I Revived My Maid, Now She Hungers for My Blood

Chapter 247: A Year’s Time

“What am I doing?”

“Why am I doing this?”

“What do these runes even mean?”

These were questions that should have been hardwired into her subconscious, requiring zero conscious thought to answer, yet they began to surface one by one, entirely out of her control. Like a swarm of woodworms, they started gnawing at the foundations of her will.

“This won’t work...” The thought flashed through Pandora’s mind. “The Meditation Method alone isn’t enough...”

She understood it completely now. The Sentence of the Void didn’t just target Corpse-Plague Acolytes. It was equally effective against the rare Wizard-path extraordinaries of the Academy.

Because it targeted more than just the mind. It targeted the existence of meaning itself.

No matter how powerful your mental force was, in the face of absolute nothingness, it was just... a bigger void.

Perhaps a Rank-4 Wizard, whose mental force had undergone a fundamental metamorphosis, would fare differently. But the Disciplinary Court’s targets were strictly Apprentices of Rank-3 and below.

No wonder fewer than one in ten survived with their sanity intact. Even the Apprentices most adept at psychic warfare found that the mental training they prided themselves on, the very thing they relied on to survive, was completely useless here.

That kind of despair was a hundred times deeper than the blank confusion a normal person felt facing the void. You thought you had a weapon, only to find out it was a pathetic, fragile illusion that shattered at the slightest touch.

Pandora felt her consciousness starting to fray. The light of the runes grew dimmer; the circulation of her mental force slowed to a crawl.

The void was like the tide. Every crashing wave seemed so small, even gentle. But it never stopped. It never rested.

It held no malice. It had no motive. It simply was. And its very existence was a denial of all other “existence.”

Just as Pandora’s consciousness was about to sink completely into that soundless, shapeless, meaningless abyss—

Thump.

A “sound” rang out in the absolute nothingness.

No. Not a sound. Something more primal. A rhythm that didn’t need auditory organs to be perceived directly by her consciousness.

Thump.

Thump.

A heartbeat.

In a void that had stripped away every internal and external perception, she shouldn’t have been able to feel any feedback from her body. Yet this heartbeat was undeniably clear. It wasn’t a hallucination. It wasn’t a memory. It was a real, ongoing throbbing from the deepest depths of her physical form.

Pandora grabbed onto it.

Then, more perceptions surged forth.

Blood. She felt her blood flowing. Not through touch, not through any traditional sense, but through a more direct, internal awareness. It was as if she had become the blood itself. Or perhaps the blood had become a sort of limb, transmitting the most primitive signals of life to her.

Her blood pumped from her heart, surging through her arteries like an underground river, branching out into the finest capillary networks, and then slowly pooling back into her veins, carrying a certain weariness of a mission completed.

Every cycle carved a clear, indisputable trajectory through that absolute nothingness. That was the trajectory of Witch’s Blood.

Wizards relied on perception and mental force. The meaning of their existence, the continuation of their power, still depended on the physical body as a substrate, a bridge connecting them to the material world. So, while they weren’t as vulnerable as Corpse-Plague Acolytes—who thoroughly transformed themselves into weapons of flesh—they were still countered by bizarre creatures like the Sentence of the Void, which severed the connection between mind and flesh.

But the power of the Witch bloodline seemed... different. It seemed to be something more independent, more fundamental.

It was strange. Theoretically, the power of any bloodline originated from life itself. But that was exactly how Pandora felt right now. This internally self-sustaining, self-proving sensation didn’t need external feedback to confirm itself, and therefore, it couldn’t be completely stripped away by the Sentence of the Void.

Regardless. The heartbeat became her new anchor. An anchor far more stable, real, and irrefutable than the runes of her Meditation Method.

Because it wasn’t constructed by her consciousness or simulated by her mind. It was the most primitive, direct proof of existence from the lifeform named “Pandora Douglas” herself.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

The runes lit up again. But this time, it was different.

They were no longer isolated points of light floating in the void, ready to be swallowed at any moment. Instead, they reorganized and recirculated around that steady heartbeat, syncing with the rhythm of her blood flow.

The circulation of her mental force synchronized with her blood flow for the very first time. Every throb of her heartbeat acted as a powerful thrust, driving those esoteric runes through a complete circulation cycle.

This synchronization brought unprecedented efficiency. Her mental force was no longer passively, futilely fighting the void. It was actively utilizing the void as the ultimate pressure chamber.

With every cycle synced to her heartbeat, her mental force grew more condensed, more pure. Like steel being repeatedly forged, the impurities were squeezed out and expelled bit by bit, leaving behind only the most resilient core.

Pandora even felt a bizarre sense of delight.

The Sentence of the Void was supposed to be torture. Even though she had gotten as much detailed information from Julian Bennett beforehand as possible, mentally preparing herself and coming up with countermeasures, that was solely for self-preservation.

However, the unexpected collision between The Quicksilver Blood Meditation and the hidden Witch bloodline within her body, in this extreme high-pressure environment created by the Sentence of the Void—a place stripped of all interference—actually produced a bizarre stacking and multiplying effect.

For her, this was an unforeseen accident. A... wonderful accident.

An accident that turned the terrifying Sentence of the Void from a brutal punishment into what could be called a perfect training environment for her.

No external interference. No intrusive thoughts. Only the purest circulation of mental force, and the most essential rhythm of life. The two complemented each other, pushing each other forward.

The Witch bloodline, whose progress hadn’t been slow to begin with, now showed a faint tendency to break through under that continuous, steady perception of heartbeat and blood. It became more active, more... distinct.

And without the shackles of the external environment on her Meditation Method, combined with the special environmental amplification of syncing with the source of her life, the growth and purification rate of her mental force skyrocketed at an astonishing pace, catching up to the progress of her bloodline.

The Sentence of the Void lived up to its name. It could destroy almost any existence that relied on external objects or sensory feedback to define itself.

But she, Pandora, had never been a Wizard who relied solely on externalities.

Buried deep within her flesh and blood was something older, more independent, and far more... dangerous.