Enemies Enter the Dungeon

"Yes."

The tightness in Isolde's chest had barely eased when Lia added,

"But if Lord Duke activates the Main Contract to suppress me, I'll lose the ability to act."

Isolde was somewhat confused. "What is the Main Contract?"

"The Castle's master is Lord Valen. You are his subordinate contractor, Miss, and your contract is ranked below his."

Of course. A scheming old bastard like Valen would never truly keep a blade capable of killing him at his side.

Lia was useful, but she could not be pointed directly at Valen.

Isolde walked over to the desk and opened the notes left behind by the body's original owner.

The pages were densely covered in symbols of dark arts. Much of the handwriting was twisted and crazed, the strokes trembling all the way through, nearly cutting through the backs of the pages whenever excitement took hold.

She merely glanced at them, yet the meanings of the corresponding spells automatically surfaced in her mind.

Soul preservation, severed-limb attachment, Puppet control, human experimentation...

The knowledge made her stomach churn, but it was also the only weapon she could wield right now.

Yu Lingye loathed these things, but Isolde understood them.

If she wanted to survive, she first had to swallow down this disgust.

Isolde flipped to the structural diagram of the underground laboratory, her gaze settling on the words "Protective-Stripping Array" in the corner of the parchment.

Before long, Valen would conduct a body-part fusion. At that time, he would voluntarily remove part of his protective spells here to make it easier for the new body parts to connect to his body.

In other words, that would be the moment when he came closest to "showing an opening."

But even then, Valen would not be a snake with its fangs pulled. Even if his defenses temporarily weakened, with her current strength, rushing him would only get her slammed into the floor with one sweep of his tail.

Isolde lightly tapped the diagram with her fingertips as an idea slowly surfaced.

What if she lured the players into the Castle ahead of time?

She could let them draw Valen's hatred and drain his strength for her.

All she needed to do was prepare a trump card at the Banquet Hall in advance, then give Valen one final stab at the most critical moment.

As for those players...

Isolde lowered her eyes, the corner of her lips curving upward.

In her previous life, she had been used as a pathfinder. This time, it was their turn to taste the dangers of dungeon mechanics.

Isolde closed the notes and looked up at Lia.

Gray light leaked in through the window, making her pale face look beautiful and cold.

"Lia, prepare a white dress."

"Yes."

"Bring me the key to the underground laboratory as well."

Lia turned to leave, but Isolde suddenly stopped her. "Wait. From now on, without my order, you are not to report any of my abnormalities to Valen."

Lia's gray eyes paused. "Yes, Miss."

Valen's body was constantly decaying, and the rejection of his power had weakened his perception of lower-ranking contracts.

As long as Lia did not report anything proactively, Valen would not notice the abnormalities on her side.

Isolde leaned back in her chair and carefully studied the magic array.

If she could not attack head-on, then she would use her brain to decide the outcome.

Besides, with 120 Intelligence, it would be a waste not to use it for something underhanded.

Lia soon brought back the key to the underground laboratory.

The key was pitch-black from end to end, with a shriveled eyeball embedded in its handle. When Isolde took it, the eyeball gave an utterly inappropriate twitch.

Suppressing her nausea, she gripped it in her hand, and the two of them entered the underground laboratory together.

Ghostly blue flames hung along both walls. Complex transmutation arrays covered the floor, their lines still crusted with dried blood like a mouth that had not yet closed.

Isolde looked around and matched the materials one by one using the original owner's memories.

Black salt, Soul-Sealing Wax, Soul Thread, potions, bone nails—everything was there.

Even better, there was an unlocked wooden chest in the corner.

Isolde lifted the lid. Inside lay three bottles of [Degraded Purification Holy Water], neatly arranged.

Good stuff. It was degraded, sure, but against the rotting Valen, it was exactly the right remedy. No reason not to use it.

Isolde took the holy water, then found a torn roll of parchment.

