Elan her Cocky apprentice

Elan had ended up as Christina's apprentice thanks to a variety of unique circumstances. The poor guy had been born from the union of an elf and a human. However, instead of being blessed with superior magic ability like most half elves, his mixed genes had caused his 'gate', the core where mana was stored inside his body, to be defective and completely incapable of holding anything. Due to that, the unlucky half-bred became obsessed with finding a cure from his early age.

Unfortunately, even after years later, his pursuit of knowledge still failed to produce the results that he had hoped. And yet, Elan found the journey to understand magic had become just as (if not more) important to him than the elusive cure he set out seeking in the first place. However, there was still another problem. He had come see the limitations that a formal magic teaching institutions had, and realised that he needed to look elsewhere to satisfy his mind. Long story short, he had ended up as Christina's apprentice as she was curious about his defective gate, and well... she wanted someone she could brag to and order around.

So while Elan could do without the witch's crazy antics and Christina would had preferred a pupil that wasn't so hard to impress, all in all both parties had been more or less happy with this partnership... Until Christina's latest project.

Elan examined the creature in the vial and studied the notes his master had passed on to him.

"Ok? What am I looking at? A parasitic slime of some kind?"

"I call it Mimic slime! Isn't it amazing? I really think I outdid myself this time. A truly unique creation, don't you agree!?"

"Uhhh... no? This is basically an inferior version of the so called 'Elder Blood', the organism responsible for vampires, isn't it?"

Cristina looked at her apprentice like he had just slapped her across the face before quickly regaining her composure.

"N-No, this is way better! See, with mimic slime, there is no fear of the sun and no inconvenient 'hunger' to content with!"

"I thought you haven't tested this yet, so how can you be so sure there will be no 'hunger' or some inconvenient weaknesses? Cause from what I see here, it should have both. Also, ignoring the fact that the weakness to the sun was a trait introduced later to combat vampires, Elder Blood was developed as a means to achieve immortality. What is the supposed end goal of this parasite, or experiment as a whole?"

The witch gave her student an annoyed look, before a lightbulb seemed to light up inside her head a moment later. She grinned mischievously, something that Elan knew well from his apprenticeship would lead to something bad.

"Obviously you are not going to understand it's greatness by only reading about it, so you'll need to have first hand experience instead!"

Before Elan could react to the ominous words, he found all his limbs restrained by roots while his consciousness began slipping away due to his Master sleeping spell.