Chapter 352: Without Sense or Sentience...

Soon enough, they had reached the very end.

Pandora paused briefly before the final compartment. Inside was an Anomaly—a gray cat. Its fur was somewhat unkempt, its eyes amber. At that moment, it was curled up in the corner of the compartment, tail wrapped around its body, ears pressed slightly down.

Under ordinary circumstances, it was just a common gray cat. In this form, it provided no materials of any particular value.

But once certain specific conditions were met, it would shift into an aggressive, humanoid monster. That was its true essence as an Anomaly—and its most valuable aspect.

The troublesome part was that the current containment apparatus could not handle this form-switching well. In its cat shape, it could be bound by conventional means. But once it became that humanoid monster, its strength and size would shift dramatically. The existing restraints might not be enough to fully suppress it.

So, as a rule, procuring materials from the Crowcat required Pandora to handle it herself. Occasionally, Elsa would assist.

At that thought, Pandora glanced back at the crocodile behind her.

Her mind turned the idea over, and she quickly dismissed any notion of manifesting Elsa to assist. True, she now commanded considerable strength. In this Fragment World, there were few who still surpassed her. Even if the crocodile saw Elsa manifesting, there would likely be no real issue.

But—

There was no reason to. No reason to take a risk, however slight it might be.

Turning back, Pandora extended a finger and pressed a button on the control panel. The button was unmarked, just an inconspicuous gray square embedded among a row of similar ones.

But in the shadows of the experimentation area, within some unseen chamber...

A wine glass half-filled with poisoned cherry juice was knocked over by a mechanism. A black cloth covering a mirror was pulled away by another, revealing the ancient glass beneath. A fixed camera gave a sharp click. As its shutter opened and closed, the flash illuminated an entire wall. Beside a piano, a phonograph suddenly began to spin, emitting discordant notes.

There were many more props in that room. Without exception, all had come from the Black Crow Mansion. Fewer than half of them were triggered by the room’s mechanisms.

But it was enough.

In the compartment before Pandora, the Crowcat began to change.

Its mottled gray fur bristled and stood on end, as if being pushed outward from within by some invisible force. Its amber pupils contracted sharply, narrowing to the thinnest of vertical slits, while the whites of its eyes were rapidly consumed by black.

Then—

Its body tore open, as if ripped apart from the inside by an unseen power.

The disguise shattered.

The feline form was stripped away like a shed husk. From the cracks of that husk, limbs not belonging to any cat stretched forth, twisted and wrong.

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It molted from cat into a contorted humanoid shape. The process took only a second or two, but it was nauseatingly rich with detail.

Once the transformation was complete, the Crowcat was nearly three times its original size. Misshapen limbs and arms several times the normal length extended from both sides of its torso. The joints bent backward. Its fingertips were sharp, black claws.

A head, resembling that of a girl but far more grotesquely large, sat crookedly atop a narrow, spindly neck. In the depths of its pitch-black pupils, something like boundless malice seemed to coalesce.

The malice was so intense that merely meeting its gaze through the glass was enough to induce a creeping discomfort. It felt like countless ants crawling beneath the skin.

And yet—

It must be noted that this so-called “malice” was merely a perception of the observer. In truth, the creature possessed nothing resembling human awareness. No thought. No emotion. No self-awareness.

That “malice” was simply an aura naturally exuded by its form. It was just as the vertical pupils of a venomous snake inherently carry a chill, without the snake itself coldly calculating anything.

Pandora’s expression remained unchanged.

She raised her hand lightly. Dozens of fine red threads extended from her fingertips. They were impossibly slender, each no thicker than a hair. Yet they gleamed with a luster that did not belong to ordinary thread, like congealed blood beneath the light.

As if alive, flexible and swift, they slipped into the compartment through small holes deliberately left in its walls. They moved like dozens of hunting crimson serpents, wrapping around the Crowcat’s limbs and torso.

Witch’s Heartstrings.

The red threads tightened, sinking into twisted flesh and anchoring the Crowcat firmly in place.

But the anomalous form of this creature was among the tougher ones in the entire experimentation area.

It thrashed violently.

The arms, many times longer than normal, heaved outward. The Heartstrings pulled taut, emitting a faint, high-pitched hum. The grotesquely swollen head whipped from side to side, unleashing a ragged, inhuman shriek.

Without Pandora exerting her full strength, there was a visible risk of it breaking free. The red threads trembled under its struggles, like violin strings about to snap.

But this, too, was within expectations.

Pandora’s gaze remained serene. She merely increased her output of magical power by a fraction.

In her mind, a spell matrix condensed.

Within the compartment, the shadows rose.

They peeled away from the pool of darkness beneath the Crowcat’s feet, like ink shaped into human form. In its hands, they coalesced into a scythe. The blade was dark as pitch yet gleamed with a cold, sharp light.

It swung down upon the creature’s head—

Swift as lightning.

One stroke. Two. Three.

Every cut landed precisely at the juncture of limb and torso. The material Pandora required consisted primarily of those malformed arms. The scythe swept through, severing them from the body. The sections were clean, without the slightest ragged edge.

The severed arms still twitched. The fingers still clawed. But they were promptly engulfed by another tendril of shadow and sealed into a high-strength containment vessel that had been prepared nearby.

Click.

The sound of the vessel sealing rang out, unnaturally crisp in the quiet corridor.

Throughout the entire process, Pandora bore not the slightest psychological burden. Her expression remained consistent—calm, detached, as if completing an entirely routine task.

Every test had demonstrated that the Anomalies within this laboratory possessed no intelligence whatsoever. They had no selfhood, only the most fundamental operating logic and survival instinct. React when stimulated. Struggle when harmed. Attempt to break free when bound.

That was all.

In this respect, Phoebe was utterly unique. She was more human than Anomaly. To date, no second case had ever appeared.

After harvesting the materials she needed from the Crowcat, Pandora turned around.

Those icy eyes settled, quiet and still, upon the crocodile.

In that single moment, the crocodile felt as though the air around him had frozen solid. A terror that welled up from the very depths of his soul pressed down on him, chilling his spine. The cold sweat that had just dried on his forehead began to bead anew.

The sights from within those earlier compartments were still seared into his retinas. The imprisoned kin like himself. The precise, emotionless dissection.

And now—

Those eyes that controlled everything were looking directly at him.