Soaked in blood, gasping for breath, he nervously scanned every shadow around him.
“Monster! I know you’re here!” He mustered his courage and screamed with all his strength, “Come out! Fight me fair and square! You bastard!”
What answered him was a pleasant, lilting giggle. The voice was sweet and lovely, yet it plunged him into an icy abyss.
“I’m not a monster, you know…”
The girl’s voice seemed to come from right beside his ear.
“I’m just… Young Master’s most loyal maid.”
The light in the Knight’s eyes winked out instantly. His body slumped softly to the ground.
The alley returned to dead silence.
The shadows in the corner receded like a tide, and Marianne’s figure stood there, as if she had never left from the very beginning.
The elegant maid uniform she wore remained spotless, utterly out of place amid the surrounding blood and filth.
Her delicate face held not half a trace of color, save for those crimson pupils that glimmered with unsettling light in the deep darkness.
She tilted her head with interest, surveying the wreckage strewn across the ground, a pure yet cruel curve tugging at the corner of her lips.
“Whew, finally done.”
Her pale wrist gave a light flick.
The next second, the shadow beneath her feet writhed violently, like a monster that had overeaten and was now vomiting, disgorging the vanished corpses one by one.
“Thud, thud…”
Amid the dull impacts of flesh, a small mountain of stacked corpses rapidly took shape in the center of the alley.
Marianne clapped her hands in satisfaction, as if she had merely finished a tedious household chore.
Cleaning up trash was part of a maid’s job, after all.
Ever since Livia moved into the Rabel household, Marianne had noticed that her control over her Engraved Mark was growing at an unbelievable rate.
This seemed related to the dramatic shift in her emotional state—more precisely, to the infinitely amplified emotions known as “jealousy.”
Thanks to this, when she used her Engraved Mark, the whispers of the Evil God became clearer and clearer.
They no longer simply tempted her toward Fall; instead, they had switched to a more insidious method, constantly sowing discord in her ear.
“Look, Livia is replacing your position…”
“Young Master’s gaze rests on her for longer and longer…”
“You’re just a lowly maid, and she is Young Master’s rightful fiancee. Are you really content with this?”
These venomous words drove her already sensitive and fragile yandere heart to the brink of madness with jealousy.
Marianne relied on her near-pathological loyalty and love for Allen, and on the complex yet profound friendship she shared with Livia, to desperately suppress these emotions on the verge of eruption.
But suppression is worse than channeling. So these pitiful soldiers became the perfect outlet for her fury and jealousy.
During the “hunt” just now, she had discovered with delight that the authority of the Brand of Shadow went far beyond manipulating shadows on the physical plane.
She could go further—directly touch, even toy with the “shadows” in her enemies’ hearts.
She could drag out their deepest fears, their most unbearable memories, their most regrettable pasts, and weave them into an inescapable labyrinth, letting them collapse and self-destruct within the nightmares they created themselves.
This power… was really useful.
Not everyone could be like Young Master, who through cycle after cycle of death had honed absolute resistance to all fear and trauma.
Marianne had not told Allen about the anomaly in her power.
This was her little act of willfulness.
Young Master had his secrets, so she would have some little secrets of her own. That was only fair, wasn’t it?
Of course, there were risks. But she felt she could still control it, still resist the Evil God’s corrosion.
She firmly believed that her soul had long been branded with Allen’s mark.
No matter what she became, after death, Allen would surely come to take her to God’s Paradise.
So she would never Fall.
She was merely using the Evil Gods, using Their power.
She could not forever remain sheltered behind Young Master and Livia.
Livia had borne so much alone to protect their promise. How could she herself remain stagnant?
Livia’s Crestbearer bloodline was thicker, and the corrosion she suffered was deeper.
If she could resist the Evil God’s whispers for so many years, then Marianne would do it too.
No—she would do it better.
Livia was merely resisting. But she—she would turn this power into her own, into a gift for Young Master!
The girl she was now was no longer the country bumpkin who could only let fate push her around. She was Allen’s Apostle.
This identity was more important, more eternal, than the mere title of “fiancee.”
In every way, she would not lose to Livia anymore.
Just as this yandere maid—now a veritable slayer—was about to thoroughly clean the scene and return to report to Young Master, a thick, nauseating stench of rot, accompanied by an equally cold and violent aura, poured in from the alley entrance without warning.
“So you’re the traitor they spoke of?”
A voice tinged with amusement rang out.
The smile on Marianne’s face vanished in an instant. Her crimson eyes narrowed dangerously as she coldly regarded the blurry figure shrouded in a wide black robe at the alley entrance.
“Traitor?” She elegantly smoothed the wrinkles from her skirt, her tone reverting to the Head Maid’s characteristic gentleness and humility.
“That word is impolite. I have always been Young Master’s most loyal maid. I merely took some advanced homemaking courses at the Cult—things like… how to dispose of garbage more efficiently.”
She turned slightly, revealing the mountain of corpses behind her, and gestured in invitation with a grace befitting a host offering a guest afternoon tea.
“I believe a guest who arrives uninvited, like yourself, also needs to be disposed of properly.”
