A worm lunges at my side to be cut into nothingness. I unfold a worn parchment as I scan its contents. I decapitate a lunging worm with a flick of my finger without even bothering to look up.

Well, well, well, it appears we are in sector B6. Should I say as expected from the Labyrinth of Sin? There are precisely ten dungeons with each allocated to a head.

A second worm in close proximity attempts to catch me off guard. I gaze upon it and test my new skill. Red strings shoot out of my eyes to pierce its head as it slumps.

I continue to peruse the map. That woman seems air-headed and ignorant at first.

But it is all merely a facade. Extreme cautiousness is needed as such.

Not because she’s an archdemon or has defeated a minotaur with such low stats, although those are not the matters to be glossed over either. Her telling the minotaur was battered is but a fat lie.

It is not because she’s hiding her inventory or sixth skill. I know for a fact that those are just preemptive measures to scare me. After all, no matter how good of a talisman or a skill she has, she isn’t my equal at the moment. There’s a wide gap that cannot be crossed over.

No. What I’m wary of is her eyes.

Those eyes of hers when I first got here—

Those emotionless eyes—

They are the exact same eyes my mother had. They may seem empty and soulless at first. Yet I know they are the exact opposite.

They tell everything. They tell of the ravenous obsession. She has no pride, envy, lust, or greed. Those eyes are filled to the brim with insatiable gluttony instead. Monika is a parasitic and obsessive person who destroys both themselves and others just for the sake of it.

My fists clench involuntarily. Such people should be exterminated on sight, yet it just so happens that she’s now my lady. My judgment might get clouded by hate. I need to calm down.

I take a deep breath after deforming another worm. This woman might have the same character but not the wits my mother had. Summoning a familiar much stronger than her was an unrecoverable blunder from her side. She’s also terrible at playing pretend.

Even if I cannot attack her, I can make others do that in my stead. That Contract skill of hers, I’ll first force her into using it on me to switch our roles.

I step toward the direction the horrid screeches are coming from after folding the map and tucking it back into my inner pocket. There’s no way she’d die of worms. Still, she’s depleted of her spiritual energy. It might get dangerous. I must ensure her security since if she dies, so do I.

Golden strings erupt from my fingertips. The first batch of worms is instantly entangled. The strings wrap and slice to cut through flesh and chitin.

Swarms of walls of gnashing jaws and writhing bodies surge toward me. My strings expand to sweep through the mass and scythe through tall grass. Their remains are torn and scattered in a shower of roses.

One larger worm lunges at me with a shriek. The strings coil around the gloth to constrict it until it explodes in a spume of waves of ichor.

“Yahaha!”

Hmm? Another monster? How bizarre—I haven’t seen this sort of keeper before.

Wait, that monster—

Looking like she has just bathed in the heart of a volcano, the fiery fairy stumbles free from the smoky haze.

“First, you spew shit at me, and now just spit in my face!?”

My eyes widen. I barely suppress the laughter bubbling up. Monika's hair is completely gone, her scalp a deserted wasteland, a charred badland. Or should I call it baldland instead?

Her face is a patchwork of soot and burns and… feces? She looks like a spectral ghost rejected from the afterlife with only her eyes and a few patches of skin free from the blackened mess.

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Monika glares at me with her funny-looking nonexistent eyebrows. “Don’t interfere. This is a matter between the two of us,” she commands.

“Of course,” I tell her. Just what the fuck happened? I didn’t leave her alone for a moment so she could change her image.

Her suit is almost entirely burned away—gone, leaving her naked—her body a bloodied and burned mess. Her skin blisters with deep wounds oozing blood. Every step she takes leaves a trail of red droplets—every breath a searing inferno that surges from the very flames of the abyss.

She is thoroughly barbecued and, to top it all off, seasoned in shit. The dragon who stands across her looks just as pale, visibly tired of shitting. He hisses.

His body undulates with a hellish fire gathering within to spew forth a torrential storm at Monika. She wells to the side, winding the heat licking at her skin.

