“Yes.”
The tightness in Isolde’s chest had just begun to ease when Lia added,
“But if His Grace activates the master contract, I will lose the ability to move.”
Isolde frowned slightly.
“What is the master contract?”
Lia answered in her flat voice.
“Lord Valen is the master of Sylvain Castle. You are one of his subordinate contractors, Miss. Your contract rank is below his.”
Of course.
A scheming old monster like Valen would never keep a blade at his side if that blade could actually kill him.
Lia was useful, but Isolde couldn’t just swing her straight into Valen’s face.
Isolde walked to the desk and opened the notebook the original Isolde had left behind.
The pages were packed with dark symbols. Many of the lines were twisted and frantic, the strokes trembling all the way across the paper. In places where the writer had grown excited, the pen had nearly torn through the back of the sheet.
Isolde only skimmed a page before the meanings of the formulas surfaced automatically in her mind.
Soul anchoring, limb grafting, doll animation, human experimentation.
The knowledge made her stomach churn.
Unfortunately, it was also the only weapon she could pick up right now.
Evelyn hated these things.
Isolde understood them.
If she wanted to survive, she had to swallow the disgust first.
Isolde turned to the structural map of the underground laboratory. Her gaze landed on a corner of the parchment marked with the ward-stripping array.
Soon, Valen would carry out the body-part fusion. At that location, he would personally remove part of his protective wards so the new body parts could be joined to him.
In other words, that would be the closest thing to an opening he would ever give her.
Even then, Valen was not a snake with its fangs pulled.
Even if his defenses dropped for a short time, charging him with her current strength would only end with her being slapped into the floor by his tail.
Isolde tapped the map lightly with her fingertip as an idea slowly surfaced.
What if she lured players into the castle ahead of schedule?
She could let them draw Valen’s hatred and wear down his strength.
All she had to do was prepare a few hidden measures in the banquet hall and wait for the most crucial moment to add one final stab.
As for those players…
Isolde lowered her eyes, and the corner of her mouth curved.
In her previous life, she had been used as a disposable scout.
This time, it was their turn to taste just how vicious dungeon mechanics could be.
Isolde closed the notebook and looked up at Lia.
Gray light leaked in through the window, making her pale face look beautiful and cold.
“Lia, prepare the white dress.”
“Yes.”
“And bring me the key to the underground laboratory.”
Lia turned to leave, but Isolde suddenly stopped her.
“Wait. From now on, unless I order you to, you are not allowed to report anything unusual about me to Valen.”
Lia’s gray eye paused for a moment.
“Yes, Miss.”
Valen’s body was rotting nonstop, and the rejection caused by his power had weakened his awareness of lower-tier contracts.
As long as Lia did not report anything on her own, Valen would not notice anything wrong on Isolde’s side.
Isolde leaned back in her chair and carefully studied the magic array.
If she couldn’t win from the front, then her brain would decide the outcome.
Besides, with 120 Intelligence, it would be a waste not to do something a little wicked with it.
Lia soon brought her the key to the underground laboratory.
The key was pitch-black from end to end, with a shriveled eyeball set into the handle. When Isolde took it, the eyeball turned at the worst possible moment.
She fought back another wave of disgust, closed her fingers around it, and went to the underground laboratory with Lia.
Blue ghostfire hung along both sides of the walls.
Complex alchemy arrays had been carved into the floor. Dried blood clung inside the grooves, making the patterns look like a mouth that had never quite closed.
Isolde looked around and matched each item with the original Isolde’s memories.
Black salt, soul-sealing wax, Soul Threads, potions, and bone nails were all there.
Even better, there was an unlocked wooden chest in the corner.
Isolde lifted the lid.
Inside, three bottles of [Degraded Purifying Holy Water] were arranged neatly in a row.
Good stuff.
Degraded or not, it was perfect for dealing with a decay-ridden monster like Valen.
No reason to let it go to waste.
Isolde took the holy water, then found a damaged parchment scroll.
[Basic Spell Formula, Bind]
[Description, Consumes 5 Mana to briefly bind a target and interrupt spellcasting. Success rate is affected by Intelligence.]
