Sarah took a deep, long breath upon exiting the portal behind her. Contrary to her expectations, it didn´t drop them in front of the portal on the other side, but right outside the cave system. For whatever reason.

“Nobody here.” She mumbled upon a quick check over their immediate surroundings.

But she wouldn´t complain. She was still in a slightly weakened state from the boss fight and the transformation of her body and soul.

She had never noticed before, but not only the air was clean and pure, but the ambient magic power was too.

In the dungeon, the ambient magic power may have been denser than here, but it was also somewhat corrupted and constantly damaged whoever stayed inside it. But breathing in the clean air and magic power, she felt a sense of relief enter her mind.

“Oh shit this is so good!” Neil shouted and threw himself on a patch of grass. He took deep breaths while rubbing his body against the grass.

Sarah chuckled and looked over to Melissa. She had a more subdued reaction than Neil, but she also took deep breaths.

Sarah let these two enjoy the moment for a while longer and started to walk around their location in small, semi-circles. All the while, she stuffed every plant, animal, and insect into the mouth she could find and focused on restoring herself. She at least tried to steer the magic power inside of her in the right direction, but she had no idea if she was even doing something. The restoration mutation was more of a passive one she had no direct control over. Yet. Time would tell.

She had to get used to the vibrant wildlife in this place again. In the dungeon, the density of minds and the number of beings was very small, so it was easy to tell everything apart.

But here, it felt like her mind was standing in the middle of a storm of information. But she wasn´t the same as before. Even though it was hard to filter all this information, her mutated brain combined with her increased stats somehow managed.

After having made sure, that no trap or people were waiting in ambush around them, she went back to Melissa and Neil.

They both had dropped their heavy backpacks and were holding weapons in their hands. Neil his gauntlets made out of Sarah´s old horns, and Melissa a sharp, metal-stick.

“Metal,” Sarah whispered and tasted the sound of the word. For some reason, a tidbit of information had revealed itself to her. She now knew, that the hard sticks they had brought with them, was metal. Probably iron or steel, if she remembered the rusty smell correctly. But that had to wait for another time.

“Let´s do it as we discussed. I´ll scout ahead, you two will be in shouting range behind me. Questions?” Sarah recapitulated one of their many conversations from the dungeon. All their discussions had led to one conclusion: They had no idea what awaited them and where a safe place would be. So they´d stay together and slowly stake out their surroundings.

Melissa and Neil nodded with steely eyes and started smearing dirt on their faces, hair, and clothes and Sarah joined them with a sour face. This brought back memories of a certain swamp. She had developed somewhat of a cleanliness tick. The mere act of purposely making herself dirty felt somehow wrong to her. But it was no use. She could get cleaned after she got some more blood on her hands.

A few leaves here and there, and they would be very hard to spot if one didn´t look for them. And like this, they crept forward.

Melissa and Neil weren´t a match for Sarah´s silent and ghost-like movements, but they too were used to sneaking as quietly as possible through the woods.

As the entrance to the forbidden cave system wasn´t that far away from the main plaza, they reached their destination in a rather short amount of time.

Sarah sent a weak mental impulse to the two, to signal them to stop. The slight magic power poisoning was quickly dealt with, as they had trained their resistance with Sarah.

Making sure the two were staying in place, she crept forward. She moved so slowly, it felt like she would explode from the adrenaline kicking up inside of her, but she bore with it. Nothing was too much for her revenge.

She shoved herself through one of the bushes on the edges of the forest and peeked towards the main plaza. She hadn’t dared to stretch out her mind this far, in case Denise would be there.

But barely anyone was there. Sarah´s brows furrowed upon this strange sight and her body tensed up. Abandoned tools and various stuff were just lying around on the floor. This place always bristled with life, even after the sunset like it was right at the moment. But nobody was there.

Sarah was very irritated. She slid back into the bushes and crept closer to the cave entrance. And when she saw a movement through a small gap between trees, she immediately froze.

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For a few moments, she thought that she had imagined it. But then, four people came out of the big cave. They seemed to be carrying something in their midst, but it was hard to tell what it was.

They walked some distance, and gently let the object down to the ground. Sarah nearly gasped upon seeing what, or rather who was lying on the object, which turned out to be a stretcher to carry the person.

The person twitched now and again and moved its thin body clumsily. The head was a mess of ugly scars, and the eyes and their sockets looked like they were half burned out. The whole upper part of her face was nearly melted off. It was a horrible sight. There were only a few, red strings of hair growing out of her neck.

And then it hit Sarah. This crippled person in front of her was Denise.

Sarah’s body tensed up and she involuntarily slid out her claws and fletched her teeth. Her muscles tightened so strongly, that thick veins could be seen on them.

But as hard as it was for her, she held back. With a barely controlled mind pulse, she signaled her two companions to slowly approach but stay hidden.

