The Magistrate’s study.

  It was in an unassuming annex on the side of the town hall, with a pointed roof and small, delicate windows. Less than thirty meters in a straight line from Arthur’s window, the one with the light.

  The night breeze drifted by, and Pandora could even clearly hear the faint conversation leaking from inside.

  This was close.

  Close enough to make a heart race.

  She unconsciously slowed her breathing, doing her utmost to avoid making a single sound.

  She glanced into the distance. Good. The whole town was still quiet. No one had noticed anything amiss.

  Her gaze remained calm, but deep within her eyes, a scorching heat was hidden.

  This was it.

  She remembered a story her father had once told her as a joke: The Magistrate had gone through a phase where he was fascinated with alchemy, spending a fortune to acquire ancient scrolls and metal formulas, all claiming to “turn lead into gold.” The final result was easy to imagine. Aside from filling his room with the smell of sulfur, he’d achieved nothing.

  But that very joke, once dismissed, could now be the key to unlocking her System.

  She had never forgotten that besides having 【Myriad Alchemy】, her System also possessed an unactivated feature called 【Assisted Alchemy】. Its connection to the art of alchemy was certainly no coincidence.

  Among the books collected by the Magistrate, it was highly likely there were texts containing true alchemical knowledge. Of course, she had no doubt that the vast majority of it was junk.

  At Pandora’s signal, Elsa moved to the shadows beside the door, her hand resting on the hilt of her sword. She was now the most loyal sentry.

  “My Lady, rest assured. I will handle this.”

  Pandora nodded.

  She took a deep breath. From her boot, she drew a slender, tempered dagger, sharper than the one from the manor.

  Carefully, she inserted the tip into the gap of the door.

  With a gentle upward flick…

  Click.

  A crisp, barely audible sound, and the lock yielded.

  Pandora’s face lit up with joy. Good luck. The lock was crude; she didn’t even need a wire!

  Without a moment’s hesitation, she slipped inside. The door closed softly behind her, but not completely. This way, she could retreat at a moment’s notice, while also keeping an ear on what was happening behind her.

  The moment she entered, darkness rushed in like a tide.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  There were no lights, only a window. A narrow window set in the stone wall, directly facing her. The blood-red moonlight, like a liquid, poured through the window bars, spilling diagonally across the heavy oak desk in the center of the room.

  Behind the desk, sat a figure.

  Motionless. Like a forgotten wax figure.

  Pandora’s heart suddenly constricted. She reacted in an instant.

  Someone!

  She even stopped breathing, her fingers subconsciously tightening around the dagger.

  A scribe? One of Arthur’s guards? Or… someone like her, who had snuck in to “borrow” a book?

  She couldn’t be sure. The person’s back was to the moonlight, their face hidden in shadow. All she could see was a lowered head, hands resting on the pages of a book, and a slightly worn but still neat, dark grey scribe’s robe.

  It was too quiet. Unnaturally quiet.

  Pandora didn’t dare move. The other person, too, remained perfectly still. It was as if time had frozen at this intersection of moonlight and shadow. The tension was so thick she could hear the rush of her own blood in her ears.

  He’s… reading?

  An absurd thought flickered through her mind. But if he was reading, why hadn’t his fingertips turned a single page? Why were the rise and fall of his breath barely perceptible?

  A dummy? A prop Arthur had placed here to scare people?

  Thoughts raced through her mind. Finally, Pandora could bear it no longer.

  She softened her steps, moving forward silently like a cat. One step, two steps… The tip of her shoe was almost touching the edge of the moonlight.

  Just then—

  “Hhhh…”

  A raspy, low roar, as if its throat was clogged with phlegm, suddenly burst from the still figure!

  This sound, Pandora knew it all too well! Whether in the mill’s granary, the manor’s corridors, or on that fateful night, this sound had haunted her.

  A sudden chill creeped up her scalp!

  Her most instinctual reaction was to turn, to run, to sprint for the exit!

  With her current skills, dealing with a single zombie shouldn’t be a big problem. However, the fundamental threat of dealing with these things was “injury equals infection”—a guillotine hanging over the head of every survivor! Even with Betty as a precedent, she would never dare to take such a risk.

  This thing should be left to Elsa to handle…

  The thought was unavoidable as it rose in her mind.

  But the instant her toes pushed off the ground, her body preparing to retreat, she suddenly stopped.

  Wait, something’s wrong!

  Her gaze flickered. She forcefully suppressed the urge to flee.

  If this was really a zombie… why hadn’t it made a sound when she opened the door? Although the click was soft, in this dead-silent night, it should have been more than enough to alert any walking corpse with keen hearing.

  Pandora forcefully suppressed the heart that felt as if it were about to leap from her chest, forcing herself to be calm. Her gaze was like a torch, fixed on the figure hunched over the desk. She examined it inch by inch.

  The moonlight finally relented a little, dimly illuminating the side of the living corpse’s face.

  Ashen skin, sunken eye sockets, a trickle of thick saliva dribbling from the corner of its mouth… but, it was its ears!

  Pandora’s pupils contracted violently!

  Jammed deep within the creature’s ears were two wads of something—two oil-stained, greyish-white cotton balls!

  Like a bolt of lightning, all the clues connected in her mind.

  Pandora felt as if she had turned back time, a vivid scene playing out before her eyes:

  On the night of the festival, the entire manor had been drowned out by deafening drums, the screams of children, and the shouts of drunken men. This scribe, who had loved quiet in life, clearly could not endure the cacophony. So he had found the thickest cotton, stuffed it firmly into his ears, just to block out all the noise and construct a personal world of books and tranquility.

  He had indeed succeeded in immersing himself, but the price was, when the zombification came, he had fallen into the abyss without ever noticing.

  From that moment on, the tight earplugs had “frozen” him forever in his final, living posture—head bowed, intently “reading,” isolated from the world.

  Outside, the night wind howled. A few dry leaves swirled at the doorway.

  Only now, the presence of the living had intruded upon this forgotten study, finally awakening the instincts that had been muffled by the cotton.

  The thought popped into her head, completely out of place. If this were a tabletop game, I'd say that scouting roll was a critical success, right?

  Pandora let out a long, slow breath.