"...Cut very neatly."
Night Owl's consciousness would forever remain frozen on the sweet smile of that girl in the black dress.
He didn't even have time to let out a scream.
Alice's scissors were too fast.
So fast that before his nerves could transmit the signal of 'pain' to his brain, his head had already been separated from his body.
"Not very durable at all."
Alice curled her lips, looking a bit bored.
She grabbed the headless corpse, which was still twitching, like she was carrying a tattered sack. She leaped lightly from the top of the tree dozens of meters high and landed steadily at the clinic's entrance.
"Director, I caught a bad child who was peeping."
Alice tossed the corpse onto the ground. Her face had returned to that innocent expression, as if she had just gone to the backyard to pick an apple.
"What should we do with him? Should we sew him up and turn him into a scarecrow for the entrance?"
Victor was by the sink, using a brush to meticulously clean the blood and grime from under his fingernails.
A successful tumor removal surgery had put him in a very good mood.
Even though the patient was a pig, the surgery itself had been perfect.
"No need for a scarecrow; it takes up too much space."
Victor didn't even look back, simply giving a casual instruction.
"Drag the body to the recycling furnace in the backyard and see how many points it can be decomposed into. As for the head..."
He rinsed his hands, his tone as flat as if he were discussing what to have for dinner.
"Throw it away. Brain tissue breeds bacteria easily. Oh, and strip the equipment off him to see if there's anything valuable."
"Understood, Director."
Alice chirped happily and dragged the body toward the backyard, humming that eerie nursery rhyme.
Elizabeth sat behind the counter, gently swirling a glass of fresh blood she had just 'sampled' from the magic boar.
Watching this scene, her beautiful brows furrowed slightly.
While she was no saint herself—having killed more people than Victor had eaten meals—talking about murder as casually as disposing of medical waste...
Did this man really have no heart?
Or was it that, in his eyes, everything in this world was meaningless except for 'patients' and 'surgeries'?
Elizabeth took a sip of the warm blood, a flicker of complexity crossing her red eyes.
She suddenly felt a bit fortunate.
Fortunate that she had been carried in as a 'patient' back then, rather than an 'enemy'.
Just then.
【Ding!】
【Warning! An unidentified flying unit has been detected at high altitude!】
【Target is moving away at high speed. Locked!】
【Threat Level: Low.】
【Carrying hostile intelligence. Immediate interception is recommended!】
The system's alarm suddenly rang in Victor's mind.
"Hmm?"
Victor's hand-washing motion paused.
He looked up, his gaze like lightning, instantly piercing through the thick roof of the clinic to look at the pitch-black night sky.
Within the vision of his 【True Sight Eye】.
A raven, entirely pitch-black with eyes flashing an eerie red light, was moving at a speed far exceeding that of ordinary birds. It had turned into a streak of black lightning, racing toward the outskirts of the forest.
That speed was almost on the verge of breaking the sound barrier.
"A Demon-Eye Raven?"
Victor narrowed his eyes.
He was not unfamiliar with this thing.
It was a specific type of alchemy pet used by the Corvinus family's mage corps, specifically designed to transmit the highest level of confidential intelligence.
In his predecessor's memories, this expensive, single-use creation was only deployed when the family faced a major crisis or needed to execute the filthiest assassination missions.
"It seems the fellow who just got snipped wasn't an ordinary scout."
Victor dried his hands, a cold arc curling at the corner of his mouth.
"Lancelot... my dear brother."
"Couldn't sit still so soon? You already sent someone to 'collect my corpse'?"
"What a pity. Your man doesn't seem very durable."
The Demon-Eye Raven was extremely fast. In just a few breaths, it had already flown nearly a thousand meters, looking like it was about to vanish into the dense fog.
Once it flew out of the Eternal Night Peninsula, everything Victor had built here would be immediately exposed to the eyes of the family and the Church.
While Victor wasn't afraid of them coming,
He hated trouble.
Especially the kind of trouble that would interfere with his focus on performing surgeries.
"Elizabeth."
Victor didn't even bother to step out of the clinic, simply calling out her name.
"I'm here, Director,"
Elizabeth set down her glass and responded languidly.
"Do you see that black bird in the sky?"
Victor pointed toward the sky.
"I see it. An alchemy raven. It's flying quite fast," Elizabeth evaluated, her tone carrying a hint of disdain.
"Shoot it down."
Victor's voice was calm and rippleless.
"I'm a bit hungry. I'd like some bird soup."
"..."
Elizabeth was stunned for a moment.
Using an S-grade Blood Queen to hunt a raven?
You're using a butcher's cleaver to kill a chicken!
No, this is practically using a star-destroying cannon to swat a mosquito!
She really wanted to refuse.
But this was not just the Director's order; it also concerned the safety of the clinic.
"Fine."
Elizabeth sighed and stood up from the high stool.
She didn't even walk out of the clinic. She simply walked to the window and extended a finger as slender as jade.
Her fingertip pointed upward, aiming from a distance at the black dot that was about to disappear in the night sky.
"Blood Magic: Myriad Blood Spines."
