“Hey, mum, I need the slightly suspicious stuff Tom sent.” I said, wearing a formal white dress with a lot of frills. It had been a few days since big doggo entered our garden and my meeting with the king would be held that day. Mary already talked to them and we made sure to coordinate our stories accordingly.

“It is over there in the corner. Do I want to know what´s in there?” She asked, looking up from the documents in front of her.

“Hmm, we are catching a few criminals with that.” I said and stood up from the couch. Sadly, I wouldn’t have much time to spend with Mary that day either. I was already at the royal palace once, dealing with the tutor who was definitely driving me crazy by asking me hypothetical questions about everything, then I scooted over to the rapidly growing orphanage, helped out there and read a few stories, and then I was back in the evening.

“If you say so…” After I got her approval, I picked up a rather heavy box, filled with documents and struggled to walk out of the room. Thankfully, Hannah took them out of my arms immediately as she noticed my problems.

“Wow, these are really heavy.” I said, looking in wonder how she carried all of that with one hand.

“They really aren’t?” She said, making me look out of the window and curse that damn sun. Anyways, soon afterwards, we were already on our way towards the royal palace in a completely white carriage and at least for several minutes I had the chance to talk with Hannah about everything she ever wanted to ask.

“What´s inside the box?” She asked, nodding towards the package on the ground between us.

“What do you think?” I asked, and tilted my head, rather interested in how much she actually grasped from my actions.

“A few documents we managed to salvage from the Wolf Street Gang?” Not too shabby. She certainly knew more about my actions than Mary. It wasn’t that Mary was less intelligent than Hannah or anything in that direction, it was just that she wanted nothing to do with that kind of stuff and trusted that I wouldn’t do evil using my status.

“Precisely. And what exactly?” I asked, hoping she would understand even more than that.

“Information about werewolves?” She said, which certainly wasn’t wrong.

“Yup …” I commented and slowly stood up as the carriage came to a halt. Immediately a butler opened the door and helped me to get out while Hannah still had to do it herself. Well, her maid attire was considerably shorter than mine which nearly went to the ground. The dresses I wore during the day were really impractical in that regard. I even needed to pick up the sides of my dress as I climbed the stairs and certainly wouldn’t be able to fend off a wild boar-like this.

Anyway, like usual the butler led us directly into the throne room where the king sat on his extravagant chair, flanked by two men. The right man was the prime minister who eyed me with interest. Sadly, I didn´t know the other one, but he looked like a mage with his dark blue cape.

“Your holiness, it is a pleasure to see you.” Was it slightly awkward for him to call me like that in front of his subordinates? I could only hope so.

“Likewise, your highness.” I said while Hannah curtsied to my right. Luckily, I didn´t have to do that any more thanks to my honorary position as the saint.

“You claimed you have something for me?” Straight to the point, without any detours? Sure, if he wanted that.

“I do. The person who had slain the monster in our backyard visited us again two nights ago, leaving this in front of my room.” I nodded towards Hannah who picked up the box and gave it to the nearest knight. He immediately brought it in front of the king and the prime minister picked up the first document.

“Telekinesis and now infiltration as well? He is certainly a person we need to watch out for.” The king asked, not yet grasping the contents of the box fully, while I got slightly frustrated. It was one thing to hide my own accomplishments, but for them to not even realize it could have been a woman as well … was actually benefiting me. Even though, it still got on my nerves.

“Your majesty, this is quite a lot of information about this new race.” I nodded brightly as the prime minister revealed a part of what was inside.

“Certainly. It contains all the information about the first werewolf we could ever hope to get, including that he was the monster in our backyard.” I revealed concerned.

“He was?” The king asked with interest.

“Indeed. I can only guess what he wanted, but my take is that he wanted to get as fast as possible to the royal academy.” And my house was just on the way … something like that. Nobody could disprove my claim after all and the saint wouldn’t lie, would she?

“Hmm … the sapphire, why did your mother take it out?” Well, the timing was a bit odd, so it was only natural this question would come up.

