No More

Chapter 111: Used

"I had to comfort a certain, crying child." Isa hinted, making it clear that Lisa failed, shattering the hope of a little girl. Isa looked at Cassie's equipment, covered in blood. "What took you so long?"

"Oh, nothing really important~," Cassie purred in her modified, static tone before taking off her helmet. Her voice and eyes changing back to normal, letting her crimson hair flow down as she placed her helmet in her Inventory. "Just having fun!"

"Y...You're the White Pumpkin?" Luke coughed, not believing that he is seeing a frightening myth they tell children about. "You're actually real?!"

"Very real," Cassie nodded, putting on her glasses with a hint of a blush on her face. "And very flattered my reputation exceeds the Kingdom of the Ocean's boarders~."

"You're a girl?" Luke still had a hard time processing what he is hearing, especially since Scribing helped reveal the truth. "I-It's actually you!"

"Why does no one ever suspect the girl?" Cassie asked a repeated question, the one motivator for her slaughter in the Kingdom of the Ocean. "Always thinking men are the only ones with the capacity for violence."

"I-I-!" Words wouldn't come out of Luke's babbling. "Y-You drowned children in the Kingdom of the Ocean, a-and hung their parents for public display!

"That's a lie!" Cassie was offended by that remark, taking out her axe, terrifying the boy even more. "And for the record, I only killed the wives and daughters, not the husbands or the boys!"

"A man killed himself out of grief for his wife's death!" Luke argued, until he realized he sassed the woman responsible with a triple-digit body count.

"And how is it my fault he slit his own throat open?" Cassie argued, remembering the crying widower's body on the floor of a church. "Are you sure you're from the Kingdom of the Forest? Shamming and blaming the opposite gender is more like the Kingdom of the Ocean, pal."

"Oh he is from the Kingdom of the Forest," Isa nodded, giving Luke a stern stare. "In fact, he was transferred here with two others to aid the commander of the Clockwork Fortress."

"But that's not all," PAMA continued, utilizing the memories it took from the dying blood mage from earlier. "He was also thrown in prison at the Clockwork Fortress for trying to feed a starving family."

"H-How do you know about that?" Luke asked, uneasy and alert. "...Did you people Scribed me?"

The Lost PAMA is possessing tapped its chest. "Oh this body doesn't have Mana to do Scribing," It then gestured to the snow. "But they can."

"They-?" Luke yelped as multiple frozen limbs protruded from the ground, dragging him onto his back to hold him in place and covering his mouth so his screams were muffled.

"Snow is a wonderful tool." Isa commented. "It preserves the body, and the thick snow makes it so no one notices the dumping ground of bodies."

Luke recognized the dozens of people emerging from the snow, their red eyes show them being controlled by PAMA; they're the refugees who took shelter in the Clockwork Fortress. Even the limbs holding him down belonged to the family he tried to sneak cake to them when they were starving.

"It never hurts to have spares; bodies are such fragile things." PAMA then had a cruel idea. "...Do you want to know the real reason why you, Raven, and Tangle were sent to the Clockwork Fortress?"

Luke gasped for air as the frozen stopped covering his nose and mouth. "What are you talking about...?"

"I'm talking about how no one is trying to find the truth," PAMA said. "Especially since the commander of the Clockwork Fortress has been dead for months."