"Where have you been?" Lucius asked as Rita drifted down beside him.
She wore very casual clothes instead of her usual saintly attire.
Her pink hair was currently tied loosely and her face glowed from sleep in a way that made her seem far too innocent for soone capable of leveling an entire city easily.
She smiled lightly as she tucked a strand behind her ear.
"I... I overslept, sorry," she said, the tone of her voice was soft and embarrassingly honest. "You gave so much warmth in the afternoon that I was satisfied enough to last the whole night and even the morning."
Lucius hid his smirk.
’Nice,’ he thought, pleased more than he should have been. Now she wouldn’t call him at random tis and ask for warmth... He was safe for a while.
Minerva, however, wasn’t observing the exchange in a normal way.
Her nose twitched and her pupils narrowed as well.
’His scent is all over her... including her mouth,’ she analyzed in the way only a dragon could.
Since dragons relied heavily on sll and aura to read emotional states, she imdiately pieced together exactly what had transpired.
She inhaled subtly, trying to pinpoint where what was causing the scent had co from.
’It isn’t coming from his clothes... maybe his mouth?’
Lucius was oblivious, too focused on the crabs floating in the giant space-pan.
He pointed at them. "I’ll cut open the crabs now, and you’ll wash them."
"Okay," Rita agreed quickly.
Her lips parted slightly. "I like eating crabs..."
Lucius ignored it, how was he even supposed to reply to that?
He lifted the four oversized crabs... each was the size of a compact car but they were lifted effortlessly with controlled movents of spatial energy.
Their limbs began to dangle.
He turned to both girls and asked, "Where do you think the organs are in the crab?"
Minerva answered instantly with a proud smug flick of her hair. "I used my dragon eyes to look at the internal structure. If you cut open the top shell, you could remove all the organs easily."
With a nod, Lucius raised his fingers.
A thin circular line of warped air ford around the top of the first crab, and in a smooth, seamless motion, space sliced downward.
He removed the upper shell like lifting the lid off a pot.
A strong, unpleasant odor imdiately burst forth... it was a sour mix of blood, brine, and unfiltered dungeon contamination.
Lucius froze and his eye twitched.
’I suddenly feel less like cooking right now...’
Still, he powered through.
Using space as an invisible set of hands, he reached into the cavity and began extracting everything the crab didn’t need.
Gills peeled away in soft folds. Stomach sacs and dirt sacs were removed like gelatinous blobs. Long, ropey intestines slid out in one unbroken string.
Poison glands were cauterized by space and then plucked free. Any mbranous tissue that didn’t resemble edible at was removed and tossed into the air.
The sa process repeated for each crab.
All the unwanted organs floated in a hovering, disgusting cluster until Lucius crushed them together with space pressure, forming a dense ball of waste, and flicked it far across the ocean of blood.
"That shit slls disgusting," he muttered.
Minerva didn’t even flinch at the odor, which only made him want to question every assumption he had about dragon senses.
’Isn’t she supposed to have a supernatural sense of sll? What a fraud dragon.’
The crabs were now hollowed out, but their exposed interiors were still coated in gri and blood. They were still very far from edible.
"It’s your turn now," Lucius said as he turned toward Rita.
Rita inhaled deeply.
Then, with grace, she began drawing moisture from every direction.
The air glowed as water vapor condensed rapidly above her palm.
More gathered from microscopic traces clinging to the wooden platform behind them and the droplets coalesced into a sphere, rapidly expanding into a giant floating orb of water that rippled gently like a suspended pond.
Lucius nudged the crabs into ideal scrubbing positions using space, opening their cavities wide and lifting them at angles that exposed every joint and crevice.
"Nice," he said approvingly.
"I’ll start with the outside," Rita murmured.
Thin, high-pressure jets of water burst from the large orb at a motion from her fingers.
They weren’t rough or wild; they were on point.
Each stream angled precisely toward shells, legs, claws, and every fold where dirt loved to hide.
Filth ran off in streams... brown sludge, residual blood, dungeon gri, and even small parasites clinging to crevices.
The water pressure never hard the shells but was strong enough to blast away layers of hardened residue.
Lucius winced as the dirty water collected at the bottom of the pan. "How do they get this dirty...?"
Minerva shrugged. "They live in dirt."
After the outer shells took on a polished red gleam, Rita paused briefly, adjusting her control.
The water sphere above her pulsed in response.
"Now for the insides," she said.
She raised both hands this ti.
Multiple narrow jets shot forward... not forceful enough to damage at, but powerful enough to flush out lingering fluid and clotted blood.
The water stread into the hollow crab cavities, swirling around ribs of shell, washing through the tunnels connected to the legs, and rinsing the underside of the top shell segnts Lucius had removed.
A mixture of pinkish water and loosened gri flowed out in waves.
Lucius used space to peel away each wave of dirty water instantly including the one in the pan, collecting it and compacting it into a single hovering bubble of filth that he then flicked into the distance.
He repeated the cycle of flush-and-remove several tis, unwilling to let even a trace of contamination remain before cooking.
After Rita completed another thorough pass into every leg joint, every internal crack, and every crevice beneath the shell.
The inside cavities were now a fresh-looking pinkish-white.
The difference was massive. The crabs actually looked like food now instead of monsters that had been dragged through a sewer.
Minerva’s eyes shined with excitent.
Her dragon instincts were flaring and her pupils dilated as she leaned forward, inhaling deeply. "They look ready..."
Lucius didn’t even let her finish.
He narrowed his eyes at her and spoke slowly. "Down, girl. Are you planning to eat all that raw?"
Dragons truly had no manners.
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