"All finished."
Edward turned the test tube upside down and shook it. "Not a drop left."
"I didn't even get to taste it."
Lilith muttered, then swished her tail and settled quietly onto the bed.
Two or three minutes later, she opened her sapphire-like eyes again and announced brightly, "It worked!"
Edward was surprised. "Huh? You successfully achieved Advancement to Sequence 8?"
"That's right!"
She arched her back and stretched.
"So you're an Instigator now?"
"Yep!"
"You have the ability to instigate others now?"
"Yep!"
Edward took hold of her forelegs and lifted her up. "Try instigating me."
"???"
Her tiny face was filled with enormous confusion.
"Do you know what instigation means?"
Lilith shook her head, then nodded. "It means making cats and dogs fight."
"Mm, that's one way to understand it."
She raised her tail proudly. "Actually, I've already tried it before. I... made the cats, dogs, and rats in the sewers fight in groups."
"Uh."
Edward suddenly remembered that, at the last Extraordinary Gathering, the Fat Apothecary had mentioned that the medicinal herbs he planted in the sewers seemed to have been destroyed by animals fighting in groups. So Lilith had been the culprit all along.
"But you hadn't achieved Advancement back then. How did you instigate them?"
She looked puzzled. "I just went to the cats and told them the dogs wanted to take their territory, then told the dogs the cats wanted to take theirs... and then they started fighting."
"..."
That really was "instigation."
"Wait, weren't you an Assassin back then? Why were you instigating cats and dogs to fight?"
Lilith huffed. "They were too noisy and scared away all the rats nearby!"
"...All right."
Edward pressed a hand helplessly to his forehead. "Now that you've achieved Advancement to Instigator, you've gained the Beyonder