Adele soon returned to Scarlet Castle with her Uncle Bella and Aunt Bernice. Grand Duchess Triss was already waiting there.
According to Triss's own boasts, when she was "young," she had once "interned" for a while in the Moonlight Holy City of the Sanghai Empire. She had her own unique understanding of death-aligned psionic energy. Though she wasn't quite a master necromancer, checking Bernice's condition as an undead physician was a piece of cake.
Triss had been rather vague, but Murphy had more or less figured it out.
Triss's "internship" in the Sanghai Empire probably hadn't been part of any official "vampire study abroad" program. More likely, she'd secretly snuck into their holy city to study the esoteric knowledge of the Moon Priests—and had probably been caught before she could learn much.
She'd then fled in a similarly disgraceful fashion to when she'd tried to steal the elves' Holy Grail and been chased out of their kingdom.
Otherwise, given how much Triss valued knowledge and loved courting disaster, she'd never have given up halfway through her studies of death magic without reaching the level of a master.
Including this time, how many times had the Scarlet Witch, famed across the continent, been brought low?
When other people were famed across the continent, it meant they'd beaten everyone under the sun. When Triss was famed across the continent, it meant everyone had chased her down and beaten her up. Now wasn't that a remarkable distinction?
Still, Triss's earnest and rigorous pursuit of knowledge was enough to make Murphy feel ashamed and utterly mortified. He'd always slacked off in that regard. By now, he'd mastered several advanced sword techniques, yet his summoning was still only half-baked.
Just then, while Triss examined Bernice and took the opportunity to study the unique profession of