Joy flickered through Isolde’s heart.
An active skill.
Hadn’t this just landed in her lap?
She spread the parchment across the table and began taking the formula apart using the original Isolde’s memories.
The warped symbols shifted and overlapped before her eyes.
Anyone else might have gotten a headache after two glances, but the longer Isolde studied them, the clearer her mind became.
She used her own Soul Threads as the base carrier and merged the broken formula into her magical circuit.
On the seventh failure, the Soul Threads lashed back.
Tiny beads of blood seeped from her fingertips.
Isolde seemed to have sunk completely into the spell formula. She paid no attention to the small wounds and kept adjusting the array with full focus.
Half an hour later, the gray screen finally popped up.
[You have created an Active Skill, Soulbinding Thread, Beginner]
[Effect, Release threads capable of binding souls. On success, binds the target’s movement for 0.8 seconds. If the target is weakened, frightened, or corrupted, each active condition extends the binding duration. Maximum duration, 3 seconds.]
0.8 seconds might be nothing more than a blink in someone else’s hands.
But in hers, if she timed it well enough, it would be enough to make Valen choke on his own arrogance.
After thinking it over, she gave one bottle of holy water to Lia and kept the other two for herself.
She soaked her Soul Threads in a paralyzing potion and black salt.
Then she took two bone nails and submerged them in Degraded Purifying Holy Water, just in case.
Lia tilted her head.
“Miss, is this used to anchor souls?”
“No.”
Isolde calmly put away the silver threads.
“This is for pinning down certain pieces of trash that refuse to behave.”
Lia was silent for a moment.
“Should I go pin them down now?”
As expected of the household version of a human forklift with 100 Strength.
Her killing intent was steady, and her execution was flawless.
“Not yet.”
Isolde closed the wooden chest.
“We need to wait for the right people to come pick up the trash.”
For the next three days, Isolde barely left the underground laboratory.
She counted the materials again, altered several easy-to-miss array lines in the banquet hall, and repaired the illusion array in the eastern tower.
It was a lure array left behind by the original Isolde.
The array would disguise the castle as an ordinary old manor. Then Isolde, dressed as a girl in white, would guide anyone who wandered into the gray fog deeper inside step by step.
That was how the original Isolde had lured many travelers and low-level players to their deaths.
Evelyn had to admit that this body’s mind was almost unfairly useful.
Many spell formulas were things she had clearly never touched before, yet it felt as if she had taken them apart thousands of times.
One glance was enough to tell her where something could be changed and where a trap could be buried.
Just as she changed into the white dress as usual and prepared to go out for a stroll, a dull bell rang from deep within the tower.
The illusion array had been triggered.
A smile slowly spread through Isolde’s eyes.
Perfect timing.
She had been worrying about having no bait.
Outside Sylvain Castle, the dead forest lay silent beneath the weight of gray fog.
Three figures burst from the mist in a miserable rush.
The one in front was a man in his early twenties. He wore mid-grade leather armor, gripped an iron axe, and had impatience written all over his face.
Beside him was a short-haired young woman holding a staff. Her eyes were wary and full of disdain.
The last was a tall, thin man with a bow on his back. He kept looking around while swearing under his breath.
“What kind of garbage game is this?”
The axe-wielding man kicked aside a dead branch on the ground.
“They don’t even give us a beginner village. They just dump us in this haunted dump. Did the devs lose their minds?”
The short-haired woman frowned.
“Stop making so much noise. Places like this usually have hidden dungeons. There’s bound to be an NPC somewhere.”
The tall, thin man sneered.
“In the games I played before, NPCs only had those canned lines, and you couldn’t even kill them. Now they’ve got flesh and blood. Scare them a little, and they’ll cough up the treasure chest locations soon enough.”
Isolde stood in the shadow of the tower.
The moment she saw their faces clearly, the smile on her face stopped.
She knew them.
No.
Even if their bones were ground to dust and their bodies turned into beasts, she would still recognize them.
They were the enemies who deserved to be thrown into hell.
The ones she could tear apart a thousand times and still never feel satisfied.