I Revived My Maid, Now She Hungers for My Blood

Faces young and old twisted into masks of nearly identical reverence and fanaticism. Their lips moved, mouthing words as if chanting along with that invisible hymn. Some had completely abandoned their dignity, dropping to their knees on the hard concrete of the athletic field. Pressing their palms together, they thrust their hands high above their heads before bowing deeply, foreheads pressed to the ground, murmuring mechanically.

But this was an “alien world,” after all. A Fragment World that hadn’t yet been formatted into an “Orchard,” where the local tongue hadn’t been standardized into the Common language. Whatever they were speaking, it was complete gibberish to the Demon Hunter Apprentices. Not a single person on the rooftop could parse the escalating, chaotic yet unified chorus of praise and prayer. It seemed everyone was looping the same script, just with slight variations in cadence and pitch.

Even so, after studying the floating “Angel” for a moment, Poppy gave a curt nod and broke the silence. “It’s definitely not here for us.”

“The song’s influence is broadcasting on a wide band, but it isn’t targeting us specifically. However...” She frowned deeper. “What the hell is this thing doing? What’s the play here for an Angel-type Anomaly?”

One of the girls in the six-person squad hesitantly offered a theory: “Maybe it’s building a cult?”

Poppy shook her head. “What’s the point of an Anomaly gathering worshippers? It’s not some actual god; it doesn’t run on faith.”

A few others chimed in with their own theories on the Angel-Anomaly’s agenda. Maybe the song was psychic pollution, overwriting the natives’ cognition? Or perhaps it was a ritual, prepping for a summoning or a descent...

Poppy shot them down one by one. Based on what she was actively sensing, none of those theories quite fit the data.

Her frown only deepened. The group fell into a tense, brief silence, until...

“The song might not be the main event,” Pandora suddenly piped up. Her voice was quiet, but it cut through the group like a hot knife.

She redirected their attention back to the sky. But this time, she wasn’t pointing at the massive, obvious Pure-White Silhouette. She was pointing at the “Winged Angel” connected by the umbilical cord, the thing that looked like it was being birthed from the Humanoid’s forehead.

While they had been talking, the thing had evolved. That mangled mass of flesh had begun to sprout the rudimentary buds of limbs. The process looked agonizingly slow, yet it was undeniably happening in real-time. Under the group’s bewildered, unsettled stares, the blob finalized its morph into a human-shaped entity sporting a pair of wings.

Its appearance was about seventy percent identical to the colossal Pure-White Silhouette above. Both were an unblemished, stark white, both radiating that same eerie, inhuman yet holy aura. As for the remaining thirty percent...

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“A headless Winged Angel?” someone muttered, voicing the discovery.

Yes. This freshly spawned “Angel” was missing a neck. And a head. Just a smooth, empty stump above the collarbone.

The moment the humanoid form locked into place, that holy hymn ringing in their ears skyrocketed in intensity, swelling into a grand, booming crescendo! It sounded like a million voices chorusing in unison, celebrating its—Birth.

By now, the zone of effect had spilled well past the high school campus they stood on. People were filtering out onto the wider streets of the surrounding city. They stumbled out of buildings, rounded corners, drawn outside as if jerked by invisible strings. Once out in the open, they mirrored the people on the field—heads craned skyward, faces twisted in mindless, soulless fanaticism.

Even from the rooftop, with their expanding field of view, the group could tangibly feel that mind-bending power spreading like a virus.

Though, honestly, they didn’t need to actively “feel” it anymore. Because by now, that power was actively trying to sink its hooks into them.

The lyrics were still gibberish, but the song was saturated with heavy-handed suggestion and compulsion. It tried to burrow into their minds, urging them to bow, to pray, to join the frothing mob below. The meaning might as well have been static, but the psychic pressure was real.

Thankfully, being leaps and bounds above the average brainwashed Joe on the street, the group’s resistance was equally robust. A little mental fortitude was all it took to crush that nagging impulse to start kneeling and praying.

“So, you ladies gonna do something about it?” Pandora tilted her head, shooting Poppy and Ophelia an amused glance. “Wanna just blow that thing out of the sky right now?”

She sounded incredibly relaxed, like a spectator watching a messed-up play. To her, this bizarre, mass-hysteria-inducing light show was just premium entertainment. And honestly, she wasn’t wrong—her priorities were completely different. She hadn’t signed up for the Anomaly cleanup crew. She was strictly here for the drama. Hand her a bowl of popcorn and she’d be munching away.

The actual heavy hitters of this op, however, didn’t immediately jump at the suggestion.

Poppy’s frown was etched in stone, her eyes glued to the colossal Pure-White Silhouette and its freshly vamped, headless Angel. Ophelia’s face was a blank mask, but the frost in her violet eyes had dropped a few more degrees below zero.

With the two Rank-3 superiors deep in thought, the six-person squad naturally kept their mouths shut. Silence blanketed the rooftop.

The Anomaly in the sky, however, wasn’t waiting for a committee vote. That vast, holy hymn continued to reverberate, its tempo steadily climbing toward a fever pitch. It felt like the crescendo of a massive symphony, right before the big finish.

The mobs on the field and the streets beyond were completely ignited. Their eyes were dead to the world, stripped of all Self, leaving only a rabid, feral yearning.

Right on cue, the Headless Winged Angel floating in the sky moved. Maintaining that sacred, creepy poise, it began a slow descent from the heavens. Coincidentally, its chosen landing spot was the dead center of the high school athletic field right below them.

Closer. Closer. The Angel hovered in mid-air, dangling barely a person’s height above the sea of bodies.

The moment those pristine white feathers practically brushed the heads of the front row, the crowd absolutely lost their minds!

Every single person had their neck craned back, faces slick with tears and snot. A twisted cocktail of ultimate desperation and warped piety contorted their features as they shrieked and babbled, arms flailing upward, desperate to touch the Angel, begging for its attention.

“Pick me! Pick me!”

“I’m the most devoted!”

“No, me! I’ll give you everything I have!”