The crowd went wild.

  It was an indescribable excitement, a revelry in beautiful fantasies of the future. Everyone felt as if they could see their own heroic figure, waiting for them just ahead.

  And yet… Pandora was different.

  Her face remained calm.

  Because… she probably had very little to do with that so-called “future.”

  Just as Poppy had said, the special zombie plague within these mosquitoes was incredibly important. It was the “seed” of the Transcendent system known as the “Corpse-Plague Acolyte.” You could think of it as the starting point of a superhuman ability, planted within the flesh and blood of an ordinary person.

  However, Pandora’s own flesh and blood had been profoundly altered by the drop of Witch’s Blood; she was long past being considered “normal.”

  She wasn’t entirely sure what her current state was. But one thing was certain—the “seed” of this plague could never be planted in her!

  Hadn’s all the mosquitoes that bit her… popped? They simply couldn’t endure the mysterious, alien power of the Witch’s Blood in her veins! That’s why they exploded!

  In this situation, how could she possibly join the ranks of the “Corpse-Plague Acolytes”?

  What’s more… she was starting to suspect whether the zombie plague out in the ruins, the kind that could turn ordinary people… could it even affect her now? Could the power of infection truly withstand the corrosive power of a Witch’s bloodline?

  It was hard to say.

  But, was this a good thing or a bad thing for her?

  Being an apprentice of ‘The Corpse Hall’ but unable to become a ‘Corpse-Plague Acolyte’ was definitely not a good thing.

  But… a “Wizard” was absolutely not weak. After all, she wasn’t just any old Wizard. Forget the apprentices of the Corpse Hall—even in a pure, orthodox system of Wizards, her current state would be considered a freak.

  And from a resource standpoint, with the System as her backing, she wasn’t overly dependent on the growth resources provided by the Academy.

  So… it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

  In her mind, Pandora rapidly analyzed this divergent path of hers. It’s not that she couldn’t see the light in everyone else’s eyes; it was just that she had a clearer view of the path beneath her own feet.

  “Alright, enough daydreaming.”

  From the podium, Poppy’s voice landed like a cold period, forcibly ending the fervent atmosphere in the classroom.

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  “When the sickness really kicks in, you’ll have plenty to suffer through.”

  “Now, prepare yourselves.”

  “In a moment, I will release the ‘Palmfiends.’ They will choose their own masters.”

  “Keep an eye on the Palmfiend that chooses you. From now on, it’s yours. If it breaks or gets lost, getting a replacement… isn’t cheap…”

  “And that’s that. Begin.”

  So saying, without waiting for the crowd to fully process this relentless barrage of massive information, she viciously lashed out with her foot, kicking the heavy metal chest in front of her!

  CLANG—!!!

  The metal chest, struck by the heavy blow, crashed to the floor, its lid bursting open.

  From within, countless… hands?!

  These hands, in all shapes and sizes, mostly maintained the basic form of a human hand. They had a very short stump of a wrist, and at the junction of wrist and palm, there was… a bright, curious eye, taking in its surroundings!

  This was the “Palmfiend,” also known as the “Task-device.” Because its primary and most common function was to accept and deliver the Academy’s commissioned tasks.

  Before now, Pandora had been wondering, where did Dulles accept his Warden’s tasks? Why hadn’t Teaching Assistant Poppy taken them to a “Task Hall”?

  And now, this was the answer.

  —because that kind of public, centralized task hall had long been obsolete. What replaced it was this “personal task-device”: convenient, fast, and far more private.

  Furthermore, its functions weren’t limited to tasks. It also doubled as a storage and transaction device for the Academy’s currency—Contribution Points. It was even a bit like the smartphones everyone had in Pandora’s past life. In supported areas, you could even use it to order food delivery, rent a room, buy daily necessities…

  Theoretically, as long as you had enough Contribution Points, the Palmfiend could provide all sorts of services that could greatly facilitate life, just like a phone from her past.

  But unlike the phones of her past, they... were alive!

  At this very moment, countless hands swarmed out of the cramped, dark space! These Palmfiends had clearly been cooped up for too long. They seemed especially excited upon leaving the chest. The moment they hit the ground, they moved like a legion of high-speed spiders, instantly occupying every inch of the classroom floor.

  Scritch... scritch... scritch...

  Amidst the faint, scalp-prickling rustling sound, they sped towards all the freshmen, exploring.

  Soon, four or five Palmfiends made their way to Pandora. Among them was one that looked like an old man’s hand, its skin withered and covered in wrinkles. There was a chubby one, like a baby’s meaty palm, clumsily moving left and right. And another, small like a child’s, was nimble, jumping and darting about.

  They swarmed around Pandora, scurrying up and down, at times, even trying to come forward for a little feel here, a little touch there.

  But, Pandora rejected all these intrusive gestures. Looking was fine. but climb on her head? Impossible!

  With a look of undisguised disgust, Pandora reached out, again and again preventing the chubby Palmfiend from attempting to scale her expensive dress. The fat hand pushed away by her own, it seemed to pause in a fit of pique, then, wisely turned to find someone else.

  Seeing that the number of Palmfiends scurrying around was dwindling, Pandora was in no hurry. After all, it was just a Palmfiend. Don’t be fooled by how picky these little things seemed now. When it came down to it, when they realized they truly had nowhere else to go, with no other choice, they would have to accept a master. Teaching Assistant Poppy was not the type to trouble herself with taking them back and giving them a second chance to choose.

  However, just as Pandora was thinking this, calculating which one would be left to choose her in the end, her gaze suddenly froze—

  In that one glance, it was as if she had pierced through the roaring sea of people and saw the one... her fated “her.”

  The Palmfiend that immediately caught Pandora’s, an aesthete’s, eye, naturally, was quite a looker.

  It looked like the hand of a young woman in the full bloom of her youth. Slender, long, and fair, its skin as fine and smooth as the finest pearl. And among the many scurrying Palmfiends, it appeared especially… “docile.”