The sun hung high in the sky, reflecting brilliantly off the surface of the lake, which was now as calm as if the slaughter of a hundred piranhas had never occurred. Kurt watched as Isabel carefully tucked the last of the herbs into her basket, lining them with damp cloth and counting them down.

"Is that enough, Isabel?" Kurt asked, glancing over the harvest. "Not gonna lie, but I think we may have gone a bit overboard thanks to a pretty enthusiastic magic swordswoman."

"My deepest apologies." Ayako bowed with a polite smile.

Isabel wiped a smudge of dirt from her cheek and nodded. "Yes, Master Rossana. We have more than enough. We can return to the capital anytime you like."

Kurt reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. The screen lit up, reflecting that it was exactly 1:00 PM. He clicked the side button to lock it and felt a weight of curiosity leaning into his personal space.

"What... what is that?" Ayako asked. "I felt no mana from it, yet it glowed with such precision."

"This? It’s just a fancy watch. Keeps the time and stuff..." Kurt said and put it back in his pocket, but Ayako was skeptical.

"It is awfully big for a watch, don’t you think? And quite flat. It seems very impractical to carry such a slab of glass just to know the hour."

Kurt smiled nervously, trying to keep his backstory from unraveling further. "Yeah, exactly. It’s actually a very outdated model. I’m thinking of getting a proper one soon. Something more... local."

Ayako seemed about to press further, but suddenly, her posture shifted. Her head snapped toward the dense treeline of the forest nearby. The playful curiosity in her eyes vanished, replaced by the cold, analytical focus of a predator.

"What’s wrong, Izumi-san?" Kurt asked as his hand instinctively moved toward his knives.

After staring for another second, Ayako turned back to him. Her face smoothed into a pleasant, easy smile that didn’t match the sharpness of her gaze.

"Oh, nothing to worry about. I felt a faint unfamiliar mana signature, and it seems that we are simply being watched. Do not look in the direction of the forest so as to not arouse suspicion."

"Were being watched? Are you talking about the curious kind or do you feel any malice?"

"No," Ayako, almost disappointingly, shook her head. "There was no malice. Just eyes stalking us. Or rather..." She shifted her gaze toward Isabel, who was humming softly as she organized the herbs. "Stalking her."

Kurt followed her gaze to the unsuspecting maid, then back to the swordswoman. A small, challenging smirk played on his lips. "Well, Izumi-san, if you really want to impress me, why don’t you go catch our little stalker?"

Her eyes went wide for a fraction of a second before they narrowed into a delighted grin. "A challenge? I accept."

In a burst of pink Sakura petals and a sudden rush of wind, she vanished.

.....

Inside the forest, nestled within the thick foliage, the figure gasped. It was an old man. He had been watching the maid with an insatiable hunger. Then, he noticed that the woman wearing a kimono had just... disappeared.

Feeling that something was wrong, he scrambled out the bush and began to book it, sprinting between trees. But as he vaulted over a stump, his foot caught on a rock that he knew for certain hadn’t been there a moment ago when looking ahead.

He fell hard, slamming his face into the dirt. Groaning, he rolled over and looked up.

Standing before him were two feet clad in pristine white socks and traditional geta sandals.

He tried to scurry away, but Ayako was quicker. She drew her katana in a blur and stabbed it downward. The blade didn’t pierce his skin; instead, it pinned his baggy trousers to the earth, sinking the steel deep into a tree root between his legs. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦

"Please, I’d advise you to give up. It’s over." Ayako said, looking down at him with a terrifyingly calm expression.

.....

Back at the lake, Isabel, who had just finished sorting through the basket, looked up, blinking in confusion. "Master Rossana? Where did Lady Izumi go? She was just here."

"She went to catch your little stalker." Kurt pointed his thumb to the forest.

"My... my stalker?" her face turned pale as she clutched the basket to her chest. "I don’t understand..."

Before Kurt could explain, the wind picked up. Ayako returned from the forest, but she wasn’t alone. She was strolling casually, twirling her finger in the air as if she were conducting an invisible orchestra. Following her finger, a man’s body was suspended mid-air, spinning slowly in a localised vortex of wind magic.

She stopped in front of Kurt and Isabel, pointed her finger down, and the wind dissipated. The man fell to the grass with a heavy thud.

