Workshop (23)
They really were all here.
Looking down from above at the things in the pool in the direction Ess had pointed, Fu Qian didn't question her claim.
Anyone could count. At a glance, he saw three heads.
And with another look, it was easy to find six hands.
Even the heads and hands looked much more normal than Sophia's.
The only problem was that they had all grown out of the same body.
Unlike the pool where Sophia was, this one had no water.
Instead, it held a great mass of intertwined bodies, with no clear boundaries left between them.
Although they no longer had any signs of life, a closer look even revealed the order in which the three bodies had been fused together.
And the movements they'd made as they struggled.
Unfortunately, it had clearly been pointless. The more they struggled, the more their flesh and bones melted and tangled together like wax.
The sour, rotten smell they'd noticed earlier was seeping out from beneath the mass of deformed flesh.
Unlike Sophia, this place seemed to be used as a waste tank.
After the three people before them had served their purpose, Ess had tossed them in here one by one.
After showing off her achievement, she watched Fu Qian with a peculiar expression, seeming to look forward to his reaction.
"Go ahead and inspect them. Don't be shy—"
But Fu Qian interrupted her with his next move. He stepped forward, grabbed one of the arms, and examined it closely, soon reaching a conclusion.
"They don't have any weapons on them."
"I took them off... That's why they died."
Ess didn't deny Fu Qian's claim. She frankly admitted that she had later removed the "holy garments" from her experimental subjects.
"When you did that, weren't you