Her red lips parted slightly as she uttered a few cold syllables.
In the next second.
In the clinic's backyard, inside the massive blood pool that had just been used to process the waste blood from the magic boar.
Gurgle—
The blood boiled.
Tens of thousands of blood threads, thinner than a strand of hair, suddenly shot into the sky as if receiving some kind of summons.
They converged and condensed in mid-air, instantly transforming into a massive blood spear a hundred meters long. It was dark red throughout, with a tip sharp enough to pierce dragon scales.
Without a moment's pause.
Swoosh—!!!
The blood spear tore through the air, letting out a shrill whistling sound. Carrying an unrivaled momentum, it chased after the target at a speed ten times faster than the Demon-Eye Raven.
...
High in the sky.
The Demon-Eye Raven was weaving through the clouds triumphantly.
Its modified eyes could clearly see everything on the ground.
It saw that terrifying clinic and the puddles of black blood that had not yet dried at the entrance.
It could even sense that the life aura of its master, Night Owl, had completely vanished.
Fear.
A fear rooted in instinct made it want to leave this hellhole as quickly as possible.
Faster! Even faster!
I must take the news back!
Just then.
An extreme sense of danger came from behind it without any warning.
The Demon-Eye Raven's feathers instantly puffed out.
It whipped its head around.
Then, it saw the most spectacular and final sight of its life.
A massive, blood-colored spear that seemed capable of piercing the sky had already occupied its entire field of vision.
The terrifying pressure emanating from it made its very soul tremble.
"Caw... (Holy shit)!"
It only had time to let out one hoarse cry of grief.
Puff—!
The blood spear hit with precision.
There was no suspense.
The alchemy pet, renowned for its speed and durability, was like a sparrow hit by a bullet. It instantly exploded in the air into a cloud of black blood mist and dancing feathers.
Not a single intact bone remained.
"Done."
Inside the clinic, Elizabeth snapped her fingers.
The blood spear in the sky instantly collapsed, turning into a downpour of blood that dyed the forest within a hundred-meter radius an eerie red.
"Director, your soup... it seems the pot is gone."
Elizabeth turned around and shrugged, a hint of schadenfreude on her face.
"It's fine. I don't like bird soup anyway."
Victor didn't care.
He raised his hand and made a grasping motion toward the direction where the raven had been shot down.
"Blood Magic: Attraction."
Elizabeth saw a razor-thin blood thread fly from her fingertip, precisely wrapping around a tiny falling object in the air before snapping back like lightning.
Clack.
A small metal tube, soaked in blood, fell into Victor's open palm.
"Good job."
Victor offered a compliment, then used tweezers to carefully pick up the metal tube and unscrew the cap.
Inside was a roll of parchment made of special waterproof material.
Victor unfurled the parchment.
On it was scrawled handwriting written in blood. Because of the owner's fear, the writing was incredibly shaky, but the content was still legible.
"...Possessed by an ancient evil god... enslaving the Blood Queen... controlling Bone Sentinels... forbidden experiments..."
Looking at this string of highly imaginative terms, Victor's mouth couldn't help but twitch.
"What is all this?"
"I'm just a doctor saving lives. How did I become an evil god?"
"And what do they mean by 'enslaving'? Elizabeth clearly stayed behind voluntarily to work off her debt!"
He continued reading.
When he reached the last line, Victor's eyes instantly turned cold.
【...Young Master Lancelot has already prepared a backup plan. If I lose contact, the 'Black Blade' will arrive within three days. Target: Eradicate the roots, leave no survivors.】
"Black Blade?"
Victor searched for the name in his mind.
That was the top assassin among the death soldiers raised by the Corvinus family.
Gold-rank.
Expert in stealth, poisoning, and all sorts of sinister assassination techniques.
In his predecessor's memories, this 'Black Blade' was like a Sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of all the family's enemies. Countless people had died by his hand.
"Eradicate the roots?"
Victor tightened his grip on the parchment, producing a crisp sound of grinding bones.
"My dear brother, you really... aren't leaving me any way out at all."
He glanced at the system map.
On that 3D map, a red dot representing 'High-Risk Hostility' was moving silently and rapidly less than five kilometers away from the clinic.
Clearly, that so-called 'Black Blade' had been lurking nearby for a long time.
He hadn't moved with the group of monsters earlier; instead, he was waiting for the best moment.
A moment when Victor would be most relaxed and least expecting it.
"Arriving within three days? I'd say you're already here."
Victor tossed the parchment into the recycling furnace, watching it turn to ash.
He turned and looked at Alice, who was standing by the door watching everything curiously.
"Alice."
The expression on Victor's face was terrifyingly calm, but a cold light like a scalpel flickered in his eyes.
"Has the body of that scout from earlier been decomposed?"
Alice shook her head. "Not yet. It's piled in the backyard."
"Very well."
Victor nodded.
"Go and peel his skin off... completely intact."
"Then find a few wooden stakes and turn him into a scarecrow. Hang it in the most prominent position at our clinic's entrance."
"I want to prepare a special welcome gift for our 'guest' who has come from so far away."
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