Cannon Fodder To Villainess

🏮34. Her Lab

Fluffy floated over the wall surrounding Amber's parent's estate and past the gazebo. Amber could see some men she didn't recognize repairing the buildings in the courtyard and building some new construction on the East side of the courtyard. She hadn't noticed them at first because she rarely went anywhere except the maid quarters and the servants path. This time, Fluffy had insisted on flying over the wall and she didn't see any reason to refuse.

"After we get home, I want you to look around and see if you can find out what's going on around here. It looks like there could be some trouble headed my way and I want to be warned ahead of time," Amber said while looking over at Ena sitting on her shoulder.

[Alright, I'm pretty curious about what's been going on too. If nothing else, Jenna, that awful blonde haired maid of yours has disappeared. Not that I'm complaining. It just makes me wonder what she's up to. Why would she suddenly disappear? If you hadn't started taking care of yourself, you would have died from starvation by now.

Such a strange household you live in. Not that I've lived with a lot of humans in the past, but from what I've seen this isn't normal behavior,] said Ena.

Ena still couldn't speak out loud in a way that Amber could understand, but apparently after she gets strong enough, she will be able to. For now, she still spoke directly into Amber's mind.

Fluffy lowered right outside the maid's quarters where Amber lives and Amber stepped off. When she walked into the front door, she walked into the communal living space. It was much different than it had been. Now she used some of her gold to buy comfortable new gray blue furniture, soft gray rugs, a couple of book shelves filled with books, board games, puzzles and such. There was also a nice wooden coffee table in front of the couch. Sitting there, Nova was working on a puzzle. In the corner of the room was a nice roaring fire in the fireplace and next to that was a fire stick she had bought. It was a magical tool that uses a beast core mana stone to produce fire. It was shaped like a smooth stick and two cubes long. It had a soft hand grip on one side with a button. When you pushed the button, a stream of weak fire would shoot out the other end. It wasn't really suitable for battle, but it was a great tool for lighting fires.

To the left of the entryway and the communal living space, is the kitchen area. There's an arched doorway where amber can hear sounds of cooking and the delicious scent of roast meat, potatoes, carrots, fresh bread, cider, and apple pie waft out of the room. Amber's tummy growled loudly in anticipation.

Nova glanced up from being startled. Amber could feel her face heat up while looking at Nova's sudden expression of fear. She clearly thought a wild beast of some sort had snuck in and growled at her. Amber cleared her throat and walked past the room into the hallway. Then to the closest door on the right. Her head bent down low, staring at her feet in an effort to hide her bright red face.

Amber had fashioned a thick metal door with a metal bolt lock on the inside of the door from sheets of metal that she'd bought. Ideally, she would like to get her hands on a mine metal vein. Her current fiance has a mine that has some undiscovered metal veins, she just needed to trick him into giving them to her. She also needed to trick him into breaking their engagement before he realized that she was actually valuable to him. She can't let him discover that she's changed or she'll never be able to get rid of him. After all, he was only interested in things that could help him advance his power. In that way they're somewhat similar, but at least she's honest about it, and is symbiotic instead of parasitic.

She pointed her finger at the metal door and felt where the bolt was on the inside of the door. She flicked her finger over and could hear the scraping of metal from the other side, as the door unlocked. This was the easiest way to keep people out of this room, since metal manipulation magic was so rare. She quickly walked in and locked the door behind her.

She took a deep breath and sighed in happiness while leaning up against the door. The room was spacious with metal bars over the window and sterile white walls. The floor was made of white marble with thin gray veins. There are many light orbs placed in the ceiling, four cubes apart. The most noticeable things in the room were the modern style operating table and equipment that she'd fashioned from metal plates. She bought them from a construction company's surplus inventory.

She bought a little electric portable stove, made a metal sink, bought beakers, and other supplies. Everything sat on her metal countertop and had metal shelving against the wall. There was also a metal rack hanging from the ceiling that had a closed curtain partition.

Behind that curtain there were fresh herbs hanging from the ceiling rack upside down. The curtain kept light away from the herbs while they dried. In the far end of the room, next to the window was a cot on wheels, and some more white curtains hanging from the ceiling.

Amber took out the herbs she had collected from her special bag and hung them up with the rest of the herbs. The only ones she didn't hang up were the poisonous herbs that she had collected for tomorrow. She had a separate space and equipment to use with poisonous ingredients.

She walked over to the right side wall that had a smaller countertop and similar equipment as the larger countertop. The biggest difference was that this countertop had a large metal vent above it that sucked out toxic fumes and a thick clear magical barrier panel that was see-through. You could put your hands through the barrier, but it would coat her arms so you wouldn't have any direct contact. There was also a flap that she installed so she could slide small metal plates that had clear barrier bubbles with her ingredients in them.

Next to that was a small sink made of stone that didn't have running water. Instead there was a button above it that when pushed, the sink filled with a bright blue light that would automatically sanitize anything inside it.

The barrier bubbles and sanitizing light weren't cheap, but they were the best way to keep her items separately contained while still making them easy to access and not have direct contact with metal or her. Some of her items were quite corrosive after all.

She placed the poisonous herbs in separate bubbles on their trays and slid them past the flap. Then she pulled off the long black gloves she'd been wearing to pick the ingredients and threw them into the sanitizing sink. She pushed the button. Then turned her attention to making the perfect undetectable poison. She smiled while looking into the corner where she had a small metal chest that she had layered with ice along the inside. Within the chest was a large amount of thin tiny needles made of ice. It had taken quite a bit of control to make them so tiny and sharp, but she was quite excited with her results; they would be perfect.