In the end, Lucifer still brought Ermangarde back to his place.
And it was only when they stepped inside that Lucifer remembered he still had a “watchdog” at home.
If Warfarin weren’t currently sprawled there, staring intently at his blood-wine cabinet like a hawk, Lucifer wouldn’t have defamed this deadbeat Sanguine.
Hearing Lucifer and the others return, Warfarin quickly wiped her drool and sprang off his sofa.
“Reporting, sir!
I have successfully completed the task you assigned!”
Lucifer glanced around the corners of his house.
To be fair, Warfarin hadn’t survived for hundreds of years just on her smart mouth and thick skin.
Not only were the dusty, grime-prone areas scrubbed clean, but even the bugs and mice in the dark corners had been driven out.
The entire old manor felt completely refreshed.
Perhaps, looking strictly at her housekeeping skills, Warfarin was actually a qualified servant?
“Good.”
Muttering the foreign word, Lucifer walked straight to his blood-wine cabinet.
He picked out a bottle labeled with the name of an Ursus tribe and tossed it to Warfarin.
“This is your reward.”
Lucifer didn’t consider himself an exploitative vampire.
The logic of labor in exchange for compensation was something he hadn’t completely forgotten.
But Warfarin, apparently, was pushing her luck.
“Um, I saw there’s another bottle of Vouivre…
or a Hippogryph one would do too.”
“Have I been spoiling you too much?”
Seeing that her greedy scheme had failed, Warfarin wasn’t discouraged.
Scoring a bottle of high-quality Ursus blood-wine was already a massive win.
It was then that Warfarin noticed the third person in the room—Ermangarde, the Lich who had gone out with Lucifer earlier.
“Huh?
Why are you back here too?”
“Well, since the meeting doesn’t start until tomorrow, I planned to stay here for the night.”
Only now did Ermangarde get a chance to observe the dynamic between Lucifer and Warfarin.
If Warfarin was Lucifer’s servant, was it really appropriate for her to just invite herself into the master’s house so openly?
Come to think of it, whenever she traveled, she always stayed in hotels or guesthouses.
Her brain must have short-circuited earlier for things to turn out like this.
But Ermangarde didn’t regret it.
Instead, she found it a bit thrilling.
“Whoa…
Lucifer, you didn’t hypnotize this poor girl, did you?
Don’t tell me you actually prefer the younger ones?”
Ignoring Warfarin’s baseless accusations, Lucifer paid her no mind and continued counting his blood-wine bottles to see if the sticky-fingered deadbeat had swiped any.
“If you’re so worried about me doing something inappropriate or uncensored to Ermangarde, why don’t you just stay here too?”
Lucifer looked completely indifferent.
This large old manor was specifically gifted to him by the Sanguinarch, who assumed Lucifer would recruit a large retinue of servants.
As a result, not a single guest room had been used until now.
Besides, after being battered by Terra’s unique lifespan rules, Lucifer’s “fetish settings” had long stopped caring about age.
As long as they were hot…
err, appetizing enough, that was fine.
“Sure, why not.
It’s not like it makes a difference whether I’m at my own place anyway.”
Warfarin agreed without hesitation.
Rather than heading back to her own place to miserably grind her single-player life, she’d rather hang out at Lucifer’s and find some entertainment.
“Bring your own pillows and blankets, though.
Don’t blame me if you wake up with a stiff neck or catch a cold.”
“No biggie.
I can sleep in the wilderness; all I need is a spot on the floor.”
Though Warfarin wasn’t good at fighting and had no love for war, as a Sanguine who had lived for over two hundred years, her physical constitution was far beyond that of ordinary people.
“Mmm…”
Ermangarde felt a very subtle sensation upon learning that Warfarin would also be staying over tonight.
It felt like a couple enjoying some private time suddenly having a third wheel barge in.
Even though I was the one who came first…
Wait, timeline-wise, isn’t Warfarin the one who got here first?
Am I actually the third wheel who barged in?
Hiss…
doesn’t that make it even more exciting?
Just as the atmosphere was getting slightly complicated, Lucifer suddenly whipped out a complete set of blood-drawing equipment and placed it on the table.
“Before that, Ermangarde, lie down on the sofa.
And Warfarin, stop hoarding that damn blood-wine of yours.”
Sanguines with relatively high moral standards usually have some research in human medicine.
Lucifer and Warfarin, who could restrain their bloodlust, were both experts at drawing blood.
For any Sanguines looking to walk a deviant path, becoming a doctor was a stellar choice—and it was a great way to avoid malpractice disputes.
“Are we doing it…
right here?”
Ermangarde leaned back on the sofa, watching Lucifer and Warfarin fiddle with the syringes, feeling a bit nervous.
It was just drawing blood, which seemed harmless enough, but both the lead surgeon and the assistant were Sanguines!
“The pain will only last a second.”
With that, Lucifer brought out the container meant to store Ermangarde’s blood.
But to Ermangarde, no matter how she looked at it, it was a wooden bucket the size of a human head.
In an instant, cold sweat doused Ermangarde.
“Wait a second!
You aren’t planning to fill that entire bucket, are you?!”
“Well, yeah.
I said I wanted your blood, but I didn’t say how much.”
Lucifer then let out the sinister grin of a successful conspirator.
Warfarin, catching on instantly, immediately pinned down Ermangarde who was about to make a run for it, and whipped out some rope from who-knows-where to tie her up.
“I’ll die!
I’ll definitely die from that amount!”
“Relax, it’ll be over in a flash.”
“I don’t want that!”
Ermangarde’s earth-shattering shrieks echoed throughout Lucifer’s manor, but nobody cared.
Of course, Lucifer didn’t actually fill the whole bucket.
He only drew two syringes worth of blood from Ermangarde.
After all, he didn’t actually want to kill Ermangarde, and besides, if you have too much of a certain blood type, its value depreciates.
But there are always exceptions.
“Why’d you only draw this much?”
Uh oh, we’ve got a real crazy Sanguine here.
“Sustainable harvesting.
Draining the pond dry is just bad practice.”
Though he said that, Ermangarde curled up in the corner of the sofa, hugging herself like an aggrieved young wife.
Ermangarde originally wanted to squeeze out a few tears to play up her pity, but when she saw Lucifer shooing Warfarin away while carefully storing her two vials of blood, she found herself unable to cry anymore.
She used to think she was “vibrant and optimistic” enough to give even Fremont a headache, but it turned out there was always a bigger fish.
Are Sanguines all like this?
What a learning experience, folks.
After taking a moment to calm her complex emotions, Lucifer finished storing the blood.
“Now, we’ve got a new problem.”
Lucifer’s words caught the attention of Ermangarde and Warfarin.
“Do any of us actually know how to cook?”
“…”
Silence was the Cambridge of tonight—a dead, absolute quiet.