I Revived My Maid, Now She Hungers for My Blood

A faint gleam of amusement seemed to flash deep within Ophelia’s eyes, though her icy expression barely shifted. She turned on her heel, ready to leave the art building, track down Poppy, and rendezvous at the gym.

But she’d barely hit the exit before that familiar sound cracked through the air again—

Bang!

A crisp gunshot, followed by yet another blood-curdling scream, echoed from the academic building nearby.

Ophelia’s feet rooted to the spot. She looked up toward the connected building, a slight crease forming between her brows. She had just vaporized that Anomaly—its aura was completely gone. So how was there another gunshot? Was there... more than one?

The doubt had barely taken root when she caught a wisp of pale blue smoke drifting toward her. Poppy’s figure materialized through the haze. The redhead’s expression wasn’t the smug satisfaction of a victor; it was marred by the exact same look of... confusion?

Huh? Catching that subtle cue, a sudden realization hit Ophelia. Had Poppy just gone through the exact same thing? Was this Gunman Anomaly... unkillable?

..................

Over in the academic building’s hallway, Pandora was moving at an unhurried pace. Her leather shoes clicked against the tile floor in a light, rhythmic beat.

It was a stark contrast to Poppy’s smoke-riding sprint or Ophelia’s trail of frost. Pandora’s stride was light and steady, but certainly not silent.

Unlike Poppy’s wide-net smoke detection, Pandora’s psychic perception had a much tighter radius. But what it lacked in range, it more than made up for in high-definition detail and depth.

Her formidable psychic energy unfurled like a sea of sensitive, resilient tendrils, radiating outward from her core. They didn’t just sweep the area; they seeped inch by inch through the drywall, taking in every microscopic detail the building had to offer.

She wasn’t just hunting for the Gunman Anomaly. She was using the opportunity to data-mine the building for any overlooked intel.

Case in point: class was still in session next door. The teacher’s raspy voice filtered clearly into her ears.

At first, the syllables were mostly a chaotic, unintelligible babble, with only a handful of words triggering a fuzzy sense of déjà vu. But quickly, those sounds began to dismantle and reassemble in her mind at a staggering pace, rapidly crystallizing into actual meaning.

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Over half of the alien language suddenly clicked, translating into concepts she could grasp. The remaining gibberish was still a mess, but it was rapidly sharpening into focus.

She had a small vial of pale purple potion to thank for that, which she’d swiped from the potion pouch Amanda gave her. Once she downed it, her auditory nerves and language processing center were gently activated by the potion’s magic.

It seemed her mentor had already factored in the possibility of Pandora dropping into a non-Orchard, non-Common-speaking Fragment World.

Honestly, it made sense. The cleanup crew had made similar preparations; she’d noticed at least two of the six-person support squad giving off the specific aura of someone hopped up on language-assistance potions—perhaps even more specialized.

Coming back to the present, Pandora tuned into the lecture next door for a moment. The gray-haired teacher at the podium, the students either actually paying attention or zoning out—every scene her psychic tendrils painted was aggressively normal.

So normal it was borderline creepy.

Those gunshots had been loud and clear, spaced close enough together that you didn’t need superhuman hearing to catch them. Gunfire inside a school should’ve triggered absolute pandemonium. Yet the students and faculty right next door were completely unbothered. No panic, no confusion, not even a subconscious flinch or a curious glance.

“Is it the lingering effect of that ‘Gateway to Heaven’ Anomaly? Suppressing their emotional responses?” Elsa murmured beside her, offering a hypothesis.

Pandora’s brow furrowed. She processed the sensory data her psychic tendrils fed back—the heartbeats, the breathing, the micro-expressions...

It wasn’t suppression. It was more like... they literally hadn’t heard a thing. To the students and teachers, the gunshots and screams might as well have been static from another dimension, totally insulated from their reality.

Right then, Pandora’s eyebrow ticked up. She paused, her gaze shifting as if peering straight through the drywall to the corridor beyond.

“Looks like something fun just delivered itself to our doorstep.”

..................

Run!

Run faster!

The girl sprinted down the hall, stumbling, her breath coming in ragged, burning gasps like a busted bellows.

Her mind was a vortex of pure terror, a suffocating black net that smothered every rational thought. She remembered sitting in class, minding her own business. Then the guy in the black trench coat had just kicked the door in.

No warning. No motive. He just leveled that freakish rifle and pulled the trigger.

Bang!

Then it was chaos. Screaming, people scrambling over desks to get out!

She’d bolted with the crowd, figuring she was safe once she hit the hallway. But the gunman had laser-locked onto her, hounding her every step.

No matter how many corners she cut, how many turns she took, how hard she tried to blend into the crowd, that clumsy, heavy footstep just kept pacing behind her. Relentless. Unhurried.

She was terrified. Petrified. This wasn’t a prank. This psycho was actually trying to gut her.

He’d just fired again. The bullet missed her, but it tagged her classmate—the boy who’d run out of the classroom right beside her.

She could still picture the sheer, twisting despair on his face the second the round hit him.

The next shot... the next shot was for her!

She threw a panicked glance over her shoulder. The trench-coated gunman was still there, closer than before. His face was a smudged blur, like a water-damaged painting, leaving only hollow shadows where features should be.

But that stubby rifle was stark and terrifyingly clear in the dim hallway light.

The gunman raised his stiff arm. The pitch-black muzzle leveled right at her.