Isolde looked away and turned to give an order.
“Lia, prepare a room for Mr. Orren.”
Lia dipped her head. “Yes, my lady.”
Orren seemed surprised by the castle master’s hospitality and quickly asked, “May I choose the room myself?”
Isolde’s tone was flat. “You may. But Goldie has a temper. It might throw you out a window in the middle of the night.”
Orren tilted his head slightly. “Goldie is…”
“My castle’s nickname.”
Isolde smiled as she said it.
Behind her, the vast castle seemed to answer. The entire building gave a faint tremor, shaking hard enough for the bricks to knock against each other with sharp little cracks.
Orren looked up at the massive castle as if admiring a treasure and praised it happily.
“What a magnificent castle. I would very much like to have a look inside. Please trouble the maid to arrange it for me.”
Lia made a gesture of invitation and turned to lead the way.
As Orren passed Isolde, he lifted his top hat in thanks.
“Witnessed by the Contract God, I hope our cooperation will be pleasant. Good night, my honored lady.”
His voice brushed past Isolde’s ear like a cool breeze.
Once only a few faceless servants remained beside her, Isolde finally looked back at the ruined sacred beast inside the coffin.
Ice fog spilled over the coffin’s rim and spread across the floor like a layer of white cloud.
The blood beside the broken horn had dried black. Its fur was matted into stiff clumps, and the cuts across its chest, belly, and limbs were painfully clear.
She lifted a hand.
Two faceless servants stepped forward at once, but their movements visibly stalled. They did not dare move closer.
Even dead, the sacred nature left in its body still terrified the surrounding undead aura.
Isolde noticed and ordered the faceless servants to seal the coffin, then bring a roll of soul-sealing cloth and wrap it around the lid layer by layer.
The soul-sealing cloth was quickly scorched by the sacred light. Black runes lit one after another, barely separating that pressure from the room.
Only then did the faceless servants lift the coffin again and carry it into the castle.
Wrapped in her fur cloak, Isolde walked at the front.
The underground laboratory doors slowly opened. Ghostfire lamps along both walls flared to life one by one, and the lines of the alchemy array emerged from the dark like a net waiting to feed.
The faceless servants placed the coffin in the center of the magic array.
The lid was pushed open. Cold immediately poured across the floor, and an invisible ripple bloomed from the coffin.
The creatures soaking in glass jars began to darken. Several bottles holding soul remnants trembled violently, as if frightened by something.
A legendary sacred beast could still dominate the room after death.
Its remaining value was even more frightening.
Any single part of it used to modify Lia would certainly be far stronger than a Bone Blade Fragment.
Isolde was about to pull up the modification options when a gray light screen suddenly appeared before her.
[Special Body detected, Mooncrown Unicorn.]
[Quality, Legendary.]
[Status, Dead.]
[Warning, This creature retains a powerful lingering final wish.]
[Before the lingering final wish is cleared, disassembly, smelting, devouring, stitching, and refinement are not recommended.]
[The lingering final wish will evolve into a curse over time.]
[Curse Target, All who desecrate the remains.]
Isolde clicked her tongue in irritation.
She knew it. Legendary materials were never picked up for free.
If she paid the final price, took the body apart, and then got hit by the curse backlash, that would be the worst kind of losing trade.
After thinking for a moment, Isolde decided to first figure out what this lingering final wish actually was.
She gently touched the unicorn’s broken horn with her fingertip.
A fierce resentment burned her skin, as if rejecting her power.
The body before her was too badly broken. There was no way to piece together a complete final wish from it as it was.
It looked like she had to start by restoring the body.
Isolde circled the magic array once. The knowledge left by the original owner gradually unfolded in her mind.
A Soul-Stitcher was not only someone who lured enemies to their deaths and played with corpses.
A true high-tier Soul-Stitcher could call back the souls of the dead and rewrite the rules of life and death.
Isolde skillfully took out silver thread, then soul-sealing wax, moon salt, Purification Holy Water, and the obsidian needles she had just found in the castle storeroom.
Gray-blue light slowly rose from deep within the unicorn’s body. Under the pull of the silver thread, the broken and torn wounds gradually closed.
The faceless servants stood around her with their featureless faces lowered, obediently handing Isolde whatever she needed.
She worked like a professional surgeon.
Before long, the unicorn’s damaged body was finally pieced back together.
Isolde raised her hand and tried to summon its soul.
Silver-white Soul Thread spread from her fingertips and gently sank into the unicorn’s brow.
The candlelight in the laboratory suddenly dimmed.
Something slammed into her mind.
Countless images flooded in.
White-robed figures stepped through pools of blood, their hems disgustingly clean.
A young unicorn was pinned to a cold stone table. Silver nails pierced through all four of its hooves.
When it struggled, tiny cries came from its throat, but the people around it only chanted in low voices.
“A sacred beast should offer itself to the light.”
