“Unless I’m missing something, that rich ‘black soil’ under it probably came from there, right? If we dig around, we might even find the remains of that third-rank who died, just like that information broker Nicole said…”

  Pandora calmly analyzed as she stepped inside.

  “But…”

  As she spoke, she raised her leg as if to step forward.

  The next second—Crack!

  The ground under her feet shattered like cheap glass. From a tiny fissure to a massive chasm big enough to swallow them both, the collapse happened too fast for Pandora to fully react!

  Almost instantly, the feeling of weightlessness hit her whole body. Elsa’s strength found nothing to grip!

  At this moment, neither she nor Elsa, now a sword, had any leverage. This meant…

  Was she falling?

  Pandora glanced down fast.

  It wasn’t dirt.

  It was a gigantic, grotesquely grinning “human head” of a long-haired woman. Her face was badly rotted, showing stark white bone. But her teeth were weirdly perfect and white, and that long tongue… was plump and pink.

  Such nice teeth…

  An absurd thought, totally out of place in a life-or-death moment, flashed from the depths of her mind.

  Pandora, about to land on that huge, slippery “tongue-bed,” chuckled softly at her own dark joke. The laugh was quiet, holding a hint of youthful coolness.

  But…

  this seemingly ordinary, soft laugh made the world crumble where it touched.

  “Hummm—”

  Like an invisible hand shook the canvas called “reality.” The terrifying grinning head, the deep, soul-sucking background, the weightless suspension, the sickly sweet blood scent rushing up…

  All of it, every unreasonable horror, in that instant, peeled away like shattered, too-brilliant glass. Silently, fast, revealing the hidden, ordinary “truth” underneath.

  “How disappointing. In the end, it was just a childish trick?”

  “Ember” opened her eyes, that faint, mocking smile still on her half-scorched face. She was still standing at the villa’s entrance. Her hand still rested on the cold wooden door, not even having pushed it open.

  Had time rewound?

  No.

  She’d just broken the false illusion wrapped around her. The fall, the woman’s head, everything—all an illusion. Or actually… from the moment she stepped into Tsukimidaira, she’d already… been inside one.

  Once more, like in the illusion she’d just seen through, she looked up at the house. It was different now.

  No weird courtyard hidden by a giant flower. No overwhelming sea of red and black. Just a house that looked… pretty ordinary and cozy.

  The crimson moon, turned into a gigantic eye, hung high, watching everything silently.

  “The Red Moon… is an eye…”

  Pandora murmured to herself. The voice was small, light, like the wind could scatter it anytime. No one but her knew this wasn’t a metaphor. Not even Elsa, linked to her mind, knew.

  In her world, only the world where the Red Moon is an eye is the real world. Everything else is illusion.

  So from the moment she entered Tsukimidaira, from the moment she saw that huge crimson moon “close” its eye and stop blinking at her, Pandora already knew she’d stepped into an illusion.

  What came next was simple. With her strong second-rank Wizard’s mental power and the natural mind-steadiness from her Witch bloodline, “breaking free” from an illusion this level wasn’t hard.

  The hard part was making herself “sink” into the illusion, pretending to be fully controlled so the hidden enemy, getting the right “feedback,” wouldn’t realize she’d already slipped the illusion’s hold.

  For a normal second-rank Wizard, that would be tricky. Especially since the illusion’s grip tightened as she moved forward. But her mental strength wasn’t normal. Even a third-rank “Corpse-Plague Acolyte” couldn’t match her in mental purity and power!

  They’d never walked the same path from the start.

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  It was because of these unique traits that Pandora pulled off this… bizarre situation where the enemy thought they controlled everything, could crush their prey anytime, but in truth, all control, all the advantage, stayed firmly in her hands.

  So, next…

  My turn.

  Counterattack starts!

  Boom!

  The ground shook hard! Having felt the tremor coming even inside the illusion, Pandora’s body crouched suddenly, then sprang high into the air!

  As a second-rank, her physical explosive power was beyond what it was before, not to mention she now had the boost from Elsa’s alchemical body!

  So she jumped high, clearing the height of a two-story building, and finally saw the full shape of the terrifying thing coming up from underground.

  It was a monster like a giant worm, its head sporting a vicious, fanged human face!

  “So it’s a ‘Face-Worm’? Actually… not bad.”

  Pandora commented coolly as she hung in the air.

  “But…” As she hit the peak of her jump from momentum and started dropping under heavy gravity, she swung the Sword of Elsa in her hand in one smooth move.

  Slice.

  No earth-shaking roar. Just a clean cutting sound, like a hot knife through butter.

  The “Face-Worm,” which had just emerged and hadn’t even managed a follow-up attack, was neatly, easily split right down the middle from head to tail!

  Massive amounts of dark red, sticky blood gushed out. The fierce worm jerked violently twice, then crashed to the ground, completely still.

  Without even pausing, Pandora landed lightly.

  She walked to the door, pushed it open, and finally saw the real mastermind in the courtyard.

  It was a… “Droop-Head Corpse Maiden.”

