Room 202.
Cerceybe filled a basin with water and scrubbed the dormitory until it was spotless. Afterward, she swept the floor and helped her roommates fold their quilts.
With the cleaning done, she brewed herself a cup of tea and sat on the balcony. Bathed in the moonlight, she began reading a collection of romantic poetry.
The grey-haired girl savored this hard-won moment of solitude.
She was the only one in the room—well, her and the pet sheep.
After reading a dozen pages, she felt a wave of drowsiness. She closed the book, her gaze falling upon the little lamb.
It really was cute. Its wooly mouth moved rhythmically as it chewed its cud.
Looking at the lamb, Cerceybe suddenly felt a pang of shared sympathy.
“Are you lonely? Fate has left you drifting, never to see your shepherd’s face again, never to return to the grasslands of your home.”
The sheep cast a sideways glance at her. Little bitch, what are you dreaming up in that head of yours? Today is the day you die!
It had spent over a week devising a perfect method to escape this frail ovine body.
What it held in its mouth wasn’t regurgitated feed; it was the Witch’s Ointment the young witches had left behind.
It shifted its posture, sitting on the ground with an eerily human-like movement, and leaned over to smear the demonic Stigmata across its belly.
Switching faiths was a practiced routine for it. It visualized the image of a demon in its mind, and mana began to flow steadily into its body through the Stigmata.
Before Cerceybe’s astonished eyes, the sheep stood up like a man. Its body swelled and bloated grotesquely, resembling a mass of rising dough.
The sheep’s frame expanded at a visible rate, ballooning until it reached nearly two meters in height!
Because the expansion was so rapid, its skin could not contain the growth. It tore open, exposing large patches of white fascia and bright red flesh. Veins writhed and crawled across its surface like earthworms.
Its front hooves split into humanoid fingers, while its digitigrade hind legs braced against the floor. From the sides of its head, demonic, curved horns erupted.
Normally, a ewe shouldn’t have horns, but “sheep” was no longer a fitting description for this creature.
It had to act fast.
This common-sense-defying demonization would surely trigger an investigation by the academy if a second witness saw it. If word got out, its infiltration plan would be an utter failure.
It had waited for over a week, enduring humiliation and heavy burdens, finally waiting for this moment to be alone with one of the girls of Room 202.
“I’m going to cram my brain into your mouth!”
Kira Yoshi-lamb let out a roar. A line of blood split down its scalp, and with a wet squelch, its face and skull peeled apart to either side. Connected by stringy strands of gore, it exposed grey-white, slimy brain tissue, looking exactly like a Split-Head Fiend.
Kira Yoshi-lamb lunged toward the girl by the window!
Cerceybe had grown up in a well-to-do family, never wanting for anything. The greatest danger she had ever faced was a snake in the garden.
Her stress threshold was low. Normally, in a situation like this, a person would freeze up, losing even the will to resist.
However, demonic imagery was deeply ingrained in the academy’s culture. Demonic products were everywhere; one could see hundreds of illustrations just by going to the bathroom.
Consequently, she wasn’t particularly paralyzed by fear. By pure reflex, she dodged to the side.
Kira Yoshi-lamb was clearly not as erudite or clever as a Gaze Worm when it came to biology—reverse-jointed hooves were ill-suited for running upright. After missing its mark, it couldn’t stop its momentum. Its massive, bloated body tumbled right through the window frame.
A moment later, Cerceybe heard a heavy thud as something hit the ground outside.
Her heart sank. She hesitantly walked to the window and leaned out to look. Her small face turned pale with horror.
Panic set in. What do I do? I accidentally killed the dormitory pet!
She didn’t know how she would answer her roommates’ questions.
She even began to doubt her own sanity.
According to all logic, a sheep couldn’t turn into a demon. Therefore, it was highly likely she had suffered a hallucination, and she was the one who had actually killed the lamb!
The grey-haired girl’s imagination went into overdrive. She could even “see” a mental image of herself picking up the innocent lamb and hurling it out the window.
Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. On the verge of tears, she murmured, “What have I done…”
She spent the rest of the day in a daze, staring blankly into space, not even eating.
