Seo blinked open her eyes and once she did, she found herself lodged into the wall with bones bending around her arms and legs as she was hung to the wall as though she was on a cross.

"What the hell happened to me...?"

She could remember it all now, piece by painful piece.

She had met these people on her way to Oroe City while traveling in the carriage, and they had promised her a dragon... something which she urgently needed for her family’s honor and her future advancement.

Her Big brother who had willingly stepped down from his position as the family heir specifically for her sake, her father who’d pinned all his hopes on her magical talent, everyone in the prestigious Aestrea Family was desperately searching for a dragon companion because she had the highest magical potential among all of them.

So she had decided to take matters into her own hands and help with the search.

And these Death Cult members had told her to find some stupid commoner named Klaus. Of course, the rumors of this particular Klaus person had already spread even as far as Oroe City by that point... stories of a commoner who had somehow faced against the Death Cult and rescued Cedric Arlain.

These people were members of the Death Cult that apparently wanted to teach him a harsh lesson for reasons they hadn’t fully explained, which had been okay with her at the time but they’d wanted her to bring in a Commoner in exchange for a Dragon as payment for her services.

Even if it was an absurd and one-sided deal that should have raised immediate red flags, she had agreed to it anyway because the promise of a dragon was too tempting to refuse and look where that decision had gotten her now.

"Neo!" Seo immediately yelled out, her voice echoing off the stone walls of whatever dungeon cell they’d imprisoned her in. "NEO!"

She didn’t see him anywhere in the darkness.

Her mother had personally picked Neo up from the streets years ago when he was just a starving child, and despite the fact that he had common black hair instead of noble coloring, he also had striking gold eyes that marked him as special.

Regardless of how he looked on the surface, her family had already confirmed through expensive magical testing that he not only possessed the rare Bloodline of the Emperor... which made him technically a Prince of royal blood just like Prince Zephyr but he also had the extraordinarily rare ability to use multiple different elemental magics.

He could currently access all four of the basic elemental magic types: Fire, Water, Air, and Earth.

Though for now in his training, he could only reliably use Fire and Air magic with any real skill or power but once he fully mastered controlling all four elements, he would inevitably become a heaven-defying genius mage whose name would be written in the history books.

There was a loud clatter of footsteps approaching from the hallway outside.

"About time," Seo muttered with relief.

But instead of Neo appearing like she had desperately expected, it was a woman wearing a black cloak pulled low over her face.

Beneath the hood, Seo could make out unnaturally pale skin, an unnaturally thin face with prominent bones showing through, and deep hollow eye sockets.

Seo immediately fell back into her noble hauteur and demanded.

"I’ve done exactly as I was told and brought you that commoner Klaus. Now I want to get out of here this instant! How dare you people lie to a noble such as myself? Release me immediately!"

But the woman didn’t say anything in response. She simply walked past Seo toward the opposite wall of the torture chamber.

Seo’s voice died in her throat as she finally noticed what she’d been too panicked to see before.

She hadn’t bothered to look around the room carefully, but now she could see that the walls were covered with bloodied weapons of every type.

Rusted knives still caked with rotting blood, Broken swords with jagged edges, Curved daggers designed specifically for flaying skin and so many different kinds of whips hanging from iron hooks.

"What the hell are you planning to do with those things?" Seo asked, her voice rising with the first hints of real fear. "You better not use them to lay a single hand on me!"

The woman chuckled a bit... a dry, rasping sound that sent chills down Seo’s spine. She ran her skeletal hand across the various weapons almost lovingly, making a deliberate show of it.

She drew one particular broken blade from its holder and trailed her bony finger around the dried blood coating its edge.

"This one’s too easy," the woman muttered to herself. She returned it to the wall and pulled out a different blade instead. "I almost couldn’t believe it myself, Lady Seo... I genuinely can’t believe I was actually assigned the honor of your discipline and preparing you properly for our god."

Seo blinked in confusion. "You know me? Then unhand me this instant and give me the dragon you promised!"

The woman let out a long disappointed sigh.

She kept the blade back on the wall and continued trailing through more weapons with her skeletal fingers before finally taking hold of the leather-wrapped base of a particularly vicious-looking whip.

She gripped it tightly and pulled it free from its holder with a single motion.

"You haven’t changed from back then, not even once, My Lady," the woman said with what might have been sadness in her hoarse voice. "Even while your very life is on the line, you still behave like an arrogant brat who thinks the world owes her everything."

The woman slowly walked in front of Seo with each footstep echoing ominously in the stone chamber then she reached up with her free hand and pulled back the hood covering her head, fully revealing her face in the dim torchlight.

It was shockingly thin and malnourished, with skin stretched tight over her skull and deep eye sockets that made her look more like a walking corpse than a living human.

This woman was clearly suffering from intense malnutrition, or rather it looked like she simply wasn’t eating at all by choice.

"Do you remember me?" the woman asked quietly.

Seo looked at her with barely concealed disgust. "I see malnourished commoners such as yourself every single day in the streets. You’re not different from any of them at all."

