'Ah… I'm going to enjoy torturing this fucking bitch,' Inara cursed inwardly as she lay on her back, on a floor made of slithering maggots, her entire body riddled with them.

Maggots crawled into her nose, her mouth, her eyes, her skin, her ears, seeping deep inside her from every opening, drinking her blood like a pool to bathe in, and licking at her brain as though it were candy.

At that moment, Inara was made entirely of writhing, crawling black and white maggots — from head to toe, from the inside to the outside — her mind barely holding together under the strain.

The deceptively sweet voice of the monster slithered into her mind, beautiful and haunting.

"Show me, Heiress," it whispered eagerly. "Show me you are my master."

Its tone carried an almost desperate longing, as if Inara's failure would wound it more deeply than her suffering ever could.

Inara didn't respond. The pain was too overwhelming and she couldn't waste a single drop of energy on useless thoughts. Her mind focused solely on survival.

She wanted this monster beneath her, bound to her will. But since her quest began, this was the first one that offered to follow her, if she could succeed in only one thing.

And that was to simply swallow it whole before it swallowed her.

It was a game made for monsters and a test made to measure whether Inara was truly worthy of the title Mother of Monsters.

She had accepted, confident in her own ability. But now she recognized that she had been impulsive and yet, it hardly mattered anymore.

Because if she wasn't even able to stop herself from being swallowed by a monster, then she had no right to be called the Mother of Monsters.

'I am Inara Serpentine,' Inara whispered, her eyes snapping open, black and white maggots crawling in and out of her sockets as blood streamed down her face. 'I am the Mother of Monsters.'

Inside her, she could feel her power being slowly siphoned away.

An atrocious pain jolted through her entire being, tearing a sharp cry from her throat. Her mouth stretched unnaturally wide, revealing maggots devouring her lips, her teeth, even her tongue.

The pain was threatening to consume her, to strip her of self and with the monster itself as the trigger. It would have succeeded.

But Inara had endured the test of Echidna.

And during that ordeal, she had learned one truth…that to be the Mother of Monsters, she needed to be a monster herself.

This writhing cluster of maggots sought to devour her, to drain her strength, to seize her consciousness and claim her place. It wanted to become the Heiress in her stead.

As these thoughts paraded through her mind, Inara grinned, her mouth now nothing but bone, toothless and tongueless , yet her voice thundered through the chamber made of maggots, shaking it to its very foundations like a storm beneath a still night.

"You dare to enter inside of me…" Inara began, her tone reverberating like a curse. "Me… the Mother of Monsters?"

Her grin widened until her face cracked open, and within her hollow skull, eight pairs of glowing eyes blinked awake, peering out from the depths of her insides.

Her monsters opened their mouths wide, and spoke as one, her voice echoing through every one of them.

"Then come, my dear."

The words rolled through the chamber, monstrous, calamitous, and motherly, followed by a maniacal laugh that made the maggots screech in agony, a sonate of madness resounding with divine lunacy.

"Come back to my womb! Let me show you the place you came from!"

Immediately after, an intense green light erupted outward, devouring her entire body as it swept through the chamber, transforming all the maggots into luminous green ones before crushing them into sprays of viscous, sticky blood under the weight of Inara's Intent.

Only one maggot survived, the core of the monster.

It stood trembling at the edge of Inara's weathered bony mouth, staring into the abyss within her, where countless monsters writhed and whispered, its gaze filled with fear… and elation.

The sight before her mirrored that of her creator, her true mother. But now, it knew it would have to return, to go back… to be reborn. But this time..

"I am Inara Serpentine," Inara said again, her eyes fracturing into countless shards of color and pupils shifting within them. "I am the Mother of Monsters."

She declared it, then swallowed the maggot whole, sending it directly into the abyss where her monsters dwelled.

The maggot cried out in joy, and in a burst of divine faith and feverish obsession, its voice echoed even from the depths of Inara's body:

"HAIL MOTHER OF MONSTERS!"

"HAIL TO THE ORIGIN! TO THE BEGINNING! TO THE END OF ALL MONSTERS!"

"HAIL TO THE MOTHER OF MADNESS!"

And with that, Inara had finally obtained her first Grandmaster beast.

An obsessed and unbearably loud one, it seemed.

"HAIL—!"

"Shut the fuck up, you goddamn maggot," Inara snapped, silencing it with sharp, seething intensity as her body began to knit itself back together.

