As soon as Charlotte finished her prayer, she felt a hand rest on her shoulder.

"What are you doing?"

Charlotte jumped back in alarm. If it weren't for the warmth of the hand on her shoulder, proving the presence of a living being behind her, she might have swung her shovel at them.

She turned and saw a man holding a lantern. He was hunched over, with white hair and a face deeply lined with wrinkles.

But judging by his voice, he seemed to be merely middle-aged.

"And who might you be?" In such an unsettling environment, Charlotte felt a pang of anxiety, enough to forget the noble etiquette she was raised with.

The lantern in the man's hand swayed from side to side.

"Nick. They call me Grave-digging Nick. Girl, you're looking for Susan, aren’t you?" The incident surrounding Susan had already spread through the village.

Charlotte wasn’t only looking for Susan; she wanted to examine the other dried-out corpses. Her intuition told her the bodies might hold the clues she sought.

But she couldn’t very well say, "I’m here to dig up graves." Even though the laws of Wenzel allowed for exhumations under certain circumstances, the village of Solvellon, far from the empire's heart, still regarded grave-digging as a taboo.

"Actually, ah, behind you!"

..........

Caroline woke up to the sound of a snapping branch. A hulking beast emerged from the forest.

It stood about a meter tall, with a length of at least two meters. Its head resembled that of a chicken, complete with a comb adorned with yellow patterns.

Its wrinkled skin was neither feathered nor scaled, and a snake-like tail swayed behind it.

Its claws were razor-sharp, and it had six legs—or rather, eight, though two of them were still underdeveloped and tucked against its body.

It was a cockatrice.

The creature’s claws multiplied as its strength grew. The villagers hadn’t noticed the undeveloped fourth pair of legs in the darkness, which led them to believe it had only six.

Fortunately, eight legs were still within a manageable range. Caroline had dealt with far trickier beasts before.

The creature's breathing sounded like the hiss of a snake, but its voice was an eerie mix of clucking and laughter.

It sniffed the air, detecting the alcohol-soaked snake left on the ground. Tilting its head in curiosity, it pondered the odd scent.

The cockatrice never expected an attack. It grasped the snake in its chicken-like front claws and swallowed it.

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Suddenly, a silver thread coiled around its neck, tightening as white flames ignited along its length.

The creature let out a shrill screech, thrashing violently, and managed to snap the thread.

A fist-sized metal orb, engraved with spiral patterns, struck its head. Upon contact, it erupted into the same white flames, engulfing the creature.

Caroline leapt from a tree branch, blades extending from her fingertips, slashing downward. She doubted a single alchemical weapon would be enough to kill the cockatrice.

As she predicted, even engulfed in searing pain, the cockatrice sensed the danger from above. It jumped back, out of her reach.

Its bulging eyes fixed on Caroline, the human daring to challenge it.

It was an unnatural being, born from a rooster's egg and the king of serpents.

For 200 years, none had dared to defy its authority. But this being before it... she wasn’t entirely human.

She wasn’t warm like other living creatures. Her scent was cold and unyielding, like the weapons used by those hairless apes.

No matter.

For centuries, humans had tried to kill it with their weapons, always failing.

This time would be no different.

The cockatrice raised its torso, spreading its four front limbs wide as it roared.

The force of its cry extinguished the lingering alchemical flames on its body. Toxic gas began to seep from its pores, withering the surrounding plants.

Caroline crouched low, mechanisms in her legs charging. White runes of solidified magic began to glow along her limbs.

The creature turned and bolted, scattering dry leaves as it fled.

Caroline didn’t hesitate. With an explosive burst of power from her legs, she shot forward like a gale, giving chase.

..........

Meanwhile, elsewhere, Charlotte dragged Nick’s unconscious body to a clean, concealed spot.

She silently thanked mystery novels—the old "look behind you" trick had worked surprisingly well.

Still, she worried she might have hit him too hard. What if he didn’t wake up?

“Focus,” she muttered to herself, trying to shake off her guilt.

Grabbing her shovel again, Charlotte used the lantern’s dim light to read the names on the tombstones. Before coming here, she had asked the shopkeeper about the names of the victims.

Confirming the correct grave, she began to dig.

With swift efficiency, Charlotte unearthed nine corpses, each as dried and shriveled as the last.

She sighed in relief—she hadn’t dug up the wrong graves.

“Forgive me,” she murmured, as she began inspecting the bodies one by one. Three men and six women.

From their condition, they hadn’t been dead for long.

What filled Charlotte with anger was discovering that, besides Susan, three of the women had been pregnant.

Their blood seemed to have evaporated entirely, leaving them desiccated—consistent with the effects of cockatrice venom.

But something felt off.

What was it?

Under the faint lantern light, Charlotte meticulously examined each corpse. Five of them had expressions of sheer terror, as if they had felt the venom spreading through their bodies, evaporating their blood and desiccating their muscles.

Their faces were frozen in horror.

The other four, however, looked peaceful.

Their eyes were closed, as though they had died in their sleep. Susan was among them.

The remaining three had noticeably swollen abdomens—they had been pregnant.

What did it mean? Was it connected to the pregnancies?

Charlotte thought of Susan, found dead in bed with her eyes closed. If it had been venom, there would have been marks on her body—the cockatrice’s beak was strong enough to cut through steel.

And it couldn’t have been the poisonous gas; otherwise, John, who had been beside Susan, wouldn’t have survived.

Carefully, Charlotte turned Susan’s body over, inspecting every inch of her. There were no external injuries.

No bites, no poison gas. The cockatrice couldn’t kill with its gaze—if it could, Venym, who had seen its eyes, wouldn’t still be alive.

So... was the cockatrice not the killer?

But the pregnancies... that couldn’t be a coincidence.

Charlotte swallowed hard and retrieved her black box.

Praying to the Queen and the Great Tree for forgiveness, she activated the blade within and made a cut into Susan’s abdomen.

Inside, she found a tiny, undeveloped form. It wasn’t even an embryo yet—just a blastocyst, a cluster of around a hundred cells.

Charlotte’s heart sank.

Every woman who had died peacefully had been pregnant.

In her experience, only two kinds of people could detect a pregnancy this early: witches... or someone far more terrifying.