The woman sighed again, deeper this time. "I shouldn’t really expect much from you, so allow me to jog your privileged memory."

She raised the whip high.

"You wouldn’t da—"

WHIP!

The leather cracked through the air and slammed down hard across Seo’s shoulder. It tore straight through her expensive noble robes like they were made of paper and left a long, bleeding gash across her previously unblemished skin.

Seo let out a sharp cry of pain that echoed off the walls as the burning agony was unlike anything she’d experienced in her sheltered noble life.

"I used to work for the Aestrea Family as your personal maid, Lady Seo," the woman said calmly, as if she hadn’t just struck her former employer. "But you accused me of something serious. Do you know what that was? If you answer correctly, I won’t whip you as hard again but if you stay quiet for too long, I’ll whip you even harder because I’ll assume you’ve forgotten me."

Seo immediately began threatening her. "My family will hunt you down for this! The Aestrea name carries weight across the entire—"

But the woman raised a thin bony finger to her cracked lips.

"Shh. Your Big brother, your father, none of your precious family will ever find you here in this place. The Death Cult has made certain of that. Now what’s your answer to my question? What exactly did you accuse me of all those years ago?"

Seo trembled with her mind racing through fragmented memories. "I don’t kno—"

WHIP!

The strike came without warning, lashing across her mouth and tearing at her beautiful noble lips and part of her face.

The sharp leather left deep cuts that immediately began bleeding and Seo screamed.

"Wrong answer," the woman said with a twisted grin spreading across her gaunt face.

WHIP!

WHIP!

WHIP!

Three more rapid strikes hit Seo across her torso, each one peeling away layers of her expensive clothing and the soft noble skin beneath. Blood began dripping down onto the stone floor in a steady pattern.

As Seo finished screaming herself hoarse, the woman spoke again.

"You accused me of stealing, Lady Seo. You accused me of stealing your precious silver locket... the one your mother gave you before she passed. Do you remember now? Why did you accuse me of that theft?"

Seo’s mind was a blank slate of panic and pain... She didn’t remember... She genuinely didn’t remember anything about this woman or any locket or any accusation.

"Because I—"

She didn’t even get to finish her attempted answer.

WHIP! 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

WHIP!

WHIP!

Three more brutal strikes whipped around her body, the sharp leather literally peeling off strips of her skin and making her scream out in fresh agony.

"You didn’t even let me answer the question!" Seo cried out desperately.

"Lady Seo," the woman said softly, staring directly into Seo’s terrified eyes. "I can obviously see it clearly in your eyes that you have genuinely forgotten what you did to me. You’ve forgotten because it meant nothing to you."

The woman’s expression twisted with remembered pain.

"Let me remind you then. You accused me of stealing your locket because I dared to speak up when you were insulting commoners on the streets that day. Do you remember now? You were mocking a crippled beggar, calling him worthless trash, laughing at his missing leg. And I... I made the mistake of telling you that I didn’t like hearing you talk that way about people who were suffering."

Seo’s remaining eye widened as fragmented memories started surfacing.

"That was my crime," the woman continued, her voice dripping with bitterness. "Speaking up to defend the powerless. So you decided to punish me by falsely claiming I’d stolen your precious locket. You wanted me destroyed for daring to question your cruelty."

The woman stepped even closer, her skeletal face mere inches from Seo’s.

"Now answer me this very carefully, Lady Seo: What happened after you made that false accusation to your family? What did they do to me?"

"What happened whe—"

WHIP!

The leather lashed viciously into her thigh, cutting deep enough to expose muscle beneath the torn skin.

"WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED AFTER THAT ACCUSATION?!" the woman screamed directly into her face with spittle flying.

Seo swallowed hard against the pain, her mind desperately digging through old memories she’d long suppressed.

"My... my Brother said he would handle your discipline personally. And then... and then he fired you from service in our household afterward. You were cast out without references."

"Yes! Good!" the woman said with manic satisfaction. "I’m so glad that got your privileged memory jogging, Lady Seo. You remember the basics at least. Now tell me something more specific: what exactly did your beloved brother do as ’discipline’ before throwing me out into the streets? What punishment did he inflict on me for your false accusation?"

Seo trembled violently. Her mind was completely blank on this particular detail.

She genuinely didn’t know the answer this time because her brother had never told her the specifics of how he’d handled the maid’s punishment.

"I... I don’t know," Seo admitted weakly. "He never told me what—"

"YOUR FUCKER OF A BROTHER KILLED MY YOUNGER SISTER!" the woman suddenly shrieked, her composure shattering completely.

The raw agony in that scream made Seo’s blood run cold.

"He murdered her in cold blood right in front of my eyes!" the woman continued, tears now streaming down her gaunt cheeks even as she laughed hysterically. "He dragged my innocent ten-year-old little sister into the punishment room and made me watch as he slowly snuffed out the life from her terrified eyes! He tortured her for hours while I was chained to the wall! All because of your lie! All for something I DIDN’T EVEN DO!"