In the evening, her roommates returned.
“Eh? Where’s our sheep?” Dorothy asked.
Cerceybe shook her head, lost and confused, as a mountain of guilt crushed her heart.
“It’s not in the room. It probably wandered off and got lost,” Wang Yue speculated.
They searched the entire building but found no sign of Kira Yoshi-lamb.
Dorothy pulled a long face and said sadly, “My sheep is gone.”
“I’ll help you draw a ‘Missing Sheep’ poster.”
Lulu’anna was very enthusiastic. With a few swift strokes of her pen, the adorable likeness of the lamb appeared on the paper.
Unfortunately, Kira Yoshi-lamb was already dead; the drawing she made was effectively a funeral portrait.
After tumbling out the window, Kira Yoshi-lamb had hit the ground with a heavy thud. Its brain had been ejected, rolling away into the tall grass by the force of the impact.
As for its monstrous physical body, it turned into a heap of rotting matter once the mana dissipated, eventually being cleared away by the servants.
Kira Yoshi-lamb was not actually named Kira Yoshi-lamb.
It had long ago forgotten its true name.
Its avatars used many aliases while wandering the world, but that didn’t matter.
What mattered was that encountering bitches always led to a bad end.
No one was born a misogynist; it was a lesson it had learned over a long, long life.
A few rats scurried out from the sewers, warily eyeing the heap of sheep brains. Their whiskers vibrated in the cold wind, hesitating.
Finally, the boldest and strongest male rat darted forward and began to lick at the brain matter…
“Hurry!”
The man’s voice was laced with terror.
He gripped a steak knife, neurotically scraping it against the car door’s paint over and over, producing a shrill, grating noise.
It was an exquisitely crafted luxury carriage.
Whether it was the high-quality glossy finish, the polished wheels and axles, the fine leather harness, or the Baroque gold ornaments and tassels—everything signaled immense value.
Not to mention the two purebred horses pulling it, which didn’t have a single stray hair of a different color. Their price alone was likely higher than the carriage itself.
Behind the man, a Gothic villa was built into the mountainside.
The villa was surrounded by meticulously manicured plants and fruit trees. A gate in the quiet back garden led to a path winding around the mountain, where a lookout deck offered a broad view and a cool breeze.
Inside the villa, all the lights were extinguished. Cabinets were overturned, chairs were skewed, and trash littered the floor. It was a mess.
The servants had already been dismissed. Gold and silver valuables were packed into bundles and hidden under the carriage seats.
The window glass was being smashed from the inside out, and even the curved surfaces of the gold ornaments were being scratched up with a wire brush. A woman was doing all of this.
Her face was as pale as the man’s. Her eyes were sunken, her lips parched. She seemed barely sane, hovering on the edge of delirium. Her nerves were so frayed that the slightest rustle of wind caused her to jump, like a bird startled by a bowstring.
Aside from the middle-aged couple, a child stood by the carriage—a young girl who looked to be only six or seven years old.
She wore a white silk nightgown. Fine cotton lace socks covered her Little Feet, tucked into soft, comfortable lambskin shoes. She hugged a teddy bear tightly in her arms.
“Faster! Don’t let them find us!”
Even though he was in front of his wife and child, and was supposed to be the pillar of the family, the man could not hide the uncontrollable dread in his trembling voice.
“Cedric, are there any shiny surfaces left?” the woman asked hoarsely.
“There shouldn’t be…” The man lifted a candle to check. He gasped in horror. “The bear’s eyes!”
The bear was made of plush fabric stuffed with cotton, but its eyes were two glass beads glued onto its face. Under the candlelight, a glint of light swirled within them, making it look as though the bear was watching the family.
The woman rushed to her daughter, snatched the bear from her arms, and pried out the glass eyeballs.
She used all her strength to hurl the eyes deep into the bushes, as if something terrifying were attached to them.
Facing her daughter’s confused gaze, the woman kissed the girl’s forehead and comforted her.
“Helen, when we get to where we’re going, I’ll give it new eyes. Much prettier ones.”
“Okay…”
The little girl nodded obediently. She cast one last glance back at the bushes before following her mother into the carriage.
