Iris sauntered through a crumbling street. Surrounding her were students and guards, restrained by black chains, constricted by vines and flowers, imprisoned within ice cages, restricted by spider webs. Although most were unconscious or too weak to move, a few futilely struggled. The stubborn ones sometimes earned the fancy of a few Monster Girls, who came up to them, flirted with them, and offered a chance to experience a unique sensation.

Iris drew her cane to the side. Secain emerged from the darkness, received the cane, and kissed the back of Iris’s hand. She bent her head groundward, her posture shrinking, and smiled brightly.

Despite standing on the battlefield, she paid no attention to everything except her mistress. Only that pair of abyssal eyes, which shone through a black-and-white masquerade mask, could seize her heart and fill her with bubbling feelings she dared not express. Not now. She could only expect a reward after everything had ended.

“Is there something on my face?” Iris said.

“Nothing but elegance, Mistress.”

“This elegance, will you ruin it?” Iris smiled. “Do you wish to defile my appearance?”

Secain averted her peeking gaze and lowered her head further. Her silence said many things.

Lorient arrived beside her mistress, looked at the blushing Secain, and reported to Iris the progression. She’d led other Court members to defeat, capture, and interrogate the guards and students in the nearby buildings.

Her brief report gave Iris an understanding of the situation within Royal Magic Academy. The students and professors were hiding within their respective buildings, where the emergency spell formations kept them from the crimson mist. Unless the Lab Master or the Tower Guardian issued a command, they wouldn’t leave the buildings.

“What do you think?” Iris said.

Lorient pressed her right hand on her chest. “We’ve already captured the building nearest to Mystic Tower. Would you like to enjoy dessert and drink?”

“I can’t overwork my attendants.”

“To serve you is our privilege, Mistress.” Lorient straightened her back. “Please relax and watch us complete the operation. This dangerous work doesn’t befit your status.”

“Who’d save you all from danger, if not me?”

“You’re too precious, Mistress,” Secain said. “To harm you is to gouge out our hearts.”

“To gouge out your heart is to gouge out mine.” Iris turned to Secain. “Your tongue is quite a tease.”

“It can do more than that, Mistress.” Secain covered her mouth, though she allowed her tongue to peek through.

Lorient hmphed, her tone harsh. She shifted her body closer to Iris, but she dared not graze her mistress. Her eyes could only yearn for that permission, yet her vocal cord, bound by her duty, refused to sound her desire.

Iris shook her head. She drew both her hands to her sides, wrapped her arms around Lorient’s and Secain’s shoulders, and pulled them close. Her black-and-white uniform wrinkled, and her lively flesh pushed against theirs.

While Lorient bit her tongue so as not to gasp, Secain weakly cried, her pupils trembling. The two stifled their movement, staying as close as possible to their mistress. As Iris’s fingers glided beneath their uniform and on their bare skin, they held their breath, keeping the heat searing their bosoms.

“This . . . we’re out in the open,” Secain said, though her face gradually moved toward Iris’s. “Others . . . are watching.”

“You’re right.”

Iris let go of her two attendants and strolled onward. She didn’t have to turn around to see their regretful expressions. The other Monster Girls, spying, felt their hearts racing. Their determination flared up; they’d do everything in their power for a chance to receive Iris’s grace, the grace shown, although briefly, to be heavenly.

After recollecting themselves, Lorient and Secain dejectedly followed Iris. Their mistress teased them, lit up a fire in their hearts, but devilishly kept it burning. She was too wicked, too wicked!

Iris arrived before Mystic Tower. With a magic formation preventing crimson mists from pervading its interior, the tower challenged the sky. Its antique design, built with stone slabs, bricks, marble, and crystals, reflected its prestige. Within this building lay forbidden knowledge and, more importantly, captives of her kind.

The Court members had already dealt with the patrolling guards; the students and professors were within the tower, hiding, preparing for the invasion.

Iris produced a small wooden chest in her left palm. She took out a pot containing a withered flower. Its grey petals and dry stem sluggishly swayed as if forceful movement could crumble it into dust.

“We Monster Girls are like this flower,” Iris said. “Alone, we wilt, our essences decayed.”

She grabbed the flower’s stem, yanked it out of the pot, and stroked its petals. Her black-and-white Corruption Power, flowing out of her fingertips, enveloped the dying flower. Its grey vitality livened, turning dark purple.

“To live, to maintain our existence, we have no choice but to plunder, steal, corrupt. They might see us as pitiful; we might see ourselves as liberated; it matters not.”

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With a faint smile, in which she concealed myriad emotions: pride, remorse, confusion, guilt, and delight, she let go of her flower. A gale guided it to Mystic Tower’s sealed entrance. Its ancient exterior exuded dim radiance which deterred all intruders from recklessly barging in.

“The truth is we are both. We live on others, but we live freely. We are unshackled by the world but shackled by ourselves. We are pitiful but also liberated. We are ourselves but also not.”

As the corrupted flower touched the gate, rays of multi-coloured lights erupted. The spell formation defending Mystic Tower exerted its power, producing a sea of Fire, Ice, Water, and Light Elements. They morphed into countless spells of such potency that, other than Iris, everyone braced themselves, preparing their defensive spells, readying their protections.

Yet the flower remained unmoved. Dark purple fluid oozed out of its petals and tainted the spells, the Elements, the door, and the magical formation. The Corruption Power intertwined with the formation’s mechanism, dyed it black and white, and spread its influence.

The formation’s self defence struggled against this foreign energy, but nothing could stop the otherworldly power from plundering, stealing, and corrupting.

