It was a bizarre setting, to say the least.

Adrin was standing just beside the bed despite being a cripple.

His arm was extended supporting his palm which rested on the woman’s almost entirely exposed breast. Bella posed herself invitingly on the bed as if she was begging him to push her down and be done with it.

He guessed she wasn’t kidding around when she said she wanted to love him. It showed that the sensuous older lady had made up her mind about this. Her reaction to the ever-changing scales was mild, probably because she had seen them in action enough while peeking through the secret entrance like a closet pervert.

This shiny make-shift ‘Exo-scale-aton’ alpha-version-one was doing quite well, as limited as it was. His movement was slow and awkward and maybe practicing the otherworldly martial art kata would help. It was also quite cold to his skin but this was remedied by spending a tiny amount of mana to warm the scales up.

Moreover, the interaction with the slotted [Shell] and [Metallurgy] skills was telling him that he was doing something right. He could almost feel a related skill coming out of this, as he had been hinted at before.

A tiny yelp escaped her mouth as his blood burned into her silky soft skin. His hand was slightly buried when he barely touched the unblemished surface. The perfect contours made him want nothing but to bury his face in their warmth again.

The red mark disappeared under her skin, leaving no trace of it at all.

When he rubbed his thumb on the spot, however, he could still feel it, the runes, hidden right under the thin layer of the epidermis. Bella had insisted on being marked on the chest herself, and this had proven that the woman was broken in a way he couldn’t even imagine.

Adrin ignored the pleased whimper that leaked from her thick lushy lips as he traced the spell circuit details with all his senses. His curiosity could barely contain his other urges this close to such enticing, deep, cleavage. He could have slept for days buried in the deep valleys and never complained about anything in the world.

The women in the old world might have met the famous ‘wall’ when they reached their thirties but there was nothing like that in this world. Mana had made aging obsolete, but not everything was sunshine and rainbows.

The human mind is fragile. Not everyone was built to withstand long life filled with tribulations and many would break after it had enough.

Suicides wouldn’t even be a thing if all human minds were inheritedly capable. Not many even among the gifted could handle the looming threat of monsters on top of cruel powerful people.

Immortality was overrated because of this. He couldn’t even imagine what the everlasting youth and beauty could do to a person's mind when terrifying monsters and equally heartless people were involved. The worst scars were the unseen ones.

Regardless, the ritual Bella had taught him had formed a magic circuit with very familiar runes filling its every form. It had obvious differences in its configuration from what he had seen on Lily’s collar. The differences ended at the power source which was their mana.

A bond formed in his mind and he suddenly realized that the lady wasn’t playing around. A quick check on his status and the [System] itself had confirmed it.

Blood Bound: [Primary]

He had to admit that, at first, Adrin thought he was just entertaining one of the rich lady’s very dark and very twisted fantasies. People in high places tend to have those and no one would be stupid enough to not leave a way out for themselves. Especially for someone like her.

Adrin had suspected that he would find the loophole after carefully studying the spell circuitry on her bulging heaving chest. Half of him was expecting a role reversal if he slept with her, but alas, he was dead wrong.

The rules enforced in the magic circuit were simple. Others might see the magic circuit as random lines and symbols but his extensive experience in electronic circuits and programming had told him otherwise.

The [Vez], [Nar], [Khair], and a few other minor runes were aligned perfectly and there were no [Jao] or the more obscure [Dun] runes.

Or in English, there weren’t any clear or underlying ‘if’ in the mark’s circuit.

Her life was bound to him, period.

Other than that, he could even rob off her mana if he wanted to but never in reverse. He could use her mana to heal himself but he rather not for now. His security was the top priority and even an all-powerful mage like her would be useless without mana.

Adrin suspected that the lady would be glad to offer herself if he asked, which would be another hidden card he could play. The mark would reward her on top of her other reward.

Regardless, there was no hole in the spell circuitry, and he had triple-checked it. Moreover, any attempt to remove the mark without his consent would forfeit her life in almost an instant. Unlike Lily, however, the ownership couldn’t be transferred.

It was crazy to say, but the ex-Matriarch had become his lifelong slave. He had never seen this come even if this arrangement had starred on his face for years.

“But why?” he asked the question inside his head out loud.

“You already know why,” the lady said, trying to evade the question.

“Do me a favor and spell it out,” Adrin pushed and Bella bit her lower lip.

She winced when the mark glowed under her skin before she sighed in defeat.

The lady probably didn’t think he would ask such a question in this situation. She was probably expecting him to devour her as soon as the ritual was complete.

And to be honest, she wasn’t far from the truth. If he hadn’t been more interested in translating the runes on the mark he would be giving the lady her lifetime’s worth of close attention.

“Because something is wrong with me,” she ground her teeth as the mark flared again. “I’m, I’m incapable of falling in love,” the lady finally admitted before she slumped, submitting to the mark’s pressure.

Adrin was taken aback. Most women would never admit something like this, especially a beauty like her. It would put a chip in her perfect self. A gapping flaw in her ideal image.

Bella, or anyone like her, would never admit it if not for the small hidden mark made of his blood.

“And this blood-bound somehow fixes that?”

“All blood-bound are helplessly infatuated with their prime,” her cheek turned rosy when she said those words as if they had warmed her heart. “That’s why it needs a willing subject.”

He now understood it.

A normal slave could still freely hate the one they served, but blood-bound had no choice but to fall in love with their prime, as she called it. Who would have thought that the lofty woman was secretly dying to feel in love once again? The woman must have been through hell to have her heart hardened up to such a degree.