“You were born as a blessing granted to humanity by the gods.”
“Your sacrifice is worthwhile. People will remember it forever.”
In the next scene, an adult unicorn shattered its cage. Blood ran down its broken horn.
It raced through a long corridor, its hooves striking a road paved with the corpses of its own kind.
At the center of the judgment platform, a beam of pure white sacred light fell.
It illuminated nothing.
It only made the blood look redder.
Pain burrowed into Isolde’s bones.
She heard wails, curses, and the scrape of chains dragging across the floor.
Soon, those sounds tangled with the memories of her previous life, flashing before her eyes like a broken slideshow.
For a moment, she could not tell whether she was the unicorn or Evelyn Hart.
The white-robed people said “the sacrifice is worthwhile.”
The players had said “if you’re weak, you should obey.”
Different words. Same rot.
They all ground other people’s lives into the mud, then stood above them and declared meaning on behalf of the victims.
The next moment, the entire world was swallowed by red.
Only two words remained in the air, bloody and glaring.
Revenge.
Revenge.
Revenge.
Revenge.
Revenge.
Isolde’s eyes snapped open. She stumbled backward and hit the cold wall.
She gasped for breath. Cold sweat slid from her temple to her jaw, and her cloak slipped halfway from her shoulders before she instinctively grabbed it.
The laboratory returned to silence. The ghostfire lamps brightened again.
The unicorn in the magic array remained dead and still, but the dark lines beside its broken horn seemed to move for an instant before slowly falling quiet again.
Isolde leaned against the wall for a long while.
She thought again of what Orren had told her.
A unicorn’s memories could be shared.
So could its emotions.
The fear, regret, and hatred before death would pass down through the bloodline, layer after layer.
Then what was the last surviving unicorn, really?
It was not a sacred beast anymore.
It was the final witness to an extreme crime. It was a breathing mass grave.
Isolde wiped the cold sweat from her temple. Her fingers were still trembling.
If she followed the original Isolde’s methods, she could simply rip open the shackles of the final wish, carve out the most useful part of the soul remnant, and stuff it into a doll, a weapon, or the castle’s arrays.
Even if she failed, she would still obtain a batch of incredibly precious sacred materials.
Rationally, that would maximize profit.
If it were Valen, his mountain of flesh would probably already be shaking with laughter. He would have split the unicorn’s bones into three hundred portions and refused to waste even the hooves.
But as Isolde looked at the unicorn lying on the alchemy table, irritation rose in her chest.
She did not want to be a good person.
She had no intention of suddenly raising the banner of justice, standing in the light, and saying pretty things.
But she knew what it felt like to be pressed to the ground and forced to “volunteer” for sacrifice.
She could not ignore everything and continue cutting this body apart.
Just as even after being reborn, she could not ignore the wounds her previous life had left in her.
More than that, those high and mighty faces, so certain they had the right to decide for others, made her deeply unhappy.
Isolde walked back to the magic array and crouched down. She placed her palm on the unicorn’s brow again.
“I won’t take you apart. I won’t force you back either.”
“I’ll complete your final wish and collect the debt from those extremists.”
“The lives they owe you, I’ll take them back for you. But whatever resources drop afterward belong to me.”
“We each get what we need.”
After saying that, she added one more line.
“I am not your believer, and I am not your enemy. You want revenge. I want to get stronger. If our goals align, we cooperate. If they don’t, we part ways.”
The unicorn gave no response.
Only the soft crackle of ghostfire remained in the laboratory.
Isolde waited patiently.
After a while, the black lines on the broken horn suddenly moved.
A strand of gray-blue moonlight fell from the tip of the horn and wound around her wrist like an icy chain, or perhaps some long-delayed confirmation.
The moonlight sank into her palm, and a gray light screen appeared.
[Triggered, Mooncrown Unicorn’s Lingering Final Wish.]
[You have obtained a temporary identity, Executor of the Final Wish.]
[You cannot command the Mooncrown Unicorn’s soul remnant.]
[You cannot forcibly command the Mooncrown Unicorn’s body.]
[Until the final wish is completed, you may use the sacred nature remaining in its body.]
[Current Final Wish, Pursue Old Debts.]
[Warning, If you violate the agreement, the final wish will backlash against your soul.]
Isolde lowered her head.
The gray-blue moonlight in her palm slowly sank into her skin and disappeared.
The magic array lines on the floor gradually lit up.
Blue light flowed along the array like a layer of cold frost, covering the unicorn’s broken body.
The sacred aura in the laboratory was suppressed slightly. The soul remnants in several glass jars retreated to the bottoms of their bottles and finally quieted down.
Isolde raised her hand and extinguished the disassembly runes inside the alchemy array.
“Don’t worry.”
She looked at the remains of the Mooncrown Unicorn, her voice lowering.
“I won’t forgive them for you. I’ll only collect what they owe.”