“Ha… ha…”

  Inside the alley, a man ran while staggering along the walls, as if he were being chased.

  The sky gradually darkened, yet the man still ran frantically, as if a monstrous beast were chasing him.

  Finally, as if he had given up, the man stopped, leaned against the wall beside him and, panting, looked back.

  That man was none other than Andreas.

  “Stop hiding, I know you’re there!” Fear kept growing in the depths of Andreas’s mind, the sweat pouring over his whole body making him even feel signs of dehydration.

  The magic in his hand was already prepared, the set of runes glowed in his palm, but he did not know where the target was.

  “Whoosh—”

  With a brief sound cutting through the air, a table knife tore through the air and directly pierced Andreas’s right hand, which was casting the magic.

  “Ah!!!” Flames exploded in Andreas’s hand, and the backlash of the magic made his right hand completely lose all sensation.

  Andreas fell to the ground, without strength. A dried and shriveled eyeball rolled out of the pocket of his coat and hit against the wall.

  Andreas’s charred right hand spurted blood incessantly. The pain intensified his fear, and the fear amplified his pain. He had completely lost the will to resist.

  “Ugh… I beg you, I’ll do anything, I beg you, let me go, I promise you, I’ll do anything…”

  Andreas collapsed. Like a madman, he cried out to the empty air in front of him.

  Under his pleas, at the bend of the alley before him, a silhouette appeared.

  A strange bright red suit, green hair, a color combination that defied all sense of aesthetics, together with the makeup, did not convey something comical, but something bizarre.

  That figure seemed extremely relaxed, coming from afar skipping, like a clown about to go on stage.

  Under the light of the kerosene lamp, the face of the newcomer was fully revealed: it was Elysia. Only, at that moment, her mental state seemed quite unstable.

  His mental state had already collapsed, preventing Andreas from using his spiritual vision to judge the strength of the newcomer. He crawled on the ground like a dog, only crying helplessly.

  “Hic… hic…” Another sob was heard, but it was not from Andreas.

  Andreas stopped crying and raised his head stiffly. He saw that the madwoman in front of him was imitating his crying.

  When she noticed that he was looking, she went back to laughing.

  “Ha ha, hahahahaha, interesting.”

  Looking at the woman in front of him, who clapped her hands for some unknown reason, Andreas became even more terrified.

  He desperately tried to retreat, but he wasn’t faster than her. She reached out and yanked the table knife from his palm.

  “AAAAAA—Ghk Ghk—”

  The intense pain made Andreas let out a miserable scream, but in the next instant his neck was cut.

  Blood bubbled in his throat. It would not take long for him to choke on his own blood until he died.

  Perhaps death would be his best release.

  “Hey, hey, Andreas, hey Andreas, Andreas, Andreas.” A hoarse female voice called his name impatiently.

  And Andreas, already collapsed against the wall, no longer had the strength even to raise his head.

  “Heey~”

  The woman extended her left hand, grabbed Andreas’s hair and said with a smile: “Look, hey, how about I show you a magic trick?”

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  She held Andreas’s hair with one hand, making him look at her, while the other spun in the air.

  Andreas watched everything without strength. At the end of his life, there was nothing left to fear.

  “Ta-da~” The woman brought her hands together and opened them again, in her hand appeared a beautiful bouquet of flowers.

  “No, no, that’s not it.” Shaking the bouquet, the branches opened and revealed a dagger hidden inside.

  Andreas showed no fear, on the contrary, he revealed a faint resigned smile, as if he thought that ending his life like this would not be bad either.

  “No, no, hehehe, hahahahahahaha this is it!”

  The woman laughed madly. The exquisite dagger spun in her hand. She put her hand behind her back again and, when she extended it once more, there was a dirty rat in her hand, squeaking in pain.

  “Gurgle— Ghk!!!!”

  Andreas’s eyes suddenly filled with terror. The blood stuck in his throat did not allow him to say a word, he could only shake his head weakly and helplessly.

  “Come on, open your mouth, You haven’t eaten yet, have you?” said the woman with a smile, squeezing Andreas’s mouth. “Come on, have a good meal.”

  Andreas did not know where the strength came from, he shut his mouth tightly, clenched his teeth until his gums bled, but did not open it.

  Making him swallow a live rat was perhaps more terrifying than dying.

  “Ah, your mouth is injured, you can’t eat, so that’s it.” As if she had thought of something, the woman gave up forcing Andreas’s mouth open.

  Squatting in front of him, the woman lifted his chin with her hand, exposing the throat that had been cut.

  She pressed the rat’s head and, brutally, shoved the rat through the wound in his throat.

  “Hehehe!!! Still won’t eat? Huh?! Hahahahaha!!!”

  “Ghk!!!! Gurgle!!!!! Ugh!!!!!!”

  With the woman’s movements, Andreas’s wound tore wider and wider. The painful and desperate wail echoed through the alley. No one knew how much time had passed until it finally ceased.

  ….

  ...

  Some clarity returned to Elysia’s crazed gaze because of this system notification.

  She frowned in pain, as if she could no longer resist the mental erosion.

  Gathering all her strength, Elysia transmitted her thoughts to the system.

  “Dr… draw…”

  This time there was no extravagant draw interface. The moment Elysia said “draw,” a card shining with blue light appeared in her vision.

  Her consciousness gradually dissipated. Elysia no longer had the strength to see the description of the card. With the last remnant of mental power, she transmitted her final thought to the system.

  “Transformation!”

  The space around her warped, and in an instant, the blood-covered clown disappeared.

  In her place appeared a figure of height similar to Elysia’s original body, completely wrapped in a long black coat, with a silver beaked mask on the face, standing calmly in the middle of the pool of blood.