I Revived My Maid, Now She Hungers for My Blood

But—

Even as the sounds stopped just outside the door, Crocodile took no action at all.

He did not flee. He did not hide. He did not even attempt to fight back.

He simply stood there, beside Butterfly’s severed head.

And so, Crocodile saw the monster that had been hunting them.

It was a girl with skin slightly paler than normal. She had changed her clothes.

A dark-hued dress had replaced the previous one, the one stained and soaked through with blood.

But that exquisite, almost unreal countenance, that calm, almost indifferent gaze—

They were exactly the same as they had been at the banquet just moments ago.

The girl’s eyes settled on Crocodile, as though appraising an unremarkable piece of decoration.

“Why didn’t you run?”

The girl’s voice carried a trace of curiosity.

As if she were asking something utterly trivial—something like how the weather was today, or how this dish tasted.

But Crocodile’s reply came out impossibly hoarse.

It was as if the words had been forced from a parched throat, carrying a bone-deep weariness that bordered on resignation.

“Because I can’t escape.”

Pandora regarded him with amused interest. “How would you know if you didn’t try?”

Her tone was light, almost to the point of cruelty.

Crocodile fell silent.

He did not answer. He did not know how to answer.

Should he say that he could smell the lingering scents on her?

Those scents—they had been assaulting his senses from the very moment he stepped into this room.

The first was Butterfly.

The scent was already very faint.

Without the preconceived notion, without Butterfly’s severed head lying right beside him, that scent would have been so thin it was barely detectable.

As if it had been utterly consumed by something.

The second was Serpent.

Serpent’s scent was stronger than Butterfly’s, and more complex.

Within that scent, he could clearly make out Serpent’s fear, Serpent’s agony.

That fear was not the fleeting panic of a death fast approaching. It was sustained—a despair crushed beneath the weight of some far more dreadful monster.

He did not know what Serpent had endured. And he had no desire to experience it himself.

The final scent was Bear.

This aura was so intense it was practically the most vivid signal radiating from the girl’s body.

It was exhilaration. It was death. It was a fight where one had given everything, a brutal, unembellished end.

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Crocodile had long since guessed the manner of Bear’s death.

And he had been right—brave, direct, without a single flourish.

But he had never imagined it would actually happen. And it must have happened just now.

Corresponding to that faint tremor moments before.

The tremor had been so slight that an ordinary person would have dismissed it without a thought.

One would assume someone next door had shifted a heavy piece of furniture.

But he had not dismissed it. He could not dismiss it.

That was no ordinary tremor. That was the lingering aftershock of a collision between great powers.

She had killed Bear, and yet the battle had left almost nothing in the way of detectable traces behind.

That absolute mastery over her own strength—it suffocated him.

And furthermore...

Crocodile’s gaze slowly dropped, falling upon the wound on the girl’s abdomen, utterly unconcealed.

It was a ghastly gash, stretching from the side of her waist all the way across her belly.

The wound was deep enough to expose bone.

The flesh was split and curling outward, and clinging to its edges was the overbearing, tyrannical aura that belonged to Bear.

That aura was like invisible thorns, embedded around the perimeter of the wound, preventing it from healing.

But—

A translucent, crimson serum had already begun to seep from the wound.

Within that serum flowed a power he could not fathom at all.

It was rapidly eroding, purifying the lingering aura trapped within the torn flesh.

Visibly, before his very eyes, Bear’s residual presence was being washed away, scattered bit by bit beneath the crimson tide.

He had no doubt that in a few more minutes, every last trace of Bear’s aura would be completely purged.

Which meant...

Bear had given everything he had.

And in the end, he had not managed to leave so much as a single, lasting mark on this monster.

Too terrifying.

In that instant, a fierce, overpowering will to live shattered the pride and conviction Crocodile had nurtured for so long.

That conviction—the absolute certainty that he was a higher form of life, standing far above humanity.

That pride had been maintained in his heart for over a decade, solid as bedrock, never once wavering.

Yet now, beneath the shadow of death, it crumbled more thoroughly than Butterfly’s severed skull had.

Without the slightest hesitation, he dropped to his knees before the girl with a heavy thud.

His knees slammed against the bathroom tiles, producing a dull, muffled sound.

He pressed his forehead tightly to the floor, his brow against the cold ceramic, not daring to lift it even a fraction of an inch.

“I beg you.”

“I only want to live.”

His voice was hoarse and rushed, laden with pathetic, humble entreaty.

“I will do anything for you!”

Crocodile thought to himself: he was probably the weakest of The Seven.

Butterfly had her disguise. That false human skin could deceive every gaze in the world.

Serpent had her cunning. Her mind was more adept at calculation than any human’s.

Bear had his strength. Pure, brute force capable of crushing everything in its path.

And him?

He probably only had this hard body of his, and even that was barely worth mentioning.

But this hardiness—before this dreadful girl—would likely not last a single moment.

To die a glorious, earth-shattering death, like Bear did? He truly could not do it.

He was not Bear. He did not want that so-called pride and dignity.

He only wanted to live.

“Anything?”

Pandora did not strike. She merely countered with a tone of idle intrigue.

Crocodile detected a note of playfulness in her voice—as if she were examining an amusing toy.

But it also meant one thing: there was hope!

He pressed his head down even deeper, his forehead scraping faintly against the tiles.

In this moment, he more closely resembled the human skin he wore.

The one who had once, in life, clung so desperately to survival—than an Anomaly.

His voice hardened with unprecedented certainty. “Anything.”

“Very well.”

Pandora let out a soft laugh.

“In that case, the first thing—tell me—”

Her voice turned abruptly, lethally cold.

“The remaining members of The Seven. Where did they go?”

“Do not attempt to deceive me. My squad knows more than you imagine.”

Pandora’s voice carried an immense, crushing authority, like an intangible shackle clamping down around Crocodile’s throat.

“Of course. This servant would not dare.”

Crocodile answered instantly, without a moment’s hesitation.

His forehead remained glued to the floor, but his voice had steadied considerably compared to moments before.

......

Among The Seven, Rat was the most cautious.

It could always be the first to sense danger.

That perception came not from any supernatural ability, but from instinct—pure intuition.

An acute sensitivity to threat, honed through long, drawn-out periods of concealment and disguise.

This city did not harbor only their own group of skin-wearing aberrations.

In certain places—within the strains of jazz music, in the depths of reinforced concrete—other, similar entities also made their homes.

Some of them were even more terrifying than The Seven.

Raccoon remembered the last time he had encountered one of them. That time, he had nearly died.

The only reason he survived was that Rat had sensed that hair-raising, predatory gaze ahead of time.

He had been able to slip away, calm and composed, just before danger could strike.

Had it not been for Rat, he would have already been food dissolving in that thing’s stomach by now.

But...

The cautious Rat.

How exactly did he die?