A cold chill, as if from the abyss of hell, shot up her spine to the top of her head.

  So this… was what death felt like?

  No…

  The excruciating pain of shattering bones and a bursting skull didn’t come as expected.

  Instead, it was a scalding hot, foul-smelling liquid, like a downpour, drenching her from above!

  Aurora’s eyes flew open, only to meet Pandora’s gaze, calm and almost cruel.

  Pandora was standing on the back of the black bear!

  The sword of Elsa in her hand was held in the finishing pose of a vicious, top-down strike.

  A drop of warm blood slowly slid down the scarlet blade, dripping onto Aurora’s blood-stained cheek.

  Her expression was terrifyingly calm, but deep within her eyes, a flicker of a predator’s… cruelty.

  THUD!!

  A dull, teeth-jarring CRACK echoed through the silent forest.

  The giant, ferocious bear head, severed from the neck, rolled into a nearby pile of leaves, kicking up a spray of rotting debris.

  A massive amount of foul, black blood, like a burst dam, gushed from the huge stump, drenching Aurora, who was standing mere inches away.

  Immediately after, the headless, massive torso, like a mountain of flesh, collapsed, crashing heavily to the ground and kicking up a cloud of dust.

  And Pandora, in the instant before the corpse fell, bent her knees slightly, then leaped high into the air. With a graceful flip in mid-air, she avoided the falling body, landing beside the corpse.

  The entire process was clean, efficient, without a single wasted movement.

  Aurora stood frozen in place, her body drenched in warm, foul-smelling bear blood, a sorry sight, but she seemed completely unaware of it.

  Her gaze was locked on the slender girl who had just leaped from the bear’s back.

  Her mind was a complete blank.

  That scene just now… that sword strike… that phantom-like figure… Was that… Lady Pandora?

  Was this still the person she needed to protect, the person she was meant to guard… the pampered Viscount’s daughter?

  “Aurora.”

  Pandora’s voice pulled her from her stupor.

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  Pandora ignored Aurora’s lost expression. She simply walked over to the headless bear corpse, crouched down, and with the tip of Elsa’s sword, gently parted the thick, black blood at the stump, staring at the bone and tissue within, examining it closely.

  “Just as I thought. Something’s wrong.”

  She murmured to herself, her voice holding a tone of certainty.

  “This isn’t a normal beast at all…”

  Pandora looked up at Aurora, and said, word by word:

  “It was already a corpse.”

  This statement hit Aurora harder than the sword strike from moments before.

  “A… a corpse?” Aurora repeated, dazed and unable to understand. “My Lady, what do you mean?”

  “Come closer and see for yourself.”

  Pandora used the tip of her sword to point to the corpse’s dense, black “fur.” “Especially this.”

  Aurora, suppressing her shock and confusion, walked over unsteadily. She crouched down and, hesitantly, reached out to touch the so-called “fur.”

  The texture… was strange. It wasn’t smooth like an animal’s pelt, nor was it hard like a brush. It was… soft, with a slightly damp, velvety texture, and she could even feel a fine, mycelium-like structure.

  “This… this isn’t a black bear’s fur.” Aurora’s voice trembled with shock. “This is… black mold. That’s right, it’s all mold! It’s not fur!”

  She finally recognized the loathsome fungus, one she’d usually only seen on certain damp, rotting wood.

  Pandora nodded, and with the sword tip, she peeled away a large patch of the dense black mold.

  What lay beneath made Aurora gasp.

  It wasn’t the flesh and hide of a beast. It was a naked, pale-skinned, yet powerfully muscled, even abnormally swollen… humanoid body!

  Beneath that thick black mold was a naked, powerful, almost grotesquely muscular body. If you ignored the mouth, which had been distorted into a beast-like maw… the contours of the face were, surprisingly… somewhat human?

  Aurora’s pupils constricted, her heart tightening.

  What on earth was this monster?!

  Pandora, however, spoke the horrifying conjecture a step ahead of her.

  “Perhaps,” Pandora said, her gaze grave as she looked at the face that was somewhere between human and beast, “this is also a kind of ‘zombie’?”

  “This is a zombie, too?”

  Aurora’s mouth hung open, but she couldn’t say a word. She couldn’t find a single flaw in that theory. All the evidence pointed to this absurd and terrifying conclusion.

  However… if this was a zombie, then the black bear she had encountered in the Forbidden Forest ten years ago… Could the transformation have started as early as ten years ago?

  Aurora’s head snapped up to look at Pandora, hoping for an answer.

  But Pandora just shook her head. She had the same confusion; she didn’t know what was going on either. The existence of this monster had completely scrambled the timeline of the entire event, leading it into an even more baffling mystery.

  “But…”

  “Aurora.”

  Pandora’s voice calmly resumed, pulling Aurora from her daze. Pandora ignored the shock and dishevelment on her face, only using the sword of Elsa, which still glowed with a sinister red light, to point at the headless, massive bear corpse on the ground.

  “This bear-monster zombie is indeed terrifying.” Her voice was as calm as if she were analyzing an object. “Its strength and defense are enough that even a fully armed, experienced knight would only be able to barely hold its own.”

  Pandora’s words, like needles, precisely pierced the most painful spot in Aurora’s heart.

  “And you, Aurora,” Pandora’s gaze shifted to her, her eyes holding no blame, only a pure, fact-based judgment, “are not in a good state right now.”

  She paused, her tone leaving no room for argument:

  “Go back for now.”

  “Wash off this stinking blood. I will find you at the manor later.”

  “Remember, go find that herb girl, Lena. Have her give you a thorough check-up to see if you’re injured. And if… if by any chance, there’s any possibility of infection, you must make your own decision and be prepared to take ‘preventative measures’.”

  “Do you understand?”

  The last sentence was spoken softly, but it carried the weight of a thousand tons.

  Aurora shuddered. She understood instantly what Pandora meant by “preventative measures.” It was the ultimate choice a knight, in the worst-case scenario, had to make, to not harm her comrades and to not sully her honor.