Lailah’s Darkness

"Alright come out little guy."

The tattoo on Lailah's forehead began to glow with a red light before Apophis appeared in front of her.

He had grown significantly since his birth and was now about twenty two feet long.

'Mother..'

"I know you hate these tests okay, but we still have a bit more to do! I promise I'll let you eat something good when we're done. "

The serpent could only sigh and resign itself to its fate.

It'd been two months since Exedra had left and during that time Lailah unlike the other girls had not been training for evolution but for understanding.

According to her husband, her evolution requirements hadn't changed much despite her path evolving from Mother of Jörmungandr to Mother of Apophis.

< Lailah Izanami Draven >

< Evolution Path : Mother of Apophis

(Unique Species)

< First stage conditions

- Ingest 100 different kinds of poison (100/100)

- Gain a Serpent type familiar.(Completed)

- Feed your familiar the hearts of 100 malicious beings. (37/100)

Exedra wrote her a note that explained her condition's final change and the reason behind it but Lailah was pretty sad about it.

How amazing would it be if when she finally took revenge on her mother, she gained this sense of fulfillment that actually elevated her to a higher level of being?!

Despite the change, Lailah had no plans to cancel her revenge.

Lailah had been growing quite the malicious side since binding with Apophis and her new favorite pastime was combining her intellect with these new gory ideas to decide how to give her mothers and sisters the ultimate humiliation.

While everyone around her noticed this change, no one seemed to care too much.

It wasn't like she would ever dream of harming them and in their eyes she should've been like this a long time ago.

No one should've gone through what she went through and not come out of it atleast a little angry.

Lailah and Apophis were currently standing in the castle dungeon.

Truthfully, these dungeons have never held a single prisoner before.

Like her father, Yara did not take prisoners. If she was wronged she was much more fond of erasing the problem all together instead of dragging out their death.

Thus, the dungeon ended up becoming a secret spot for the guards to come and gamble. Some of the castle workers who were seeing eachother would also sneak here for a bit of bdsm play.

In front of Lailah twenty men were on their knees bound and gagged, unaware of what was about to happen.

Because she needed living beings as test subjects, Lailah concocted a plan to walk around the streets at night and kidnap every man who tried to stupidly pursue her.

With the help of a few of the guards and Yara's permission to use the dungeon, her plan worked perfectly and she'd been able to gather over fifty men in three weeks.

While the citizens were alarmed at such a rapid amount of disappearances, most of these men were travelers from other countries or simple thugs.

Therefore no one was really looking for them too hard and instead came to the conclusion the men must've offended a horrible existence.

All over the world but in Antares especially, if you offended someone more powerful than you whatever happened next was entirely your fault.

"Let's start with those two first." Lailah's first choice were two young men, a vampire and an elf.

While most would consider the two men extremely handsome, for Exedra's wives who were fiercely loyal to him they may as well have been sheep shit in shallow water.

"Okay mother."

Apophis' eyes glowed for a moment before the two men's bodies began to float upward before they headed towards a metal table a few feet away.

"Mmh!"

"Mmf!?"

Naturally the two men struggled fiercely when they felt their bodies suddenly being lifted, but it was to no avail.

Once the men had been strapped onto the table, Lailah picked up a worn out notebook and a pen.

"Alright… for him let's do grey rot venom and searing analgesia venom."

"Okay." Nodding at his contractor's request, Apophis slowly slithered up to the vampire lying on the table.

Lailah discovered something truly horrifying about her 'son'.

All of the venom used in his creation could be recreated within his body with an increased toxicity.

The best part of this was that his two fangs could each secrete a different venom that when injected together produced an even more devastating effect.

To study these effects and think of their potential uses was the sole reason why Lailah kidnapped so many men.

Apophis slowly slithered toward the tied up vampire.

He opened his mouth wide to reveal fangs that looked like three inch curved needles and were already dripping with venom.

"Hisss!!"

With a loud hiss, Apophis promptly sunk his fangs into the vampire's forearm.

Lailah prepared to start counting the seconds until the venom took effect, but much to her joy the effect was instantaneous.

"MMMMHH!!! MMH!!!!" The man's muffled cries fell on deaf ears as Lailah leaned in to get a closer look at the venom's effect on the body.

Grey rot venom is a kind of poison that, as the name implies, rots the flesh of the victim.

Searing analgesia venom has the effect of numbing the body to all outside stimuli, while simultaneously assailing every nerve ending in the body with a searing pain that makes its victims beg for death.

Two of the most horrifying poisons in all of Dola were now not only enhanced, but they were working together to run rampant throughout this man's body.

Lailah hurriedly scribbled everything down.

She did not take her eyes away from the man who was writhing in pain and on the verge of screaming his lungs out.

Forty five seconds after the initial bite, the area where the man was bitten was turning grey and the injection site was oozing a yellow pus that had a foul smell.

Fifty seconds after the bite, the man's arm was completely grey and his once firm muscles had become mushy. Blood was also leaking from the pores on his skin.

A minute after the bite, the venom spread to his chest where it immediately began to attack his heart.

A minute and two seconds was all it took for the man to leave this world for good.

"Fascinating! The venom is still circulating even when he's dead! We'll have to mop him up at this rate!"

Apophis looked back and forth between his mother who wore a pleased expression and the dead man on the table who was slowly becoming a pile of pudding.

He found biting into that man to be incredibly unpleasant.

That man was too pure, too good so to Apophis his blood tasted incredibly foul and repulsive.

While most of the men his mother had him bite tasted better, sometimes he'd get one that was utterly disgusting.

He just chose not to complain because his mother had already promised him a reward later and her rewards were always divinely delicious.

Lailah had just finished taking all of the notes she could on the now dead vampire's body and now seemed to be ready to move on.

"Okay then for this one… let's try bone blight and shade blood. You can bite a little harder so that you can pierce the bone but try not to snap his arm okay baby boy? I need him in the most optimal condition possible after all. " Lailah lovingly stroked Apophis' hood as she told him the next steps.

"Yes mother." Apophis then slithered towards the elven man on the table.

He just hoped this one would taste a little better than the last.

-

"Alright! I think this was a very productive day!" Lailah finally closed her notebook after all of the men had been killed and their deaths were thoroughly recorded.

Apophis was much too busy burrowing into the chests of the men that his mother marked and swallowing their hearts whole.

As Lailah looked at all of the death she had brought, a distinctive fear welled up in her heart.

Lailah knew she had changed even though she didn't fully understand why.

One day she just woke up and she just felt like embracing this hidden darkness that she'd always kept locked away, and while no one around her seemed to mind, deep inside she was still a fearful girl who worried about what the man she loved would think.

Of course she knew he loved her but what if he only loved a certain version of her?

Sensing his mother's emotional state, Apophis left the dead bodies alone and slithered over to his mother to nudge her hand and offer her comfort.

Lailah smiled sadly seeing her greedy son's attempt to comfort her despite his hunger and she could only stroke his ruby red scales silently as her mind filled with horrible thoughts.

'My love…will you find my actions repulsive and no longer treat me the same when you return?'

Just the thought brought a single tear down the beautiful young woman's cheek.