<“Now, reveal Sis Hazel’s status, Aza.”>
【...Are you sure, Master? Your emotions are still unstable. Considering that cat became a slave ten years longer than that elf, her past must be even more harrowing.】
Aza’s words carried a weight that pressed against my chest.
I couldn't even fathom Sis Esta’s past properly.
How much worse would Sis Hazel’s story be?
I hesitated.
My hands clenched into fists.
My breathing grew uneven.
I knew Aza was right.
My heart hadn't yet recovered from the torment I had unraveled in Sis Esta’s past.
It was strange that I tried this hard for people I just met.
But… I wanted to know.
<”Sorry for being selfish, but, please.”>
【Haa…】
Then, the status window materialized before me.
? STATUS WINDOW ?
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Name: Hazel
Age: 70
Race: Brown Cat
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
? Essence ?
Vitality: 10210 (Fake: 2220)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
? Attributes ?
Strength: 9870 (Fake: 2102)
Agility: 11584 (Fake: 2430)
Dexterity: 8108 (Fake: 1675)
Status Points: 47414
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
? Element Affinity ?
Earth, Dark (Hidden), Shadow (Hidden), Decay (Hidden)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
*You need the target’s consent to manipulate their status.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
<”.... Fuck.”>
I cursed internally, my hands trembling.
Her stats were even higher than Sis Esta’s.
If I only looked at raw numbers, her power had already reached A-Rank.
But that wasn’t what shook me the most.
That number. The status points.
47,414.
Almost five times higher than Sis Esta’s.
My stomach twisted.
My heart pounded against my ribs.
How much did she have to suffer to obtain that much power?
I inhale and exhale before starting the conversation.
I forced myself to inhale, then exhale.
My fingers dug into my palms as I tried to steady myself.
I had to keep going.
<”First… let’s start with her elements. She has four. Three of them are hidden. But based on their names, I can guess they must not be favorable elements.”>
【Master, elements are considered neutral. Their morality depends on how the user employs them. The people in this world don't discriminate against certain elements.】
<”I see. My bad.”>
【First, the Dark element. As you know, it's one of the six basic elements. Since she has Earth as well, she probably possessed both since birth.】
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<”Yeah. She might be like Sis Esta, who obtained a new element later, but it might be too hard to determine its origin.”>
【Correct. Even if she gained it later, I lack sufficient data to determine how. I would need to observe her using Dark magic first.】
That made sense. Aza could only analyze the requirement to obtain an element based on what she had observed.
【The next is the Shadow element. It’s an advanced form of Dark. As the name suggests, it allows her to manipulate shadows—even enter and exit them freely.】
I swallowed. That alone was terrifying.
【And lastly, Decay. It’s a fusion of Earth and Dark. This ability can weaken, rot, and ultimately consume both living and non-living matter, including people.】
<”Haa…”>
I exhaled.
Just hearing about these elements made my skin crawl.
<”... Is she an assassin?”>
【There’s a 75% chance.】
My chest tightened.
<”Is there another possibility?”>
【She might have also served as a soldier, using her elements in war.】
A war.
A battlefield drenched in shadows.
What if she uses her shadows to employ decay elements?
A soldier moving like a ghost, her body slipping in and out of darkness.
An army collapsing, bodies crumbling into dust, erased from existence.
<”She… could massacre an entire battlefield alone.”>
【It would be difficult. The Decay element consumes an enormous amount of aura. However, if she fought in multiple wars, she may have slain hundreds or even thousands of soldiers across different battles.】
【Or both… She could have been both a soldier and an assassin.】
【There is also a possibility she is similar to that Elf, considering she can fake her status.】
The same as Sis Esta…
【I lack so much information to determine the possibility of her past.】
<”Either way, there's no way her past was clean.”>
【Correct. We also don’t know how many times she was sold as a slave within 30 years.】
I bit my lower lip. Thirty years.
Thirty. Years.
That was five times longer than I had even been alive in this world.
<”How about collecting historical data related to her elements?”>
【Searching for related events in the past thirty years.】
While Aza processed the data, my mind refused to stay silent.
How much has she endured?
How many nights did she cry herself to sleep?
How many times did she wish for death, only to be denied even that?
【Completed.】
I braced myself.
【In the Katza Dynasty, dominion of the cat race, there is a famous case from 23 years ago. In a span of five nights, five small villages vanished. Every person—gone, without a trace. Each night, one village disappeared. The total population of the villages is about 1000 people from the cat race.】
I gritted my teeth.
<”One thousand people… in five nights?”>
My grip on my clothes tightened as Aza continued,
【Twenty years ago, a few months after the Herrschaft Empire and the Liberia Holy Kingdom officially declared war against Rosenwood Kingdom, a small town of 6,000 people in the empire was massacred in one night.】
A chilling sensation crawled up my spine.
【Two months later, another small town—this time in the Liberia Holy Kingdom, three weeks journey from the first town—7,000 people were wiped out overnight.】
6,000.
7,000.
Thirteen thousand people. Gone.
Aza’s next words boiled my blood.
【Both towns had hidden laboratories. There were many corpses from humans, elves and cat races. The total of the corpses were 2000 humans, 1000 elves, and 500 cats in each laboratory.】
【...Those cat corpses in both laboratories were the same cats that were missing from those 5 villages 3 years ago before that incident.】
Laboratories filled with bodies of various races.
One thing was certain.
They were used as experimental subjects.
<”... So those missing incidents and massacre incidents were related.”>
【There’s a high chance.】
<”Continue.”>
【The first laboratory was dedicated to poisons. All the corpses had been subjected to unknown toxins.】
They were testing poisons on them.
【The second laboratory was far worse. The bodies were… altered.】
【They found corpses with limbs from different races stitched together. Some had elf bodies with cat heads. Others had human bodies with multiple arms and legs. Some had two heads. Some had… even more.】
I felt sick.
<”...Human experiments... Or it probably could be said as living beings experiments... No, is it a chimera experiment?”>
【Correct.】
The room felt suffocating.
My breath came out ragged.
What kind of hell did she go through?
<”But, is there a chance for Sis Hazel to be the one who is responsible for those two massacre incidents?”>
【One additional detail ties these massacres together.】
<”And that is..?”>
【All the bodies in both towns… had completely decayed. As if they had been dead for a hundred years.】
<”... Damn.”>
I cursed internally again.
My entire body trembled.
Was she the one who did it?
Was she the one who erased them all?
Aza continued.
【These two events were the primary reason why the Katza Dynasty finally declared an alliance with the Rosenwood Kingdom to fight against the Empire and Holy Kingdom.】
And then—
【Seven years ago, during a major battle, in the heart of the battlefield… hundreds of catkin and elves suddenly decayed into nothing. Minutes later… the same fate befell the empire’s and holy kingdom’s soldiers. Hundreds of human soldiers had decayed.】
I couldn't take it anymore.
I buried my head into my hands.
How much suffering did she endure?
How much blood was spilled by her hands?
How much of her humanity was stolen from her?
Tears welled in my eyes, but I forced them down.
I wasn’t ready to cry yet.
I had to hear it all.
