“I would.”
Just as the tension in Isolde's chest began to ease, Lia added, “But if the Duke activates the primary contract's suppression, I will lose the ability to move.”
Isolde was slightly puzzled. “What is the primary contract?”
Lia explained, “Lord Valen is the master of the castle. You, Miss, are his subordinate contractee, meaning your contract hierarchy is lower than his.”
As expected, a cunning old bastard like Valen wouldn't keep a blade capable of killing him by his side.
Lia was usable, but she couldn't be brandished directly in Valen's face.
Isolde walked over to the desk and opened the notebook left behind by the body's original owner.
The pages were densely packed with occult symbols. Much of the handwriting was distorted and crazed, the pen strokes trembling violently, nearly tearing through the paper where the writer had reached a fever pitch of excitement.
With just a glance, the meanings of the corresponding spell structures automatically surfaced in her mind.
Soul anchoring, limb reattachment, puppet driving, human experimentation...
The knowledge made her stomach churn, yet these were the only weapons she could currently wield.
Yu Lingye loathed these things, but Isolde understood them.
If she wanted to survive, she had to swallow her disgust first.
Isolde flipped to the structural diagram of the underground laboratory, her gaze landing on the "Ward-Stripping Formation" in the corner of the parchment scroll.
Shortly after this, Valen would undergo the body part fusion. He would actively disable some of the protective wards in this very spot to facilitate the integration of the new body parts.
In other words, that would be the moment he was closest to revealing a weakness.
But even so, Valen was not a defanged serpent. Even if his defense temporarily dropped, with her current strength, charging at him would only result in being swatted into the floorboards.
Isolde lightly tapped the diagram with her fingertips as an idea slowly floated to the surface.
What if she lured players into the castle ahead of schedule?
Let them draw Valen's aggro and wear down his strength for her.
Meanwhile, she only needed to set up traps at the banquet venue in advance and deliver the finishing blow to Valen at the critical moment.
As for those players...
Isolde lowered her eyes, her lips curving upward.
In her past life, she had been used as a stepping stone to test the waters. This time, it was their turn to taste the cruelty of the dungeon mechanics.
Isolde closed the notebook and looked up at Lia.
The grey light filtering through the window illuminated her pale face, making her look both beautiful and chilling.
“Lia, go prepare a white dress.”
“Yes.”
“And bring me the key to the underground laboratory.”
As Lia turned to leave, Isolde suddenly called her back. “Wait. From now on, without my order, you are not to report any of my anomalies to Valen.”
Lia's grey eyes paused. “Yes, Miss.”
Valen's current body was continuously rotting. The rejection of his power caused his perception of low-level contracts to weaken.
As long as Lia did not proactively report anything, Valen would not notice any anomalies on her end.
Isolde leaned back in her chair and carefully studied the magic circle.
If she couldn't attack head-on, she would let her brains decide her success.
Besides, with 120 points in Intelligence, it would be a waste of her stats not to use it for some underhanded schemes.
Lia quickly returned with the key to the underground laboratory.
The key was pitch-black, with a shriveled eyeball embedded in its handle. When Isolde took it, the eyeball rolled quite inappropriately.
Suppressing her disgust, she gripped it in her hand, and the two of them entered the underground laboratory together.
Eerie blue soulfires hung on both sides of the walls, and the floor was engraved with complex alchemy arrays. Dried blood scabs remained within the lines of the arrays, resembling an unclosed mouth.
Isolde swept her gaze around, matching the materials one by one based on the original owner's memories.
Black salt, soul-sealing wax, Soul Thread, potions, bone nails—all were present.
Even better, there was an unlocked wooden chest in the corner.
Isolde lifted the lid, revealing three bottles of 【Degraded Purifying Holy Water】 neatly arranged inside.
Good stuff. It might be degraded, but it was perfect for dealing with the decaying Valen. There was no reason not to use it.
Isolde took the holy water and fished out a tattered piece of parchment.
【Basic Spell: Bind】
【Description: Consumes 5 MP to briefly bind the target and interrupt spellcasting. Success rate is influenced by Intelligence.】
Isolde was delighted.
