Chapter 208: Chapter 207: Ludmint’s Secret Lab

The wooden door creaked open. Evening light seeped through the gaps and illuminated the hallway. Iris poked her head inside, looking for lit candles, hung overcoats, fresh flowers, or dinner ingredients. She found nothing. Ludmint had yet to return home.

Since the date, Ludmint had been swarming with works. Though she always had time to spend with her fiancée, it came at the expense of her overworking and escaping her duty. She oftentimes had to get back reluctantly, or she'd face the punishment of the Court Founder.

When Iris asked about the detail, Ludmint froze up, her entire body turning pink. She refused to divulge anything except that it was unforgettable.

Under such a threat, Ludmint shouldn't be home early. Iris now had time to repay Ludmint's kindness with her food and surprises.

After placing down her bags, Iris went to the kitchen. She searched for the ingredients, which Ludmint preserved in small magical containers, and found enough meats and vegetables to make a full course of her design. Though she wasn't as good as her dearest, she'd learned how to cook as a miscellaneous skill in her past life.

A few minutes later, Iris tasted her food and threw them all. Ludmint would tease her all night if she served her with them. It wasn't too bad, but Iris wouldn't give her lover any weakness, or she'd get pounced at and played for the entire night.

Though her body liked it, her pride hated it.

Her second attempt succeeded. A satisfied smile on her face, she set the table, arranged the plates, cleaned the cutlery, and replaced flowers in the vases. Her hands grazed the table’s edge as she circled it while looking for imperfections.

Her eyes gently rested on the seat opposite hers, her heart conjuring an illusory Ludmint, who would dine and be surprised by their flavour. Iris did everything for that praise, that smile, that tender whisper that would seize her breaths until her face turned red and her mind melted into a puddle of viscous slime.

Would Ludmint be pleased? Why wouldn't she?

In her seat, Iris lowered her head. An idea struck her. She looked at a particular bookshelf on the wall, then turned to the house’s entrance, and finally smirked.

Ludmint wouldn't be home in a while. Why shouldn't she try something fun?

Iris walked to the bookshelf and tilted a few books in a particular order. The mechanism behind the shelf clicked, and a hidden door emerged from the wall beside it. Inside was a spiral staircase leading to Ludmint's secret laboratory. Besides the time Iris came out of the Void, she had never gone beyond the first underground lab.

Since Ludmint always sneaked into her room, Iris would sneak into her laboratory too. It was only fair.

“Ludmint, I'm entering your lab. Are you going to escort me?” Iris glanced behind her.

The dining room remained serene. Candlelight flickered, and the clock hands monotonously moved. Ludmint was indeed not home.

Chuckling, Iris descended the stone staircase. Her footsteps produced dull noises. She touched the outer wall and glided her fingers across luminous moulds growing on it, avoiding the magically lit torches which produced no heat nor smoke. The musty atmosphere gave off a feeling of walking in an ancient castle.

Unlike the antique style of the staircase, the white metal door at the bottom exuded a disinterested aura. Iris pressed her hand on the padlock beside the door and injected her Corruption Power. Its blue shade permeated the circuit and activated the mechanism, unlocking the first floor.

Although Iris had come here multiple times, her eyes still darted around for the magical equipment and potion stands. Everything within the lab was comparable to the state-of-the-art equipment in specialised laboratories funded by the imperial family. Only Ludmint—after imploring the Court Founder and other senior members—could afford to build a secret lab this marvellous.

Iris naturally took advantage of her status as Ludmint’s fiancée.

“I've asked you multiple times, but you always change the subject,” Iris said. “What's so secretive about your experiment that even your lovely fiancée can't know?”

Fortunately, Ludmint never directly forbade her from sneaking in.

Iris exited the lab and descended another staircase. This was the farthest she could go under Ludmint's watchful eyes. Ludmint never told her what lay beyond this point and what punishment would befall her if she crossed the boundary.

If the first floor was for forbidden alchemy and drug synthesis, what would the second floor be?

A large black gate stood at the end of Iris's path. On its surface hung a warning sign whose shape depicted a multi-coloured whirlpool swirling around a diamond-shaped crystal. Iris had asked Ludmint before: behind the door was a metaphysical hazard the like of which no mortal could resist.

Taking a deep breath, Iris pressed her hand on the padlock and closed her eyes. Memories of Ludmint's gently caressing, stroking, touching her flashed in her mind. Every savoured sensation, Iris recalled them all and sculpted her slimy hand to mimic Ludmint's.

Her face flushed, and her body heated. Her disposition became a little more lustful, a little more flirtatious. She exhaled a puff of hot air, her mind turning fuzzy. Her blue Corruption Power turned milky, ghostly. She injected it into the padlock, copying Ludmint's usage of magic.

The padlock resonated with the Corruption Power. The black door slid open, revealing a pitch-black room. If the first floor was for scientific purposes, the second floor was for supernatural purposes.

Iris bit her tongue, using pain to control her overflowing craving. She shapeshifted back to her natural appearance, though pink shades tainted her azure slime. Ludmint's influence was too much. If impersonated Ludmint for too long, the lingering feelings might consume her.

She wanted to become closer to Ludmint, not become Ludmint.

“We all have secrets,” Iris said. “I told you a few of mine, and you told me a few of yours. Unfortunately, I'm not satisfied, so I'm going to dig for more.”

Iris, laughing, stepped forwards. Darkness consumed her silhouette, but it couldn't permeate her with a sense of uncertainty before soft radiance chased it away. The vastness of space expanded outwards, revealing a monumental room, a hall whose dizzy height gave an otherworldly impression that Iris was no longer underground but in another dimension.

