Slapping the healer out of her face, Lily sat up with a hiss and started fighting her way towards the door.

“Stop it stop it — ow!” The woman cried out as Lily forced her to the side. “You sit your ass back down right now!”

“Or what?” Lily grumbled as she fended the deranged woman off while she fumbled with the door. “You’ll heal me to death?”

“I would if I could,” the healer retorted as she finally gave up restraining the mage. “But no, if you don’t want to finish being healed, then so be it. If that’s what you prefer. It’s honestly fine by me, seeing as you’ll be one less person I have to heal in the future.”

Rolling her eyes as she finally got the old wooden door unstuck, Lily stepped out into the main cavern. Looking around, she saw that there was a shallow pool of water on the other opposite side from the iron gate. She hadn’t noticed it before because she had been on the verge of unconsciousness when they first brought her here from the arena.

Fucking corruption. I didn’t know how annoying it would actually be to deal with firsthand.

“What’s so important to you anyway?” The healer — Maggie? Marge? Lily didn’t remember— asked as she joined her to peer through the gate. “Worried about your friend?”

Lily sighed. “Yeah, something like that.”

The healer crossed her arms and gave a tut-tut. “You getting up to watch her when you really need to be resting and getting better won’t do her a lick of good, you know.”

Lily didn’t respond. She was entirely focused on the action before her — or rather, the lack of it. She had missed the initial entrance and attack completely, as it appeared that Zoe was now striding forwards to deliver a killing blow. Lily was honestly quite relieved — she knew the worldwalker was capable, but she had still been worried.

She knew she wasn’t supposed to form attachments like this. As Xephra Andre’Mea, a senior operative for the United Frontier Syndicate, she was supposed to gather information and potentially prepare this world for its inevitable contact with the wider universe. She had an incredible responsibility in this position, and any relationships she formed were supposed to be purely practical — either for keeping her true nature undercover or for achieving syndicate goals.

But she was also Lily Hellchainer — a young woman who felt like she had finally made a friend who really resonated with her. Even if it had only been less than a week.

After all, being implanted in a totally new society via reincarnation didn’t lend itself to living a life of cold calculation. In fact, to do so felt almost impossible — not to Xephra, of course — but to Lily. How could Lily live what had been her entire life doing nothing but pursuing distant, bureaucratic goals that she had been held accountable towards from even before her own birth?

Xephra — Lily — shook her head. She was still one person, but that wasn’t to say that the whole thing didn’t feel weird or dissociative at times.

Unfortunately, it appeared that the battle was not actually over. As Zoe was sent flying through the air, Lily cursed. The corrupted monster her new friend was facing seemed far stronger than the ones she and Traz — Andric — had faced.

Aa the abomination continued attacking Zoe relentlessly, Lily briefly considered the possibility that she might have to uncloak in order to save her. She quickly discarded the notion. While it would make things trivially easy in the short term — the most powerful two people in the area where only just under and just barely over level one hundred — it would be a disaster in the long term.

Not only would it be a massive breach of protocol — Lily was also beginning to strongly suspect that there was something big and unusual at play in this world. After all, by all accounts this civilization shouldn’t have the ability to detect, let alone predict, the arrival of worldwalkers yet.

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So why were people already after Zoe — and how?

She and the healer continued to watch in mutual silence. Lily was honestly amazed that Zoe had managed to survive this long. The worldwalker was demonstrating insane capabilities and clearly had massive potential — even for a worldwalker. Most of them didn’t progress nearly this fast, or adapt this quickly.

Admiration mixed together with Lily’s nervousness, creating a strange feeling of buzzing excitement. She’s still going to be a pain in the ass to deal with, though. Lily couldn’t deny to herself that it was going to be true. The woman was unpredictable in certain ways, and Lilly had a feeling she would only grow more troublesome as she continued to grow in power.

But if something big really is at play here, then she has to be the key to uncovering it. In all honesty, this particular mission was supposed to be standard, at least as far as pre-contact fieldwork was supposed to go. But Lily really had a feeling that something was afoot. And Zoe is at the heart of it.

She smirked. And if I or Traz don’t uncover it, there’s no way that this Zoe won’t bust it all wide open.

As Lily watched, the worldwalker in question appeared to be dying at the hands of the abomination. Her torso was crushed and mutilated beyond repair, and her head wasn’t even managing to stay upright.

Lily narrowed her eyes. I wonder how she’s going to make it out of this particular one.

A trembling hand caressed her on the shoulder, nearly making her jump. “I’m sorry,” the healer said to her, “it might be best if you don’t watch.”

Laughing, Lily just brushed the older woman off. “It would be quite a shame to miss it.

As she returned her attention to the fight — or one sided slaughter, really — Lily saw that Zoe seemed to be rapidly regenerating. Meanwhile, her mutated opponent was just standing there frozen. Does she have some new lifestealing ability?

And then Zoe took a bite out of the monster.

Shit!

As Lily watched, the monster reared back, putting as much distance as it could between itself and its former prey. Hunched over, Zoe hacked and coughed. Wheezing, she shifted her position unnaturally as he back began to arch.

With a sinking feeling in her gut, Lily watched as the worldwalker’s body succumbed to the corruption.

The first thing to really go wrong were her hands. Thick and hard black blades encased them, forming enormous pincer-like claws. Each finger became a thick, single jointed claw. Zoe flexed them, curling them in and out. When extended, they formed five deadly points — and when curled in, they became a colossal, hard fist the size of a cabbage.

Perfectly suited to either ripping out someone’s entire throat or basing their skull in.

Likewise, her feet split out of her filthy boots to form even larger, black, draconic talons. Two toes went backwards while three remained in front, creating a raptor-like appearance. Polished, obsidian black scales crusted over much of the remainder of her body — especially the extremities of her limbs.

As for her head…

Well, it remained mostly human, aside from the thickly segmented, curling horns and the mouth. The latter of which had split into a toothy, draconic maw — almost reminiscent of a decorative face mask. But this was the real deal, not a costume for a masquerade.

Flexing herself, the once-Zoe leered at the other abomination. Still clutching its bloodied face, the other monster roared — and then Zoe screeched back.

It was a horrible, painful sound. Clutching her ears, Lily shut her eyes. When she opened them again, she saw that the former-Zoe had spread her monstrous arms outward in an inviting challenge — all four of them.

The other abomination charged.

Holding her ground, the monster-Zoe caught its fist with her top right hand — claws — and then ripped off the offending limb with her lower appendage. As her opponent screamed from the pain of having its arm torn off, the once-Zoe chomped down on it, quickly devouring the entire limb.

She lashed her serpentine, bladed tail. Since when does she have a tail? It was quite thick at the base, linearly tapering to a spear point. Lily finally analyzed her.

{??? - ???}

That’s not good.

As far as she understood it — and as she had seen with the lionesses — corrupted entities were usually still given names by the grand design.

As the no-longer-Zoe dashed up to her inferior opponent, speared its chest with her tail, and ripped its head off, Lily began to back away. The healer was frozen in shock as well — but Lily quickly snapped her out of it.

“Come with me, we have to go,” she hoarsely whispered. The other woman nodded, and Lily shakily began leading her back out of the caverns. The little man who had helped bring her in joined up with them as well. “The fuck happened to her?” He asked, breathlessly. “Normally they don’t mutate that… coherently.”

“I have no fucking idea,” Lily said as they neared the exit, “and I suggest we try not to find out.”