I Revived My Maid, Now She Hungers for My Blood

Chapter 182: Getting Moldy~

Wilbur nodded, his mind racing.

Then, a flicker of hesitation.

“By the way, my Lord. About Raelf…”

Aldrich read him instantly and chuckled. “Worried the Baroness got the Blood Puppet secrets from him when she killed him?” He shook his head, a smug smile on his face. “First off, no proof they ever even knew each other.”

He leaned in, his voice dropping with absolute confidence. “But let’s say they did. Let’s say they were best friends. She still knows nothing. Because all of Raelf’s notes, his data, his core research… it’s all here with me.” Aldrich tapped his own temple. “At best, she might’ve heard him grumble about a secret project. A blood thing. A puppet thing. That’s it.”

Wilber had been worried. But seeing Aldrich’s certainty, the doubt in his gut faded. He looked back at the puppet. The perfect copy of himself. The plan wasn’t complicated. It was brutally simple.

The key was the secret. The method no one else knew. Raelf’s legacy, now in Aldrich’s hands. With the puppet made, the rest was easy.

That damnable Scarred Woman.

She’d cost him the Botanical Garden. A stain on his record with Lord Aldrich. A cold, ruthless gleam lit Wilbur’s eyes.

Breaking through to first and second rank wasn’t the end game. Without hitting Master Demon Hunter, you were always on the clock, the Academy’s ticking time bomb. And the resources he needed, the glimpse of that next level… they were all in Aldrich’s pocket.

This time, his Lord had handed him the knife. He wouldn’t miss.

..................

Five days later.

Inside the house in Tsukimidaira.

Pandora had been cooped up in this house for five full days.

Since Ember was the one on the lease, not Pandora and Elsa, Pandora kept the heavy curtains on the street-side windows drawn. It let her walk around without worrying about a stray glance from the outside world.

But it also meant the house only got sun when she deliberately opened the door. For five days, the curtains stayed shut. For five days, not a single ray of light had touched the inside. The air felt stagnant. Thick.

Maybe it was her imagination, but Pandora was pretty sure the house was starting to smell. Faintly. Of mold.

She sat in an armchair by the window, a heavy book on ancient alchemical symbolism open in her lap, but her eyes weren’t reading.

“I’m getting moldy…” she muttered to herself, the words thick with frustration.

Elsa was across the room, meticulously organizing the desk shelves. She heard Pandora’s complaint and glanced over, helpless.

Under her care, the house was spotless. This was something else.

Seven months in the bustling noise of Eden, and now… this. The first time she’d been holed up at home for this long. With no new Wizardry to study, no urgent tasks, all she had were her alchemy books. It felt like withdrawal. A slow, tedious boredom that made her brain itch.

“How about we get some fresh air?” Elsa suggested, putting down her dusting cloth. “Perhaps you could even… gather more ‘Alchemical Resources’ while we’re out?”

After her Reshaping, Elsa had access to Pandora’s resource pool for her own breakthrough. She knew the term.

But being a creation of Myriad Alchemy herself, she didn’t feel any particular way about it. It was like a human thinking about the fact they were made of cells.

Hearing Elsa, Pandora’s gaze flicked to the system interface only she could see:

【Flesh: 1482 units】

【Flora: 1398 units】

【Salt-Gold: 1621 units】

【Ether: 1653 units】

【Soul: 1539 units】

She stared at the numbers.

Seven months ago, right after finishing Elsa’s Reshaping, her best resource category, Soul, hadn’t even broken a thousand. The reserves had been uneven, too. Some categories flush, others bone dry.

Now? Every category was past the thousand mark, all hovering around fifteen hundred.

It was the result of her “putting in some effort” over the last seven months.

Soul was the easiest. Zombies. They were everywhere. She’d hunted them across the Ruined Capital, nearly doubling her starting pool.

Ether mostly came from them, too. First-rank zombies didn’t give much Ether, maybe a third of their Soul value, often less. But the higher the rank, the more Ether you got. By second-rank, the Ether from a zombie was almost on par with its Soul. Some of the weirder ones even gave more Ether than Soul.

Salt-Gold was a joke. This city was a metal graveyard. Usable steel was rare, but rusted, worthless scrap was everywhere. Pandora just collected it when she was out. Now it was on par with the others.

Flora, though.

Flora was the real pain.