Outside the door, Pandora leaned back against the cool wood and let out a soft, silent breath.

  Then she looked up at the empty courtyard and said calmly, “Light it.”

  The moment she finished speaking—

  BOOM—!!!

  Fierce flames, like long-suppressed rage, erupted violently.

  The fire didn’t start in one place. Instantly, from all around the opulent house, flames surged up at once. Orange-red tongues of fire greedily licked at everything flammable, crackling and popping. Thick, rolling black smoke billowed upward.

  In just a few breaths, the entire house was surrounded, engulfed by roaring flames. It became a massive, bright… torch.

  Inside, panicked screams, furious curses, and the dull thud-thud of corpse puppets slamming against doors and windows erupted immediately.

  “Let me out! You lunatic!!”

  “No—!!”

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Raelf’s voice, mixed with inhuman roars, twisted and distorted inside the flames.

  Occasionally, corpse puppets wrapped in fire crashed through windows or tried to break down the door.

  But Pandora stood calmly not far from the front door, her sword reflecting the dancing flames. Anything trying to charge out would immediately face her cold, precise blade.

  As for the house’s other possible exits, Elsa’s crimson silhouette and Nicole’s figure with her huge backpack had long since taken up quiet positions there.

  Raelf tried again and again to organize his forces for a concentrated breakout from one direction.

  Each time, the coordinated trio drove them back into the house, now a fiery inferno.

  The flames burned fiercer.

  Wooden supports groaned. Glass shattered from the heat. Opulent decorations turned to ash.

  The screams and curses inside gradually weakened. The crashing sounds grew sparser.

  Finally, all noise was drowned out by the all-consuming, hungry roar of the flames.

  The orange-red firelight lit Pandora’s calm face, flames dancing in her pupils.

  The fire completely devoured the whole house, and with it all the schemes, traps, ambitions, and unwillingness inside.

  “So…” Nicole arrived beside Pandora, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with her, watching the opulent house groan and collapse in the flames.

  The towering fire cast the evening sky in an ominous orange-red. Rolling black smoke rose like a giant beast’s breath. Waves of heat blasted their faces, carrying the smell of scorched wood, burning fabric, and… a more nauseating, peculiar stench of burning flesh.

  Nicole waved a hand in front of her face against the heat. Her gaze traveled with interest over the sea of fire, a note of curiosity in her tone.

  “Pandora, aren’t you worried… that meditation method you wanted might burn up inside?”

  Pandora glanced sideways at her. The firelight danced on her profile, outlining hard shadows, but didn’t stir the slightest ripple on her placid face.

  “Of course not.” Her reply was light, certain. “He had time to set traps, prepare corpse puppets, even arrange a whole afternoon tea… Anything truly valuable to him was moved out long ago. What’s left is either junk or bait meant to mislead us.”

  Nicole nodded, an “as expected” look on her face. “True.”

  She paused, then added with a hint of teasing, “Though, burning it down… is a pretty direct way of handling things.”

  There was one more thought Pandora didn’t voice. She’d never really believed the wizard’s book with the meditation method was in Raelf Pence’s hands to begin with.

  Now that she knew this Hunter team had a third-ranker—The Blood Tonic Aldrich—behind them, and this move against her was condoned, maybe even ordered by him… then how could something that important be left with a mere enforcer like Raelf?

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  That thing was most likely still in Aldrich’s own hands.

  The name stirred a faint ripple in her mind. The Blood Tonic Aldrich… Pandora frowned slightly. It sounded familiar. Not from casual rumors in Eden, but… maybe from Nicole herself?

  She glanced sideways at the blond girl. Nicole seemed unaware, watching the fire devour the house with keen interest, her face almost artistically appreciative.

  “Hey, right.” Nicole suddenly remembered something, turning to Pandora, her eyes sparkling with gossip. “As expected… your maid’s been around all along, huh.”

  Her tone held a hint of “called it” self-satisfaction. “I guessed that sniper, Index Finger, was taken care of by her, right?” She blinked. “Impressive. Seems like aside from me, practically no one knows about your connection…”

  A smile mixing excitement and satisfaction appeared on her face. “This feeling of having ‘exclusive intel’… pretty good!”

  She leaned in closer, lowering her voice. “By the way, how did you two coordinate? How’d she appear so… ‘timely’? You and Poxman hadn’t been inside long before she came and found me waiting outside…” Her eyes held clear curiosity. “She wasn’t… secretly following us the whole time, was she?”

  Hearing this, a faint curve touched the corner of Pandora’s mouth. She didn’t answer right away, turning her gaze back to the fire.

  The flames had completely swallowed the house. Wooden structures crackled their last under the intense heat. The house’s outline blurred and collapsed within the inferno.

  “All that…” Pandora’s voice was calm, carrying a hint of “just wait.” “…After this fire burns out… We can sit and chat.”

