Meanwhile, back in Tsukimidaira.

  Warm sunlight poured through the freshly cleaned window, throwing bright squares of light onto the polished wooden floor.

  Three days had passed since Pandora settled in.

  Unlike Aurora, who spent those three days balanced on a knife’s edge of pain from the enhancement serum, Pandora’s time had been… pretty good. Relaxed, even.

  She’d focused almost completely on one job—sorting out her new place, turning this long-empty house piece by piece into somewhere cozier. Somewhere comfortable.

  After all, your own home should feel good to live in.

  And unlike the “rented room” back at the academy, this place was, in theory, hers. That brought a realer sense of “home.” It gave her a steady stream of motivation to clean, arrange, and fix things up.

  Sure, besides setting up the house, she also found time to put on her “Ember” face and make a trip to the East District of Eden—the trading and fun zone for apprentices in the Ruined City. Using the intel channels Nicole provided, she locked down a steady source for basic supplies.

  Just like that, three days blew by.

  Under her capable hands, the once-dead little house was fully alive again.

  As for the “neighbors,” the info broker Nicole and her sister, things were fine. The sisters had already caught a new Face-Worm, restoring their nasty one-two punch of Face-Worm plus Droop-Head Corpse Maiden back to third-rank threat level.

  And, pretty “luckily,” not long after they reset their traps, they ran into some self-important jerk trying to claim Tsukimidaira for himself.

  The result was no shock. That unlucky soul was now a fresh batch of fertilizer under the Corpse Maiden, conveniently topping up what it used fighting Pandora.

  This incidentally proved Pandora’s choice was right. Working with the two sisters really did dodge a huge pile of pointless trouble, letting her enjoy the perk of “peace and quiet” without lifting a finger.

  Also, like her Eden supply run, she’d gotten detailed maps and basic intel from broker Nicole first. Having that precise info made the whole trip smooth.

  But after securing her spot and a supply line, Pandora suddenly found herself with not much to do.

  Now, after wandering aimlessly for half an hour, she finally sat down at the clean desk she’d wiped down a dozen times. She pulled the familiar, slender-feathered quill from her pack.

  Putting thoughts on paper really was the best way to sort her head out.

  As the quill moved over the rough-but-tough paper, all the outside noise seemed to get muffled by an invisible force. Her mind went calm. The messy swirl of thoughts got clearer.

  Thinking back on this period…

  Jumping into a noble family, enjoying fourteen years of peace, then a sudden mutation, a corpse-change, and then somehow winding up at this Demon Hunter Academy.

  She had no power to refuse, just got swept along by a huge, inescapable momentum into joining the academy, becoming a Demon Hunter apprentice, leaving that old peaceful life behind for good.

  But…

  She… really did want this kind of peaceful, quiet life, didn’t she?

  One of her ideal lives was finding a stable place and building a warm, nice manor.

  Didn’t need family, didn’t need complicated ties, just a few close friends.

  A maid loyal to her,

  maybe… a knight to guard her too?

  She could even invite that skilled “Little Kitchen Maid” Betty, offer her great pay and a private, cozy room of her own, let her focus on what she loved most.

  That kind of life,

  would be… amazing!

  Thinking this, the corner of Pandora’s mouth lifted in a self-mocking smile.

  The “mass-murderer” she’d already become…

  deep down, was she really such a “little girl” at heart?

  What a crazy contrast.

  Compared to those ultimate, grimdark, morally complex villains from the movies and shows of her past life, she still had a long, long way to go.

  As for why she wasn’t like those hot-blooded hero types who could win everything with virtue, love, and justice?

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  —She figured she just couldn’t muster that kind of heat.

  Once a fight started, she felt no passion; her mind filled up only with ice-cold calculation and analysis.

  Yeah, a more rational, colder, more ruthless… “villain” fit her better.

  “Huh? Seems… I got off track.”

  Pandora’s quill had hovered over the paper a while, leaving a small blot of ink.

  She shook her head, shoving the pretty fantasy aside, and forced her focus back to cold reality.

  She also saw just how far that ideal, almost dream-like life was from her now.

  The truth was, those fourteen years of peaceful noble-girl life in the medieval setting were just a script the Demon Hunter Academy made for her—a carefully built, totally fake illusion.

  Away from that meticulously arranged false comfort, what jumped out was a brutal, non-stop state of struggle.

  And this was only the “apprentice” stage.

  One look showed the whole picture.

  Judging by the training philosophy at the apprentice stage and the scattered info she could dig up from different channels, even if she broke through to third rank and became a real, respected “Demon Hunter,” life definitely wouldn’t get comfy.

  The level of danger and conflict she might face could very well… be even worse than now.

  What those “Greater Demons” really were—things she’d only heard named, never seen—those terrifying beings the whole academy took so seriously, she still knew nothing.

  In other words, even with more power, as an elite Demon Hunter, she’d probably still never get the peaceful, quiet life she wanted.

  Might even turn out to be another kind of “going the exact wrong way”…

  Thinking this, Pandora felt a thread of hard-to-describe bitterness.

