They all wore serious expressions when Grey said this.
He wasn’t helping them just for the sake of helping them, and jokes aside, he wasn’t building a harem either. He was building warriors. Right now, they just so happened to be women. He couldn’t help it if he was so charismatic.
What Grey wanted was strong people who would be able to protect themselves in the future. That was all he wanted. That was all he could ask for.
Mauve looked down at the tome. She could smell the thick scent of blood in the air and it made her nose wrinkle.
The death was just so... heavy.
For a long while, she didn’t say anything. She almost forgot there were other people in the room with her.
Her mind had been all over the place these days. She was someone who was used to having so much control, and yet it felt like she had had so little through this entire process.
At one point, she thought it would be little different from Earth. She had slowly taken over their little group of three from Stella, squeezed her out, led them under the umbrella of a powerhouse like Grey...
Honestly, even if it meant humiliating herself—while she would have never done it back on Earth—she wouldn’t hesitate to do it here. The stakes were just so very different.
On Earth, the worst that could happen was that she would be blackballed. But here, she could die, suffer a fate worse than death, and her weakness would mean the people she wanted to help she would be entirely unable to.
But oddly enough, the moment Grey showed no real interest in actually taking her body in exchange for his services, the less control she felt like she had.
He was the one person she couldn’t quite read, the one person so unpredictable that any chips she tried to lay just slipped right out of her fingers.
When she heard Grey’s enraged argument with Amunet, though, she realized why that was. Grey just didn’t view the world the same way as 99% of everyone else. At the very least, he had the talent and the strength not to.
He wasn’t someone she could control. In fact, the more she tried, maybe the more likely it was that she would lose everything.
That should have made her more apprehensive, more guarded. But what disgusted her the most about herself was that it had actually made her comfortable.
She found herself laughing these days in situations she usually never would. Part of her wanted to jump in on the jokes too, but she didn’t know how.
It was a complacency... one that came from the idea that... maybe Grey would just handle everything.
How a man could possibly make her feel so safe and protected in a handful of days, she didn’t know.
Of course, she also didn’t know that her body had experienced Grey saving her and fighting with his life on the line many times already... her mind just couldn’t quite recall...
But her subconscious seemed to do exactly that.
Last night, she had almost given up. While she was suffering through just the first heartbeat, she had thought about why she needed to push herself so far.
She was just a pathetic woman who shrieked like a little girl when she faced death.
The echo of that scream still replayed in her mind over and over again, and it felt like something in her had just... snapped.
She just didn’t feel like herself anymore.
Mauve didn’t even notice as lines of blood red began to weave out of the corners of her eyes. They shimmered like ruby veins, contrasting against the light mocha of her skin in twinkling hues.
She looked up and met Grey’s gaze. "I’ll do whatever it takes."
Grey had his hands up as though in mock surrender. "Yes ma’am, whatever the smokeshow wants."
Mauve didn’t really understand why Grey was acting like this, but she didn’t need to hear it twice.
She reached forward and took the tome into her arms, holding it tight.
...
Grey had watched the process from start to finish.
Mauve was already added to Ma Famille, so it could be said that right now, she was already benefiting from Grey’s own insights. However, that definitely didn’t explain everything.
The Blood Witch was resonating with her. Or, more accurately...
An illusory shadow appeared above Mauve.
Grey could have been half dead, his heart stomped to death and his eyes ripped out and he would still recognize this woman.
Esmeralda.
She had killed him more than literally anyone else, and he would always hold a grudge for that. What he didn’t expect was that part of her would still be tied to the Blood Witch Tome.
It was just too bad that Grey understood too little about how the Witch Race worked.
There was no "race" of Blood Witches. The Blood Witch was just one of the many witches of the Witch Race.
The Witch Race itself was divided into three main, but further stratified tiers. These three main tiers were Apprentice Witches, Apostle Witches, and Divine Witches.
Apprentice Witches followed the doctrines of Apostle Witches. Apostle Witches were the more direct followers of Divine Witches. While Divine Witches were the only group of Witches who had completely crafted their own branch of magic.
Apostle Witches were good enough to take a few unique paths of their own, adding to the doctrines of the Divine Witches, but not enough that they could create a full fledged path of their own.
Finally, Apprentice Witches could only follow what was already crafted and created without any personal deviations of their own.
The Blood Witch Coven followed the Divine Blood Witch, easily one of the three greatest geniuses in Witch Race history, known for her attempt to distill the abilities of the Vampire Race into a doctrine of her own formation...
And it was said that she had done it all for love before the man she dedicated her life to betrayed her.
Ever since that moment, there was nothing the Blood Witch wanted more than perfect control over every aspect of herself and her enemies.
A doctrine could only be passed down in full to an Apostle chosen by the Divine Witch.
And it seemed that Esmeralda had made her choice.