Monika grips her greatsword with both hands. Her eyes are locked on Degloth’s fiery maw.

So this is the Willpower of SS+? Monika must be going through unbearable pain. Yet she bears it as if wrapped around her skin are not scorches but water droplets. I eliminate the pesky worms that try to lay their teeth at her while they’re at it.

Monika anticipates the upcoming volley of spitfire trajectory and springs to her feet in advance while twisting her body to evade the flames and sprinting closer.

She brings her greatsword down in an arc. The worm twists to avoid the blade by a small margin and lashes out with its head. Monika rolls under to come up from behind.

I gulp. Degloth gulps. We both know what’s to follow next.

The blade bites deep, really, really deep. Degloth shrieks in agony. Monika seizes the moment and darts forward, driving her sword deeper, very, very deeper into the chasm. The worm thrashes in a frenzy. His fiery breath sputters out wantonly.

Degloth, then, as if understanding that his end is nearing, closes his maw, silent.

Yet unforgiving.

“GHAAAAAA!” He shits a bloodied dung bigger than any shit I’ve ever seen.

—

He may have been deprived of his manhood, yet he died like the true man he was.

What follows is the silence and the worms slithering as they retreat underground.

They turn and flee. The ground beneath them trembles and cracks as the worms burrow downwards. Their appendages dig into the dirt as they vie to disappear beneath the surface.

“Are you alri—”

“Not a single one…” she says while coughing shit and spewing fire, her face artistic yet expression unreadable.

“I think the regeneration alone won’t suffice. We should craf—”

“Not a single one shall escape!” Monika smiles shittily. “Kill them all!”

She rushes toward the closest worm with her greatsword no longer in her hands and gnashes at the delicacy with her grinding teeth and gnarling nails.

“Yahahaha!”

Having no choice, I follow as I sever as many gloths as I can while preserving my spiritual energy to the best of my effort.

Half of the worms die while the other lucky half manage to escape.

She’s still maddeningly digging the ground with her bloodied hands in search of more.

Why am I so wary of this human? Well, honestly, I’m not very sure myself. Did I judge correctly? I don’t know. One single thing I can rely on, though, is my instinct honed in hundreds of battles—

She’s very dangerous. In what way? I cannot tell. She is a crazy person who tries to act like a normal person, which, in all honesty, makes her even crazier. I shall interrogate her after forming the contract.

I spy on the transparent screen spreading across Monika’s view.

|E-| You are among the first 100 candidates to kill 100 keepers

|+20 LS| |+10 CP|

|D-| You are among the first 25 candidates to kill 250 keepers

|+100 LS| |+30 CP|

|+1 Agility Potion |E||

|+1 Strength Potion |E||

|F+| You are among the first 250 candidates to kill a Rank 1 keeper

|+50 LS|

“I need purification—no, crucifixion. Yeah, right,” Monika whispers under her breath. “No-no-no, an exorcism. Or, even better, a memory loss potion. Is there such a thing? Hmm? Hmm? Hel?”

I flinch. “Yes?”

“Do I look that bad?” she asks.

My breath gets stuck in my throat. Is there a right answer to this? As a woman myself, I know just how bad she must be feeling right now. If I say yes, that’d be an obvious heart-wrenching truth. If I say no, that would be an obvious heart-piercing lie.

“It can be fixed,” I assure her. “You have Regeneration, so it will all return to its place in an hour at the longest.” I approach her as I try to pat her shoulder, yet I stop. Too gross. I don’t want to stain my hands in shit.

Monika beams with not-so-bright teeth. “Is that so?”

“Well…”

“You know, I have never tasted shit. They say there’s always something new to discover. They also say life is full of surprises. It indeed is.”

“Haha…”

“Shit doesn’t even taste that bad. We eat plants, and plants eat shit. Animals, too, eat shit. And what is a human if not an animal, right? Life may be a progenitor of all things. But there’s also a saying that life is shit.”

“Right…”