"This is..." Kurt frowned as he leaned forward to inspect the captive. "Isn’t he from the village we passed by? Although, something’s wrong with him."

The man’s skin was a sickly, translucent grey. His eyes were entirely bloodshot, the whites replaced by a frantic, pulsing red. Yellow foam bubbled at the corners of his mouth, and his teeth clattered together like stones.

"He looks... sick. Damn, I don’t really know how to describe it." Kurt muttered.

The man looked around frantically, his chest heaving as spit flew from his lips. He let out a guttural, wet growl until his eyes locked onto Isabel.

Isabel flinched as she took a step back. "Sir? Are you alright? Do you need hel–"

"Gr– RAAH!" The old man lunged at her.

"Kyaah–!"

"Watch out!" Kurt reacted instantly. He stepped into the man’s path and brought his boot down with a heavy stomp directly onto the man’s face, slamming his head back into the dirt.

The man didn’t stop. He struggled beneath Kurt’s boot, his strength far beyond what a normal villager should possess. He snarled and sunk his fingers into the leather of Kurt’s boot and then, with a sudden, violent jerk, his nails tore into the skin of Kurt’s calf.

"Ah!" Kurt winced, shifting his foot slightly from the sharp pain.

That split-second opening was all the man needed. He twisted his head, bared his teeth, and bit down hard into Kurt’s ankle.

"ARGH! BITCH!"

After feeling the pain of the bite, Kurt wound up his other leg and delivered a massive, mana-reinforced kick to the man’s ribs.

The impact sounded like a branch snapping. The man was launched through the air, skipping across the grass before tumbling directly into the lake.

"Oops..."

The silence that followed lasted only a second.

The water where the man landed began to boil. The piranha monsters, drawn by the scent of fresh blood and the vibrations of the splash, swarmed the spot in a frenzy. The man managed one final, gurgling scream before he was dragged beneath the surface. A few moments later, all that remained was a small, dark inkblot of blood in the water.

Kurt grunted and fell to one knee.

"Master Rossana!" Isabel cried out, dropping her basket and rushing to his side. Ayako was there a second later, also with a rare look of concern.

Kurt reached down and rolled up his pant leg. The wound was gruesome. Two deep rows of tooth marks were torn into his flesh, but the blood wasn’t just red – it was streaked with a dark, oily black. Deep purple veins were also starting to spread outward from the bite.

"It’s poisoned," Ayako hissed, her hand glowing with a soft light. "Let me heal you. I can purge the toxin."

"No, wait. Let’s leave it for now."

"Are you insane!?" Isabel cried. "What if you die!? Or worse, turn into... into that thing! Lady Izumi, please, hurry!"

"Isabel, calm down," Kurt commanded, fixing his gaze on her with a calm intensity that stopped her heart. "Trust me. This is nothing. I’ve survived worse."

Ayako frowned, her eyes scanning the spreading purple veins. "Rossana-sama, why? I can stop the pain. Why do you want to keep this wound? Please let me heal you. This is my fault for not being more careful when handling that man..."

"I mean think about it, that man was from the village. If we go back there and just tell them one of their people attacked us, they might lie or hide the truth. But if I show up with this... if I show them what their ’neighbor’ did to me... we can use it as confirmation.

We’re going to watch their reactions. If they’re innocent, they’ll be genuinely horrified. If they’re hiding something... their faces will tell us everything we need to know. Just to make doubly sure, we’ll say he killed Izumi-san before getting to me."

"I’m still worried about your wound... I’d hate to see Ms. Valentine see you like this..."

Ayako knelt down, her eyes glowed slightly as she inspected the wound again.

"He is right about one thing, Isabel. Look at the veins. They are spreading... but at a very, very slow pace. It’s strange. His own mana is fighting it off, suppressing the spread. No... that’s not right. This is something else... In any case, he won’t turn, at least not for several hours."

She looked up at Kurt with a mixture of worry and respect in her eyes. "The village is not far. We should figure out if they are related to this immediately."

Isabel reluctantly nodded, wiping her eyes. She reached out a hand. "Do you... do you need a hand up, Master Rossana?"

Kurt stood up on his own, testing his weight. He had a slight limp, and the ankle throbbed with a dull, burning heat, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle. He looked at both of them and offered a small, determined smile.

"It’s all good. However, Isabel, I hope your acting skills are good for this next part."