I looked at Sandora's body, mutated by the Abyss, and found what she said especially surprising. "It's never changed? Why do I feel like everything about you is perfectly normal?"
"That's because you're usually too careless..." Sandora sighed helplessly. "From the very beginning, I controlled these Abyss powers myself. Unlike other infected people, I wasn't insane at the start, so you never noticed it—though of course, I didn't notice either. It was only after so much happened recently that I became increasingly interested in the nature of the Abyss, and then happened to notice how my situation differed from everyone else's. You remember, right? When we first met, I showed you my Abyss powers back then..."
I immediately nodded. "Right. You showed me your claws like you were showing off a new toy. It left a deep impression on me—you even gave me a scare."
Sandora scraped her claws against the balcony railing and rolled her eyes at me. "What do you mean, showing off a new toy? I just wanted to be honest with you... Forget that. You probably didn't have the ability to precisely sense the Abyss back then, so you may not remember clearly, but I've always kept precise records of my physical condition: my contamination level was the same then as it is now. In more than five years by your side, it hasn't changed in the slightest. But everyone else is different. Even soldiers from the Abyss Independent Regiment who never met you and merely received one routine purification through the Spiritual Network showed huge differences in contamination before and after coming into contact with you... Don't you think that's strange?"
I looked at Sandora, then curiously grabbed one of her claws and began examining it. "It is a little strange, but your situation was