At that moment, the child waved her hand at Gru.
“Y-you gotta come quick, dey said.”
“Uh, yeah. Uju, I’ll be right back!”
“Should we go with you?”
Uju asked with a worried expression.
“No. Uju and the other friends help with the store here.”
Gru stopped Uju and the others from following, then took the child’s hand and started to leave. At that moment, the child suddenly turned around.
“Aren’t you taking that bag?”
“Oh, I gotta take it.”
Gru picked up the bag containing the Filial Snack mk.2 (S+) and followed after the child.
The child took Gru’s hand and began to run.
“Let’s hurry.”
“Yeah.”
How many minutes had they been running like that?
Gru, who had been running after the child, looked back.
‘Was the chairman’s office really this far away?’
The child turned corner after corner and finally reached the far end of a deserted garden.
In the end, Gru asked,
“Friend, how far are we going?”
The girl turned her head.
Unlike before, the child spoke in a calm, cold voice.
“To somewhere with no people.”
“Huh?”
Gru asked again in surprise. It felt as though her heart had dropped with a heavy thud.
At the same time, the child’s black hair began to turn red.
A long scar appeared over the child’s left eye.
[“You should have thought that I might have another vessel too, Han.”]
Gru stared at the child, who was speaking incomprehensible words in English, and opened her mouth.
‘I have to run…….’
As Gru unconsciously took a step backward, Theodora, who had already transformed into an adult, snatched the bag from Gru’s arms.
“Got it.”
“……!”
Gru looked down at her empty hands.
The Filial Snack mk.2 had been stolen!
“If you let that much mana pour out of you, of course you’ll be found out.”
Theodora smiled.
At that moment, a silhouette suddenly flew through the air and snatched the bag from Theodora’s hand.
“Yurian!”
The white Maltese bared its teeth with a growl, the small bag clenched in its jaws.
Gru hurriedly ran over and took the bag back.
‘It’s gone!’
The glowing Filial Snack was already in Theodora’s grasp.
After checking the snack’s information, she let out a delighted laugh.
An S+-rank enhancer.
Something like this had been in a kindergartener’s bag?
She trembled faintly with joy and shock.
It was an opportunity she had discovered completely unexpectedly.
‘I have to find some way to make use of this.’
After becoming Sheyer’s vessel, Theodora had been shattered to pieces.
She had barely managed to gather the fragments that remained and regenerate her body, but this vessel was far too weak.
If things continued like this, she would soon turn to dust again, just as she had before.
‘Han Rowoon……!’
How dare he deceive me!
Grinding her teeth, Theodora roughly seized Gru by the wrist.
[“Yurian. Use your skill on my left eye.”]
“Grrrr……!”
[“What, you’re not going to cooperate willingly? I suppose you don’t care what happens to your friend?”]
“……!”
What was she planning to do to Gru?
While Yurian hesitated, Gru twisted her arm, trying to break free from the woman.
If she could only pull free the wrist wearing her watch, she could contact Dad.
But the woman’s strength far surpassed that of an ordinary adult woman.
A five-year-old’s desperate struggle was not enough to escape her grasp.
“Stay still!”
Theodora grabbed both of Gru’s arms, pinning them in place.
“Grrr! Arf!” (Let her go!)
Yurian barked fiercely, and mana began to rise from its body.
[Activating skill ‘Spectrum Echo (SSS)’.]
-Detects and restores the flow of past time or traces of past energy.
Theodora’s left eye, targeted by the skill, began to move backward through time.
Before long, something resembling a round bead swelled within her eye.
“I knew it would work!”
With a cry of delight, she thrust her finger into her left eye.
At the horrifying sight, Gru let out a choked sound and shrank back.
Then Theodora pulled a round core from the eye socket.
Yurian recognized the core’s presence, and its pupils trembled.
“Arf, arf!”
Theodora clenched the core tightly in her hand.
[“Since it’s come to this, experimenting on my own body shouldn’t be so bad.”]
She would become the dungeon’s master herself in order to reconstruct her body. And the mana that would form the foundation for that would be supplied by the S+-rank enhancer.
As Theodora placed the glowing Filial Snack into her mouth, light burst from the core.
“……!”
In an instant, the scenery before their eyes began to change.
Crack, crack-crack, crack—
At the same time, Theodora’s back bent, then split in two as though a doll’s zipper had been opened.
Creeeak—
Splurt—
A huge silhouette, far too large to have come from such a small body, emerged as though shedding its skin.
Viscous fluid dripped from its entire body. The creature, with unnaturally long limbs, stood hunched over and motionless, like a newly hatched butterfly drying its wet wings.
The sight was so grotesque that the hairs all over Gru’s body seemed to stand on end.
[Modified Theodora Weiss (SSS)]
‘SSS?!’
Could a human become a monster?!
It was the perfect form of a monster—there was no way to guess that it had once been human.
As Gru stood frozen in shock, the sharp, sour smell of chemicals stung her nose.
Only then did Gru look around.
The first thing that came into view was the metal tables scattered here and there.
Experimental apparatuses lay strewn across the tabletops, and sticky liquids dripped between them.
Glass capsules hung from the ceiling above like cocoons. Inside, test subjects floated in curled-up positions.
Gru’s mouth fell open.
The outlines of the test subjects blurred beyond the liquid. None of them had a human shape.
“Eek!”
When Theodora raised her hand, the test subjects curled up inside the glass capsules began to awaken one after another.
They spilled out of the capsules, dropping one by one onto the damp floor with wet thuds.
The grotesque test subjects glared at Gru while breathing heavily.
Gru’s eyes trembled as she found herself surrounded by modified monsters.
Theodora giggled as she watched the terrified child’s eyes, then soon exhaled a strange, sensual breath.
“Haa……!”
It felt as though a tingling tremor caused by mana spread from the top of her head to the tips of her toes. Her heart pounded rapidly, and the energy flowing through her veins burned hot.
Her entire body was like a torch blazing with mana.
Though she was overwhelmed by the surging power, an intense confidence swept over her—the certainty that she was in control of it.
Theodora clenched her fists.
With this power…… she could take Sheyer for herself.
She could never defeat him in a head-on confrontation, but what if she used that child as Sheyer’s vessel?
Wouldn’t Sheyer, contained within the vessel, be someone she could fight with this body?
‘I mustn’t kill her just yet.’
Theodora raised a hand to hold back her test subjects.
Just as a sinister smile began to seep between her lips—
Vroom~ Vrooom~ Vroooooooooom
Fweeeeeeeeee-