And the maggot…

"My goddess, my mother… cursed me?" it whispered in a daze. The other monsters turned to look at it as if it was a fool. Then, slowly, the maggot began to squirm, a faint shade of pink coloring its slick form as it cooed with a trembling, ecstatic voice,

"Curse me more, O Mother!"

Inara felt like she was about to lose her goddamn mind.

…

My eyes… my eyes…

My eyes.

'…I'm losing my sight.' Vaela thought painfully, her breath ragged as she finished peering into the future once again. Her face was drenched in sweat, her body trembling constantly like a leaf in a storm.

It was getting harder and harder to see the future with her dear around.

She slowly lifted her head and looked around, but her vision blurred, shapes melting into haze, outlines twisting into fog. To see, she had to strain, to focus, to squint her weakening eyes until pain pulsed behind them.

Fear began to crawl into her heart like a snake's venom, but she bit her lips harder, drawing blood, using the pain to drown the fear.

'It's for him,' she whispered, her hand clutching the green weeds beneath her. 'It doesn't matter, Vaela. It doesn't matter. He was the one who saw me first, the one who hugged me, who pinched my cheeks, who looked at me the way a human would look at a human.'

'He was the one who made me feel love, and accepted my overwhelming love without complaint.'

'He was the one who shared my life. If I die, he dies. And yet, he never complained. And yet, he still smiles at me… and makes me his eyes to see for him.'

Her dear surely didn't know the cost of seeing the future, but he didn't need to. Vaela was certain that if he ever did, he would forbid her from using her power again.

If that happened, then what would be the use of her?

She couldn't accept that.

That's why…

"It doesn't matter," she said, making the Anthropologist, standing a few meters behind, shake his head in pity.

"I guess trying to convince you is a useless thing," he said, watching Vaela kneeling on the ground, hidden from the other members. Around them, the trees stretched endlessly toward the sky.

Vaela didn't respond to his words, her mind still struggling to hold itself together, trying to piece together the information she had just learned.

The Anthropologist fell silent for a moment, then spoke softly, "I doubt the Harvester will be happy seeing your current state."

"He doesn't need to know," Vaela retorted sharply, slowly rising to her feet. Her body swayed, her steps unsteady. "He doesn't need to know, as my dear has enough problems as it is."

"No need to concern him with my own."

She finally succeeded in standing upright.

"But you will lose your eyes," the Anthropologist said. "And I told you, that was the first symptom. After you've sacrificed your sight, it will be your other senses next, then your mind, and finally, your body will eat itself."

"It won't stop until you become nothing but a husk of yourself, everything devoured by the weight of the myriads of futures you've seen."

He glared at her. "Did you not learn anything from the story of the Mad Sun Emperor?"

Vaela didn't respond. She simply stood there, trying to get used to the feeling of seeing almost nothing.

She knew the Anthropologist wanted her well-being, but her decision was already made.

'I have to sever my fate from my dear,' she whispered inwardly. 'I don't want to drag him down with me.'

She decided quietly, intending to undo what she had done.

Slowly, she began to walk away, heading toward the others, careful not to stumble on the uneven ground littered with rocks and branches.

The Anthropologist sighed, his brown eyes resting on Vaela's back as his mind drifted toward the past… to a very distant past. Then a sad and melancholic smile crept across his lips, unwilling to fade away.

'Is this the fate of all who dare to see beyond? To die? To lose everything? For what?' he wondered, his rocky heart clenching painfully at a memory he didn't wish to revisit. He shrugged it off, exhaling quietly before following Vaela slowly.

"Now what?" he asked, watching as Vaela walked forward, each step hesitant, her body swaying slightly as if she might collapse at any moment.

He closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight.

"I have a special relationship with my dear," she said slowly, "so I can feel, to a certain degree, when he is in trouble." She paused briefly, then added, "And he also told me he was looking for his brother."

She stopped just outside the cluster of trees, the sunlight falling directly onto her face. Even in the process of losing her sight, her eyes seemed to grow more beautiful, like blue jewels crafted for the gods to admire.

"I have missions from the Crimson Veil," she said suddenly, her head tilting upward toward the sun.

"I'm listening," the Anthropologist replied.

Without turning to face him, Vaela spoke calmly,

"We're going to have a little talk with Lord Silver of Silver City."

The Anthropologist's eyebrows arched, curiosity and confusion flickering in his expression. But Vaela wasn't done.

"And we need to find a blacksmith," she continued, her head tilting as if recalling a distant memory.

"Old Smith, if I recall correctly her name."

—End of Chapter 312—

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