“Whether your brains taste good or not… I’ll have to have a taste to find out! Come here, let me have a sip!”
The pink-haired girl burst into fresh wails, clutching her head and rolling around on the ground, crunching the dry leaves beneath her.
“Alright, alright. Stop crying. I’m a human, not a ghost.”
Wang Yue knew when to stop. She grabbed the girl’s hand and hauled her up.
“You’re… you’re really not a ghost?”
“This wound on my head is your fault. I slammed into the partition because of you, and you call me the ghost?”
“I’m sorry…”
The girl, who performed a full prostration to apologize, introduced herself as Dorothy. Born in Spore Town, she was twelve years old, and this had been her very first attempt at a “staged accident” scam.
“Why would you do something like that?” Wang Yue asked.
“I’m poor. I have no money.”
“But you have two hardworking hands.”
“But… but Balor Academy is about to start! If I can’t save enough for tuition, I’ll… I’ll…” She sobbed. “If only tears could be traded for money, Dorothy would be the richest girl in the world…”
So, she was desperate for tuition. In her hopelessness, she had turned to fraud.
Balor Academy was famous throughout the Evernight Realm as the “Cradle of Witches” and for “Serving the Devil.” The curriculum lasted six years and was restricted to pure girls under the age of fourteen. Tuition had to be paid in full upon entry—twenty ounces of gold or its equivalent.
In this world, twenty ounces of gold was an astronomical sum.
“Stop dreaming,” Wang Yue said bluntly. “You could fake accidents until next year and you still wouldn’t have enough.”
Even if she made a significant amount per scam, she would need to pull it off hundreds of times. Even if the opportunities existed, her body wouldn’t hold up. She’d be a vegetable before she reached the halfway point.
“I want to go to school… I want to be a witch…” Dorothy bit her lip, wiping away a never-ending stream of tears.
Wang Yue’s lips curled into a smile. She pulled a small silk pouch from her pocket and loosened the drawstring. Inside was a collection of high-quality rubies, shaped like pomegranate seeds, translucent and shimmering with a deep, crimson light.
She picked one up and let it drop back into the bag. It made a sound like hail hitting glass.
The light of wealth illuminated the poor girl’s face. Dorothy’s mouth hung open, a string of saliva trailing from her lip.
“This bag of gems should be worth about a hundred ounces of gold…”
Wang Yue toyed with the gems casually, as if they were worthless pebbles. A wicked smile played on her lips.
Dorothy bit her lip so hard it nearly bled. She was trembling from head to toe, her eyes so focused on the rubies and Wang Yue’s pale fingers that she almost went cross-eyed.
“Rather than funding a poor girl’s education, I’d rather use these for target practice against birds. After all, the life of the wealthy is just that unpretentious and boring.”
Dorothy’s eyes went dim. She stopped crying and stopped biting her lip. She sat on the ground, hugging her thin knees, her heart turning to ash.
“However…”
At those words, Dorothy snapped her head up, her pink hair fluttering. Her eyes sparked with hope.
“I am willing to spend twenty ounces of gold to hire a little maid for a term of six years.”
Dorothy threw herself into Wang Yue’s arms, laughing and crying at once. She hugged Wang Yue’s waist so tightly she nearly squeezed the breath out of her.
The carriage resumed its journey.
Inside the cabin, Dorothy knelt beside Wang Yue, using a damp cloth to wipe the blood from her face. She felt a mix of guilt and shame.
When she looked at Wang Yue’s eyes again, the suspicious tentacles were gone. Dorothy began to doubt her own memory; perhaps in her panic, she had simply mistaken stray strands of hair for writhing limbs.
Wang Yue, meanwhile, was distracted. Her attention was entirely focused inside her skull.
She felt the Gaze Worm leave her eye socket and crawl along her cranium toward her cerebellum. The cerebellum controlled motor functions, which meant the worm had the potential to hijack her physical actions.
“Dorothy, if I start acting strange toward you, realize that it isn’t me,” she warned.
“Eh? Acting strange?” Dorothy paused, her cheeks flushing slightly. “It’s not like I’d mind… Master, please just be gentle.”
“No. You must stop me decisively. Tie me up.”
“Tie you up?”
“Use a tortoise-shell bond.”
“O-okay…”
Dorothy thought to herself that her new master had very strange tastes. But for the sake of going to school, it was all worth it.
***
An hour later, the carriage arrived at Crowsnest Town.
Crowsnest was the primary recruitment hub for Balor Academy and the closest human settlement to the school itself.
The coachman tipped his hat, shaking off the dust, and accepted the five Silver Spike Coins Wang Yue handed him before turning the carriage around to head back.
Spike Coins were the official currency of the Holy Kingdom. They were high-quality, high-purity coins—a reliable currency accepted everywhere.
The town was flooded with young girls arriving for enrollment. There were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of them moving in groups, all dressed in cute little outfits.
Wang Yue and Dorothy were swept along with the crowd until they reached a building fronted by moon-white stone pillars.
Most of the buildings in Crowsnest Town were ordinary red-brick structures with Gothic spires and dormer windows. Only a few were constructed from expensive, hand-cut granite, featuring pillars, statues, and fountains.
The two waited in line for a long time before they finally reached the registration desk.
The appraiser took rubies equivalent to forty ounces of gold from Wang Yue’s pouch, returning the remainder in silver coins.
They paid the fees, filled out the forms, and received an enrollment handbook.
After leaving the registration office, Wang Yue gave Dorothy five Silver Spike Coins. She sent her to a tailor to buy several sets of maid uniforms, while Wang Yue herself headed toward a pre-arranged location to meet her contact from the Church.