When Sarah confirmed their approach, she too crept closer to the opening. All the while, she studied the four people surrounding Denise. She even knew one of them very well. It was Vanessa. The woman, which was abducted and violated by the three scumbags.

Vanessa was also the only one, with a disgusted and discontent look on her face, but she still stood there. The other three looked somewhat vacant, but still had soft smiles on their faces, as if they weren’t fully awake.

Sarah smiled a little. Denise was badly hurt. And according to the weird facial expressions from her porters, her influence on them seemed to be somewhat different. Maybe even weaker, in the case of Vanessa.

When Sarah was as close as she could be to Denise, she could barely hold on anymore. She gathered magic power to protect her mind and slowly started to circulate magic power through her body. Her muscles and brain started to heat up, and her still weakened body screamed in protest, but she ignored it.

When she felt Neil enter her closer proximity, she couldn’t hold herself anymore.

With an inhuman roar, she exploded out of the bushes straight towards Denise. With her hyperactive brain, she perceived everything slower.

The three vacant-looking people immediately looked at her and started to get in a defensive position around Denise. Vanessa however, looked at her with a grim smile on her face and even stepped a little bit backwards.

All of this only registered fleetingly in Sarah’s mind, and only to differentiate between friend and foe. With all the anger and hatred pouring out of her, that was all she was capable of.

She landed on top of one of the defenders, crushing his ribcage immediately. While they were falling to the ground, and blood started gushing out of his mouth, Sarah grabbed the two other guys by the neck and slammed them into the ground. Loud cracking noises echoed over the clearing, as all three of them died on the spot after her impact.

There was no room for mercy or hesitation. The last time she had held back, she was thrown into the hellish dungeon. Never again, would she allow something like that.

While she took the step next to Denise, she felt her soul and mind getting attacked. But this time, she only grinned diabolically, and let it happen for a few moments.

It didn’t take long for Denise to stop her assault, and scream in pain and surprise.

“What is it, honey?” Sarah asked with an insane smile on her lips and burning eyes. “Don’t you like it inside of my soul anymore?”

But Denise couldn’t or didn’t want to answer her, as she only screamed and tried to crawl away. With no success.

When Sarah took her next step towards her, two more men and three women stormed out of the cave with wooden clubs in their hands and came rushing at her. But they were stopped by Neil, who came rushing out of the bushes like a raging bull.

When he smashed into them, they fell like dry leaves blown away by the wind.

Sarah turned her head towards Denise again, and her smile grew even wider. “Where were we? A right.”

She knelt down and gently laid her hand on Denise's cheek. “Let’s see what my new skill can do.”

With this phrase, she activated her disintegration infusion and started channeling it towards and outwards her hand.

Denise immediately screamed even louder. In the beginning, this was the only indicator that it was working. But soon enough, Sarah started to see the effect. The one half of her face, which Sarah touched with her hand, seemed to wobble and tremble sickeningly. After some more time, her head seemed to be boiling from the inside and her skin burst open in certain places. Her screams were now ear-splitting.

And suddenly, everything was quiet again. The one half of her head had dissolved into reddish gas and slug, which flowed on the ground. Denise was dead.

Sarah looked down with a disgusted look on her face and frantically wiped her hand on Denise's clothes. Now that her rage had somewhat subsided, she looked down on what she had done with horror. She didn’t feel sorry for Denise but was more shocked about her ability.

“Thank you.” She heard a trembling voice from above and she looked up in surprise. Vanessa stood there, with tears streaming down her face. Her lips quivered and her body shook, but her eyes were hard and cold as stone. “I promised to myself, that I’d never let anyone do as they liked with me. That I’d rather die. But I couldn’t even do a thing.”

Sarah could empathize with her feelings, as she had also felt helpless in front of Denise in the past. And apparently, Vanessa had been freed of the parasite upon Denise’s death.

She stood up and put her clean hand on Vanessa’s shoulder. “Let’s make it so no one ever dares to try this on you. What do you say?”

Vanessa nodded stiffly and the stone in her eyes slightly cracked, showing Sarah the hurt and afraid person behind it.

“Go see Melissa after this,” Sarah told her in a soft but firm voice and took in her immediate surroundings.

Neil had tied up the people who had tried to attack her and was standing guard next to them. He gave her a quick nod and a grim smile, before walking off to get Melissa.

“I know you are hurting but…” Sarah looked at Vanessa and she firmly wiped her tears away and shook her head. “It’s fine. What do you need?” she answered while her eyes glanced towards the gory corpse of Denise.

Sarah guided her away towards the nearly empty cave and didn’t spare Denise's corpse another glance. She was now finished with her.

Only six confused people stumbled out of the cave and looked at them with a mixture of joy and fear.

“What the hell happened here?”