After the fight with the black centipede, they continued for a while before finally stopping to rest for the remainder of the night.
The camp settled slowly.
Fires were lit, the wounded were treated, and the night watch began its rotation. The forest just beyond the reach of the flames swayed with slow shadows.
Petra sat alone near the edge of the camp.
Her Ant Avatar didn't need sleep, and her main body was already half-submerged in a light trance, so rest was unnecessary. She simply existed there, silent, unmoving, and watched the mist drift between the trees while thinking about alchemical calculations in her head.
Time passed.
The fire burned lower, and the surrounding voices faded one by one.
As the night deepened, Petra was sprawled out on a large stone, laying on her back, looking up, her small frame outlined faintly by the dying light.
She wasn't thinking of anything in particular, she just let her imagination run wild.
Then… the light dimmed suddenly.
She raised her head.
"Mm?"
Two figures stood above her, Lethra and Lithra. Their silhouettes flickered faintly with their innate glow, casting strange shadows across the ground. Their faces, in the half-light, looked too perfect, too symmetrical, and too beautiful in a way that bordered on eerie.
They stood there for a moment, silently watching her.
Petra could feel a strange or a leaking from their bodies.
Then one of them spoke.
"You smell like her."
"She does."
"She's alive?"
"How sad."
"Is that bad?"
"If we can feel it so, can they?"
"Yes, that's not good."
"Should we remove this one?"
"It's not that easy."
Petra tilted her head, expression blank as she listened to the two girls converse back and forth.
The other sister stepped closer, her silver eyes narrowing slightly. This time, her question was directed at Petra. "Do you… know Melllillyan?"
Before Petra could respond, the other answered softly, "Sister… this one can't talk."
Indeed, Petra's Ant Avatar didn't have the ability to speak, just like most low-level insect-type Beastmen.
"Then the trail is lost before it even begins…?"
"Can she write?"
"With those hands?"
"No…"
The two fell silent again.
The campfire crackled quietly in the distance.
Petra's little mind spun.
'Who is Melllillyan? And… why do I smell like her?'
Her mind flickered through all the people that this ant's body had met and interacted with. She was certain that she didn't know anyone by that name, especially someone related to the Tibon Family.
However…
Something flashed faintly in Petra's mind, and she narrowed her eyes.
Lethra and Lithra turned away.
They seemed to have given up, no, it was more like they didn't want to confirm something. Their glowing figures faded into the fog as they walked back toward the center of the camp.
They didn't press her further.
Petra had a way to communicate, of course, but the twins had already lost interest.
So, the conversation ended like that.
Her Ant Avatar sat up and watched their backs leave.
Then, Petra's eyes flickered with light.
Her consciousness pulled away from the Ant Avatar like a thread being drawn through water. When her consciousness returned to her main body, Petra opened her eyes slowly. The light of the rooftop pavilion swayed faintly around her.
She narrowed her eyes.
Then, she called for a certain rustic village girl.
A few minutes later, Mell stood in front of Petra, fidgeting, and visibly confused. For some reason, she felt a bit nervous right now.
Petra stared at her with a blank, unreadable expression.
Then, she spoke a single word.
"Melllillyan?"
Mell froze.
Her eyes went wide, and beads of cold sweat began to roll down her forehead.
"I-I-I!"
She stuttered, her words tangling together, trying desperately to say something. Unfortunately, her panic only deepened, as if she didn't understand how Petra could have found out. Between the nervous glances, the twitching hands, and the endless series of half bows, Petra already had her answer.
The girl's name wasn't Mell… It was Melllillyan.
Petra puffed out her cheeks, asking with a cute face. "Just… who, are you…?"
Mell stiffened, then sighed.
Her hair fell over her face as her head drooped.
She knew that this day would come.
She reached for her right arm, her fingers tightening around it. Her eyes lowered to the bandages wrapped firmly over the new skin.
After Petra 'looted' Arthur's eye and Kilemin's arm, she had personally implanted them into Lilly and Mell, who just happened to need one of each.
Lilly's missing eye was replaced first. She had lost it during the chase that nearly killed her and her sister when Petra first found them.
Mell's case was different. Her right arm wasn't only scarred, it was cursed. The curse had rooted deep into her bones, nailing her soul to the limb in a cycle of constant, unbearable pain. Mell had hidden it so well that Petra didn't discover the truth until months after taking her in.
Petra didn't ask, she simply replaced it.
When everything was finished, the curse vanished, scattered by the strange power flowing through the new arm. There was no rejection. The limb shifted and reformed on its own, adjusting itself to match the exact shape of Mell's original arm.