“We needed it to pay for the costs of the orphanage.” I claimed and smiled brightly.

“You would sell such a valuable gem?” He said in utter amazement.

“As you can see, I am not a fan of jewellery in general, and neither is my mother. It is an asset, a highly emotional one because of where we got it from, but an asset nonetheless.” I claimed and showed him my hands, devoid of any rings.

“I see.” He said, grabbing his chin shortly afterwards. He knew that something was fishy about me, but he neither could investigate too deeply, nor could he question me thoroughly.

“Your majesty, this isn´t just information about the new race.” The prime minister said, picking up one document after another.

“I assume you knew about that?” The king asked after going through one of these.

“It would be a lie to say I didn´t. I trust you can handle these secrets better than me.” I said slowly and carefully.

“Hmm … we certainly will. Professor Apfelsaft, if you would be so kind to present everything to the saint.” The king said, already going through the next documents.

“At once. Please, do follow me.” The mage said and went towards a side door while indicating us to follow. After bidding my farewell to the king and the prime minister, I followed him with Hannah through normal hallways at first, but these turned darker and darker with time while wondering what this mage would show us. We took quite a few stairs downwards and my guess was we were deeply underground as he presented us his laboratory.

Magical apparatuses I could barely recognize stood on tables in large quantities. Weird liquid bubbled in them, while a few valves made strange noises. In the corner, there were a few cages with mice, probably for some experiments he did on a large table in the middle of the room.

“Come in, come in. Please don’t touch anything.” He said, right before Hannah wanted to snip against a glass cage with a rat in it.

“Why are we here, professor Apfelsaft?” I asked nicely.

“When we received your letter a few days ago, I immediately had a brilliant idea. If we could infuse mana artificially int-“ I had read what Jacob wrote down in his diary and all the documents Sirius had. I knew what they had gone through and thus immediately interrupted the mage as I feared we would need to listen to a hour long talk.

“The results were higher aggressiveness against the original inhabitants. These werewolves mostly saw us humans as lower lifeforms after they reached adulthood, making it a very risky subject to explore.” I didn’t want any more races like the werewolf on this planet at all. If this mage wanted to create these races artificially … we would have a problem.

“Naturally. Of course. We do not wish to create more of these Demons as you had called them. But it is still necessary to explore the topic nonetheless. Soo …” He opened another door and rolled a fish tank full of mackerels into the main laboratory.

“So?” I asked as he didn´t finish his sentence yet.

“Please wait a second.” He said, opening a shelf and lifting up another fish tank up slowly. This one was empty though and the water seemed … strange. The reflections of the surface were a bit odd and it looked a lot slimier than normal water.

“This is liquid mana.” He said, dropping a bombshell in this small room. Hannah immediately froze to my side while even I had my troubles keeping my calm.

“Mr Apfelsaft, do I have to explain to you this liquid is highly explosive?” I asked, highly concerned about any accidents.

“Don’t worry, I had a professional mix it for me. He is the absolute best on this field … even though he is a bit unreliable sometimes.” A bit unreliable? If he was talking about the person I knew who did everything with explosives, then he was more than a bit unreliable.

“If you say so. So, what do you want to show us?” I asked, crossing my arms in front of my chest.

“What happens when a lifeform is thrown into this?” I could see where this was going, but as a saint, I shouldn’t speak out about what would happen. Helplessly, I looked over to Hannah who I definitely taught this stuff during one night while we were training.

“Liquid mana is highly corrosive as such it should dissolve everything.” Hannah said, making me quite proud of myself as I didn´t fail as a teacher.

“Entirely correct, Miss …” He said, but didn´t continue.

“Hannah. I wasn’t born in a noble family.” She said in a crystal clear voice.

“Oh, you are the elf everyone is talking about?” Was there another elf to talk about? And I thought scientists didn´t like useless questions.

“So does it seem…” Hannah muttered quietly.

“Anyway there weren’t that many tests with liquid mana in the past, so it is entirely understandable we haven’t found that out yet.” He fished a mackerel out of the tank, picked up a heavy lid for the tank with liquid mana and threw the fish inside. Instantly, he closed the tank and secured the lid on it.