An active skill! Talk about a freebie landing right in her lap.
She spread the parchment on the table right then and there, dismantling the spell structure using the original owner's memories.
The twisted symbols constantly shifted before her eyes.
Anyone else would probably get a headache from just a couple of glances, but the more Isolde looked, the clearer her mind became.
Using her Soul Thread as the foundational medium, she integrated the fragmented spell structure into her own magic circuit.
On her seventh failed attempt, the Soul Thread backfired, and tiny beads of blood seeped from her fingertips.
Isolde seemed completely immersed in her spellcraft, paying no mind to the negligible wound as she continued to focus on modifying the formation.
Half an hour later, a grey light screen finally popped up.
【You have created an active skill: Soul-Binding Thread (Novice)】
【Effect: Releases threads capable of binding souls. Upon success, briefly binds the target's movements for 0.8 seconds. If the target is in a weakened, terrified, or contaminated state, each matching condition extends the binding duration, up to a maximum of 3 seconds.】
0.8 seconds might be just the blink of an eye to anyone else.
But in her hands, as long as she timed it right, it would be enough to give Valen a nasty setback.
After some thought, she gave one bottle of holy water to Lia and kept two for herself.
She soaked her Soul Thread in paralyzing potion and black salt, then took two bone nails and dipped them into the Degraded Purifying Holy Water just in case.
Lia tilted her head. “Miss, is this for anchoring souls?”
“No,” Isolde said, leisurely putting away the silver thread. “This is for pinning down certain garbage that doesn't know how to behave.”
Lia fell silent for a moment. “Do you need me to go pin them down now?”
As expected of a domestic-use human forklift with 100 Strength—her killing intent was steady, and her execution was flawless.
“Not yet.” She closed the wooden chest. “We have to wait for the fated ones to come collect the trash.”
For the next three days, Isolde barely left the underground laboratory.
She re-inventoried the materials, modified several inconspicuous array patterns in the banquet hall, and repaired the illusion formation in the east tower.
It was a decoy illusion formation left behind by the body's original owner.
The illusion formation would disguise the castle as an ordinary manor, and Isolde would then use her persona as a young girl in a white dress to lure those who strayed into the grey fog step by step.
The original owner had lured and killed many passersby and low-level players this way.
Yu Lingye had to admit that this body's brain was indeed excessively useful.
Even though she was touching many of the spell structures for the first time, it felt as if she had dismantled them thousands of times before. With just a single glance, she knew where to make alterations and where to bury traps.
Just as she had changed into her white dress and was preparing to go out for a stroll as usual...
A heavy, dull toll of a bell suddenly echoed from the depths of the tower.
The illusion formation had been triggered.
A smile slowly welled up in the depths of Isolde's eyes.
What perfect timing. She was just worrying about not having any bait.
Outside the castle, the dead forest was choked in a deathly silence by the grey fog. Three figures dashed out of the mist in a disheveled state.
The leader was a man in his early twenties wearing mid-tier leather armor. He clutched an iron axe in his hand, his face filled with impatience.
Beside him was a short-haired girl clutching a staff, her gaze filled with disgust and vigilance.
The last one, a tall, thin man with a bow slung over his back, looked around while cursing under his breath.
“What a garbage game!” The axe-wielding man kicked a dead branch on the ground. “They didn't even give us a starting village and threw us straight into this hellhole. Are the devs orphans?”
The short-haired girl frowned. “Quiet down. Usually, places like this have hidden dungeons. There's bound to be an NPC.”
The tall, thin man sneered. “In the games we played before, NPCs only had fixed dialogue lines and couldn't even be killed. But now, they're flesh and blood. Threaten them a bit, and they'll spit out the chest locations in no time, won't they?”
Standing in the shadow of the tower, when Isolde clearly saw their faces, the smile on her face froze.
She recognized them.
No, even if their bones were ground to dust and their bodies turned into beasts, she would never mistake them!
They were the very enemies who deserved to be cast into hell, torn to shreds ten thousand times over without ever quenching her hatred.
Rate on N.U.