  She said they’d talk after the fire burned out, but standing around watching a house turn to ash was too tedious. It took too much patience.

  Especially once the flames were in complete control, the house’s structure was collapsing for good, and all signs of life inside had long since vanished…

  Sticking around felt pointless.

  After about a dozen minutes, both Pandora and Nicole lost the patience to keep watching. In silent agreement, they turned and walked away from the heat and smoke.

  They found a similarly abandoned but still sturdy fast-food joint on a quieter street. The sign’s letters were peeling and faded, barely hinting at “hamburger” or something like that. The glass was long gone, the inside full of dust and debris.

  Pandora and Nicole went in, cleared off a table and two still-solid chairs by the window, and sat down. They chatted while watching the distant skeleton of the house burn, the flames starting to die down. The firelight danced on their faces, casting long, wavering shadows.

  In truth, Elsa’s role in Pandora’s plan hadn’t been as simple as she’d casually told Nicole. The real situation was this:

  After absorbing Iron Hand’s blood at the flower market, Pandora had Elsa change back to human form. But she didn’t have her leave the shop right away to regroup. Instead, she told her to find a hidden spot to rest and adjust.

  This wasn’t necessarily to avoid Nicole on purpose—though Pandora’s trust in her wasn’t that deep yet, it wasn’t at the level of constant suspicion. It was more out of habit. Caution.

  No need to show Elsa, her ace in the hole, in front of a broker whose motives were still unclear.

  Pandora had confidence in her own strength, but some things were better kept hidden. That was her way.

  Of course, when she psychically sensed the corpse puppets hidden around Raelf Pence’s house, still giving off a faint decay, and when she noticed the subtle but real shift in Poxman’s breathing, heartbeat, and mental state the closer they got to the house—that “relaxation” that was all wrong…

  She knew Elsa’s help was needed.

  Some of the dirty, heavy work required speed and absolute force. Work that Nicole alone, as an infodealer, couldn’t handle quietly.

  And it was true. Without Elsa, Nicole probably couldn’t have “handled” the lurking corpse puppets around the house so cleanly and fast without raising the alarm inside. Nor could she have quickly gathered enough fast-burning fuel and spread it evenly to all the key points of the house by herself.

  Nicole’s intelligence and on-the-spot analysis were crucial, but Elsa’s combat power and execution were just as indispensable.

  But during her earlier chat with Nicole, Pandora didn’t share all these details. She skillfully left out the core of Elsa’s shape-shifting ability and the special, near-telepathic bond they shared. Using vague words like “coincidence” and “pre-arranged,” she summed it all up as: after killing Index Finger, Elsa returned to the spot Pandora had told her about ahead of time and just happened to run into Nicole waiting outside.

  That was it.

  ………………

  “Alright.” Nicole brushed dust—mixed with ash and unidentifiable blackened bits—from her hands. She looked satisfied at the small pile of barely recognizable items in front of her. “These are… the somewhat useful papers and clues. As for the rest…”

  She glanced at the surrounding ruins, still smoking and reeking of scorched things, and shrugged. “Not much use. Leave them for the scavengers with noses sharper than dogs. They always fish unexpected ‘treasures’ out of dumps.”

  Three or four hours passed. The huge fire finally ate all the burnable stuff and began to die. All that was left was a field of blackened, twisted wreckage and the throat-clogging smell of smoke and dust. The temperature inside had dropped enough for Pandora and Nicole, as second-ranks, to go in and search. The few glowing embers deep in the charred wood weren’t a threat.

  Nicole moved fast. She was the first to duck into the still-hot ruins the moment the flames weakened and the heat let up a little. Her figure shifted nimbly between charred beams and twisted metal, her eyes sharp as a hawk’s.

  The warped, soot-blackened wreckage seemed to take on meaning under her gaze. Sometimes she bent down, pulling a half-burned notebook from under rubble, its inner pages holding faint writing. Other times she used a special small hook to fish out a few not-fully-melted badges or rings from a mess of fused metal and glass. She even found a small, heat-warped but tough-looking metal box beside an almost-carbonized corpse.

  The whole process looked practiced, quick, and full of purpose.

  Pandora stood farther off on a cleaner patch of ground, quietly watching Nicole work. It even crossed her mind that Nicole’s skill and sharp eye for “treasure-hunting” in ruins might rival those of the professional scavengers who combed the city’s dumps and wrecks for a living.

  Maybe she really had done similar work before?

  The thought flashed through Pandora’s mind. But when she asked about it later, Nicole just blinked and gave a kind of mysterious smile, neither confirming nor denying, not really answering the question at all.

  ………………

  The trio—Pandora, Nicole, and Elsa standing quietly nearby—brought the “somewhat useful” items salvaged from the ruins back to the abandoned burger joint. They sat back down at the cleared table by the window.