The ice had melted, life was returning to the land.
On a patch of damp grass where the snowmelt had seeped into the soil, a rabbit quietly poked its head out of its burrow.
It first looked cautiously left and right, ensuring no danger lurked nearby.
Only then did it hop fully out of its hole.
As a rabbit, it was supposed to be nocturnal.
But this one was unusually energetic—and its family had grown by several new members during the long, cold winter.
To keep its family from starving before spring came, it had no choice but to risk venturing out in daylight to forage for food.
What it didn't notice, however, was that a starving lone wolf was hiding not far away behind a clump of bushes.
The wind was blowing from the wolf's direction, so the rabbit caught no scent of its hunter.
The wolf, on the other hand, smelled its prey clearly.
But it wasn't in a hurry.
It waited patiently—for the rabbit to stray farther from its hole, for it to come a little closer.
Only then would the wolf strike its fatal blow.
Yet at that moment, faint black wisps drifted silently through the air, carried by the breeze.
The rabbit, whose sense of smell should have been keen, noticed nothing amiss.
The wisp slipped into its nostrils, and the rabbit suddenly froze.
Its ears perked up sharply, twitching uneasily as if sensing something was wrong.
The wolf, seeing the rabbit's strange behavior, grew anxious.
It didn't want the small disturbance to scare its prey away, so it leapt from the bushes and lunged toward the rabbit.
The rabbit's ears twitched again.
Instinctively, it wanted to bolt toward its burrow—but an inexplicable thought rooted it in place.
Thin black threads began winding through its scarlet eyes, and in moments, both its pupils and whites had turned pitch-black.
The wolf, now mid-pounce, suddenly felt something was wrong.
Some primal instinct screamed that the rabbit before it was far more terrifying than even the bear it had once barely escaped from.
But hunger overcame instinct.
Without hesitation, it lunged, jaws gaping to tear into the rabbit's neck.
Maybe it's just a stupid rabbit frozen in fear, it told itself.
It had no choice—only by eating could it hope to survive the last stretch of winter.
Just as its sharp teeth were about to pierce flesh—
The rabbit smiled.
Its tiny mouth split open—wider, and wider, and wider—until its entire head tore apart, revealing rows upon rows of razor-sharp teeth.
A dreadful suction erupted from its maw.
The wolf's body was dragged in, writhing helplessly as it was swallowed whole.
The rabbit's mouth obligingly stretched wide enough to accommodate the wolf completely.
When the last bit of fur disappeared, those jagged teeth began to grind and crunch furiously—and soon, the wolf was nothing but shredded meat and a fading memory.
Then, the monstrous maw and countless teeth folded and shrank away.
In seconds, the creature looked like an ordinary rabbit again—save for a smear of blood at the corner of its mouth, the only trace that the wolf had ever existed.
[High-tier Death Magic: Soul Drain]
A spectral hand appeared from the distance, swooping toward the rabbit.
The creature instinctively tried to open its jaws again, but the phantom hand was faster—
it plunged into the rabbit's body, then withdrew holding a faintly glowing wisp.
"A mere ordinary animal, yet its soul has condensed enough to be visible…
Could this be due to the influence of the corruption aura?
Or has the corruption already begun pushing it toward transcendence?"
Crunch, crunch—footsteps pressed through the thin snow.
A small figure walked toward the rabbit's fallen body.
She stopped beside it, the cold wind tugging at her cloak.
For a moment, the hem lifted—revealing white bone beneath.
Barely half a meter tall, with that distinctive skeletal frame—it was Hel's clone, the Little Magus.
She examined the new tags appearing above the rabbit's body and murmured thoughtfully:
"The bloodline hasn't changed yet, but there's a new 'Corrupted' tag.
Is that because the process has only just begun?
So for ordinary creatures, full corruption into a devil requires time.
If I intervene before that process completes, I can reverse the corruption—and the creature won't turn into a devil at all."
It was, for once, a piece of good news Hel had uncovered since entering the Snowmelt Principality.
For others, preventing corruption might be nearly impossible—but for Hel, it was as simple as removing a tag.
Still, if a being's bloodline had already been completely altered by corruption, even she would find restoring it difficult.
"So the key questions are—how long does corruption take to complete?
And how do we defend against the corruption aura itself?"
Hel turned her gaze back to the captured soul in her palm, probing its structure.
"The soul's memories remain unchanged, but there's a faint energy constantly rewriting its perceptions—like a powerful form of mental suggestion.
That explains why these souls, though not transcendent, can still be seen with the naked eye.
However, the suggestion isn't absolute.
If the original memories remain intact, it might not work as effectively on intelligent humans.
Especially those with strong wills—perhaps even if they fell into corruption, they might instinctively cling to their original selves."
Hel shook her head slightly.
That hypothesis felt… optimistic.
From Witt's earlier reports, even powerful knights—men of discipline and conviction—
lost themselves completely once transformed into devils.
That alone proved just how terrifying this mental corruption really was.
"The sample size is still too small," she muttered.
"I'll have to dig deeper."