WHIP!

WHIP!

WHIP!

The woman began whipping Seo all around her body in an absolute frenzy of violence and grief.

WHIP!

WHIP!

WHIP!

WHIP!

Her noble clothes ripped completely open, exposing her battered body. Blood began spewing out from dozens of cuts and gashes across her skin.

The woman was laughing hysterically now as she kept whipping with a crazy smile.

WHIP!

The leather caught Seo directly across her left eye with tremendous force and there was a sickening pop sound as her eyeball burst under the impact.

Seo screamed louder than she ever had in her entire pampered life but the woman kept whipping her crazily, over and over, with no sign of stopping.

The violent movements gradually loosened the bone restraints holding Seo to the wall. She fell down hard onto the blood-slicked stone floor.

Seo tried desperately to push herself away using her torn arms, leaving bloody handprints as she crawled.

"Sorry..." she whimpered. "I’m sorry... please..."

It was the first time in her entire noble life that she had brought herself down from her family pride enough to actually say the word "sorry" to a commoner. She’d always been taught that apologizing fixed everything, that nobles didn’t need to—

"SORRY?!" the woman shrieked. "SORRY?! EHEHEHEHEHE! WILL SORRY BRING BACK MY SISTER?! WILL IT UNDO HER MURDER?!"

WHIP!

The leather struck Seo’s back, tearing open a massive gash.

Seo cried out even harder as tears and blood streamed out from her ruined eyes, mixing together on the floor beneath her.

"Help..." she muttered weakly. "Someone... please help me..."

She wanted someone, anyone to save her from this nightmare.

Seo knew deep down that she probably didn’t deserve salvation after what her family had done but she wanted help anyway, wanted this pain to stop, wanted—

*WHOOSH!*

Something impacted the crazy woman’s head with incredible force, accompanied by a wet sound.

Seo turned her one remaining good eye to see the blurry headless figure of the woman falling over backward with a splash as blood leaked out from her severed neck stump.

Someone wearing the Death Cult’s distinctive black uniform was advancing toward her through the dim torchlight.

Seo trembled harder than ever... Never had she been so utterly terrified in her entire sheltered life as she was in this specific moment.

’They’re going to finish me off.’ she thought with numb horror then the cult-uniformed person leaned back slightly and drew their face down a little bit so she could see who they were.

For a split second that felt like an eternity, Seo’s heart leaped with desperate, irrational hope flooding through her chest.

’Neo! He finally came to save me!’ she thought with relief so intense it made her dizzy. ’He found me! I’m going to be rescued!’

But as her vision slowly focused through all the blood and tears blurring her sight, as the blurry figure came closer and the torchlight hit their face at a better angle, the crushing truth crashed down on her like a physical weight.

It wasn’t Neo at all.

It couldn’t be Neo because Neo wasn’t wearing the Death Cult’s distinctive black uniform with its bone decorations.

The face looking down at her with an unreadable expression belonged to the Commoner she’d betrayed... Klaus.

Her heart, which had briefly soared upward with hope just a moment ago, now sank down into absolute dread and terror.

The Death Cult uniform he wore seemed like a death sentence rather than salvation... He was one of them now... He’d probably joined them after she’d sold him out.

’From one commoner to the other,’ Seo thought with bitter, hysterical irony. ’Could my miserable life possibly get any worse than this? The first commoner’s innocent sister was killed because of my careless false accusation and this second commoner was deliberately betrayed and sold to a death cult by me personally for my own selfish gain.’

Klaus just stood there looking down at her without doing anything or saying a word.

Seo trembled while stuttering.

"Please... Please don’t kill me, I’m sorry... I’m so—"

But Klaus suddenly leaned down and lifted her up in his arms, getting her blood all over his stolen cult robes. Seo blinked in complete shock and confusion.

He carried her over to the wall and softly set her against it with surprising gentleness. "You shouldn’t talk that much right now. Save your strength."

"Do you have any Healing Potions?" Klaus asked.

Seo tried to speak but could only mouth silently. "Not at all."

"Alright then," Klaus said with a slight sigh.

He reached into the new storage ring he was wearing and brought out a small glass vial filled with glowing red liquid.

’It’s a pretty high-quality healing potion that I was saving for emergencies,’ Klaus thought to himself as he examined the glowing red liquid in the vial.

He’d bought this particular expensive potion before they’d entered the World Dungeon, spending several precious gold coins up front specifically because he wanted to be properly prepared in case someone in their group got mortally wounded by dungeon monsters or traps.

For this specific type of high-grade potion, even if you were literally on the verge of death from massive catastrophic injuries, it would pull you back from the brink and help you survive against all odds.

And even if your limbs were completely cut off and severed from your body, if you managed to reattach them quickly enough and drank this potion immediately afterward, they would heal and fuse back together instantly as if they’d never been separated.

The potion could even regrow entirely lost limbs from scratch with just a few drops of the concentrated magical liquid.