I Revived My Maid, Now She Hungers for My Blood

Chapter 248: Changes

A year.

The thought settled back into her consciousness, carrying a palpable, heavy weight. But this time, she didn’t feel the dread or the exhaustion. No need to sweat it. The proof was already staring her in the face.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

The heartbeat echoed in the void. A sound only Pandora could hear.

Nobody noticed. Right now, on the surface of that massive, pitch-black creature that had devoured countless minds—beneath the shell of a girl pinned in place by countless densely packed tentacles—deep within the flesh under her pale skin, a scarlet, pulsing light circulated in perfect sync with her heartbeat.

..................

The familiar rooftop restaurant.

The breeze carried that specific scent of the campus district’s edge—a mix of botanical fragrances and the faint soot from the distant industrial sector.

The last time she’d been here was over a year ago. With Aurora, Betty, and Elsa. Eating that piping hot, rich-broth sukiyaki. It had been their last day before leaving the campus, a farewell seasoned with a light buzz and easy laughs.

Today...

Pandora’s gaze drifted across the table.

Elsa was still in her unmanifested state, sleeping in her own system space, quietly waiting for the next time she was “equipped.”

And Betty... Betty had drifted further away. Like a stone dropped into water, the ripples had faded, and her tracks were hard to find. Heaven knows what state she was in now, or where she’d ended up.

For this meal, across that long dining table, there was only Aurora left.

Her silhouette seemed to have shifted slightly. Not her looks, but her bearing. The way she stood, the rhythm of her walk, even the line of her shoulders as she sat quietly—there was a taut, clean efficiency to her now, forged and tempered in real combat.

But the look in her eyes hadn’t changed. The concern pooled in the depths of her gaze, threatening to spill over, was exactly the same as before.

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Truth be told, Pandora was still a little spaced out.

It felt like she was still stuck in that lightless, soundless, sensationless void. The warm lights, the smell of the food, the familiar face across from her—it all felt like a hallucination her mind had cooked up.

When her sentence had ended, she hadn’t even registered it.

One second, she was in that absolute nothingness, feeling her heart thump, feeling her blood flow, riding the bizarre, hyper-efficient growth from syncing her mental force with her life’s rhythm.

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The next second? All her senses came crashing back like a breached dam. Sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste... and gravity.

She felt the sickening lurch of zero-G, like her body was falling from a massive height. Though, the freefall lasted a lot shorter than she’d expected.

Sploosh—

The sound of splashing water rang out, painfully sharp in the dead-silent space.

She found her footing, freezing liquid soaking through her pant legs. Looking down, she saw she’d landed in a shallow pool. The water only reached her knees. It was pitch-black and bone-chillingly cold, but otherwise had the consistency of normal water.

She tilted her head back and looked up. Above her was an endless expanse of pure darkness. Somewhere up there was the main body of the Sentence of the Void.

She was out.

The rest was history. Aurora had picked her up from the heavily guarded, highly restricted exit deep beneath the Disciplinary Court. It was only then, from Aurora’s own lips, that she learned her one-year stint was up.

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“It’s almost a shame, really,” Pandora said, using her fork to spear a massive, beautifully seared ribeye, the edges glistening with mouth-watering fat. “Honestly, the accommodations over there weren’t half bad. The power leveling was insane—off the charts efficiency...”

She shoved the rib into her mouth. Her teeth crunched through the caramelized crust and sank into the tender, juicy meat underneath. The rich, savory umami of the beef, the spicy kick of cracked black pepper, and that tantalizing, perfectly calibrated sweetness of honey glazed over the top—

Instantly.

Those complex, distinct flavors hit her brain like a thousand tiny keys sliding into the rusted locks of her senses, which had sat dormant for a year. Click.

Wham—

A tsunami of sensory rebound came crashing through her consciousness, the sheer overload giving her a fleeting, dizzying hallucination not unlike the burst of inspiration during 【Assisted Alchemy】. A pity it was just a mimicry—couldn’t actually recreate that profound state. But it was enough. More than enough.

“How is it, My Lady? Feeling better?” Aurora’s concerned voice broke through. Her eyes hadn’t left Pandora’s face for a second, tracking every micro-expression.

Pandora nodded, her brow unfurling as she let out a long, slow exhale. “Much better.”

When she’d first gotten out, her biggest problem hadn’t been trauma. It had been hunger. A craving for sensation so deep-rooted it threatened to swallow her whole. That was why they’d come straight here—to the rooftop restaurant.

As she spoke, Pandora rapidly inhaled a soft, pillowy roll dripping with rich gravy.

“Slow down, My Lady.” Aurora’s voice carried a note of helpless amusement. She nudged her own untouched dessert—adorned with fresh strawberries and cream—across the table. “The kitchen made plenty. No need to inhale it.”

“You don’t get it, Aurora.” Pandora let out another long sigh, shaking her head as she plucked a bright red strawberry off the dessert plate. “Spending a year in a place like that... a whole year...”

She paused, popping the strawberry into her mouth. The sweet, tart juice burst across her tongue, weaving into the rich, velvety cream. “It makes you realize that being able to taste something... to feel sweetness... is an incredible luxury. Almost sacred.” Her voice was quiet, carrying a strange, contemplative weight. “Even if you aren’t actually scared of the place, even if you go in prepared. It doesn’t matter.”

“It’s the difference between knowing something is sweet, and actually feeling the sweetness.” She looked up at Aurora, her eyes remarkably clear under the restaurant’s warm amber lights. “The gap between those two concepts is bigger than the gap between my power level when I first enrolled and where I am now!”

Aurora listened in silence. Her eyes never left Pandora.

As she listened, her gaze suddenly went slightly out of focus.

For some reason, unlike herself—whose body and aura had inevitably been scarred and hardened by a year of killing out in the field—the girl across from her looked virtually unchanged on the outside. Still the same face with its lingering traces of youth. Still that same slender, almost delicate frame.

But... something else had shifted. Something far more subtle, far harder to put into words.

It felt like if she blinked, the unassuming girl sitting across from her would slough off that harmless façade and turn into something far more dangerous than the grotesque, mutated zombies she’d spent the last year tearing apart in the Dead City...