Cold sweat trickled down Ashley’s temple. She realized she couldn’t resist this mysterious loli at all. The little girl’s finger clamped down like a hydraulic press, forcing Ashley to half-heartedly hand over the item.
“It’s poisonous… you can’t eat it…”
Ashley made one last effort, but what happened next left her utterly speechless.
A thin red line split open along the plump, glistening lower lip, extending all the way to her throat. Then, the delicate chin flipped open like a freezer door, forming a triangular cavity with the slender upper lip!
The cavity’s inner walls bristled with dense clusters of fresh red tentacles glistening with moisture, tender as blood tofu, wriggling softly.
“Ah woo!”
The Squid Sleeve Sword was bitten and, with the tentacles’ pulsing rhythm, slowly swallowed into the bottomless throat.
“Gulp!”
After finishing, the loli sucked on her little hand with lingering satisfaction. The slit in her lip and throat zipped shut like a zipper, her skin smoothing to a flawless milky white without a trace.
Ashley’s scalp tingled. This was clearly no human body structure!
“You… you’re not human?”
Her voice was dry. The pressure from this mysterious loli exceeded anyone else’s.
She could crack jokes in front of her teacher, but a monster defied human logic.
One moment it might smile, the next its tentacles could swarm and drown her. She didn’t dare slip up.
“My name is Delwei. I’m not human, but I’m undergoing the arduous trial to become one,” the loli said earnestly.
“Then what were you before?” Ashley probed.
The loli tilted her little head, frowning in distress. After thinking for a long time, she replied:
“I’ve always been just me. I’m everything and nothing. In human terms, I have no sense of identity.”
If a human had said it, Ashley would have dismissed it as pretentious riddling. But Delwei wasn’t human. Her clumsy, awkward attempt to describe something beyond human comprehension felt sincere instead.
Ashley had a big heart and wouldn’t cower from the unknown. Her eyes darted as she feigned melancholy:
“That was a precious gift from my teacher.”
“Is it important to you? Sorry, I couldn’t resist eating it.”
Delwei sighed, primly pressing her knees together and patting her little belly.
“It’s digested to just a bone shard now. If you still want to use it as a weapon, I can reinforce it and give it back.”
“You can do that?” Ashley asked dubiously.
Delwei lifted her shirt, revealing a soft white belly without a navel. A red line appeared along the midline of her abdomen, flipping open outward in a horrifying display. Countless tentacles surged and writhed like a massive cluster of deep-sea coral, slowly regurgitating a bizarre weapon from somewhere within!
The transparent sleeve sword connected to an ivory twisted bone hilt. The hilt had two rows of perforating holes; when gripped, tiny tentacles emerged from them, wrapping tightly around the palm for a non-slip hold.
Ashley took the shortsword and tested it. The balance was perfect, very handy.
“Think of it as the teacher’s gift in a new form. Oh, and I preserved the toxin-secreting organ. If you accidentally poison yourself, it can secrete an antidote serum,” Delwei added.
“I won’t be dumb enough to lick the blade.”
Ashley stowed the shortsword, feeling somewhat relieved. This little monster wasn’t just mimicking a human exterior; it was imitating human social norms too.
The town wasn’t large. Minutes later, carriages carrying the guests pulled into a small square.
Surrounded by small buildings on all sides, but with no entrance—and the lowest windows started three stories up—this was a shared rear courtyard.
Ashley dismounted and casually glanced at the banquet table set up in the square’s center. Her expression froze, her pupils dilating in shock!
Claire, the black-haired girl who had come with the team, sat cross-legged naked in a massive silver platter. Moonlight bathed her body, making her skin gleam like polished jade, pure and white.
A Shepherd’s Crook pierced through her slender hands crossed behind her neck, drilling a hole through her swan-like neck and down through her graceful instep, nailing the girl alive to the table. The crook’s cross-shaped head forced her into a humiliating bowed posture.
Blood trickled slowly along the Shepherd’s Crook, pooling in the silver platter. The moonlight gradually took on an ominous dark red hue.
Claire wasn’t dead yet, but her mind teetered on collapse. Her eyes stared wide, pupils shrouded in despairing gray, tears carving bright trails down her cheeks to drip from her chin, rippling the blood-red pool.
A small dais stood before the table. Captain Roy knelt there, clothes hiked up to bare his muscular back, while Elsa and Theodore stood helplessly beside him, heads bowed in guilty shame.
Ashley didn’t care about these people’s fates. Amber! Where was Amber?!
She anxiously scanned around. All five from the Seventh Group, including herself, were here—only Amber and Linden were missing.
She took a deep breath, clenched her fists, and forced herself to calm down.
The four captives posed no threat. Captain Roy was an officer, but his extraordinary ability was utility-based and useless in combat.
But Amber wore black tech gear, and Linden was a family pawn; those two were the strongest besides herself. They wouldn’t go down easily.
Still, the situation was dire. Since the enemy had struck, they’d torn the mask off completely. Otherwise, word getting back would bring tactical squads of ability users and the Tribunal Undead Squad.
Thus, the Boothslot Family must be hunting those two down furiously while sealing the town to prevent escape.
At that moment, the Boothslot Family’s eldest son, Sidney, stood beside the kneeling Roy, presiding over a bizarre ritual.
Sidney wore a bone crown and a robe of black-and-red satin vertical stripes. In his hand was a highly elastic whip, black-and-white segmented like a longhorn beetle’s antenna.
With a flick of his wrist, the whip tip sliced the air with a shrill whistle—guaranteed to flay flesh on impact.
He dipped it in a bucket of water at his feet, then swung his arm back and lashed forward with full force!
Crack!
A bloody welt bloomed across Roy’s broad, sturdy back!
“You are the slave to be scourged; Boothslot is your master.”
Sidney intoned with dignified calm.
“You are the grass-eating lamb; Boothslot is your shepherd.”
He lashed out again.
…
It took only ten lashes for Captain Roy to go from trembling in agony to baring a masochistic grin.
“The master’s scourging… upon my body… this slave feels bliss from the heart… this slave is a sheep… this slave will trim the master’s lawn with its lowly mouth…”
The middle-aged man spoke in a sycophantic falsetto, utterly grotesque.
Ashley wasn’t surprised. She recognized it—that suspected King Insect Tentacle.
From the effect, it seemed to infuse will through whipping, forcibly brainwashing the victim.
Sidney turned, proclaiming in a sermon-like tone, solemn and distant:
“The grass-eater is slave, the meat-eater is vassal, the bread-and-wine eater is guest.”
“Shit-eaters die!”
Ashley mouthed the final line silently. Then, the second form of Time Sequence Heterostructure activated!
Sidney’s face twisted. His lungs filled with heavy, viscous mercury; he couldn’t inhale or exhale, his face quickly purpling like liver.
He collapsed, thrashing desperately. Servants rushed to press on his chest, but foul-smelling shit sprayed from his mouth and nose!
Soon, he convulsed and kicked, his fat belly jiggling like a hot water bottle. Moments later, he went limp all over—dead.
Ashley had used her teacher-girl form’s ability, which she’d copied a bullet with back in the studio.
