow, clinical nod, her expression completely unchanged.
Without adding any unnecessary dramatic flair, Warfarin laid out the entire sequence of the midnight assault in a flat, casual narrative. She made the terrifying, high-stakes defense sound about as eventful as getting out of bed in the middle of the night to pour a glass of water.
Yet, despite the casual delivery, Kal'tsit could easily read between the lines. The defensive garrison had walked through an incredibly fierce, desperate battle. Even if she didn't know the exact strategic maneuvers the Doctor had deployed to turn the tide, an assassination force of this scale was an existential threat.
This wasn't a standard raiding party; it was an elite vanguard specifically designed to eliminate Theresa. Even without the direct presence of the Confessarii leadership, the combatants Theresis sent were the absolute pinnacle of Kazdel's military might—the type of high-tier commandos who could comfortably trade blows with Babel's own elite operators for multiple rounds.
"If you want the granular tactical breakdown, you're going to have to drag it out of the Doctor," Warfarin added, scratching her head. "She was the one calling the shots during the final phase of the engagement. By the time the dust settled, half of us didn't even know what hit the enemy."
Warfarin vividly recalled the bizarre command sequence from the previous night. The Doctor had abruptly ordered all active units to pull back, locking themselves deep within the absolute lowest sublevels of the fortress. Shortly after the lockdown engaged, a massive, ungodly racket echoed through the upper structural frame, and when they finally opened the blast doors, the invading force had already been completely dismantled, their fighting capacity reduced to absolute zero.
When questioned about the sudden annihilation, the Doctor had simply flashed a smug look, declaring it a classified strategic secret that wouldn't be disclosed until Kal'tsit returned to review the data.
"By the way... where is Her Highness?" Warfarin asked, her eyes darting around the ruined courtyard as a sudden wave of panic washed over her face. "Don't tell me your convoy ran into a hostile ambush on the road and failed to protect her!"
"She is right over there," Kal'tsit replied curtly, tilting her head toward the edge of the clearing before leading the way. She was eager to conclude the initial field assessment so she could personally inspect the Doctor's physical vitals.
That reckless strategist's body was already functioning on borrowed time, yet she had just forced herself through a high-stress, master-level defensive campaign. Kal'tsit needed an immediate diagnostic profile to ensure the idiot hadn't permanently shattered her own life span.
Closure immediately fell into step behind her, while Warfarin abandoned her shovel entirely, leaving her historic rivals half-buried in the dirt as she scrambled to follow the group.
She knew Theresa's gentle nature perfectly; the Sovereign would have rushed over to greet them the moment the vehicle pulled up. The fact that she was staying back suggested something was seriously wrong with her condition.
A moment later, they rounded the transport and encountered Theresa, whose face carried a striking, alabaster paleness. Warfarin gasped, instantly bouncing forward to run a frantic medical scan, completely forgetting in her panic that Kal'tsit was also a world-class doctor standing right next to her.
"Her vitals are stable, though her overall stamina is completely drained," Warfarin muttered, her fingers tracing Theresa's pulse points. "But her Oripathy has taken a clear turn for the worse... Theresa, did you seriously attempt to engage an entire military detachment by yourself? How could you push your baseline system to this alarming degree?"
The Blood Demon let out a heavy sigh of relief once she confirmed there were no immediate fatal injuries. But as the medical tension completely drained from her shoulders, her sensitive olfactory receptors caught a scent drifting through the air—a fragrance so overwhelmingly potent that it bypassed her rational brain entirely.
"Whew... you really need to stop treating your health like a disposable resource," Warfarin mumbled, her words suddenly slowing down as her nose twitched violently. "An irregular strain like this could easily become... become a life-threatening... sniff... wait, what on earth is that... slurp... why does it smell so incredibly incredible?"
A profound, intoxicating aroma had hit her senses! The sheer quality of the scent kicked her internal biological instincts into absolute overdrive, waking up every dormant craving inside her Vampire lineage. Her inner mind screamed at her to throw her arms around the source's neck and drain them continuously for three days and three nights!
Her glazed eyes snapped instantly toward the teenage girl currently supporting Theresa's weight.
"It's you, isn't it? You're the one named Jeanne?" Warfarin gasped, taking a stumbling step forward, her focus entirely locked on the French girl. The scent radiating from her skin was richer and more refined than the most legendary, ancient vintage ever pulled from a royal cellar. Her knees felt entirely weak; she could barely maintain her balance! "This profile... it's miles more exquisite than even that chaotic person's blood! Please, just a tiny taste? A fraction of a drop! Can you spare me just one hundred milliliters? Just a tiny syringe, please..."
Jeanne blinked, looking thoroughly uncomfortable as a drooling Vampire stared at her like a starving peasant looking at a feast. She offered a strained, highly awkward grimace as she delivered a swift refusal:
"Uh... yeah, I'm going to have to say no to that."
It wasn't that Jeanne was particularly squeamish about needles or blood donation—one hundred milliliters was an insignificant amount that her reinforced physical frame could regenerate in a heartbeat. She was relieved the crazy lady hadn't whipped out a giant, terrifying veterinary syringe on the spot, which she assumed was probably due to Theresa's restricting presence.
What actually worried Jeanne was her passive, high-tier cleansing aura. If this eccentric Vampire actually managed to ingest a single drop of a holy maiden's blood, the divine purity would likely trigger an immediate, catastrophic purification reaction inside her undead anatomy. If Warfarin spontaneously combusted into a pile of holy ash right here in the courtyard, would that count as Jeanne's fault, or would it just be a classic case of the local idiot paying the ultimate price for her own stupidity?
Before Warfarin could even open her mouth to beg a second time, the supreme authority of the Babel household intervened. Kal'tsit stepped up seamlessly, her hand clamping onto the back of Warfarin's collar with practiced efficiency. She lifted the protesting Vampire off her feet, dragging her backward across the concrete exactly like an annoyed mother cat carrying a problematic kitten by the scruff of its neck.
As the chaotic duo disappeared into the broken entry corridor, Jeanne could distinctly hear the elite operators behind her trying—and failing—to muffle their amused snickers.
Wow, Babel really is an absolute circus, Jeanne thought to herself, watching the flailing Vampire get dragged away into the darkness. Everyone here has a completely unhinged personality. Why does this place give me the exact same chaotic vibe as hanging out with Yelena's Yetis?
A creeping sensation filled her chest. Her upcoming stay inside this massive landship wasn't going to be a boring diplomatic visit. Not in the slightest.
It was going to be an absolutely wild ride.