—

 

Fayette tapped the housewife on the shoulder with a broom and kept up her best civil smile when the woman spun around in fright, clutching a knife.

“Who are you? H-how did you get here? All the doors are closed!”

“Hey—please don’t be frightened. I just want to ask some questions. Put that nasty thing down. Hey, why are you backing away?”

 

—

 

Fayette poked the [Merchant] in the nape of his neck with her broom, and the man jumped a solid foot straight up.

And fell to the ground on his face. Fayette grimaced.

“Ouch, that looked like it hurt. Are you okay? I have some questions.”

The man spun around, eyes wild. “Who are you? How did you get here?”

Fayette rolled her eyes. “This is starting to get repetitive…”

 

—

 

Fayette stood in front of a building and tried to psyche herself up. She smacked her cheeks and made a fist, using one more [Eavesdrop] to make sure there were indeed humans inside. Right, this time, I’ll make sure to not frighten anyone! No more surprising people from behind!

She stepped forward and banged her fist on the door.

“Open up! I need answers! Stop hiding! Wait, why are you running away? I can heaaaaaryouuuuu. There’s no escape! I’m breaking down this door!”

 

—

 

Fayette pried open the floorboard, and smiled into the gap at the face of a stunned woman staring at her. “Hello, my name is Fayette, I came for a talk.”

 

—

 

Finally, a good while later and a good few dead zombies later, Fayette sighed as she stood on a rooftop, surveying the scene. The scene of the beginning. A district that had once been a sort of slums, but now had fallen into true disrepair.

It had taken her a few hours of searching and questioning, but she had finally managed to narrow down the origin point of the epidemic to a degree that she felt rather certain on. Especially when she saw what was there. But that was also part of the issue.

She looked over streets filled with an order of magnitude more devastation than elsewhere in the city. Collapsed walls, dug up brick, houses that seemed to have just been… knocked over. Zombies—weaker types and stronger ones too, packed tightly in seemingly every alleyway.

And the dead. So many dead, many with flowers laid out in memoriam over them. Fayette frowned. How am I supposed to get answers about what happened out here, when everyone seems to be dead?

Not even her [Maidsense] or [Eavesdrop] revealed any traces of living, breathing people—just the endless eerie groans of their monsterified remains. She kicked her feet over the rooftops edge aimlessly and took a look at setting sun.

Only an hour more before I have to start heading back… Was this all a waste after all? She thought for a moment, then shook her head. Definitely not—she had gotten decent experience after all. For every person she managed to interview, she had been forced to clear out three zombies, resulting in a decent bit of progress.

And she had also maybe made some progress in becoming more capable of socializing. Why, the last two people she had interrogated hadn’t even tried to run away in fear! It was a stunning amount of progress for just a few hours of work.

But still… Fayette leaned backward, and let her back fall onto the rooftop—the only completely intact one in four blocks. She had dusted her spot at the ledge mostly clean, so she was able to lounge without worry. A [Maid] always had to be on guard for danger, dirt or anything else.

And that preparedness let her catch the subtle change. A slight shift in the magical auras engulfing the rooftop, a slight disturbance to the dust in the air and on surfaces. Only the slightest shift, but for a [Maid] her level, it was clear as footsteps approaching.

Which was precisely what it was.

Fayette got up warily and turned around, then saw a woman. Just a kindly middle-aged woman, standing right on the other side of the rooftop. Smiling at her, like a caring adult would smile at a child. She was holding a bouquet of flowers in her hands and nodded at Fayette relaxedly.

“Evening, a most pleasant day for a stroll, isn’t it?” The woman said, taking a step closer. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to say.

Fayette felt herself instinctively relax et her easy-going bearing. Something about the woman was just so calming, like the air in a flowery meadow. A pleasant diversion from the scents of rotting flesh.

Fayette smiled at her and took a step closer too. What had the woman said? Fine day for a stroll or something of the sort? Fayette looked at the sky above her and breathed in the fresh air. “You couldn’t speak truer.”

The woman took another step closer and measured Fayette with wise eyes. “What would someone of your sort be doing out here? These are troubled times.”

Fayette blinked twice at her, trying to process the words. Right—why was she here? Where was she? She was… “I’m… looking for someone. The person behind everything that’s happened here. I think?”

What had happened here? It suddenly felt so very distant to her, as if only this rooftop and the woman standing opposite her existed. She blinked her eyes again, feeling them grow even foggier.

The woman nodded at her answer and kept walking forward at a slow pace. “Did somebody send you? Is the government searching?”

“No… they… they don’t need to search. I came on my own.”

“Just you?”

“Just me.”

The old woman smiled, then reached to her bouquet and picked out a brilliantly red rose that seemed to be at the height of its bloom. She drew it up like a precious jewel, then held it out for Fayette.

“Would you care for a flower? Fine ladies like you deserve them most of all.”