  The huge, seemingly uncrossable gap between ideal and reality gave her real, heart-deep pain.

  But…

  As a “transplant” from another world, with life experience way beyond her young looks, her mindset was way more mature than she seemed on the outside.

  Pandora adjusted fast, dragging her mind back from the fog of daydreams to this solid, thorn-covered ground.

  Truth was,

  even “becoming a Master Demon Hunter” probably wouldn’t give her the life she wanted.

  But right now, it was the most realistic goal she had. The one that mattered.

  Right.

  For no other reason than this—the academy was cruel.

  The academy wouldn’t patiently “support” these “apprentices” forever.

  It might look like she had no pressure, but she was the one rare exception.

  Hadn’t she seen how the others from her batch, all dumped in the Orchard World, had that pressure and grimness written plain on their faces?

  Forget the far-off ones. Just look closer.

  Take the three-month “leave-campus” deadline, only just passed.

  She’d smoothly found a house she liked. But how many apprentices like her could there be? Maybe one in ten thousand.

  Remember—her own second-rank strength was completely hidden!

  Out of all the new students, how many could hit second rank by the three-month mark?

  Think a bit further out.

  That two-year “breakthrough to first-rank” deadline was still fresh.

  It was that cold, heavy deadline that forced the old Orchard World Warden, “Dulles,” to take stupid risks, and end up dead.

  And apprentices like him, who didn’t break through to first rank by the two-year mark? Plenty.

  Not to mention at second rank, there were similar, maybe even stricter, promotion deadlines.

  Once time was up without advancing, what waited was… a total status change.

  From “apprentice with potential” to “cannon fodder” with none.

  Dulles’s diary mentioned it.

  If he failed to break through by the deadline, he’d lose his “apprentice” tag and, as basic combat muscle, get tossed into the battlefield where Demon Hunters and “Greater Demons” tore into each other.

  But that was… a Demon Hunter’s battlefield!

  A first-rank “apprentice” thrown in there…

  It clearly meant “cannon fodder.”

  The “apprentice” tag might not sound great, but that depended what you compared it to.

  So,

  even if… getting more power right now didn’t seem to help her ideal life directly,

  under… these rules, it was everything.

  It was the foundation… to have any choice, any hope at all.

  Thinking this, Pandora’s moving pen tip paused a second.

  She dipped the nib in ink again and wrote one line hard at the top of the clean paper:

  Fourth Rank, Demon Hunter.

  This goal wasn’t pointless for her now. The opposite—it was the most practical thing.

  Just like when she risked breaking through to first rank in the Orchard World, becoming the only second-rank Wizard—only by having more power could she have a say in what came next, handle whatever crazy changes came her way.

  If she weren’t second rank already, she sure wouldn’t be living this easy now.

  So.

  A layer of calm, rational, almost icy light flickered in Pandora’s eyes.

  “Fourth Rank Demon Hunter,” as the main big goal for this stage, got carved deep in her mind.

  Since becoming a “Demon Hunter” was the long-term big goal,

  the next small goal was obvious—

  Break through the second rank and become a real power among the Ruined City apprentices!

  For others, “reaching third rank” and “being a power among third ranks” might be two totally different things.

  But for Pandora, these two goals could basically be one.

  With her weird system of leveling her Witch bloodline and Wizard powers side-by-side, once she hit third rank, her starting strength would be way up there.

  Plus, after she broke through, she could 【Reshape】 Elsa anytime, helping her hit third rank too.

  With Elsa’s boost, becoming a top-tier power among third-rank apprentices soon after wasn’t some distant dream.

  But…

  While the Witch and Wizard paths gave her bigger potential, they also made advancing way harder.

  Especially the “Wizard” path.

  Right now, she badly lacked a meditation method that really fit her.

  It kept her Wizard strength stuck right at the level of just entering second rank.

  Over the past three months, besides getting better at using the power she had, any growth was tiny.

  The meditation method in The Wizard’s Tome—maybe it was missing something key, or just didn’t suit her—never gave Pandora the steady spirit growth it described.

  Her spiritual power had only settled a bit, with no real jump.

  She didn’t even know if the tiny growth she got came from daily boring meditation or was just natural—she was only fourteen, after all. Her body and mind were still growing. Normally, she should still be in a phase of natural spirit growth.

  As for the Witch bloodline…

  She didn’t know why, but every night, if she just looked at the moon right, basked in that eerie light a little while, her bloodline would grow on its own, steady.

  From the first time she saw the red moon in the campus room till now, it had been smooth.

  From how she felt now, it wouldn’t be long—maybe a year, maybe less—before she could max out the second rank on the Witch path.

  So, the Witch bloodline, she wasn’t worried about.

  For now, what needed the most attention, the thing that had to be solved, was a proper Wizard meditation method.

  Thinking this,

  Pandora finally pinned down the main “target” for the time ahead.

  She drew a down arrow from the big goal “Fourth Rank Demon Hunter,” and at the end of the line, wrote a new word:

  Meditation Method.

  This was the more realistic, more specific small goal under the big one. The main thing she needed to chase in the coming days.