Shizuka stared at Edward's outstretched hand for a moment.
Then, she grabbed it, clutching it in her own.
Activating her Soul Weapon, Shizuka's body once again lost its natural coloring, taking on a brown, earthy consistency.
And since Shizuka's hand was currently connected to Edward's, her Soul Weapon spread over to his body.
Edward looked down at his hand, as the brown, earthy consistency began to travel down his body from the point of contact.
As it did, Edward felt a strange sensation begin to fill his body.
It was as if a foreign energy was being injected into him.
Shizuka felt a sudden strain, and it made her grit her teeth as she was forced to apply more exertion.
She hated taking passengers with her when she used her Earthen Travel Skill.
Spreading her Soul Weapon out to affect others always caused her a higher level of Mutant Cell expenditure than when she was using it on herself.
This was primarily due to the fact that it always seemed that the bodies of others she was trying to affect were fighting her, resisting her Ability.
When, as a result, caused her to have to try harder, literally forcing her Ability through.
However, she had never felt the strain be quite this hard.
It was like trying to turn the handle on a metal door that had been rusted all the way through.
'Is this because he's a Vampire and not a Human?' Shizuka asked, sweat dripping down her forehead from the effort.
Just as Vorden had said to Quinn while the two of them had been alone in the arena of the Training Center of Pioletic, it seemed that Human Mutant Cells and Vampire Mutant Cells were completely different from each other.
This meant that the process of Shizuka attempting to activate her Soul Weapon, and thus, her Ability, on Edward's Vampire body was the equivalent of trying to shove a square peg through a round hole.
Although, unknown to Shizuka, this was only half the problem.
As had been plainly stated to Quinn on at least two separate occasions, Vampires were completely incompatible with the Earth Elemental Ability of the military, which only caused Edward's body to resist Shizuka's attempt even more.
Shizuka ground her teeth hard from the immense strain, causing her jaw to start to hurt.
Eventually, after a significantly longer process than normal, with an intense amount of effort on Shizuka's part, Edward's whole body took on the same brown, earth-like consistency that Shizuka's was.
Once it had, the connected bodies of the two began to crumble.
They fell to the ground as a mass of small pebbles and dirt clumps.
After remaining still for a moment, the mass of earth and pebbles on the floor began to move across the ground like a snake, heading back towards the door of the room.
Although, it was moving at a noticeably more…sluggish pace than it had been when Shizuka had been traveling alone.
The mass of earth and rocks slithered its way across the floor of the winding halls of the 10th Family Castle, and straight through the empty gap under the front door.
Just like with Shizuka, Edward could also perceive the world around them in the "third-person perspective" that Shizuka could, him being able to see the Settlement as if he was a bird flying overhead.
'Well, this is rather the interesting Ability,' Edward thought, as the two of them traveled.
He was honestly curious about just how this Human girl had managed to not only sneak into the castle, which should have impossible, as only he, as well as a small boy who he was taking care of called "Timmy", was aware of the combination needed to open the "circular lock" on the castle door, but on him as well.
Edward had been completely unaware of the girl's presence until he saw her shadow being cast in front of him, and had smelled the scent of a Human in the air.
'This girl…' Edward thought. '...is she some kind of an assassin in the Human World?'
While he had his enhanced Vampire senses and reflexes to fall back on, an ordinary Human wouldn't be as lucky.
If she really wanted to, this girl could just simply sneak up on someone from behind, and either cut their head clean off or stab them through the heart with that blade Edward had seen by her side before the person even knew what happened.
Edward felt a chill run down his "spine", despite his current state.
The idea of this girl, a Human who could sneak past any locked door or barrier, kill someone, and retreat using the same method virtually unseen was quite the chilling thought.
The girl also seemed to be invulnerable to physical attacks, given how his attempt to slice open her neck earlier had done next to nothing, her simply turning the part that he had attacked into earth and rock.
Deep in his heart, Edward hoped that this girl's capability was just a one-off thing.
Because if there were other Humans like her…an entire group that could do what she could…perhaps the Humans represented a greater threat to the Settlement than the Vampire Council had thought.
On the way back, Shizuka took the shortest routes back towards the 9th Family Castle.
She wanted to deactivate her Soul Weapon as soon as possible due to her feeling her MC draining away like water though a mesh colander.
***
Back at the 9th Family Castle, two Vampires stood outside and at attention in front of the castle, both standing on either side of the door like a pair of sentries.
They had their eyes laser-focused on the area in front of them, watching out for any form of danger to the 9th Family like a set of hawks.
A short while later, they noticed something moving towards the castle at the sluggish pace on the ground.
The eyes of the two Vampires narrowed, as they used their enhanced vision to bring the object in question into focus.
When they did, they saw that it was what appeared to be…a sentient pile of earth and rocks.
The two Vampires blinked a few times in confusion, momentarily stunned by what they were seeing.
Although, as the pile of earth and stone got closer, neither Vampire did anything to interfere or block the pile's path.
A while ago, the two guards had received a message from their Leader, Muka herself, that if a "sentient pile of earth and rocks" were to make its way towards the castle, they were to let it through.
Honestly, the two guards thought that Muka had misspoken at the time.
Either that, or she had decided to have one too many drinks for the night, and had become a slight bit drunk and delusional.
Though neither of the two would dare say this to Muka's face.
While she was known to be a level-headed and reasonable Vampire Leader compared to the others, even they knew that saying such a statement in the presence of a Vampire Leader would cause…repercussions.
And they would be lucky if all they got was a stern reprimand.
They remained still as a statue as the seemingly-sentient pile of earth and rocks approached the castle door, before sliding underneath it through the small gap on the bottom of the door.
***
On the other side of the door, Shizuka immediately deactivated her Soul Weapon and the associated Skill.
The pile of earth and rocks began to build on top of each other, forming a pair of two rock statues of remarkable realism, in the exact likeness of Shizuka and Vampire Knight Edward.
The two statues were in the same exact poses that the individuals in question were in when Shizuka had originally activated the Skill, with Shizuka holding Edward's outstretched hand.
Slowly, coloration came back to the two "statues", and they transformed from "stone statues" to flesh-and-blood, living creatures.
Shizuka immediately let go of Edward's hand, and began panting, taking in deep, labored breaths.
"Oh...thank…god!" Shizuka gasped, her hand clutched against her chest. "I thought I was…going to pass out…if that took much longer!"
Shizuka's whole body ached, and she felt incredibly drained.
It didn't take a genius to tell her that her MC reserves were now critically low.
And while it was true that it was a well-known fact that one's Soul Weapon put an immense drain on the MC, Shizuka had spent years in intensive training, getting to the point where the drain had lessened substantially.
To the point that now using her Soul Weapon to transform small, select parts of her body into Earth and rocks to avoid attacks or use to form objects was no different than using a High-Level Skill.
However, her "Earthen Travel" Skill was a different story.