CHAPTER 21: THE RITUAL GONE WRONG

Alicia’s face turned slightly complicated upon hearing my words, her gaze filled with annoyance.

But after a deep sigh, she turned towards me and asked, "How much do you know?"

I tilted my head and recalled everything I had managed to learn since waking up that day.

"That I am now in the middle of a ritual of my marriage with five supernatural women and that if I don’t complete it before dawn, I’d die."

She grimaced at my words. "

The heck! You only know the surface information? Didn’t you bother to learn more about why and how the ritual got messed up?"

"I didn’t get the time to learn," I countered.

"Besides, they didn’t bother to explain anything clearly."

Alicia facepalmed and looked at me, utterly speechless.

"Good grief. Alright, let’s begin from the moment you were brought by Liliana."

...

....

Alicia’s pov

In an old mansion, a place dark and barely with any form of lighting other than the moon.

Eleanor was pacing in front of me as I prepared the magic circle.

"How long will that bitch take to bring Darling here? I am tired of waiting," Eleanor said to me, her voice a low growl of impatience.

"Don’t be impatient, El. Kidnapping a young human is dangerous and needs to be extremely secretive,"

I said gently, not looking up from my work.

But she just turned her head away and scowled at the air, a tempest of frustration brewing around her.

Sigh.

I had to wonder why I had even become her contracted witch in the first place.

Even the daughters of Dracula gave witches a certain level of respect, but this spoiled brat didn’t seem to care how crucial witches were for vampires.

However, what could I do? I was tied to her from the moment I accepted the contract.

Then, I felt the mana particles in the air disturb as a demonic circle appeared in the room.

From it emerged Liliana, a mischievous grin on her face, with a man in her arms.

"Darling!" Eleanor’s voice was a joyous cry, a stark contrast to her previous anger.

I needed no further confirmation.

It was the man that made this princess make such a gamble.

"Hey, slut! Give him back to me! I don’t want you touching him with your dirty hands anymore," Eleanor shouted in annoyance.

But Liliana didn’t do as she said.

On the contrary, she hugged the unconscious man tighter.

"Well, I seem to have developed a liking for this sugar pie. Mind letting me have him?" she taunted Eleanor, her smile a playful challenge.

Eleanor’s eyes turned darker.

"Bitch, don’t play with fire. I can drain your blood until there’s nothing left," she hissed with a clear threat.

Hearing her words, Liliana gulped in slight fear.

After all, she was just a succubus with only support abilities and powers related to the mind, which didn’t work on the same sex.

And Eleanor on the other hand Had the annoying Ability of her’s which can absorb any form of energy by sucking on the blood of the victim.

But there was a way for her powers to affect women.

Well that is unless I developed a liking for girls, but that’s impossible, she thought, and gestured a pose of surrender.

’But, I can just wait until the right moment to disrupt the ritual,’ she thought mischievously.

"Humph. Don’t try that again," Eleanor huffed and snatched the man away from Liliana.

I was curious now.

Why was that man so special that even Liliana, who was said to be the most picky succubus in hell, was interested?

But it was just a curiosity.

I had no interest in love relations.

After all, I am a witch, and witches don’t dream of love.

"Let’s begin the ritual quickly!" Eleanor urged, a mixture of impatience and possessiveness in her voice as she tightly hugged the man in her arms.

But before I could even prepare to start the magic circle, a voice interrupted us.

"So this is what you were scheming, bloodsucker?"

Another magic circle emerged, but this one was green and radiated a pure, ethereal energy—the purest form of mana and the energy of the spirit.

I immediately knew who it was.

"Bitch! What do you want, and how did you know about here?" Eleanor snapped, her eyes narrowing.

"Damn leech, I got a name, and it’s not ’bitch.’ Call me Lady Iris, respectfully," the woman said, her voice calm and even.

She was a stunning, tan beauty with long silver hair tied in a ponytail.

She was a werewolf and a known rival of Eleanor.

Beside her, another woman came out of the magic circle.

She was hooded, but I knew her very well, perhaps even more than I knew Iris.

She was my childhood friend, a Druid.

Just as vampires have witches as their advisors and helpers

Werewolves have druids as their emissaries and guides.

But they never interfere in disputes between the two factions.

So why now? I was confused on that part.

"What is your business here, Iris?" I asked, stepping between the two women before Eleanor could escalate the situation into something worse.

Iris looked at me and calmly said, without a hint of disrespect

"I am here to take that man away, as he better suits the sun of Arcadia than the darkness of the Land of the Night."

But her words instantly made Eleanor snap.

"The heck you said, bitch!"

