Most of the apprentices they saw were around their age, between fourteen and sixteen. Compared to older apprentices like Poppy or Dulles, their eyes were clear and calm. When they saw Pandora’s group, fresh from the “Orchards,” their expressions a mix of tension and confusion, they mostly just offered a curious glance before looking away and getting on with their business.

  However, Pandora noticed that among the many looks of curiosity, investigation, and indifference, one stood out.

  That gaze was cold, rigid, and it held a barely concealed hostility.

  Pandora followed that line of sight.

  The owner was an older apprentice.

  He had a head of thick, curly hair, dark green like swamp moss, and wore a classical, dark, and somber robe. On the chest of that robe was a strange, special emblem woven from thorns and bleached bones. It seemed to be the insignia of the Corpse-Plague Furnace, a department Pandora had never come across in Dulles’s diary.

  Even from a distance, looking at him, Pandora felt as if she were being watched by a venomous snake coiled in the shadows.

  The sense of menace this person exuded was no less than that of Teaching Assistant Poppy, who hovered in the air, radiating immense power.

  Poppy, too, seemed to have noticed him. Her smooth, flowing words, with which she had been introducing the Academy’s facilities to the freshmen, had stopped.

  For the first time, the playful languor vanished from the red-haired assistant’s face, replaced by a faint, almost imperceptible tension at the corner of her mouth.

  “Someone from ‘The Discipline Hall’…” her voice dropped a few notes. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m in the middle of my TA duties,” Poppy started to say, “so there shouldn’t be…”

  “Poppy,” the man cut her off, his tone as cold and emotionless as if he were reading a charge sheet. “My business has nothing to do with you.”

  Hearing this, the tension at Poppy’s lips eased, slightly.

  It seemed she breathed a sigh of relief.

  Pandora observed all of this, quickly mulling over the meaning of the words “The Discipline Hall” in her mind, wondering if this man’s appearance was related to her, if he was here to cause trouble…

  Right at that moment, the “green hair,” his dead-fish-like, lifeless eyes, sweeping over the procession, suddenly froze, finally landing on one person.

  Pandora followed his gaze—

  It was Dulles!

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  The instant he was locked by that icy gaze, Dulles’s entire body went stiff.

  “Dulles, MS06871, the former Warden of the ‘Douglas Viscounty.’”

  The green-haired apprentice took a slow step forward. His voice wasn’t loud, yet it was like a dull funeral bell, clear to every ear.

  “By mandate 782311 of ‘The Discipline Hall,’ you are under arrest.”

  “Come with me.”

  “I…? Wait, wait! No, there must be some kind of mistake!”

  Dulles, who’d been a stone statue the entire trip, finally cracked. He shook his head frantically, his face a mask of terror. “I haven’t done anything wrong! I haven’t done anything wrong! On what grounds are you arresting me!”

  “Whether you have done anything wrong is of no concern to me,” the green-haired man replied coldly, his slow, steady pace unchanging. “I am merely executing a warrant. Don’t… make this difficult.”

  However, as he continued to advance, Dulles’s emotions began to spiral out of control.

  A hint of madness appeared on his face, the kind of madness seen only in a cornered beast.

  “Don’t come any closer! Don’t come any closer!”

  He spun around violently, shoving aside a few startled youths, and fled in the opposite direction without a backward glance.

  The green hair’s speed didn’t change; he still moved at a slow, steady pace. His voice was like the beat of footfalls approaching death.

  “You are under arrest. Come with me.”

  “Don’t come any closer!”

  Dulles ran, glancing back over his shoulder. His face, covered in red lines, was twisted with fear, but as he looked back, it was as if he saw something so terrifying it would make his soul flee his body.

  He whipped his hand around, a sharp dagger slicing through the air toward the other man, as if to show he wasn’t to be trifled with. “Don’t come any closer! I have a Warden’s dead man’s switch! If you kill me, you will too…”

  Before Dulles could finish, the green-haired apprentice made his move.

  A flash of undisguised, cruel killing intent flickered in his dead-fish eyes.

  Then, his thick, dark-green curls… came alive.

  They became a cloud of thick, writhing tendrils, like frenzied vines, surging forward. They engulfed several freshmen standing between the two of them, yet with impossible agility, they deftly avoided every single one.

  The moment the dark green hair made contact with Dulles’s body, it was like some kind of bloodthirsty, carnivorous plant, savagely burrowing, inch by inch, into his flesh and blood!

  “AAAAHHH—!!!”

  Dulles let out a shriek of pure agony, accompanied by the distinct, wet sounds of tearing and piercing flesh.

  Everyone watched, horrified, by the bizarre and exceedingly gory sight.

  Pandora barely managed to maintain her composure. Her heart hammered, but her mind was unusually clear, parsing the intelligence before her.

  This person’s power… was no less than Poppy’s!

  Which meant—he was also a third-rank!

  And the identity of “The Discipline Hall” granted him some kind of special authority, higher than that of a normal apprentice, so much so that Dulles’s so-called “insurance,” whatever it was, a seemingly mutual-assured-destruction measure, never even activated.

  As she was thinking, it was already over.

  That long, dark-green hair, like an ebbing tide, rapidly retracted.

  As it receded, it brought back two things.

  One was Dulles’s head, the expression of ultimate terror still frozen on its blood-stained face.

  The other was the inconspicuous gray wristband on Dulles’s wrist. It had never activated.

  “I will be taking the ‘sinner’s head.”

  The green-haired apprentice casually stored the two items and turned to Poppy, his tone as flat as ever. “I hope I didn’t disturb your work.”

  “Not at all.”

  Poppy thought to herself, How could you not have disturbed me? You just scared the soul out of my freshmen! But she had no intention of arguing with someone from “The Discipline Hall.” Getting this harbinger of doom away as quickly as possible was the best choice.

  And so, the green-haired apprentice, with his two items, turned and left.

  In the spot where he stood, nothing was left behind.

  Not even a single drop of blood.