Chaos. If Sara had to distill the scene before her into a single word, that would be it—pure, unrelenting chaos. And yet, she could do nothing but watch, a prisoner in her own body, as it danced to the tune of another’s will.

  The young guard she’d been eyeing earlier suddenly snapped, letting out a high-pitched, animalistic squeal before turning his crossbow on his comrades. Then another succumbed—eyes wild, movements frantic—as he unleashed a volley from his own damn enchanted weapon.

  And those crossbows were no joke. Their enchantments were top-tier, each bolt carrying enough force to leave wounds even on mid-tier yellow-cored warriors. The soldiers faltered, blood spttering across the battlefield. She and Igor, both high yellow-core, weren’t immune either. And she—damn it all—had been so close. So agonizingly close to breaking through to red-core lightning mastery, to reaching enlightenment. And now? Now it was all for nothing.

  Trapped inside herself, she could only watch as her body moved with unnatural grace, like a marionette in the hands of an unseen puppeteer. Mana surged within her—not at her command, but at hers—lightning bolts tearing through her own allies.

  A crossbow bolt came her way, but her stolen reflexes were heightened beyond belief. Electricity crackled through her veins, and her body slid out of the way, effortlessly avoiding the strike.

  The guards weren’t fools. Battle-hardened and well-trained, they weren’t about to die without adapting. They sensed something was off—something wrong. And through sharp, silent commands, they fell into formation, moving in practiced rhythm.

  Sara understood.

  It had to be that damn doll. The same one controlling her. But something about her method was different. It was precise, refined. Not the same raw madness affecting the others.

  The rest? They lost their minds with a feral shriek, turning rabid before attacking their comrades. It was almost as if they fought against whatever force was cwing into their skulls, resisting through sheer willpower—something Sara hadn’t been able to do.

  And in that struggle, they had found their own defense. The moment one of them succumbed, the rest reacted instantly—raining bolts onto his hands, crippling him before he could fire or swing his weapon. Formation tightened. Shields interlocked. Crossbows aimed not at possessed comrades, but at their weapons.

  CRACK.

  A bolt sheared through Zyan’s trigger finger mid-lunge. He howled, madness and pain warring in his eyes. Another guard’s saber shattered mid-swing, enchanted steel exploding into shrapnel that spared the victim’s throat.

  It was still brutal.

  One thing Sara noticed—there was a cooldown. A dey between possessions.

  But whoever was pulling the strings? Relentless.

  A mop materialized out of thin air.

  Then—so did she.

  An ethereal maid shimmered into existence atop one of the guards, a spectral figure cd in prim, proper maid attire—if one ignored the snarling, badger-like head. She squealed, swinging her mop in a wide arc, releasing a sickly green fog.

  Guards staggered. One dropped to his knees, gagging. Another cwed at his eyes, shrieking as his pupils melted into milky sap.

  And just as quickly as she had come, the ghostly maid vanished, leaving only confusion and the lingering stench of whatever cursed concoction had been on that mop.

  Three pyers.The doll.The ghost maid.And—

  Sara’s breath caught.

  The girl they had kidnapped.

  She was near Igor’s corpse.

  What the fuck was she doing?!

  Sara watched, a slow, creeping horror twisting in her gut as the little Drakkari whelp—grinning like a child caught up in some private joke—tilted Igor’s head back and poured a potion down his throat.

  “Oh, Thador,” the girl sighed, almost wistful, before licking her lips. “Never thought I’d have to use this poison. But this is perfect. Too bad I won’t get to eat any of these fuckers after it works its magic. But at least it’ll be pretty.”

  Sara’s stomach turned.

  What the fuck was she pnning?And—eat them?

  A slow, sickening dread curled in her chest as she watched the seemingly innocent, fil-wielding Drakkari gleefully tip a vial of something very wrong down Igor’s still-bleeding throat.