Smooth black pillars glowed, their surface traced with shallow lines, inside of which golden currents flowed. These sleek lines crawled from one pillar to another, traversing the black floor, creating paths which divided the room into sections.

While walking, Iris gazed upwards. Floating black slabs formed hovering platforms. Each housed cylindrical tubes containing strange objects, organisms, or mists hovering in the middle. Iris couldn't recognise most of them, and the ones she recognised were because of their auras, some blessed with Holy Power, others cursed by Evil Power.

What was Ludmint trying to do?

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Iris placed her right hand on the protective glass of a cylindrical tube. A scroll container floated inside a viscous green liquid. The dragon-shaped engravements on its surface slithered around, moving from one imprinted mountain to the next. They occasionally roared, but the magical liquid muffled them.

As Iris felt the scroll's aura, her brows furrowed. At first, it resembled the Holy Power, specifically of an Artefact blessed by the Church of Knowledge. Yet when concentrated, she detected a hint of rotten stench, which reminded her of a pile of corpses shrouded in white drapes.

The blessed scroll was contaminated by the Evil Power of Chained Corpse Vessel, though the contamination was light, and the Artefact was gradually breaking down.

If not for this unknown liquid, the Artefact would have already disintegrated.

Iris pulled back her hand, her lips curving into a smile. In this relationship, she wasn't the only crazy one. Her Ludmint was more powerful, more flirtatious, and more insane than her.

“We're reaching out for the same goal, chasing the impossible dream, knowing that one misstep will doom each of us.”

A pair of blue slimy wings grew out of Iris's back. She soared above many platforms, landed on a few, checked the status of the cylindrical tubes, and admired Ludmint's carefully crafted masterpieces.

Most tubes contained tainted Artefacts, but some contained synthetic organisms tainted by two or more powers. Though all failed to reach the equilibrium, they produced varying degrees of rejection and incompatibility. With these results, Ludmint improved the newer models, which sat on the higher platforms, hoping to glimpse at the mystery no mortal should know.

While observing a deformed creature submerged in green liquid, Iris contemplated her feeling. These inhumane experiments should disgust her, but she only pitied them. It was as if she never knew herself, that she would ruthlessly experiment on others, coldly disregard their lives, and care only for those she deemed hers.

Had she changed, or had she always been like this?

Iris slapped her cheeks. Now wasn't the time to introspect herself. As she descended to the ground, her wings retracted into her back. The pinkness in her chest finally faded, though phantasmal warmth persisted, perpetuated by Ludmint's scent in the air.

Once her mind cleared, she searched for the door leading to Ludmint's most mysterious place. The third floor, the place where Iris had no idea what lay within, held Ludmint's deepest secret and intrigued Iris the most.

When asked about it, Ludmint sealed her lips, giving no clue, entertaining no game. Even as her mind blurred and, her body twitching in pleasure, she remained silent regarding the topic. It was certain that if someone barged into it, they would have to stay inside forever.

What could be more important than the unification of the Holy and the Evil, the Pure and the Corrupted?

In front of a grey worn-down door, whose wooden-like surface pulsated as if it were alive and breathing, Iris tensed up. The golden radiance and the pitch-black floating monoliths faded into monotony when faced with this small, insignificant door. Whatever was hiding behind that door, its presence dwarfed the grand black hall. Its aura eclipsed the contamination of the opposite powers.

Her mouth revealing a crazy smile, Iris grabbed the decayed handle. She didn't even turn herself into Ludmint or divine her safety or prepare any emergency spells. She merely twisted the handle and pulled open the door.

An infinite void unfurled behind her, endlessly stretching upwards, downwards, outwards, inwards, in all directions possible and impossible. Innumerable black stars, whose dark light and bright shadow intertwined, flickered and created fractal patterns that periodically glowed, revealing overlooking mass of distortion. The Void Creatures peered into reality, their unseen tentacles sprawling out of the greyish door, and screamed.

Their rending voices unravelled the underground foundation. The floating black monoliths trembled, their golden lines cracking. Iris's slime body splattered into blue viscous droplets. Her unharmed Shadow Heart Core glowed and pulled her slime inward, constructing for her a new body. Her reformed hands gripped the door handle and slammed it shut.

Her forceful motion shattered her hands, but she regenerated them. Staring at the closed door, she sighed. Though she expected failure, she didn’t anticipate such a deadly trap. If she weren’t a Slime Girl, and if her core weren’t Shadow Heart Core, she would’ve died.

“You almost killed me,” Iris said. “Where did you hide the third floor, Ludmint?”

“I hide it behind that door.”

Ludmint embraced Iris from behind and rested her head on Iris’s right shoulder. Her waving silver hair hung before Iris’s eyes.

Iris grabbed Ludmint’s hands and squeezed them lightly.

“Will you punish me?” Iris said.

“You make me mad, Iris.”

“Will you punish me?”

“I’ll punish you.” Ludmint nibbled Iris’s right ear, gently licking it. “You’ll have to get used to this cold, hard floor.”

“I thought you were mad, not . . . lustful.” Iris struggled, but her strength paled before Ludmint’s. She didn’t want to get out anyway. “I sneaked into your secret place, and you’ll reward me?”

“I’m mad because you intentionally hurt yourself. Your earlier smile, you knew it was a trap, yet you still opened that door.”

Iris giggled. “I knew you were watching.”

“I was with you every step of the way. I could have stopped you at any moment.”

“But you didn’t. You want me to see your work, to praise your result, and to validate your ideas.” Iris walked forward. Her slimy body went through Ludmint’s arms. She turned around. “I need to finish the tour first.”

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