房客(糙汉)何璐程曜坤

A young dark-brown-haired maid with dark-brown-haired eyes was carrying out her duties as always. She diligently helped in the kitchen since one of the kitchen hands ended up sick that day.

She was sent to the cellar for potatoes which she brought back in a large basket but being the little klutz that she was, she ended up losing one of her personal belongings – seeing her pitiful expression the head chef excused her and allowed her to go back there to search for it.

"You need to stop bringing that pouch everywhere, you aren't a marsupial – it's the third time that something fell out of it and caused you to drop your duties."

"Sorry!"

One of the senior maids called after the little maid hurrying through the hallway which cause the girl to turn around for a moment and laugh apologetically.

"Phew..."

Being back in the dark cellar the young maid looked over her shoulder to make sure that she wasn't followed and breathed out in relief.

The girl hurriedly took out a pair of dark pants and a dark shirt from the purse that she was scolded about, and changed out of her maid uniform.

After folding and stuffing the uniform back into the pouch and pulled a soft fabric over her face so only her eyes remained visible.

With that part of the preparation done, the girl rummaged through her purse and took out two pieces of soap – both of which had an imprint of a key on them.

*crack*

"...!"

A distant sound made the girl freeze in place, listening in for a few seconds before she breathed out again and moved deeper into the cellar, walking past the cool vegetable storage and stopping in front of an unassuming old door.

What was behind it was supposed to be a wine cellar where the mansion's lord kept his most precious beverages.

There, the girl put together the two pieces of soap holding them in one hand and punctured her index finger with one of her unusually sharp fangs.

"Clot."

As the drop of blood from the tiny wound was getting bigger and bigger, the girl pressed her finger into the hole and muttered – as she did, her dark-brown irises trembled and cracked apart and sunk down in amaranth hidden beneath.

Similarly, the girl's hair turned from dark brown to amaranth, the color of fresh blood.

After a few seconds, the girl pulled the two pieces of soap apart and a hardened blood cloth in the shape of a key was revealed.

The girl pulled it away with a serious face and inserted the makeshift key in the lock.

*click*

Without the need to move her hand the girl made the key twist and unlocked the door – with the satisfying sound of the lock, she nodded to herself and took out the key, entering the wine cellar and...

*click*

...locking the door from the other side...

The inside was much darker than the previous room but the girl came prepared, after rummaging through the cramped purse, the amaranth-haired girl took out a small magic crystal lamp and activated it.

She approached the rows of nested bottles and started inspecting all of them one by one.

"Cherry wine aged in oak barrels with earth mana stone finish..."

Finally, the girl muttered to herself reaching towards a ruby bottle with a dark brown label and golden writing.

"...is a fake switch and will open a trap passage that will imprison the foolish intruder..."

The girl turned right around and faced the other shelf where she counted three bottles diagonally and ended up pointing at a slim emerald bottle with a white label and black writing.

"...spicy spirit with a drop of swamp drake venom is the right one~"

She smirked to herself triumphantly and moved the emerald bottle to the side, reaching into the back of the shelf and pushing in a tile masked as part of the wall.

*click* *hshaaa*

A mechanical sound reverberated through the wine cellar and part of the wall without any shelves opened smoothly on hidden hinges.

The girl moved in and followed a narrow passage until she met a dead end where a small leaver slightly above her head was tempting her to pull on it.

"Hmph. This is an emergency exit, not an entrance – just another trap. Overly cautious bastard."

The girl glanced at the leaver and scoffed.

Made sure that the magic crystal lamp is placed securely in her bag and raised both of her hands to her mouth and stabbed all of her fingers with her pointy fangs.

The drops of blood started appearing at her fingertips instantly and the girl pressed them to the wall while focusing.

The thin trails of blood started creeping alongside the surface of the stones in search of even the thinnest crack – after a minute or so the opening was found and the blood pushed through as the girl's complexion was turning pale.

When the blood was pumped through the wall, the girl made it creep to the left until it encountered a sconce. Having localized it, the girl made her blood clomp around it and...

*creak* *click*

Forced it to turn clockwise which activated the mechanism and unlocked another secret door allowing the girl to enter the room brightly lit with dozens of sconces lined up all around the walls.

Said walls weren't exactly normal either, they were covered with this tiles made from mana white mana crystals, each one inscribed with runes.

The girl didn't know all the details about them, but what she knew was that they were supposed to cancel out whatever mana was released within the room and that they cost the owner of the mansion a fortune... enough to not be possible for him to afford without betraying his own nation...

Just as she learned from infiltrating the mansion, the one room that she entered through the secret passage was separated from another, much larger one, where the hired scholars – or rather mad scientists – were performing the experiments.

The room she was in was meant for storing important documents – as an archive of sorts - as well as contained one of the recent successful experiments that also doubled as yet another security system.

pαпdα-ňᴏνêι·сóМ It was impossible to miss as it was giving the room that was supposed to be white a slightly pinkish hue.

In the center of the room stood a magic device made almost entirely from mana crystals of various colors.

The base and the very top of the device were composed of dozens if not hundreds of mana stones of most of the available attributes but the center was composed of a container made out of translucent crystal.

Within it, submerged in a reddish fluid floated a large piece of magic crystal so intensely pink that not even the reddish fluid could alter its color.

"..."

The gulped down her saliva as her gaze ended up at the pink crystal – or rather the fluid it was submerged in.

As a variant blood magician, she could at least sense the blood in her surroundings even if she couldn't take control of it.

...and the fluid was definitely diluted blood...

What kind of freakish experiment required a mana crystal to be submerged in blood?

And more importantly whose blood was it? It definitely wasn't a monster's blood – even a diluted blood of a monster would carry a bit of the creature's will.

The blood within the container – although making the girl feel a bit creeped out – did not carry any traces of the beast's consciousness...

…which meant it must have been humans...

Nonetheless, the device and whatever was inside of it was of no interest to the young girl, so she shook her head to clear her mind and moved toward the drawers where documents were stored.

The girl retracted the blood she released previously but did not reabsorb it and instead made it partially coagulate around her wrists creating dark red bracelets of sorts, still ready to be transformed and used according to her will.

...she was focused on searching for very specific information but from time to time her eyes wandered toward the creepy device...

She wasn't sure what it was supposed to do, but she managed to learn that it could be activated by the scholars working in the other room to instantly get rid of everything inside the archives.

Such action was marked as the absolute last resort because amongst the papers and reports gathered there was some really useful incriminatory stuff that could serve as blackmail in case the mansion owner came under scrutiny.

"...it won't trigger and blow everything up just by me being near it, right...?"

The girl muttered to herself nervously as she moved to another cabinet – this one much closer to the creepy device than the first one she checked...

"....where is it...?! I know that those two made dirty business together...!"

The girl was getting impatient and increasingly nervous which made her mutter to herself more as she went through the stacks of documents as if they were one-word fliers and not long reports of various experiments and dirty transactions.

*click*

"!!!"

The girl's cautiousness was what saved her – at the moment she heard the click of the lock in the door leading to the other room she instantly jumped into hiding.

...which ended up being behind the creepy device – the girl was small enough to hide behind the colorful base without sticking out from the semi-translucent center – it was a marginally better hiding spot than between the document cabinets since it at least allowed her to crawl around while keeping out of sight...

...at least when only one person entered the room...