  Her eyes snapped forward just as her body moved again—twisting, ducking, sliding past another crossbow bolt before retaliating with a crackling arc of lightning.

  They were still fighting back. Resisting.

  Whatever method the doll was using to control her, it had limits. She could feel them—her body still responded to instinct, still channeled basic magic. But the finer, more advanced spells? Out of reach.

  Small mercies.

  Nearly forty guards had been standing at the start of this sughter. Now? Between her forced assault and the ghostly maid’s eerie interference, their numbers had thinned. But not fast enough. These weren’t green recruits. They were seasoned, disciplined, adaptive.

  And she—

  What was she supposed to feel?

  Panic? Rage? She should be screaming inside her own mind, thrashing against the unseen hand puppeteering her. But instead, a cold, unnatural calm settled over her like a thick fog.

  Wrong.

  Wrong.

  She should be panicking. She should be afraid.

  Then she felt it.

  The doll’s threads weren’t just moving her. They had lobotomized her fear response.

  Lightning surged from her fingertips, spearing another guard.

  The defense was crumbling.

  But too slowly.

  And then—

  Laughter.

  The silver-haired girl cackled, stepping back from Igor’s unmoving form, admiring her handiwork.

  Igor's skin—bloated.

  Red patches stretched and ballooned, flesh rippling, as if something inside was pushing to get out.

  Sara felt a deep, gut-wrenching certainty settle in her bones.

  Then—

  Boom.

  Flesh ballooned. Igor’s stomach distended into a translucent sac of churning acid. His ribs snapped skyward, jagged and spyed like a broken umbrel. And then—

  He burst.

  The explosion painted the walls in colors a mortician would weep to name. A thick, nauseating gas erupted from his remains, curling outward like a sentient fog.

  The moment it touched them, the remaining guards choked.

  Sara’s stomach twisted in dread as the first man staggered, his skin swelling—just like Igor’s had. He screamed, stumbling back from the cloud, cwing at his throat, before—

  Boom.

  Another detonation. Armor and flesh shredded apart. Blood rained across the battlefield. His breastpte became shrapnel—shrapnel. Another guard took a femur to the throat.

  Then another.

  And another.

  Screams tore through the air.

  It spread like a chain reaction.

  One breath. Two. Then—pop-pop-pop—bodies ruptured like overripe fruit. Viscera became airborne spores, glowing with a faint, sickly green light. Guards staggered, cwing at their faces as capilries burst, pupils diting into yawning voids.

  Their screams harmonized—a grotesque symphony of dissolving vocal cords.

  They ran. They fought. They struggled.

  It didn’t matter.

  The moment they breathed it in, it nested inside them. It multiplied.

  This wasn’t poison.

  This was a pgue.

  And through it all, only four figures stood untouched.

  Sara—likely spared by whatever pill the doll had forced down her throat.

  The doll itself, standing motionless, that eerie, serene expression never faltering.

  The wraith-maid, lurking unseen.

  And—

  The silver-haired Drakkari.

  She stood in the carnage with a notebook, calmly jotting down observations like some deranged scientist recording data. Clinical. Detached. Fascinated.

  A surviving guard lunged at her, saber raised—

  Only to freeze mid-swing.

  The wraith-maid’s mop handle protruded from his sternum, leaking gray smoke.

  “Squee!” she chirped, yanking her weapon free as if to say, no interruptions!

  Sara could only stare.

  What the fuck was wrong with this girl?!

  Sara had seen horrors. She had caused horrors. But this?

  The sheer sadism radiating from her…

  It was something else.

  Something worse.

  Something that made Sara wonder—

  Was this even a Drakkari at all?

  Or just a monster in mortal skin?

  ***

  This time… I wasn’t holding back. Not just because I wanted to test the limits of this brand-new weapon—though, I won’t lie, the results were delicious. It tasted delicious too. Too bad it was costly, and I couldn’t indulge in more than a few drops myself. Practicality demanded restraint.