Before I could stop Eleanor, she made her vines target Iris’s heart.

But they were stopped instantly by Iris’s claws, which ripped the thorny vines to shreds.

"If that’s how you want it to be, I won’t be nice anymore," Iris growled.

Wolf ears and a tail emerged from her head and tailbone, and lightning coated her fur, making it stand on end.

As she whispered, "By the blessings of nature, let me wield you ’Sword of Jupitar’," then as she finished a huge broadsword appeared in her hands with lightning crackling around it.

"Prepare yourself, bloodsucker."

The tension in the air was palpable, thick with the scent of ozone and the heavy sweetness of blood.

Iris was a blur of motion, her broadsword shimmering with crackling lightning as she moved to attack Eleanor.

Eleanor’s vines, now overflowing with a dark, furious energy, lashed out to meet her.

The sound of steel against plant echoed through the cavern

I wanted to step in.

I was tied to Eleanor, and a part of me felt a fierce loyalty to her as her contracted witch.

But another part, the rational part of me, knew that this fight could only end in disaster.

I prepared a spell a simple ward to hold them both at bay, to give me time to talk some sense into them.

But before I could even utter the first syllable of the incantation, the hooded Druid’s voice echoed in my mind.

’Stay out of this, Alice. This is a matter of the wolves and the vampires. You know our rules,’ she said, her tone a mix of warning and disappointment.

"But this will get out of hand," I pleaded my voice just a whisper only she could hear.

’It already has,’ she replied.

She was a Druid, sworn to neutrality.

I knew she wouldn’t fight me, but she wouldn’t let me interfere either.

It was a stalemate.

As Eleanor and Iris clashed, their powers sparking and thundering around them, I saw Liliana, a mischievous glint in her eyes, begin to sneak towards the unconscious man on the floor.

She had been waiting for this exact moment.

She reached for Valerian, her movements quick and silent as a cat.

But Eleanor, despite her fury, saw everything.

Her head snapped back, her crimson eyes finding Liliana’s form in the shadows.

The primal, feral rage that had been simmering beneath the surface exploded.

"HE’S MINE! ALL MINE!" she shrieked, her voice a guttural cry of pure madness.

The fight stopped instantly.

Liliana froze, her eyes wide with terror, and Iris’s broadsword clattered to the floor as she looked at Eleanor with a mix of shock and dread.

Eleanor’s body began to glow with a dark, malevolent light, and her Briar Vines spread like a web covering the entire room.

"If I can’t have him, nobody will!"

The vines began to bleed, and the blood, black and shimmering with dark energy, dripped from them, covering the floor in a web of veins.

The magic in the air changed; it became a consuming, suffocating force.

Every living thing in the room began to bleed from their eyes, ears, nose, and even pores.

It was a wide-area of effect attack that didn’t distinguish between ally and enemy.

I felt the blood in my veins react to the magical pressure, and my wound reopened as I fell to my knees, blood pouring from my mouth.

The Druid, Iris, and Liliana were all in the same position, on their knees, bleeding.

The ritual was in chaos, and we were all caught in the middle.

The only person unaffected was the unconscious Valerian.

"Eleanor, stop this! Or else it could lead to something very bad!"

I uttered weakly, my body still trembling from the loss of blood.

But Eleanor gave my words the deaf treatment and walked towards the unconscious Valerian, who was lying in the middle of the ritual circle.

Eleanor stared at the complex pattern on the floor, a disturbing smile spreading across her lips.

An idea, crude and impulsive, seemed to strike her.

"Eleanor! Stop this, now!" I cried out, trying to get to my feet, but my body refused to cooperate.

Eleanor’s smile didn’t waver.

"Heh, I know it. You also want to take advantage of me to steal my darling away from me."

She rubbed her blood-soaked finger on her lips, a gesture of crazed affection.

"I don’t need your advice on this. I’ll complete the ritual on my own! I DON’T NEED YOU, ONLY MY DARLING!"

With that, she dropped a droplet of her mana-infused blood onto the magic circle.

It’s true that vampires don’t know how to use mana as naturally as witches or mages, but they know how to infuse mana into their blood.

However, this method is extremely crude and could lead to disastrous mishaps.

Eleanor, in her moment of crazed obsession, didn’t care about the consequences.

All that mattered was her darling.

"No! Don’t do this, Eleanor!" I screamed, but it was already too late.

The magic circle lit up, but instead of glowing with the singular symbol of a vampire, it absorbed all the blood on the floor and began to glow and change.

One symbol became five different symbols, twisting and morphing chaotically.

Valerian, caught in the center of the magic circle, was now involved in a mess far more complicated than a simple marriage ritual.

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