Chapter 0007: Mary in Red

His room was cramped and oppressive to begin with, barely more than twenty square meters; standing at the doorway, one could take in everything at a glance. A bed, a shabby yellow desk piled haphazardly with books—one left open, revealing strange, mysterious runic lines. An old-backed chair, its paint nearly all peeled away, exposing the wood’s dull, somber grain beneath.

Along one wall, a wooden shelf displayed a row of glass vessels, within which half-cultivated exotic plants and peculiar organs of magical creatures could be glimpsed. In the corner stood a metal-bound wooden chest, beside it a waste bin for discarded remnants.

Beyond these, there was hardly any other furniture to speak of.

A look of disdain flickered in the eyes of Alan and Fenrir. Though they too were apprentice sorcerers, their circumstances were immeasurably better than those of the Grim standing before them. Not only did their own bedrooms boast soft, comfortable beds, but the lavish furnishings rivaled those of human nobility. This “kennel” before them could not even begin to compare.

Perhaps to assert their authority, the two apprentices strode quickly inside and began their rummaging in earnest. The bedding was flung from the bed onto the floor; the books on the desk scattered into utter chaos, an overturned ink bottle splattering great blotches across the open pages. The metal-bound chest was pried open, its contents—a few pieces of clothing—tossed carelessly aside.

As these lackeys ransacked his room as if razing a home, the head apprentice, Anxos, remained unmoved at the threshold, his expression blank, making no attempt to intervene.

Grim stood by the door, hands clenched and unclenched within his sleeves, his gaze awash with chilling hatred.

At last, the search was finished.

Beneath the smug, provocative gazes of the pair, Grim coolly shut the wooden door. He strode quickly to the overturned chest and, rummaging through the scattered clothing, soon could not contain a muttered curse.

Serpentvine, mountain-mouse grass, black lotus, wild steelbloom, graveyard moss…

All the sorcery materials he had risked his life to gather on countless patrols through the magical swamps had vanished without a trace. There was no need to guess—they had clearly been pilfered during the search.

He longed to storm out and confront them, but the thought of Anxos’s cold, sinister face chilled his heart to ice. Clearly, the pretext of investigating Mireille’s cause of death was merely an excuse to plunder the resources of ordinary apprentices. Backed by Anxos’s position as head apprentice, no one dared to oppose them directly. Of course, these scoundrels would never be so foolish as to provoke the truly powerful; they reserved their predations for solitary figures like Grim.

Soon, the wooden door next door echoed with their knocking.

They were well aware of Mary’s “situation.” She had not appeared in some time; seizing this opportunity, Anxos also wished to ascertain whether she was alive or dead.

As Alan, losing patience, was about to force the door, it suddenly creaked inwards.

A young woman in a red gauze dress appeared before them.

“So it’s Senior Anxos! I still haven’t thanked you for that task you arranged for me last time.” Her voice was sweet and beguiling, though it could not compare to her beauty.

She was a girl of slender limbs and breathtaking allure, her skin flawless as white jade, her features exquisitely delicate, a small red mouth perpetually curved in a slight smile. Most striking were her brilliant red eyes, shimmering like flawless rubies set in her lovely face.

Her figure was perfectly accentuated by the scarlet gown, her exposed skin so pale and smooth it made one dizzy.

In the somber, shadowed tower, most apprentices wore gray robes and black cloaks; dark hues reigned supreme. To suddenly behold such a dazzling beauty was to be struck dumb, unable to speak.

And from the moment they set eyes on her, the three men felt a strange, burning desire welling up inside, making them ache with hunger.

Anxos, chosen by the master sorcerer as head apprentice, proved far more self-disciplined than the other two. While Alan and Fenrir gawked, faces slack with lust, Anxos abruptly tore himself free of a pink-tinged illusion.

“Who are you? Name yourself, or else—” His expression darkened, and he sprang back, hands moving to his belt pouch.