The fact that she couldn’t fall in love anymore must have tortured her inside for who knew how long. This blood ritual, this lifetime bond, was what she meant when she said she had chosen to fall in love with him.

But Adrin could see how someone could work around that requirement. Tricking your soon-to-be victim was the best and easiest way to do it, and bam! one life-long slave for you.

This ritual was akin to mind-altering spells.

“Where do you learn such a ritual? I can’t see this being legal.”

Bella silently winced again when the mark sensed an attempt for deceit, she looked at him almost begging for him to stop asking such questions. Adrin pitied the woman, but she had dug this rabbit hole by herself.

“I need to know, Bella, I don’t want this or any loose end to creep on to me. Don’t worry, your secret is safe, we are together in this matter now,” Adrin assured her.

Bella visibly deflated when she heard it. She didn’t want her prime to hear her past faults, as hinted by their bond.

“I’ve… bargained it from a cultist, a [Blood] magic cultist,” she stated in defeat. “He will not be able to threaten us, I’ve made sure of it.”

She had slept with him in the exchange and killed the man after she had what she wanted. The poor guy probably had turned into ashes with a flick of her fingers.

What a scary woman.

She was the black widow herself but this reveal didn’t matter to him.

“Is that it?” Adrin shook his head. “I thought you had stolen or bullied it out of someone important. That is a major death flag, you know. Besides, knowledge is knowledge, no matter where it came from, forbidden or not. You are not a terrorist just because you know how to make a bomb.”

Bella looked up and stared at him in disbelief. She should at least get a gist of what he was rambling about from their bond.

After the long sleep, Adrin felt a whole lot more like himself. As weird as it sounded, he was an old man with a youthful soul and body.

No more the plague of the young blood had a significant influence over him, but everyone knew the popular modern saying. Boys didn’t grow old, only their toys got bigger, and she did have the biggest toys he had ever seen.

Adrin beckoned her to come closer and rewarded the downhearted woman with ample mammary massages. It was also very good training for his finger scales.

He took them out from their tight confines and fully enjoyed the soft but firm combination as much as their owner. Bella flopped onto the bed as her moans filled the silence while he was thinking through his fate in life.

‘What about me and milfs?’ Adrin asked himself and shook his head.

These broken ladies had always been pulled into his life both in the old world and this one. He always had to try to push them away, but they always came flocking back. It was to a point that they pretended not to know that he had other women just like them hanging around.

Some of them had even offered monetary benefits just to be around him. Of course, he had gotten to know and dated normal girls, but those usually drifted away for whatever reason.

‘Just like Emi and Nerina?’ He thought to himself. The thought saddened him.

Was it because he was broken too?

Adrin sighed. ‘Trust goes both ways,' as they say.

But perhaps this blood bond could prove to be beneficial to him. There were many benefits to having such a curvaceous powerful woman at his bidding, obviously, but he was thinking about something else.

Knowledge was one of them. One small thing had been nagging him for the longest time. He had begun to be annoyed by the question mark on his status.

Bella stopped moaning as soon as he let her go. The woman pouted as she took a seat on the bed beside him.

“How do mages get their mana pool, Bella?”

Bella’s green eyes opened bigger than they already were. She looked like a child who suddenly had a chance to show off her new toy. Adrin could almost guess the answer by how excited the lady was, but having a stable internal mana battery would be awesome for his healing process.

“The foundation of the mana pool is usually forged by the mage’s Spellmaster,” she replied, almost giddy from her thoughts. “However, anyone with the skill and enough pool can do it.”

Adrin swallowed a sigh, “can you become my Spellmaster?”

Bella bobbed her head up and down a few times and offered her hands to him. Her previous disappointment was all but forgotten.

“This again?” Adrin said as it reminded him of Nerina’s trouble with her hard-to-mold mana.

“Yes, the only way for you to build your mana pool foundation is to get a feel of what it should be like,” she said with that knowing smile. “I’ll help when I've sensed that you are ready, but I was surprised that you even asked the question. How do you learn about the existence of mana pools? I don't think anyone could have told you about it.”

Adrin grabbed her hands and closed his eyes. He rather not confuse her with the fantasy games and countless literature back in his old world. He heard the woman grumble but she was still positively excited to be the one who helped to build his foundation.

“Let my mana flow through you and yours through me,” she began. “This flow will result in two things. First, you’ll learn the gist of mana pool foundation, and the second, we will be naturally immune to each other's offensive spell.”

Adrin nodded and let the woman enjoy herself being first on his list. If he understood it right, the mark was probably rewarding her with who-knew-what for assisting her primary.

‘With lots of dopamine & oxytocin mix, perhaps?’ Adrin chuckled inside.

Bella's warm mana enveloped his being and Adrin let it slip into him.

It felt wrong to have her mana traveling through his being. It felt like something, a foreign entity, a slick eel of some sort was moving, crawling under his skin.

It was unnerving.

Adrin relaxed and stopped his instinct to fight it. It took quite a while as his and her mana brushed and mingled together until something clicked.

Both of them felt it at the same time as they both breathed in relief. Because of the warmth of her mana, to him, it felt like being enveloped by warm blankets in the cold blizzard. No one in the right mind would want to separate from such warmth and that was what he felt at the time.

Adrin wondered how his mana felt to Bella.

But then he saw it, the expanse and the deepness of Bella’s mana pool. It felt like even a loch ness monster could swim in its depth and never be found.

It was just enormous.

God, he really should start practicing the otherworldly kata again and maybe he would find peace in them. Some women in this world were just unbelievably scary.