Chapter 202 Now, Now, My Favorite Reaper.
Scarlet laughed, again, deviously, "Oh, they understand alright, their greed just gets the better of them always. And I like teasing and taunting them, it makes it fun." she said. "Come on fellas," she teased, "Why don\'t you try to feast on me? I bet I am much tastier than the itty bitty soul you were all about to prey on before the hound arrived."
She could see the calculations in their hollow dark eyes as they calculated the odds of three against two since one had already been captured. She did not know how they sensed which reapers were stronger than they were but they could. Once they did, soul eaters would attempt then to fight or flee.
One attempted to vanish through the open window and she threw out a tiny green flame that burned him slowly while the other two soul eaters looked on in shock.
"I bet you didn\'t see that coming." she said cockily. "Do you want to see something even more magical?" She released more tiny flames as if she was sprinkling water and they fell like drops of rain onto the soul eaters who now realized it was too late to run.
Severus shook his head as he watched the soul eaters writhing, all were level two, still weak which is why they had not known better that to escape when they saw a hound and a reaper. It was in their senses t run but the smell of death in the children\'s ward had probably overwhelmed them. There were too many sick children in here, not all of them had lived out their full lives but if they were not saved, they would be facing untimely death.
"Mary had a little lamb...." Scarlet sung as she hopped around the soul eaters like a little kid. Refining soul eaters was not exactly a quick process, but it was a short cut to her cultivation which she had not been progressing as quickly as she liked for a while now.
"Could you try to enjoy this a little less and feed the kids these pills." He tossed her a small bag of yellow pills that smelled like candies.
"What are these?" she asked. There were more than five hundred pills in the bag, it was small but had much more space inside than she realized. A storage bag from the underworld, probably one of the cheap ones.
"Internal heat regulators, the children and many other humans who are not meant to die will live survive." he answered.
"How much did it cost me?" she asked him. If he was buying pills it was with her soul crystals. They were slowly but steadily dwindling, thank God she could directly refine energy from soul eaters to aid in her cultivation. She had the biggest cheat among all grim reapers in the underworld.
"Thirty soul crystals, it was cheap." he replied.
"Cheap my ass." she mumbled. Those were like fifteen souls once delivered, what exactly was cheap about it?
"I am going to need a lot more if I am to help others beyond the Blue star and I am going to need a human way of making the pills and the herbs. I can\'t always rely on underworld pills to do this." she told him.
"I knew you would say that next so, I purchased a human based recipe, herbs that can be grown here and a cauldron." Severus produced all the things he mentioned. They were all in another storage bag and Severus looked mighty proud of himself. "I did good, right?"
"How much?" she asked.
He raised his paw and said nervously, "Just three."
"Three." she replied.
"Thousand." he added.
"Youuuu." she yelled loudly at him with wide eyes and the green flame burst fourth from her hands.
Severus was quick to put a distance between himself and her, some parts of his fur that she accidentally singed last time had just growing back. He did not want to a bold hell hound, that was not a good look on him. "Let\'s not be too hasty." he said now that he considered himself to be safe. "You just said it yourself, you needed a recipe and ingredients, I got all that at a discounted price. I even got seeds to grow the herb yourself in preparation for the next winter. You should be rewarding me, not going all crazy green torch."
Scarlet tilted her head in confusion, "Crazy green torch!!"
"Yeah, I didn\'t come up with the name, the old deity did. Apparently, when you go crazy, the green flame comes out like a torch and since you call him deity he now calls you crazy green torch."
"That..." Scarlet was almost about to insult the old deity when everything came to a standstill, reminding her eerily of the moment she had transmigrated over and met the old deity. Just as it was then, she could not move but she could, see and hear everything vividly.
Everything was frozen, including Severus, even the time on the large clock on the wall was not moving. The few children that had been crying a few seconds ago were quiet and a nurse that was about to inject some fluid into a little boy stood still with a green syringe in her hand.
"Yup!, the old deity was here." Scarlet thought.
"Hihihi," she heard his familiar voice chuckle and her eyes looked from side to side. "Don\'t listen to your hound, how can I call my favorite reaper crazy?"
\'Because you are...\' Scarlet thought but her thoughts were cut off.
"Now, now, my favorite reaper, let\'s think positively especially about me. I am your teacher after all, your master, the one who has been sending all these brilliant ideas into your head about how to manipulate the flame. Or did you think that you were suddenly so clever out of the blue? That little sprinkle tiny flames like rain drops move is pretty cool, right? I was inspired when these annoying little monkeys kept shaking the peach trees in Lythia\'s garden insistently. I sprinkled some water on them and they went running. Since I have been sharing some great ideas with you, you should appreciate me more dear Scarlet. What do humans say, a master for a day is like a father for life? I am your father dearest, and I have a gift for you." The old deity continued and then he held her hand and placed a bracelet on it.
Scarlet watched as the bracelet coiled itself around her hand like a little snake and then vanished beneath her skin. In it\'s place was a new tattoo of a black and gold rope coiled together around a scythe.
"I cannot have one reaper going around refining soul eaters to increase her strength otherwise you might be tempted to stop reaping souls, allowing them to be eaten because the stronger a soul eater is, the more power you get when you refine them. And when others hear about your special ability because such things never stay hidden forever every reaper will want a special flame which is like a one in twenty billion chance. Others will grow to resent you because you will catapult your way to the top unfairly and I will start to receive complaints, mumbles and all sorts of noise which I hate. So, from now on, ninety percent of the power you get when you refine a soul eater will go into the bracelet and when you visit the underworld it will automatically be directed to where soul crystals are kept. Don\'t worry, as a refining vessel, I have left you ten percent. Aren\'t I generous?"