They had clearly just finished their patrol of the manor. Seeing the scene at the gate, they hurried forward.

  “Greetings, My Lady!”

  The two of them saluted Pandora with practiced precision, their gazes simultaneously falling on the still-warm corpse and the two trembling boys.

  “My Lady!”

  Lucien, “Gabby,” was the first to speak, his face etched with anxiety and lingering fear. “You mustn’t believe a word these three scoundrels say! They’ve done nothing but wickedness these past few days, but they’re so good at twisting words! We… we sometimes can’t even win against their twisted logic!”

  He grew more and more agitated as he spoke, trying to completely erase the lies the three boys had fabricated from Pandora’s mind.

  However, as he spoke, he slowly trailed off.

  Because Pandora was smiling at him.

  It was a gentle, faint smile, but it made Lucien’s heart skip a beat for some reason.

  “What they said,” Pandora’s voice entered his ears, clear as a bell, “see if it matches what you know…” With that, Pandora recounted what the two boys had just said to “Gabby.”

  By the time he heard the st sentence, Lucien was completely stunned.

  He opened his mouth, looked in disbelief at the two boys who were scared out of their wits, then at the corpse on the ground with the gaping hole in its chest.

  “They… they’ve changed their ways? They’ve started telling the truth?” he muttered, as if asking, or perhaps affirming to himself something absurd.

  Pandora shook her head gently.

  “No, they haven’t changed their ways.”

  Her gaze fell upon Ron’s face, his eyes wide in death, her own gaze icy, without a shred of pity.

  “Death has a way of making people see facts.”

  “It made them understand that in my presence, they have no right to use any tricks, to argue in any way.”

  Lucien followed Pandora’s gaze and swallowed hard. A yer of cold, cmmy sweat instantly soaked his back.

  He looked at Pandora, this fourteen-year-old noble girl, and at this moment, he felt her methods were always beyond his expectations, unfathomably deep.

  And seeing this reaction from “Gabby,” Pandora more or less understood that what the two boys had said this time was mostly the truth.

  She trusted her own judgment, and she trusted her knights.

  But she was still curious about one thing.

  “Why did they do this?”

  Pandora’s voice pulled Lucien from his stupor.

  “Logically speaking, even if this is their nature, they shouldn’t have exposed themselves so quickly, let alone become so arrogant as to bully their companions and fabricate lies to frame you.”

  She looked at Lucien, her gaze sharp. “Tell me the exact situation when you returned to the manor. Every single detail, without omission.”

  “Yes, My Lady.”

  Lucien collected himself and began to describe everything in detail: from yesterday morning after they finished eating, to being ordered to return to the manor, to the scene they witnessed upon their arrival…

  “When we returned to the manor, there was no one here, not even a single zombie. So we entered first and found…”

  “Wait.”

  Pandora suddenly interrupted him, her brow furrowed tightly.

  “Are you saying… when you arrived, the zombies in the manor had already been cleaned up? They weren’t completely useless after all; they actually did something?”

  “No, My Lady.” Lucien quickly shook his head, a strange look on his face. “We thought so at first too, but after giving them a beating, we learned from them that… when they returned to the manor, there wasn’t a single zombie here.”

  Pandora’s brow furrowed even deeper.

  Lucien didn’t notice the change in her expression and continued:

  “When they arrived at the manor, they saw that there were no zombies and no one here, they thought this pce was their kingdom. At first, they were a bit restrained, but soon, things got out of hand.”

  “That miller’s son, Ron, he’s very smart.” Lucien’s tone held a complicated appraisal. “He even boldly guessed that Lord Viscount was dead, without knowing the full situation. With that guess, they thought that people like them were indispensable assets to a young Miss, so…”

  “They got arrogant.”

  This was actually quite normal. After all, how could a Viscount’s daughter possibly rebuild order with just a handmaiden and a little kitchen maid? In that situation, it was logical for them to feel more and more important. The arrogance and self-importance of youth, in a power vacuum, would always magnify in the ugliest of ways.

  Now, all the logic lined up.

  Pandora nodded, showing her understanding.

  But… what they were thinking then was no longer important.

  The most important piece of information in what he’d said was—

  “When they arrived,” Pandora’s voice was so low it was almost only audible to herself, her eyes filled with gravity and inquiry, “the zombies… had already disappeared?”

  Who?

  Who had cleared the zombies from the manor after she left? And why did they do it?

  Disappeared… vanished…

  The words echoed in Pandora’s mind, carrying a sense of absurd and bizarre logic.

  She frowned, unable to understand, because when she left the manor, she remembered clearly that there were still several zombies wandering around, especially near the main residence.

  This was the fundamental reason she had given the mill boys the task of “cleaning the manor” in the first pce.

  According to her original pn, these zombies would have been enough to consume most of the time and energy of those untrustworthy mill boys, leaving them no time or energy to think or do anything unnecessary.

  But the problem was right here—

  The zombies that were supposed to be in the manor had vanished into thin air?

  Pandora confirmed with Lucien and Ham again. Their answers were categorical, without any ambiguity.

  They weren’t dead. They hadn’t been disposed of by them. They had just… vanished.

  No bodies, no traces, no signs of a struggle.

  As if they had never existed.

  This was too strange.

  The whole affair was permeated with an indescribable, eerie atmosphere.

  This was clearly not a problem that could be solved just by standing here.

  Pandora suppressed her confusion and decided to shelve the matter for now.

  Right now, she had more important things to do.

  There were six new mouths to feed in the party, and six new people. She needed to settle them in properly. Besides, they had been traveling all morning, breakfast was a long time ago, and now, everyone was hungry.

  “Inside, first. Eat, and rest.”

  Pandora gave the order, and the party, leading their horses, walked into the manor.

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