The area she was in was numbered. It was monitored.

  The mysterious man was named “Bradley Dulles.”

  He was the Warden of this area.

  More importantly, this unique format, like an archive number, made Pandora feel that “Viscount Dougs’s Fief” wasn't just a name on a map.

  It was more like… a designation for a specific, isoted test tube.

  Pandora shoved down the chill crawling up her spine, suppressing the tidal wave of questions. She carefully folded the information-dense letter of appointment and tucked it away, then cautiously left the room.

  She checked the other rooms on the second floor. The most significant, without a doubt, was the Warden’s own quarters.

  Compared to the cold chaos of the monitoring room, this pce felt more lived-in.

  Here, Pandora found a locked diary hidden in a secret compartment of a wardrobe. Elsa made short work of the flimsy lock.

  From this diary, she learned more. So much more. About the “Orchard,” the “Fragment World,” the “Warden,” the “Demon Hunters,” the “Cadaverous Pgue Furnace Academy”...

  A long time ter, after turning the st page, the paper damp with the sweat from her palm, Pandora looked up, through the small skylight in the Warden’s bedroom, at the sky outside. It felt painted, artificial. She said nothing for a long time.

  “This world… is just a broken fragment.”

  “Beyond the Viscount’s fief… there is no space, only the void…”

  This concept was a bomb.

  And it went off in her head.

  It completely shattered Pandora’s entire fourteen years of understanding. But at the same time, it clicked perfectly with all the vague, nagging suspicions she’d had, the feeling that this world was just… wrong.

  If she were a pure local, a native-born “Fruit,” this probably would have broken her. It would have meant a long, painful spiral of doubt and despair.

  But… she was a transmigrator.

  Transmigration was more unbelievable, more fantastic than a “Fragment World.” And then there was the “System,” an even bigger mystery.

  All of this made it easier for her to swallow this world-shattering revetion.

  After digesting enough information to make any ordinary person have a complete meltdown, Pandora closed her eyes and organized the brand-new understanding of the world in her mind.

  The world she was in was one of the countless “Fragment Worlds” owned by one of the six major Demon Hunter Academies, the “Cadaverous Pgue Furnace,” or “The Corpse Hall” for short.

  These worlds were used to cultivate the next generation of Demon Hunters in a closed environment. Hence, they were also called “Orchards.”

  And children like her, who hadn't formally entered the Academy, were collectively called “Fruits.”

  Almost all the adults were “Live Iron Golems.” They could switch freely between “human form” and “zombie form” to adapt to the needs of the “Fruits” at different stages of cultivation.

  And the “corpse-transformation” that swept through everything? That was the final screening stage of the entire “Fruit Cultivation Program.”

  Its purpose, exactly as she had guessed, was to screen out the “winners,” the ones who could still survive in a crisis of the highest order.

  This stage sted for seven days.

  The “Corpse-Red Mist” was the most precious resource of this stage, bar none. It was almost a physical manifestation of “talent.” Aside from those truly mysterious, hard-to-quantify talents, the amount of Corpse-Red Mist absorbed rgely determined a demon-hunting apprentice’s future potential.

  After the seven days, the mechanism for absorbing the mist would just… stop. From then on, no matter what they did, the apprentices would never again be able to draw any power from these “Live Iron Golems.”

  Therefore, the Academy didn’t need to worry about a Warden like Dulles stealing the resources meant for the “winners.” The rules had plugged all the loopholes from the very beginning.

  What a… cold, efficient, precise, and inhuman system.

  However, the Academy’s supervision wasn’t perfect.

  Or rather, any seemingly perfect system had its loopholes. And Dulles was the desperate gambler who found one and went all in. He wanted to bypass the insurmountable chasm of “talent” and harvest the unripe “Fruits” of this “Orchard” in advance to force his own advancement.

  If he hadn’t had the misfortune of running into Pandora, the “variable,” his pn would have most likely succeeded. The dual support of the ritual and the potion would have been enough to help him brute-force his way through that bottleneck, break through the first rank, and become a true, second-rank demon-hunting apprentice.

  But, from Dulles’s notes, Pandora also understood the true meaning of “Demon Hunter” for the first time.

  “Demon Hunter” wasn’t a single power system. It was a unified professional title that encompassed all current and graduated members of the Demon Hunter Academies.

  As for the actual power systems, they were worlds apart.

  For example, the “Cadaverous Pgue Furnace Academy,” Dulles's alma mater, had a mainstream power system called “Corpse-Pgue Acolyte,” which let you tap into the power of pgue.

  Ranked alongside the Corpse Hall as one of the six top academies was the “Flesh-Shaping Foundry,” which specialized in bodily modification and mechanized armament. Its apprentices were called “Bloodforged Soldiers.”

  There was the “Court of Fate-Binding,” which mastered fate, curses, and the weaving of life. Its apprentices were called “Fate-Weavers.”

  And the “Phantasm Walk,” which delved into illusion, the mind, and the power of the unreal. Its apprentices were called “Echo Agents.”

  Besides these mainstream systems, each academy also had a small number of non-mainstream ones. Some were inherited from ancient, mysterious traditions; others were innovations. They were few in number, and their abilities weren't necessarily stronger, just… more special.

  But strangely, Dulles had not chosen any of those paths.

  He had chosen a path that was exceedingly rare throughout the entire Demon Hunter Academy—

  “Wizard.”

  The Wizard power system didn't seem to be a direct product of the Demon Hunter Academy. Its inheritance came more from certain ancient families or secret, powerful organizations.

  But the Academy held a very open and tolerant attitude towards it. They didn’t exclude it; they even encouraged apprentices to come into contact with and learn other power systems.

  So, Dulles choosing to study the Wizard books passed down in his family and become a “Wizard” outside of the Academy’s main power systems wouldn’t have been an issue.

  As long as he was still a member of the “Demon Hunter Academy,” no matter the source of his power, he was still one of them.

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