Tied up or not, Betty’s spirits were high.

  She strode forward on her short legs, leading the way.

  Pandora followed, with Elsa trailing right behind her, like her shadow. The blood-colored sword was held low, a sign that her guard never dropped.

  The pantry door was thrown open. Supplies were stacked floor-to-ceiling: sacks of flour, pickled vegetables, smoked meats, cheeses, and freshly baked hard bread. The only problem was the empty waterskins.

  Not a big issue. The kitchen had a pump.

  Pandora nodded to herself, then her gaze fell on Betty. Looking at the little kitchen maid’s sturdy frame, she made a decision. “Elsa, loosen her bindings. She can carry supplies. Don’t waste the muscle.”

  Elsa did as she was told, adjusting the knots so Betty’s arms were just free enough to bend and lift.

  “Thank you, My Lady!” Betty said gratefully, immediately bending down to hoist a heavy sack of hard bread. Her small face flushed red from the effort, but her eyes shone with an exceptional brightness.

  Watching Betty’s eagerness to prove her worth, the cold rejection in Elsa’s eyes seemed to melt away. Just a very tiny bit. Not much at all.

  ………………

  After getting the necessary supplies and having Elsa secretly deal with the “potential threat” tied to the chair, Pandora didn’t linger.

  The group quickly left the kitchen and returned to the main buildings of the manor.

  Outside the tall, stained-glass windows, the sun was bright, but its light couldn’t dispel the stench of blood and rot in the air.

  Elsa took the lead, wielding the blood-thorn greatsword as if she were performing a dance named ‘Death’ to the beautiful morning sun.

  A pity there was no background music.

  Shlick!

  The sword’s tip precisely pierced the eye socket of a lunging zombie. With an easy twist of the blade, the zombie, dressed in a servant’s uniform, went limp, collapsing back into a simple corpse.

  Crack!

  Facing a guard zombie clad in leather armor and moving a bit more slowly, Elsa sidestepped its clumsy lunge and, with a reverse grip, cleanly snapped its neck bone. No fuss, no muss.

  Pandora watched, marveling. Elsa was a monster. A product of the System. Top quality, as expected! Whether it was her physical fitness or her reaction time, she was far beyond a normal person. Even the zombies of once well-trained guards were like rotten wood before her, utterly unable to withstand a single blow.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  At the same time, she carefully observed the battlefield.

  Soon, she noticed another anomaly—

  Every time Elsa ended a zombie’s life, a wisp of thin, dark-red mist would float out from the corpse!

  She almost missed it. A trick of the light, maybe. If the sun hadn't hit it at just the right angle, she would have never seen it.

  After observing for a moment longer, Pandora noticed even more.

  The mist seemed to have a life of its own. Most of it was quickly absorbed by Elsa, but a very small portion would drift toward her and Betty like dandelion seeds on the wind, silently inhaled by them.

  The first time she saw herself absorbing the mist, Pandora’s heart leaped into her throat!

  Corpse poison? A virus? Some kind of magical airborne plague?

  She instinctively held her breath, wanting to back away.

  But she quickly discovered that the mist was impossible to avoid! It ignored distance and physical barriers. As long as you were within a certain range of a dying zombie, you were forcibly “absorbing” it.

  Pandora tried covering her mouth and nose with her sleeve. No effect.

  And she couldn’t stay too far from Elsa—that would be more dangerous than the mist!

  She tried asking the System.

  【Please explore on your own, Host.】

  Right. Of course.

  Pandora forced herself to calm down and observe, carefully feeling her body’s reaction after each “absorption.”

  No fever. No dizziness. No nausea, no itching, no worsening of wounds…

  There was no feeling at all!

  It was one thing to know something was wrong, but it behaved just like air! And if it behaved like air, how could it not be air?

  In a lull in the fighting, Pandora asked Elsa, “Did you notice that… red mist? When it enters your body, do you feel anything special? Is it good or bad?”

  While swinging her sword to dispatch another zombie, Elsa answered without turning her head. “My Lady, I feel nothing. Neither a benefit nor a detriment. It’s just… my ‘thirst’ grows a little slower.”

  “‘Thirst’?”

  “Yes, My Lady. I need ‘blood’ to maintain my strength. After absorbing that mist, my ‘craving’ for fresh blood lessens slightly, but the effect is minimal. And unlike the blood I absorb, it doesn’t bring me any enhancement.”

  Elsa’s answer seemed to confirm Pandora’s observations.

  This mist… was it really just some kind of… harmless “air”?

  Pandora watched the dark-red mist as it constantly rose, was absorbed, and swirled in an eerie vortex. Her brow furrowed.

  No matter what, these zombies were definitely not like the ones from the movies in her past life!

  That much was certain.

  Since when did zombies infected by a virus emit this kind of strange mist?

  “‘Corpse-Red Mist’… I’ll call it that for now,” Pandora murmured.

  The name felt fitting. Neutral. No preconceived good or bad vibes.

  The appearance of the “Corpse-Red Mist” gave her even deeper questions about the sudden zombification last night.

  Why?

  Why, at the stroke of midnight, had almost every adult in the manor, without any warning, collectively turned into zombies at the same time?

  It was too bizarre!

  It wasn’t like a virus at all!

  It was more like… a pre-programmed “application,” activated at a specific time by an invisible “switch”!

  Except for the underage children like her and Betty, who had managed by various strokes of luck to dodge the first wave of the “switch,” almost no one had been spared!

  What was hidden behind this?

  Who, or what, had pressed that “switch”?

  And…

  As the thought flickered through her mind, the group had already reached the manor’s main gates.

  Her gaze fell on the road ahead, the road that led to the town beyond the gates.

  Her father, the Viscount… had he encountered the same “switch”?

  Her heart sank.