“Haha… hahahaha! How interesting!”
The other let out a harsh peal of laughter, carrying a faint trace of excitement—the thrill of finding a new toy after a long time.
“Someone told me there were some absurdly strong people here to kill, so I came. Looks like they weren’t lying. Otherwise… I’d have to use them as entertainment instead.”
The black-robed figure stepped forward, and a pure, undisguised wave of savage killing intent crashed over like a tsunami.
The terrifying pressure made Marianne’s body instinctively retreat half a step.
A formidable enemy!
Marianne’s judgment was instant. She could “smell” it—tens of thousands of vengeful spirits clung to the other’s body, the stench of blood nearly condensed into something tangible.
“So then, young lady.”
The voice beneath the black robe carried a sick ecstasy.
“I do hope… you can entertain me.”
At that, the suffocating aura surged, ripping a fragment of an image from her mind:
“Aaaaaaagh! Get away from me!”
The smell arrived before the sight. This was a slaughterhouse entrance, densely packed like a boulevard facing the square, reeking of blood and decay like a huge mouth split open in the ground.
A masked figure shoved corpses into the pit one after another.
“Jump down! Get down for me!”
Lines of people wrapped in black cloth shuffled at the edge, some walking down the ramp themselves, knowing that looking back was forbidden.
Going forward alone toward that slope, even with strange whistles ahead reminding them.
Ah Che, this just unlucky. Entered the wrong path. Those corpses got dumped out and ran out of whack.
Must be pulling me in—looks like someone else was coming over to plant eggs!
Someone had stuffed thin bamboo tubes into the log openings on each body.
“You can make ice towers that melt drop by drop,” someone in the corpse crew was saying.
“That stuff’s just the white base residue—skimming off the scum. Poured into cells’ base form,” a person walked under cover of night gathering the escaped rats around trees and dragging along puddles.
“Thin bamboo shafts, store them separately in stone basins sealed in stone…”
“You shove corpses in first…”
The bodies and I are all run through with stones. My eyes growing tighter.
“Hmm… hm.”
A young girl appears suddenly around the corner in the center ground of the zone.
Everyone: “AHHHHH! A YOUNG GIRL! INFILTRATE! SSSRANK!”
They shook bamboo stripes—thirty or so in their grip—raining huge frozen tear hooks that snap, but no one moves.
All held between ceiling panels shoved inside vents giving off air though gas chamber and stale scum.
Raining down cluster-bomb ice torpedoes burning fierce blue flame pinging off wet walls and carving deep ice canyons into the weird hanging sludge masses between lattice window rails glowing radioactive decay shade lighter than antique beige floor tiles split back-on-back backs against…
No—other way around, perhaps backwards upstairs story scenes in inverse:
Covered in shiny bone suit weaving lines crating shade with body free-falling smile with half orange jelly sweat-halo clotted too like rice grains combined slightly merged.
Closed white wall back and frozen solid. Not breath friend, head strong pulled short choke of flavor what?
Care pull hooked nail base knob shaved swirl downward slope red. Hole hole gone empty.
Body parts down as mass, some human hands still keep under thick full-length floral quilt jacket chest up through dense black stitching pads for ball.
Rolled pinky-stub thumb its nail bending half blur now and right out as though slip peach bottom, pale scum line a strange
Strangest.
Sanest.
Wait— “you there young pale hand…” Old Lady Na voice on hole long gone teeth missing tongue pulled deep jaw soft of snail meat, like smoke staining on finger-scraped yellow walls reading and sniffing… wheeze bark hard squeezed from dead throat.
Slurry pops and gulps—down into all be closed save pit channel mostly self-opened with outward broken teeth spill huge air push out each five tiles loose from bone slot edges…
Red gas his match strike board…
Loud clacks rapid bamboo slats clattering sticks rise shrill chant inter-cut scream.
She blocked out the smell, snapped back to now, a violent determination burning in her crimson eyes.
‘I cannot fall here. I absolutely will not lose to Livia. But more than that… I must stay beautiful for Young Master.’
However, through the shadows, deep inside her consciousness, the rotten outer flower shattered. The whole world went dark.
In reality, she slammed hard against the rear at force—not open, sticky bog fresh tanning and boiled spirit, her heart was stunned then lit alive oil drum, and now completely submerged in quiet resentment melting deeply in the spilling blood red.
A sad, insidious, selfish, incredibly pure and totally brave girl known unknown sin couldn’t outpace time inside her own abyss.
Past invisible ink made flesh her total existence inside the zone room right how the zombie slum took it away eventually, same red mind sinking, slipping under split hull debris…
Below her the veil opens: A wooden barge leads in pale flickering “lattice window panel shadows—sardine mothers carrying stinking in blue mesh tarps behind like side effect invisible band wrapped around chest little hatch doors might never burn my children”
A trapdoor lid drops behind her eyelids.
Weight flung open unseen says nothing.
Fragrant and falling thick as tar drowned tiny fish red rust curtain through submerged movie-like whisper—
“Tell me, hey.”
Deformed baby foot twitches.