Petra had no explanation, so they naturally went to the teacher for help. Levy told them the arm wasn't an arm at all. It was a kind of high-level energy manifestation.
Back then, Mell could only sit there, staring at her new arm in silence, completely stunned.
Now, in her heart… she understood that it was time to come clean.
When Mell raised her head, Petra felt her aura change completely.
She was no longer that simple village girl from before.
"My real name is Melllillyan Tibon, and I was supposed to be the next master of the Tibon Family."
Mell began her story…
* * *
"The Tibon Family is one of the founding families of the Cross Continent. When humans first came to the Cross Continent, they brought with them many things, like flora, fauna, trade and war, technology, culture, all bound by a grand vision. But the Tibon Family brought something else… they brought the study of the soul. Perhaps, even to this day, they were one of the best, even outside the continent."
Her eyes dimmed.
"While immortal cultivators chase 'longevity' through meditation and accumulation, we, unlike most other pure paths, seek only 'power' through study and science. We of the necromancer pathway don't strengthen our bodies, we unravel and understand the soul."
Mell's smile was hollow as her body lit up with the aura of a peek level third order necromancer.
"Our reward? Madness, mostly... Sometimes geniuses can appear, but it's never peaceful." She reached for her right arm, realized her hand was trembling, and let it fall back down.
Her aura dispersed.
"Our lives are shorter compared to the Immortal Cultivators. Two hundred, maybe three hundred years, that's the average lifespan of the common necromancers. But in that time, generation after generation, the family continued to discover things that no one else should ever have touched. It was an abyss that dragged down the family into an unfeeling storm of ambition."
She took a deep breath.
"I was born into the twelfth generation of the Tibon Family," Mell continued. "And in the Tibon Family, lineage isn't a privilege, it's a curse. The expectations that come with a pure bloodline is like a noose that never stops tightening."
Her gaze shifted toward Petra, but her focus seemed far away, somewhere lost in the haze shrouding her old and forgotten memories.
"At the age of ten, every child undergoes what they call a 'generational refinement'. It's both an experiment and a trial for each descendant. The family called it 'a merging of essence and inheritance', but I think it's just a way to weed out the weak."
"Those who succeed… 'ascend', and those who fail… are dismantled and used as test subjects…" Her eyes drooped. "My big brother died this way."
Petra said nothing, but her black eyes flickered faintly.
"My refinement was something called 'Fate Weaving'," Mell said. "Before it can begin, the subject has to undergo 'Soul Stitching'. That's just another way of saying the family takes a soul from another being and sews it into the subject. After that, you'll have a similar fate to whatever soul was used. It's a kind of 'artificial fate'."
Her voice trembled slightly.
"Because I was the daughter of Kareth, the patriarch, I held far higher expectations than my peers. They took the ancient soul of a 'Kirin', a violent and uncontrollable beast, a mythical creature of fate and judgment, then prepared to fuse it into me."
Her eyes glazed over as her mind turned back.
"I remember my mother screaming at them to stop. She argued for hours, but my father, he... just didn't care, no, he was actually ecstatic at that time. I was supposed to be the family's next 'masterpiece', so how could he not feel joy? That may have been the only time I ever saw a real emotion on his face."
She laughed bitterly.
"They dragged me into the chamber. The table was made of a white stone, and it was cold enough to burn my soft skin. They stripped me, strapped me down, stretched my arm to the point where the joints almost broke… The surgeons wore masks, so I couldn't see any of their faces, but I knew that I recognised some of their eyes. I remember the smell of rafflesia incense. The Kirin's soul was sealed in a glass sphere beside me, thrashing around like something alive."
Her voice lowered to a trembling mumble.
"Then… it all stopped."
The silence between her words lingered.
"The moment they began the 'ritual', the Kirin went still, completely still. Everyone froze at that time. They didn't understand why, but some of them thought that it was dead, while others said it was 'listening' to something. But my father… he just smiled. I remember it through the glass."
Her hands clenched into fists.
"He said, 'it's reacting to my soul.' They thought my compatibility was perfect, so they decided to go deeper, stitch longer, and bind the two of us closer together, pushing the limits of what two separate souls woven together could be."
Her breathing faltered, and she trembled.
"The pain was…!" She stopped. "It was like burning from the inside out. I could feel them threading something through my bones, my nerves, no, through something I didn't understand, something I still don't understand. I could feel the needles moving inside me, scraping out something that even I didn't know existed."
She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood.
"Back then, I must've blacked out, because when I woke up, I was in my mother's arms, running."
Her tone softened.
"She was running through the western region, already outside the Tibon family's estate. I was still in my surgical robes, and still soaked in blood. My arm—" Mell looked down, even though it wasn't the same one, she could almost feel the pain from back then.