Fayette stared in front of her, and almost wobbled on her feet, then managed to barely stay standing. She blinked her eyes again. Why am I feeling so sluggish?

The flower in front of her seemed so inviting, so friendly, and she started to reach out for it, slowly.

But something felt wrong.

Her hand paused midway, and Fayette frowned, trying to look at the woman’s face. She had been trying to do that all day—remember what people’s faces looked like. It had been shocking to find that her memory of such had been slipping with bandits, so she had taken special note to ensure it wouldn’t repeat.

But no matter how hard she squinted, she just couldn’t make out what the woman’s face looked like. Fayette only saw a hazy outline, and a vague impression of a kindly old woman. Not an actual face, but an impression like one of every caretaker she had ever had layered all on top of each other.

She took a step back and brought her hand back. She blinked again. Why can’t I…? It’s always been the memories before, not the moment…

“Miss… who are you?”

The woman’s voice grew tighter and she advanced a step. “You’ll take my flower, won’t you?”

Fayette’s head ached. Something was wrong. Why was she here in the first place? Where was she? She shook her head, then finally sensed something—a second set of eyes. Or one eye, or none, something of the sort. A distinct entity in her mind.

She reached out, and felt at her slime’s senses, coming from a bucket sitting just a few feet away from her. The slime was watching the scene too—even if it didn’t know what it was watching.

But Fayette finally saw. The woman’s true features.

A rotting, bulging figure, with twisted imitations of flowers growing straight out the skin, with leaves growing out from under nails, and with dark, black eyes that shone with no light at all. Fayette’s senses started to feel clearer, though her mind was still fuzzed.

But she finally managed to reach for more. For skill and magic.

[Maidsense] and magic, she reached for both, trying to sense what was standing in front of her.

It was like her face hitting a brick wall from a run. Her sense of mana told her of a vile nuclei of diseased mana, spinning in an enclosing vortex all around her, centered on the rose. Her skill told her of something indescribably vile and large, almost as large as the three important men had been, like the festering corpse of a whale compared to her tiny body.

Her eyes opened wide open, and she saw her foe at last. She sensed the difference in levels.

The rotted thing pretending to be a kindly woman noticed too and jolted. “You—”

Fayette did not wait. She leaped back, caught hold of her bucket, and jumped right off the ledge. Oh, hells no!

She landed on her feet on a street lined with corpses, and finally really took note of the flowers laid over each and every corpse—she had seen them earlier too, all over town. Especially where the diseased mana was thickest. And Fayette knew she had her culprit.

But first she would have to escape.

A thud announced a foe landing behind her. “It’s rude to leave a woman hanging like that.”

Fayette looked back warily, but kept backing away. She eyed the woman’s form, and noted that the landing seemed to have hurt her. “You don’t seem too fast. I think I’ll be taking my leave.”

The woman smiled, revealing rotted teeth. “I’m not the one that does the chasing.”

And she threw the rose at Fayette.

Fayette threw a fork right back, and hit the rose midair, skewering it to the ground. She almost breathed a sigh of relief. But the rose had been only the diversion. Suddenly, she heard roars from all around her. Shifting debris and creaking boards. Zombies started piling out from every direction.

She already used a skill on me? What?

But though her eyes roamed the street for a moment more, Fayette didn’t stop to think it through. She knew this wasn’t quite the time for it. With no further words, she spotted the one gap in the amassing mob, made a dash for it, and broke through.

But even at the next intersection, foes were coming from all directions. Ghouls, zombies, and some other things too—and she aimed for the weakest gap in the formation. Her eyes narrowed. Broom! Acid mop form activate!

She dipped her broom into her bucket, then discarded the metallic contained to the ground and kept running forward. Except a slime was now on the bristles of her broom, attached as securely as a [Cleaning Slime] could be.

Fayette dashed forward and swiped with her newly-forged weapon, and spared no strength. She slathered the slime thick onto the monsters, and as they started collapsing, jumped right over, not heeding the damage the slimey corpses did to her clothes.

The [Maid] leaped into a narrow alleyway, spun a circle and lathered a thick layer of acid behind her, then kept running. She heard the zombies and ghouls pile on each other as they all tried to squeeze into the narrow alley at once.

She kept running, dodging two more packs and breaking through one, and then finally managed to get up to the rooftops. Fayette stopped for only a second to take a look behind her, saw the amassing zombies agitated by the coming night and the chase, and decided to keep moving.

But as Fayette ran the remaining distance to the secret tunnel, gradually getting away from the horde and free from their senses, when the fire pumping in her veins cooled, she didn’t shiver in fear of what she had seen, nor did she feel dismay in the levels she had felt from the foe.

Because she had finally found their foe. There was something concrete to fight—something immediate for her to do. As she shambled into the abandoned warehouse housing the tunnel, Fayette greeted the sentry holding watch with a wide smile.

“Hey, you’re a hunter too, right? I’ve finally found something to hunt!”