  A crystallized poison, tucked neatly behind my mor for emergencies. And while this situation didn’t quite qualify as a full-blown crisis, it was still a fine opportunity. These poor bastards were already losing—to Belle, to Alice’s newly hijacked lightning mage, and, well, I hadn’t even really joined the fun yet. Still, a field test was in order. A little catalyst, a warm body, and let the show begin.

  The screams were… educational.

  I crouched behind a toppled crate, stylus scratching across my notepad as chaos bloomed. "Observation 17: Propagation efficacy diminishes exponentially post-third-generation transmission. Catalytic chain reaction weakens at approximately 30% dilution per host..."

  Three meters away, a guard erupted—ribcage unfurling like a grotesque bouquet of bckened bone shards. I ducked, shielding my notes from the spray. "Hmm. Another note: Sptter radius exceeds initial projections by 1.2 meters. Adjust future yield calcutions accordingly."

  Ahh, this was going beautifully. So many fresh test subjects, delivering themselves right to my doorstep.

  Initially, when these idiots crossed my path, I’d pnned to snuff them out then and there. But then I realized they might be tied to the same organization that had been meddling with Vasilisa’s business—kidnapping alchemists, interfering where they shouldn’t. And that? That warranted a different approach.

  Alice did a divination on my behalf—one of her Aetheric Pendulum readings. No one could see her, which made things ridiculously convenient. The question? “Is where I’m heading dangerous for us?” The answer? The pendulum spun clockwise at a mild pace. Moderate danger—manageable.

  Same result we got back at Greg’s house when we cleaned up those bastards. Only this time, something was different. The moment I id eyes on that portal, on the unmistakable elven craftsmanship—something inside me snapped.

  The dragon in me roared.

  These people were up to something truly fucked up down there. And as for her—the way she treated me? Oh, she had this coming.

  Just a little twist of fate.

  A predator reciming its rightful pce.

  "Observation 23: Saturation threshold reached at 28 subjects."

  I frowned as the st infected guard twitched feebly, his convulsions more pathetic spasm than proper paroxysm. "Potency decay evident beyond N=30. Likely due to metabolic breakdown outpacing viral replication..."

  Disappointing.

  The idea of a pgue in a bottle was thrilling, but in practice? Impractical. Still, I had to admit—this particur recipe of Lotte’s was one of the most unhinged poisons I’d ever seen in action.

  It had been a while since I st got anything new from her. But now that the weaker, hesitating part of me was long dead and the universe had so graciously delivered an endless stream of test subjects, well... I licked my lips. Who was I to refuse such an opportunity?

  Did all of them deserve this? Unclear. But they were affiliated with people I considered enemies, and that was more than enough. No loose ends. No mercy.

  I gnced down at my notes—finally, some real data. But my gaze kept drifting back to the portal. The runes etched along its frame were unmistakably High Elvish, solidifying my suspicions that the elves were involved. That had been my pn from the beginning—wipe out this base, and if the other side of that portal wasn’t drenched in anti-divination wards, Alice could pry out something very useful.

  I turned to take a closer look—

  And then the roof screamed.

  Not metaphorically.

  The warehouse’s rusted rafters shrieked in harmonic agony as something colossal tore through steel and stone. A second impact followed—reeking of gcial fury—obliterating what remained of the ceiling.

  "WHO DARES KIDNAP THE NEWEST AND SECOND-PRETTIEST MEMBER OF OUR GANG—"

  The war cry died mid-bellow.

  Quickpaw hovered in the moonlit wreckage, her ice axe’s haft nearly twice her height. Frost spiraled from the bde, cing itself across the carnage below. Her foxian eyes darted between the humming elven portal, me standing there with my notes, the kidnapper slumped like a hollow-eyed puppet, and the st Rakari guard—who was currently busy vomiting up his own liquefied spleen.

  She blinked.

  "…Huh."