In this great tower, every apprentice was intimately acquainted with the others—there were only some forty or fifty in total, living together year after year. Even Grim, as aloof and taciturn as he was, had one or two “friends” he could speak with; for Anxos, constantly dealing with others, it was all the more so.

It was no exaggeration to say that Anxos could recite the details of every apprentice on the first three floors with his eyes closed. Yet, try as he might, he could not recall any apprentice matching the red-clad girl before him.

Wait—she had come from Mary’s room.

Mary, from a distant, outlying city, was remembered chiefly for her stubbornness and pride. Yet, in terms of beauty, she was one of the rarest jewels among the female apprentices.

Alas, she had proved far too unyielding, refusing time and again Anxos’s invitations to his room at night. So, when Master Anderson suddenly required a helper, Anxos had enthusiastically recommended her.

Could it be…

The thought flashed through Anxos’s mind, and the image of the timid girl, freckles dotting her nose, slowly overlapped with the striking red-clad beauty before him. His jaw fell open in shock.

“You… you’re Mary!”

Perhaps the name “Mary” struck a nerve, for the girl’s enchanting face contorted hideously. Her small mouth split suddenly at the sides, transforming into a monstrous maw. With a lunge, she sank her teeth into Anxos’s exposed throat.

With a single bite, half his neck vanished, revealing raw flesh and shattered windpipe. Blood fountained out, splattering the floor, the walls, and the girl herself. The pungent reek of blood instantly filled the corridor.

Anxos’s body slammed against the hard wall, then slid to the floor, wracked with convulsions. With trembling hands, he pulled a scorpion-shaped device from his pouch, firing a searing ray of crimson light that tore through the girl’s chest and abdomen, burning a fist-sized hole straight through her body and even piercing the wall behind her.

Having loosed the fiery sorcery, Anxos cast the artifact aside and, with shaking hands, pulled out a green vial the size of a fist, snapped off the cap, and desperately tried to pour the liquid over the gaping wound at his neck.

His vitality was astonishing; even with such a grievous wound, he did not die at once. Yet the half-severed neck swiftly began to rot, exposed flesh shriveling, the gushing blood slowing and eventually ceasing.

Partial zombification of the body.

That, it seemed, was his hidden trump card.

After studying anatomy and necromancy, apprentices could use sorcery to implant a “zombie cyst” within themselves. When mortally wounded, they could trigger the cyst, zombifying part of their body to stave off death. Yet this was only a stopgap; once life was preserved, the rampant negative energy would pose a new threat.

But faced with death, most apprentices would rather save their lives first and worry about negative energy later.

A vast shadow suddenly fell over him.

Clutching his nearly severed neck in one hand, the vial in the other, Anxos looked up to see the red-gowned girl’s fanged maw opening wide once more. From the hole in her chest, viscous purple blood oozed forth.

Purple blood?

Was she even human?

That was the final thought lingering in Anxos’s mind.

The girl lunged again, sprawling atop him and feeding hungrily from the blood spurting from his neck. The sound of swallowing was horribly clear.

Alan and Fenrir, ignored and forgotten, clutched their crude sorcerous devices in terror, but dared not activate them. If even Anxos’s formidable spell could not harm this red-clad monster, their own magic was even less likely to prevail. Should they provoke her, she might turn on them next—ripping flesh, drinking blood, crushing bone…

As the two cowered, pressed against the wall, the girl at last ceased her feeding. She sat up, her back to them, and calmly dabbed her lips with a white handkerchief and a small mirror, utterly content.

The gaping wound in her torso closed rapidly under a mysterious force; in moments, her skin was once more flawless and smooth, not a scar to be seen.

A terrifying vampiric regeneration! Could she be one of those dreaded dark nobles—a vampire?

Through the crack in his door, Grim had witnessed everything. He knew nothing of how his neighbor had been transformed into a vampire.

But at the unexpected death of Anxos, he could not help but feel a surge of satisfaction.

With the battle now claiming an apprentice’s life, surely the tower’s master must sense something amiss.

Shielded by a single wooden door, Grim wondered in silence: what end would this day’s chaos bring?