Endless Horde: Through the Eyes of a Godking

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.

Chrissy has created a lot of poisonous concoctions before. In fact, at least 25% of the available poisons on the system market were her creations.

She told him about this before, and much like him, she also secluded herself in the labs, trying to create a formula that could produce her desired effects. But much like Cedric as well, she too was having a difficult time cracking the code.

Obviously, she can't use 'personal experience' as an option here, unlike Cedric. She can't throw herself into the maws of that insect wave to get inspiration for what it's like and expect to survive that encounter. Even if she somehow could, Cedric wouldn't let her do that.

"Hmm..."

Clang!!

Chrissy was startled, causing her to drop her tools. She sharply turned around and sighed in relief after seeing that it was just Cedric.

"How long have you been there?" She asked.

"Not long. I heard you complaining from outside, so I came in to check on you." Cedric grinned as he walked closer to her. He kissed her cheeks and asked, "Still can't get the formula, right?"

"Yeah," she softly replied, resting her back on Cedric's solid chest. "It's annoying. I'm nearly out of options, I think. I've come very close to making it with the recent formula, so I thought I just needed to adjust the ratios. But even after I did, all ended up failing. I don't know what I'm doing wrong."

"Well, I think you have more options left than you initially thought," Cedric pondered as he stared at the cauldron.

That got her attention, so she looked at him inquisitively.

"I mean, I remember that you have developed other formulas that came just as close as this one to your desired effect, no?" he asked, causing Chrissy's eyes to widen. "You said you have about ten of them? Well, you've exhausted all the possible ratios of one formula, and so far, it's not the one you need.

It's too early to think that you're the problem here since it just so happens that you have nine more to explore."

She just had to smooch him because of that.

Chrissy might not say this much, but this was one of the things she loved about him.

Not everybody was fond of the idea of playing with something as dangerous as poison. More importantly, not everybody shares her passion for it, and that's fine. What stinks is that, just because of this, a lot of people became afraid of her. Most of them thought that she would poison them if they dared to do something remotely close to offending her, thinking that she's just that shallow.

It made her feel lonely, and it has been difficult to forge real bonds with people because of it. She had lost count of how many times she considered switching paths, abandoning the poison path, just to get rid of the loneliness she felt.

Team Elric was just like them at first, and it was awkward. But the more they worked together and the longer they knew each other, the better it got. Still, it has taken a long time before they became comfortable with her.

Cedric though? He's different.

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.