"It was black, disfigured, and marked by twisting centipede-like scars. It hurt so much that I couldn't even cry. I think she… my mother, had stolen me from the chamber before they finished the procedure. I have no idea how she did it, but…."
Her voice began to shake.
"She ran for hours, no, maybe days... She shouldn't have been able to, but she did. By the time we reached the edge of a small village, she could barely stand. I remember her begging the villagers to take me, before collapsing."
She swallowed hard.
Her eyes shimmered faintly with tears.
"Then she died right there, on the ground, while I fell from her arms. I was too weak to even touch her."
Silence.
Petra didn't move, her gaze was unreadable as she listened.
Mell smiled weakly, but it was the kind of smile that only appeared when one understood what true loss was. This was… something that Petra knew very well.
"They buried her outside the village. As for me, I stayed." Mell continued quietly, her tone shifting into something almost numb.
Petra understood that simply thinking about those times brought her pain.
"I was adopted by an elder in the village. During that time, I worked hard. I cooked, cleaned, and tended the fields. I tried to pretend I was normal and never spoke about my arm. The pain never stopped, reminding me that something was gnawing on the inside of my flesh, but I learned to ignore it."
Her eyes flickered faintly.
"Over time, I noticed something strange. Sometimes… when I met people, I could feel an 'aura'. Not their thoughts or desires, just… 'the end of their story'. It was like I could see which puppets were about to break, and which puppets were meant for a long performance."
Her gaze lifted to Petra.
"The Kirin's soul, maybe… I don't know. Even unfinished, it left something behind, some kind of instinct."
Her voice grew softer.
"For years, I tried to live quietly. But one day, a lone mercenary came to the village. He was looking for something, and after failing to find it, he blamed the village. I got lucky and survived, but that 'something' brought others. Not long later… came the Tibon Family."
Her hands tightened.
"Lethra and Lithra were the first to come. They were the same generation as me, so they underwent their 'refinement' on the same day. They succeeded, if you could call what happened to them a success. Their souls were tied into one. Two minds, one life… it was almost like a curse that overflowed from their bodies, like an exposed nerve."
"When they saw me, they didn't attack. They just looked… sad. They gave me a single chance to run."
Her voice broke down.
"S-so I did. They stayed behind to slaughter the village while I ran. I saw the flames from miles away, I knew that this was the only way to stall for time… but it hurt so much."
Her tone fell flat.
"I ran for days… but I was captured again, by the same mercenaries that started the rumors. They beat me, enslaved me, then planned to sell me."
"But… they never realized who I was, and the Tibon Family didn't either. The twins never reported it."
"I survived because I couldn't die. The family's tempering made our bodies resistant, even before our tenth birthdays, we were filled with countless drugs from birth, poisons, elixirs, failed serums, all kinds of things. I guess pain just became a part of living in that family."
She took a deep breath.
"One day, while they were transporting me to the black market, a monster attacked and killed them all."
"I was terrified at the time."
"But it didn't touch me. It just stared at me… and left."
Her eyes lifted, faintly shimmering.
"I think it saw the Kirin in me, no… I know it did." She smiled, although a bit hollow.
"After that, I wandered around the western region, doing everything I could to avoid the eyes and ears of the Tibon Family. Eventually, I reached Darkwell and sold myself as a free slave. I changed names, told lies, and lived quietly to learn what I could from whoever 'bought' me. I told people I was the daughter of a blacksmith whose arm had been crippled. It wasn't far from the truth. This repeated itself for many years. Unfortunately, it was almost like I was unlucky, because those who 'hired' me would all inexplicably die in an accident. My reputation became so bad that I had to be moved outside the region."
Her smile faded.
"But when I met you, Petra…"
Her voice faltered again.
"That feeling came back, the one I felt when the Kirin first paused during the surgery in my youth. Your 'stage' was like a blinding light. It was so strong that I almost couldn't resist jumping into your arms."
She looked down at her arm and fiddled with the bandages.
"Even the fragment of the Kirin's soul in me stirred. It realized something, and it was… afraid."
* * *
Silence filled the pavilion.
Petra didn't speak. Her black eyes watched Mell for a long time.
After a while, Petra asked, slightly confused. "Is that all…?"
Mell froze.
A moment later, she burst out laughing.
It was the first time Petra had seen this girl genuinely laugh since taking her in.
Mell finally realized that she was just overthinking things.
She didn't need to hold it in at all.
Petra wouldn't doubt her because of her background, no, Petra wouldn't even covet the mythical beast soul. She probably didn't even care about having another powerful enemy. In the end, Mell just needed to remember that this was her new home.