When the spells vanished, the Elements dispersed, and the door painted dark purple, the spell formation malfunctioned. Its glow faded; its structure collapsed.

“For others, our touch means destruction, for us, salvation.”

Mystic Tower’s entrance disintegrated into dark particles, which scattered with the lightest breeze. Amidst the admiring gazes of the members of The Court, Iris entered Mystic Tower.

Secain, Lorient, and other Monster Girls rushed in after her. Taking advantage of the panic, they took over the first floor, capturing the personnel, occupying all labs, and taking what they found precious.

A supervisor, Iris merely sat at a tea table her attendants prepared for her. She drank the cocktail made fresh amidst the operation and supported her head with her right hand. Her awe-inspiring presence invited all gazes, but, protected like a princess, nothing filthy or harmful could taint her.

Lorient walked to stand beside Iris and took out a silver card on whose surface engraved a series of complicated lines. This intricate structure, twisting and overlapping, was nigh-impossible to decipher.

“The highest clearance level we could acquire,” Lorient said. “Please give us another lovely speech.”

Iris raised her eyebrows. “Is the previous one provoking?”

“I won’t forget it, ever.” Lorient looked at her palm. “I sometimes reminisce about when I was human. Although feeble and restricted by the world, I feel . . . free, free from the burden of lust, free to roam the world undisguised.”

“Do you regret it?”

Lorient froze and then laughed. Her lascivious tone caressed Iris, who slightly lowered her head, her thoughts unreadable. “It merely fuels my resolution. One day, the future where we Monster Girls walk the earth unchained will arrive. The Court will herald this change; you will herald this change.”

Holding the silver card, Iris got up from her chair and went to the entrance to the second floor. The first floor was merely an archive with relatively mundane knowledge and labs. Even ordinary students could come here if they have the professors’ permission.

As Iris pressed the silver card on the locked gate leading to the second floor, her subordinates gathered around her. Their gazes concentrated on her figure, her neat uniform, and her faint smile as if determined to have her appearance burn unto their souls, her spectre unto their minds.

The winding lines on the card glimmered, and the hidden mechanism within the gate shifted. Fog crawled out of the second floor, poured down the staircase, and obscured Iris’s heels.

She lifted her head, staring at the second floor, where a few Mages awaited. A smile emerged on her face as she stepped forward. Her figure distorted, vanished, dissolved into the wind. Her ghostly silhouette traversed the stairs, their aura emitting a chilling presence that dulled, froze, and shattered all activated traps.

The Mages raised their staffs, but their eyes failed to track their enemy. Iris’s shadowy figure manifested in front of one of them. She swung her blade of ice. Its dull side struck the Mage, flinging him across the hall.

His body crashed against a wall and fell to the ground. He groaned and stood up. When he raised his staff, ready to return fire, he found his friends disarmed, bound by shadowy chains, stabbed by icicles, and constricted by thorny vines.

Yet he couldn’t find Iris. A chill gripped his heart. He reached for an emergency teleportation scroll in his cloak. He was about to tear it apart when his vision blurred, and he fell unconscious.

Iris let go of her icy blade, which dispersed into Ice-Element particles, and sighed.

What she did was bullying a few junior researchers who never partook in life-or-death combats. These people, even if they come in groups of tens, wouldn’t be able to touch her.

They couldn’t even see her.

The rest of The Court came up and cleared the mess and ventured forward, leaving only a few attendants to take care of Iris. Bored, Iris searched the nearby rooms. The second floor was for summoning experiments and Planes explorations.

She didn’t find anything she’d consider a treasure, though a few research papers piqued her interest.

Except for capturing a professor, a Master-Tier Mages, nothing noteworthy happened on the second floor. Iris didn’t even need to interrogate the professor, who, upon seeing Lorient’s bloodied whip, revealed everything.

“That’s all, Mistress,” Secain said. “But I believed he concealed a few abilities of his colleagues.”

“It’d be strange if he didn’t.”

“He’s taking our mercy for granted.” Secain hmphed. “I can interrogate him again.”

“It’s not yet the time to declare war. Our priority is to save our friends.”

Secain assented. After receiving the silver card from Iris, who didn’t want to steal the spotlight from her subordinates, Secain led the team up to the third floor.

A few Master-Tier Mages cooperated and put up a desperate defence, injuring a few Transformation Phase Monster Girls before getting subjugated. Though Iris didn’t personally act, she oversaw the battle in anticipation of any unexpected result.

No Monster Girl could die under her watch.

Though she looked after the injured Monster Girls, the professors who wounded them didn’t receive her protection. If not for the no-death rule, these professors would already have their hands cut off and their eyes hollowed out.

“Heal them,” Iris said. “Torture them, but do not grant them death. It’s my mercy, and cruelty.”

Their agonising screams permeated the floor until their pain became unbearable, and they fainted in their blood puddle. Some Monster Girls still wanted to continue, but Iris reproached them, putting an end to the punishment.

While ordering her people to restrain the prisoners, Iris frowned. Throughout the torture session, she coldly watched the process, her eyes gleaning the most gruesome detail.

Her heart was still, her mind tranquil. Even if those professors were to die, she would remain unmoved. Only fury for their harming her Monster Girl followers swirled in her soul.

She couldn’t feel anything. Not even contempt.

Only indifference of a higher being.

She had changed. But was it this body that changed her, or was it herself?

If she continued down this path, would she lose all feelings for everyone except the selected few?

That notion didn’t distress her.

“No more carelessness,” she said. “For the next floor, I shall lead the way.”

The fourth floor, the floor on which the captive Monster Girls got imprisoned. She couldn’t afford any mistake now.