Dulles was silent for a moment, as if calcuting the final seconds of his own miserable life.

  Finally, he gritted his teeth, as if dredging up the st ounce of his strength, and snarled:

  “I can st… twelve hours at most! You must bring the person here before then, otherwise…”

  His eyes burned with a mad resolve.

  “You won’t get a single thing of mine! I'll destroy it all, even if it kills me!”

  Pandora, however, seemed perfectly unconcerned. She gave a slight, almost dismissive nod.

  “Alright. Deal.”

  She gnced at the sealed alloy gate.

  “You can open the door now.”

  Dulles hesitated. She had agreed too quickly, so quickly that a strong sense of unease grew in his heart.

  But…

  “It’s fine,” Pandora, as if reading his mind, added lightly, “I’m not in a hurry. I can wait.”

  “Damn it!” Dulles cursed inwardly.

  He had no other choice. He had to put his faith in the monster-girl he had just tried to kill.

  Trembling, with his remaining hand, he groped across the messy console, operating it with difficulty. During this, he pretended to casually check the area near the shattered hole, the spot where he “felt” something had been thrown up.

  It was indeed a zombie’s limb, just a mangled arm.

  But what was her purpose in throwing this up here?

  What was she thinking… truly incomprehensible…

  These troubles made him even more uneasy. But to live, for that final chance, he had no other choice.

  RUMBLE—

  The heavy gate slowly rose.

  Pandora’s slender figure, without a single backward gnce, grew more and more distant.

  Dulles watched her retreating back, and just as she was about to disappear around the corner, he mustered his final strength and shouted:

  “If you still want to know the truth, then help me! Otherwise—”

  “You’ll never know the truth!”

  ………………

  “Forever?”

  The word echoed in her mind.

  Pandora stopped in her tracks and let out a soft scoff.

  She gave the greatsword in her hand a little shake.

  “Elsa, change back.”

  With a fsh of light, Elsa, dressed in her cssic maid’s uniform, appeared silently behind her, following from a distance.

  A few minutes ago, she might have worried about losing crucial information if he died.

  Now?

  She wasn't worried at all.

  Forever?

  Anyone who said “forever” so easily was panicking. Desperate. Out of options.

  However, would she actually go through with the verbal agreement?

  No, of course not.

  She wasn't interested in the so-called “rewards” or “backing” he had promised.

  If she weren't worried about that so-called “insurance measure,” whose existence she couldn't even be sure of, she would have killed him long ago.

  You live by the sword, you die by the sword. From the moment he decided to try to kill her, he should have been prepared for this outcome.

  But she wouldn't say any of this out loud. There was no need.

  Leaving him with a sliver of false hope, letting him wait as time ticked by, watching him spiral from self-doubt to utter despair, dying inch by inch…

  Now that was a much better end.

  Pandora listened to Dulles’s frantic, distorted calls from behind her, gradually fading away, and a cold smile touched her lips.

  She knew this moment wouldn't take long. And this method would also effectively prevent him from pulling a desperate st move, detonating that so-called “insurance measure.”

  Perhaps it would even allow him to leave behind a more complete “inheritance.”

  This was a deal that was guaranteed to be profitable.

  Pandora began to hum a tuneless song. A melody from another world, unearthed from a hazy corner of her memory. It was distant, lighthearted, completely out of pce amidst the blood and decay. The sound faded, disappearing into the twisted shadows of the Forbidden Forest.

  Inside the research facility, dead silence fell once more.

  Dulles sat slumped on the messy floor. He watched the heavy gate lower, sealing the room in darkness. He knew.

  He was imprisoned.

  And it was by his own designated “sacrifice” that he was imprisoned.

  “Gyah…”

  The excruciating pain from his severed arm and leg was a constant, gnawing thing, eating away at what little sanity he had left.

  With his remaining hand, he fished out a small metal box from a storage cabinet, shattered by the explosion.

  Opening it, he found a few syringes and several vials of potions with a pungent smell. This was the most basic emergency hemostatic agent taught in the demon-hunting apprentice practical csses.

  He bit the cap off with his teeth and injected the cold potion into his body, then, trembling, he took out a small, instant high-temperature cauterizer.

  Sizzle—

  Scalding white smoke, thick with the stench of burnt flesh, rose from his wound.

  The searing pain of the cauterization made his whole body tremble violently, his muscles twitching uncontrolbly, almost making him faint again.

  But he endured.

  Because he wanted to live. He really didn't want to die.

  He felt the power of the “Witch’s Blood” in his body, like a receding tide, dissipating bit by bit. He felt the mental barrier, already fragile from his forced advancement, beginning to crumble.

  Those once-beautiful memories from his student days had now turned into confused, mad whispers, echoing repeatedly in his mind.

  “Brother… I’m so hungry… My head hurts so much…”

  “Brother!! You killed me!!!"

  “Killed his sister…”

  “You deserve to die…”

  He staggered and crawled to a section of wall that was still intact. The wall, made of a special material, was like a polished mirror.

  In the mirror, a monster both familiar and strange was reflected.

  From his own body, strange, writhing fleshy sprouts began to grow, one by one.

  His face was gradually losing its familiar shape, his features twisting, his skin becoming like a melting wax figure…

  He kept telling himself, “She’ll come back… she has to come back…”

  “I still have value… the information in my hands still has value…”

  However, that sliver of despair, rooted deep in his soul, could not be erased.

  It grew wild, consuming the st light in his eyes.