[Basic Spell: Binding]

[Description: Consumes 5 mana to briefly bind the target and interrupt spellcasting. Success rate is affected by Intelligence.]

Joy rose in Isolde's heart.

An active skill—wasn't this being delivered right to her doorstep?

She immediately spread the parchment across the table and used the original owner's memories to break down the spell.

The twisted symbols constantly shifted before her eyes.

Anyone else would probably get a headache after looking at them twice, but the more Isolde studied them, the clearer her mind became.

Using her own Soul Thread as the base medium, she integrated the incomplete spell into her magical circuits.

On the seventh failure, the Soul Thread backlashed, and tiny beads of blood seeped from her fingertips.

Isolde seemed wholly immersed in her spell, paying no attention to the negligible wound as she continued focusing on modifying the array.

Half an hour later, a gray screen finally appeared.

[You have created an active skill: Soul-Binding Thread (Beginner)]

[Effect: Releases threads capable of binding souls. Upon success, briefly restrains the target's actions for 0.8 seconds. If the target is weakened, frightened, or corrupted, the restraint duration increases for each condition met, up to a maximum of 3 seconds.]

0.8 seconds might be no more than the blink of an eye in someone else's hands.

But in hers, as long as she seized the right moment, it would be enough to make Valen suffer.

After thinking it over, she gave one bottle of holy water to Lia and kept two for herself.

She soaked Soul Thread in a paralytic potion and black salt, then took two bone nails and immersed them in Degraded Purification Holy Water in case they were needed.

Lia tilted her head. "Miss, is this for securing souls?"

"No." Isolde slowly put away the silver threads. "This is for securing certain pieces of trash that refuse to behave."

Lia was silent for a moment. "Do you need me to secure them now?"

As expected of a domestic humanoid forklift with 100 Strength—steady killing intent and perfect execution.

"Not yet." She closed the wooden chest. "We have to wait for someone fated to come collect the trash."

Over the next three days, Isolde scarcely left the underground laboratory.

She counted the materials again, altered several inconspicuous array patterns in the Banquet Hall, and repaired the illusion array in the eastern tower.

It was the bait illusion array left behind by the original owner.

The illusion array would disguise the Castle as an ordinary castle. Then, using the image of a girl in a white dress, Isolde could lure people who wandered into the gray mist inside step by step.

The original owner had used this very method to kill quite a few passersby and low-level players.

Yu Lingye had to admit that this body's mind was absurdly useful.

Many spells were things she was clearly touching for the first time, yet it felt as if she had dismantled them thousands of times before. One glance was enough to tell her what could be altered and where traps could be buried.

Just as usual, when she changed into a white dress and prepared to go out for a walk,

A muffled bell suddenly rang from deep within the tower.

The illusion array had been triggered.

A smile slowly spread through Isolde's eyes.

They had come at just the right time. She had been worrying about not having bait.

Outside the Castle, the dead woods lay silent beneath the gray mist as three figures stumbled out of it.

At the front was a man in his early twenties, wearing intermediate leather armor and gripping an iron axe, his face full of impatience.

Beside him was a short-haired girl holding a staff, her eyes contemptuous yet wary.

The last was a tall, thin man with a bow on his back. He kept looking around while cursing under his breath.

"What kind of trash game is this?" The man with the iron axe kicked aside a dead branch. "No beginner village, and they just throw us straight into this godforsaken place? Are the devs orphans or what?"

The short-haired girl frowned. "Stop yelling. Places like this usually have hidden dungeons. There'll definitely be NPCs."

The tall, thin man sneered. "In the games we played before, NPCs only had fixed lines, and you couldn't even kill them. But now? They're flesh and blood. Scare them a little, and won't they hand over the chest locations themselves?"

Isolde stood in the tower's shadows. When she saw their faces clearly, the smile on her face froze.

She recognized them.

No—even if their bones had been ground to ash and their flesh turned into beasts, she would never mistake them!

They were all enemies who deserved to be thrown into hell, enemies she could tear apart a thousand times and still not vent her hatred.