I Revived My Maid, Now She Hungers for My Blood

“So, you understand now, right?”

“A Rank-3 Apprentice isn’t exactly a tier to write home about.”

“Hurry up and become a Demon Hunter, kid.”

“The difference between the extraordinary and the mundane isn’t just a simple one-rank gap; it’s whether you actually manage to snatch that slim, precious ‘possibility.’ It’s a metamorphosis at the very level of your existence.”

Amanda’s violet eyes locked onto Pandora through her glasses, her gaze loaded with meaning.

Pandora gave a solemn nod. She’d already figured that much out. Even without the “Law of the Extraordinary Catalyst” hanging over her head, she’d still push for Rank-4 and beyond purely for the raw power of it—just to survive in this cutthroat world a little bit longer.

“I tucked the cultivation methods for the seeds in there, too.” Amanda tapped the potion pouch. “It’s front and center, hard to miss. Keep in mind, once you’re actually in a Fragment World, the environment is going to vary. You’ll need to adapt your methods and make tweaks on the fly based on the local terrain.”

“Fair warning: these plants are incredibly picky about their growing conditions. Especially in the early stages. You’ll need a healthy dose of patience.”

“No problem,” Pandora replied. “Also,” she said, as if suddenly remembering something, “you just said this pouch is mine now. So, what about the seeds inside...?”

“Oh, no,” Amanda immediately shook her head, as if dispelling a critical misunderstanding. “The pouch is what I’m giving you—the portable miniaturized spatial device. The leftover seeds have to come back.”

“Sure, there’s a mountain of them, but cultivating them is a massive pain in the ass. These little darlings all possess the potential to hit Rank-4 or higher. Every single seed is incredibly valuable!”

“Makes sense...” Pandora looked down at the pouch in her hands, her mind spinning. “So... is there a quota on how many I can use? Like, what percentage of the seeds am I allowed to burn through? What happens if I use too many?”

Amanda just smirked at the question. “There’s no point setting a cap. It’s not like you could use them all anyway.”

“Though, if you actually managed to... well, that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.” She seemed to realize she’d let that dangling thought hang a bit too long, and cleared her throat delicately.

“Just joking. It took me a very long time to hoard this many seeds. The sheer volume is absurd. Just digging them all out of that little pocket would take an eternity. There’s absolutely no way you’ll run out. Don’t sweat the hypotheticals.”

“As for what counts as a successful harvest versus useless ‘trash’—you can just toss the duds or do whatever you want with them. The cultivation manual I gave you outlines the criteria. You can read it yourself when the time comes.”

Pandora nodded, carefully tying the pouch to her belt. “Alright, I understand.”

“Right, let’s stop wasting time on the nitty-gritty details,” Amanda pivoted, her expression shifting back to a more serious gear. “The real bottleneck right now is figuring out how to smuggle you into one of those Fragment Worlds.”

She frowned slightly. “Truth be told, it’s going to be a hassle. You came to me a bit late in the game. This operation kicked off half a year ago, and it’s pretty much wrapping up now. Most of the Apprentices who were supposed to get on the train already have. They’re either on-site or en route.”

“As for the few stragglers who haven’t boarded yet...” Amanda paused, sinking into thought. “I’ll have to pull some strings, see if I can bump you up the waitlist and squeeze you in. Let me think... for a situation like this...”

Amanda mumbled, her voice trailing off as she stopped walking entirely. She seemed to have plunged into some deep deliberation, standing dead still in place.

Pandora didn’t press her, simply waiting with the patience of a stone. While Amanda was busy crunching the mental gears, Pandora let her gaze wander, idly surveying the bizarre, flourishing flora around her.

The vast majority of these plants outranked her by a wide margin. She could tangibly sense the faint, heart-stopping aura of higher tiers radiating from their oddly shaped, softly glowing forms.

Rank-4. Rank-5. Maybe even higher. These were formidable lifeforms; any single one of them dropped in the outside world would trigger a bloodbath of acquisition. Yet here, they projected an aura of extreme “docility.”

They grew in dead silence, emitting a gentle luminescence, as if pinned down by some vastly superior entity. They didn’t dare leak even a fraction of their extraordinary aura into the open air.

That was the only reason a measly Rank-3 Apprentice like herself could stroll through this garden without suffocating. If these plants weren’t leashed, the sheer ambient pressure of their auras would’ve crushed her into the dirt long ago. This garden had been thoroughly broken and tamed by its master, using absolute, overwhelming force.

The thought flickered through Pandora’s mind, scaling up her mental estimate of Amanda’s combat power yet again.

Her gaze drifted, wandering through the labyrinth of bizarre flora. It was beautiful here. Hauntingly, unrealistically so. The bioluminescent vines, the flesh-pink moss, the impossibly lush and dreamlike blossoms—all bathed in the golden light, projecting a texture that felt like a walking fever dream.

But right then, her gaze snagged on something.

Hidden beneath the canopy of the lush foliage in Amanda’s garden, there existed a specific plant that seemed to serve as the structural core of the entire ecosystem.

It bore flowers too. Petals of deep crimson fading into black, layered thickly upon one another, eerie yet mesmerizing. However, the flowers had primarily been in bud form, not fully bloomed.

At least, up until just a moment ago, that had been their state. Pandora remembered distinctly. When she had first stepped down into the garden—when they had just emerged from that frozen Laplace’s Demon Library—the buds had been tightly clenched shut, as if locked in a deep slumber.

So why... in the span of just a few minutes, had it opened?

Exactly. The crimson-black flower before her had now completely unfurled. Its posture was demonic and beautiful, like an elegant black swan craning its neck. Each petal was as sheer as cicada wings, rippling with a silken sheen under the golden light.

Wait.

A realization struck Pandora like a bolt of lightning. It wasn’t just it. It was them.

Every single black rose in the entire garden was in full bloom at this very second!

Pandora snapped her head up, instinctively holding her breath as her eyes widened.

It wasn’t an illusion. She could clearly see, in every corner of her vision, the black roses that had been tightly budded were now peeling open layer by layer at a pace visible to the naked eye.

It was as if an invisible hand was gently, tenderly caressing the buds, coaxing their petals apart one by one.