I Revived My Maid, Now She Hungers for My Blood
Chapter 305: Rank-Chapter 3 Wizardry

Was it over?

Pandora slowly exhaled. The breath carried a faint, lingering heat—the warmth of the flames. The tension of battle receded like a tide pulling back from the shore.

She stood in the center of the street, her gaze calmly sweeping across her surroundings. Across the food street once known as Firefly Lane. Across the street that was now so spotless it could almost be described as immaculate.

She arched an eyebrow. Quite the blaze. That towering inferno had burned everything clean. The man-eating maggot-people—gone. The shop signs oozing with ominous malevolence, the streetlamps, the brickwork—all of it. Burned to nothing by that unearthly Wizardry fire.

The ground of the entire street now looked as though it had been carpeted in a thick layer of snow. Countless white ashes. They shimmered with a strange, iridescent gloss, almost like mother-of-pearl.

Beneath the last dying tangerine rays of the setting sun bleeding across the skyline, it all held a kind of... sickly, eerie beauty.

Rank-3 Wizardry: Conflagrant Breath.

This was another Rank-3 spell Pandora had learned over the past month.

Under normal circumstances, the trigger for this spell involved the caster drawing a deep breath, then exhaling a mana-infused gust forward. Where that breath reached, the air in the target zone would instantly ignite, triggering a violent chain-reaction combustion.

But Pandora had felt that the gesture was... lacking in elegance. Not nearly cool enough.

So, drawing from her own understanding, she’d made subtle adjustments to the spell matrix. She’d altered the trigger motion to “snapping one’s fingers.”

Judging by the results, the visual impact was more than satisfactory. The crisp sound of a finger snap. Then the explosive, sky-devouring flames. High drama. Maximum ceremony.

Nodding to herself with quiet satisfaction, she glanced at the girl beside her—clinging tightly to her hand, practically plastered against her side.

Miss Anomaly’s face was still streaked with tears, but her eyes were wide open, fixed on the expanse of pristine white ash before them.

Within that gaze, beyond the sheer relief of having survived, was something ineffable. Awe. The way she looked at Pandora now, beyond the growing dependency, held an almost reverent adoration.

Her little modification had indeed worked wonders.

It was just a shame the lethality had been a bit... too effective. Overkill.

Originally, she’d hoped to capture a few live maggot-people, or at least gather some samples of anomalous living tissue with research value. Something to bring back to the lab and properly dissect—to analyze the structure of this “Food Street Anomaly.”

But now... everything had been reduced to these pristine white ashes.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Though, she could hardly be blamed for it. Really. The fault lay squarely with the Anomaly itself. Who told it to whip out that stomach-churning sea of maggots?

Without a wide-area extermination method like this, what was she supposed to do? Hack them apart one by one? That would have been... utterly revolting.

Still, while there were no living samples, she hadn’t walked away empty-handed.

Anomaly Ash. This was likely the only reward from this operation. And a substantial one at that. As far as the eye could see, the entire street was blanketed in a layer of it.

A conservative estimate put the collectible haul at a rather impressive figure.

But Anomaly Ash—for Poppy, for Ophelia—this stuff held far greater significance.

On one hand, there was the Academy’s need.

It wasn’t as though they could endlessly requisition material support from the Academy through the cargo trains without limits.

Weapons, equipment, materials, supplies... in truth, a significant portion of those resources weren’t free.

They had to be purchased with contribution points.

And one of the primary ways to earn contribution points was by turning in Anomaly Ash.

Put bluntly, they were all working stiffs. Complete the mission, gather the materials, exchange for resources, continue the mission. A cycle.

On the other hand, it was a necessity for their own growth as ability users. Anomaly Ash, once processed through specialized alchemical treatment, could be crafted into a particular type of potion.

This potion was immensely valuable to transcendents like Poppy and Ophelia—Corpse-Plague Acolytes. It could, to a limited extent, influence the mutation direction of a Corpse-Plague Acolyte’s abilities.

In other words, it could enable targeted modification or reinforcement of their unique powers. For Demon Hunters pursuing greater strength and higher ranks, this characteristic made it an undeniably critical resource.

This was why even someone like Ophelia—a Rank-3 with outstanding talent and combat prowess—would eagerly seek out Anomaly Ash.

She could break through to Rank-4. With her prodigious talent, advancing further, even reaching for Rank-5 in the future, likely wouldn’t present a real obstacle.

But the more extraordinary the talent, the better one understood... the vital importance of a solid foundation. Every step had to be steady. Every step had to prepare the most thorough groundwork for the next.

“Right...” Pandora stared at the pristine white ash around her, and an idea sparked in her mind. “Isn’t this stuff also... one of the core ingredients for the top-tier Rank-3 immunity booster—‘Eden’s Dew’?”

Eden’s Dew. A rare potion even pricier than Wormblood Brew. It had two core ingredients. One was high-quality Anomaly Ash. The other was “Corpse-Spider Matriarch’s Purified Bone.”

A pity she only knew these two core components of Eden’s Dew. Without the exact formula and the complete brewing process, even with this mountain of high-quality ash at her disposal, she couldn’t refine it.

If only she could attempt to craft a Perfect-Grade Eden’s Dew... the effects would be staggering.

“Such a waste...” Reeling in her straying thoughts, Pandora’s gaze shifted toward the entrance at the far end of the street. There, a familiar figure cautiously poked her head out from the edges of the lingering mist.

Betty. But not just her. Behind her, the other members of the auxiliary squad were emerging one by one. They were dressed in dark, practical civilian clothes, their hands full of various tools and containers. Their expressions were tense but solemn.

Mm. Expected. Pandora nodded to herself. This was standard procedure. The moment a Rank-3 flagged an Anomaly mission, the auxiliary squad would be notified immediately. They would then quickly establish contact with the Rank-3 who’d tagged the task.

Simple reason: to prepare for their primary job—support.

This included pre-hunt clearing operations: dispersing any ordinary people who might wander in, setting up temporary barriers or misdirection to prevent accidental intrusions during the culling—be it stray individuals, objects, or the Anomaly’s sudden rampage spilling outward.

And post-hunt cleanup: collecting valuable materials, confirming the list of the missing to be replaced by the Live Iron Golems, handling traces of the battle, etc. All within the purview and responsibility of the six-person auxiliary squad.

This “cleanup” was no exception.