  It sat alone in the courtyard’s center, its huge head hanging limp to one side. At its slender, stretched neck, the flesh split open, blooming into a giant, eerie flower. At the very heart of that flower was a single… beautiful, pure black poppy.

  It constantly spewed hallucinogenic psychic poison strong enough to trap and kill a third-rank apprentice.

  But to Pandora, this was useless. The paired combo of the “Face-Worm” and the “Droop-Head Corpse Maiden” was completely countered by her abilities. There was simply… no chance for them.

  Unless…

  “Aren’t you going to come out?”

  “Ember's” gaze, carrying a hint of challenge, swept the courtyard. It finally landed on the closed glass door leading into the house. Her calm voice rang clear in the silent garden.

  Like it was waiting for this exact moment, the glass door clicked open from the inside.

  A petite girl with long, pure white hair and a reclusive, shut-in vibe appeared in the doorway. Her eyes looked vacant, showing no reaction to the fierce fight that had just ended in front of her.

  “My Lady.”

  Elsa’s voice sounded in Pandora’s mind, holding a note of surprise. “I didn’t sense this girl earlier. My perception told me there was one person inside, but it wasn’t her.”

  So that meant…

  There were two people in the house.

  Pandora nodded inside. Seeing this sudden white-haired girl instantly confirmed a suspicion she’d had. She hadn’t been totally sure earlier if someone was really behind the door. She’d only felt a faint, slippery sense of being watched—a feeling that seemed oddly familiar.

  Since that feeling had appeared while she was under the illusion, she couldn’t fully confirm if someone was actually watching. Hence her earlier probing statement.

  But with the other’s appearance, another, deeper question rose in her mind: The Tsukimidaira area was already held by the duo of mutated zombies, the “Droop-Head Corpse Maiden” and the “Face-Worm.” From her recent experience, this pair was highly aggressive, not the rare, harmless kind.

  So why were there people here?

  And… judging by the white-haired girl’s look, her mental and physical state seemed pretty good. Not like someone trapped here long.

  Could it be…

  An unbelievable guess surfaced from deep in Pandora’s mind.

  Did she have… the ability to control zombies?

  Before she could voice this, she saw the silent, vacant-looking white-haired girl give her a slight… nod.

  She nodded?

  What did that mean?

  Was she admitting she had that kind of… legendary “Necromancer”-like power to control zombies? And not just control—could she read minds too?

  Just then, from the dim space behind the white-haired girl, a lazy, calm voice sounded:

  “No, she can’t read minds. She can only vaguely feel strong emotions. As for me, I can’t read minds either. I just… guessed you’d think that. After all… no harm if I’m wrong, right?”

  Following the voice, a familiar figure with striking golden hair stepped past the petite white-haired girl, using her taller frame to shield the shorter, vacant girl behind her.

  “First time meeting. I’m ‘Nicole.’”

  That’s right. This golden-haired girl was Pandora’s old contact—the very information broker she’d parted from not long ago.

  But seeing Nicole again, Pandora recognized her. Nicole didn’t recognize Pandora in her current disguise, the persona she’d named “Ember.”

  “May I have your name?”

  Nicole asked. Her gaze rested on “Ember's” half-perfect, half-terrifying face. Her eyes held no fear or disgust, only the pure, assessing look of an information broker.

  “Ember.”

  Pandora gave her current name, short and plain.

  Nicole nodded, silently filing this face into memory.

  She thought to herself, this was already the third mysterious, powerful person—and all girls!—to show up in her intel zone today that she, the self-called top broker, had completely missed!

  Logically, she should know all the strong girls in this area…

  Could it be… something had happened here recently that she was totally unaware of? Like, the appearance of some new resource even rarer than the stuff for “Worm-Blood Brew”?

  Nicole quickly squashed this baseless guess, tucking it away for now.

  Refocusing, she looked steadily at “Ember” and started talking:

  “You broke through our setup here. By the unspoken rule among apprentices in the Ruined City, the Tsukimidaira area is yours now. We’ll leave.”

  “Everything in the house, you can take. But don’t waste too much time. There’s nothing really valuable in there. The most valuable thing… is right here—”

  As she spoke, Nicole raised a slender finger and tapped her own temple meaningfully.

  Pandora, of course, knew Nicole was telling the truth.

  As an information broker, her most valuable asset was the intel in her head. Normally, getting that information, especially exclusive, precious intel, would be impossible without paying a price big enough to tempt her.

  So this didn’t clash with “there’s nothing valuable in the house.”

  Naturally, she also had no doubt Nicole had other valuables. But as a top broker, she’d know the “cunning rabbit has three burrows” rule. Those truly precious items were probably hidden in more secret, secure corners of the city.

  But none of that concerned her.

  She had no interest.

  What was valuable to them might be worthless to her.

  After all, their power systems were totally different.

  Many “resources” crucial to a Corpse-Plague Acolyte, like special mutated creature parts or biological samples holding precious “mutant virus strains,” had no special use for her, a second-rank Wizard and half-Witch, aside from being broken down into system resources.