The fish was dissolved within a minute, just like Hannah explained.

“Are you hypnotizing the fish will turn into something else?” I asked as he threw another fish inside. I could see the scales dissolving into nothing nearly instantly this time around as well.

“Yes, yes!” He exclaimed happily.

“Isn´t it slightly dangerous to test this out in a glass bulb?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about that. It is the sturdiest we could make and thus far, no fish ever managed to break it.” Well, that was certainly encouraging. Raising my eyebrows, I waited until he threw another fish in there and he closed the lid in a hurry again. The clasp clicked into place while I looked at the fish with great interest.

It wasn’t dissolving like the others. The scales turned red nearly instantly, the fins became sturdier and the mackerel mouth opened shortly afterwards, revealing a row of sharp teeth it definitely shouldn’t have. Its body grew in size until it filled out half of the glass container. Shortly afterwards, it went crazy.

It swam against the glass over and over again, bashing his head against it with full force. So far, Mr Apfelsaft claim held true as the glass wasn’t cracked at all. Still, the container slid a lot over the table, forcing the mage to hold it in place.

“How high is the probability of that happening?” I asked, only slightly concerned about a world being ruled by monsters.

“One in six.” He said, frowning slightly.

“So we have to watch out for the mana disease even more?” I asked, still not getting why I was here in the first place. Did the king want me to give the information to the churches?

“I don’t think that will work at all. Here take a loo-“ Incredibly careless and distracted by my question, he let go of the bulb and walked towards another shelf, at least until the bulb slid over the edge a mere second afterwards. Hannah already sprung into action while I still looked at the falling bulb. She grabbed my shoulder, pulled me away from it while I stumbled backwards.

The bulb crashed onto the ground, sending glass shards and liquid mana flying everywhere. Most of it harmlessly splashed to the side, while some of it splashed on my right shoe. I gritted my teeth as the acid-like fluid ate away the fabric and didn´t stop there.

Falling backwards, I could only grunt as my skin was dissolved nearly instantly and my flesh was corroded away. But the damage didn´t stop there. The fish or whatever this thing was, apparently evolved into some kind of shitty land animal over the last seconds, as I could see it flying directly towards me.

How? I had no fucking clue. But it did sail in a directly line towards my chest with a wide-open mouth. Helplessly, I could only stumble backwards, rowing my hands in an attempt to stay upright. Dangerously close, I saw how the fish closed his mouth even in mid-air, only to open it even more after that and reveal rows of sharp teeth.

I was completely useless. I was weak, couldn’t react in time and had trouble with my balance. It was quite godsent that I wasn’t alone in the room with the idiotic mage. As the fish was forty centimetres from me away, Hannah appeared in the corner of my vision, throwing her trusted dagger at that thing. It hit the fish right in the middle and threw it off course saving me from quite the gruesome fate.

Sailing right past me, it crashed into one of the shelves, still impaled by the magical dagger that dared to burn my skin in the past. But it apparently could do way more than that. As the fish was still hanging to his life and flapping with his fins wildly, the dagger cracked with electricity, slowly frying the fish alive.

Small lightning arcs hit the nearby shelves and the ground, travelling further and further away from the fish.

“Get out!” Screamed the mage, strangely clearheaded all of a sudden. Hannah rushed out of the room first, pulling me by my hand behind her while my foot still burned like crazy. The last one to leave was the mage, shutting the heavy iron door in the process. A few seconds afterwards, he was back to running away, following us closely until the whole goddamn laboratory exploded. The door was thrown out of its hinges and hit the other side of the hallway as blue fire escaped the room, licking over the stone walls and melting it in some places. Luckily, they didn´t even come close to reaching us as it went out around half a metre away from us.

“Puh … at least we know now why magically reinforced iron doors are mandatory in laboratories.” This mage … my foot was still being eaten alive, even though it hurt a bit less than before and he dared to make a joke.