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That night, long before dawn had arrived, Lilith suddenly opened her eyes. Darkness filled her vision. It was the darkest hour of the night, and also the quietest. The only sound reaching her ears was Lauren’s occasional sleep-talking.

From time to time, urgent shouts drifted in from an unimaginably distant place, accompanied by other indistinct noises. It sounded as though, somewhere on the far side of the city, a battle that would determine the city’s fate was unfolding.

Lilith paid it no mind. Or rather, she simply could not spare the attention. She stared into the darkness, her expression unusually solemn. She… needed to use the bathroom. It was a rather strange feeling. After all, she had not experienced such an urge for a very, very long time.

During those years she spent idling away in the Blackwater Forest, she had only occasionally chewed on the little flowers growing beside her or let droplets of dew from the leaves drip into her mouth.

Strictly speaking, she had spent that entire period neither eating nor drinking. Now that she was immortal, going without food and water naturally posed no problem. However, ever since meeting Liana, she had eaten quite a lot.

There had been flatbread used as travel rations, pork chop rice, and roasted rabbit. As a result, the body she had deliberately maintained in the condition of an ordinary person had developed the urge to use the bathroom.

As for the claim that little fairies never needed to use the bathroom… That was complete nonsense. As long as one was still a living creature, as long as one continued eating, one had to excrete waste.

Of course, Lilith could have avoided it entirely. If she wished, her black flames could devour everything. But she did not want to. Because whenever she did that, an inexplicable sadness would always well up inside her.

It felt as though all the living beings in the world had drifted even farther away from her. She did not want to stand so high above them, nor did she want to be so distant. She wanted proof that she still belonged to the mortal world. And so she got out of bed, intending to visit the bathroom.

“Hm? Where’s Liana?” As she sat up, Lilith suddenly realized the space beside her was empty. Liana, who had been sleeping next to her, was nowhere to be seen. “Could she have gone to the bathroom too?”

Lilith reached over and touched the bedding on that side. It was completely cold. It seemed the person who had been lying there had left quite some time ago. Her expression immediately grew serious.

“So that’s it… Did she eat too much greasy food and end up constipated? How pitiful.” Lilith shook her head, fully expressing her sympathy for Liana, who was apparently suffering from constipation in the chilly autumn wind despite it already being late in the season.

‘Good thing I don’t have that problem.’ The thought put her in a slightly better mood as she climbed out of bed. Her eyes had already adapted to the darkness, so she did not light a lamp and risk disturbing the sleeping Lauren. Instead, she quietly tiptoed out of the room.

“But… where’s the bathroom?” Lilith stared at the pitch-black corridor and scratched her head, realizing this was actually a rather serious problem. Fortunately, she soon noticed a faint sliver of light leaking through a door crack at the far end of the hallway.

Her eyes immediately lit up. Drawing upon the experience accumulated over two lifetimes, she concluded that a room located at the end of a corridor with its lights still on in the middle of the night had a ninety-nine percent chance of being a bathroom.

‘As expected of me. I’m so smart that even I impress myself.’ Feeling rather pleased, Lilith skipped her way down the corridor and stopped in front of the illuminated room. Peering through the gap in the door, she looked inside.

She was not entirely sure whether it was the men’s or women’s restroom. However, the room’s interior looked nothing like what she had expected. It certainly did not resemble a bathroom. Instead, it looked more like…

“An office?” Lilith pushed the door open. Her gaze swept over the desk facing the entrance and the chair positioned behind it. It was indeed an office.

“So it wasn’t a bathroom after all.” Lilith felt a little disappointed. She had no particular interest in offices. Yet just as she was about to back out and casually close the door behind her, her brow suddenly twitched, and her expression turned grave.

She smelled blood. And not just a trace of it; a heavy, suffocating scent of blood. But how could an empty office contain such a strong smell of blood? Unless…

Lilith stepped into the office and walked around the desk. Only then did she see the figure lying beneath the chair, drenched in blood. It was the corpse of a man.

His eyes were wide open, his face twisted in agony and resentment, as though he had died unwilling to accept his fate. It was difficult to imagine just how much unwillingness and despair he must have felt in his final moments.

“Is this… a murder case?” Lilith rubbed her chin thoughtfully. And not just any murder case, it had taken place inside the headquarters of the Inspection Bureau. Who could be so audacious as to commit murder right under the Bureau’s roof?

Moreover, the victim appeared to be one of their own. He was wearing the Bureau’s uniform, and Lilith recognized his face. When she had first entered the city, he seemed to have been the very officer whom the elderly woman had grabbed while tearfully pleading her case.

“Interesting. A senior official of the Inspection Bureau was murdered inside the Bureau itself.” Lilith’s gaze swept across the room. There were no signs of a struggle. Not far away, lying quietly on the floor, was a bloodstained dagger.

“The murder weapon?” As Lilith looked at the dagger, she inexplicably felt a strange attraction toward it. As though compelled by some unseen force, she bent down and picked it up. And then—

“Chief Inspector!” A shrill cry nearly ruptured her eardrums. Lauren, who had been asleep only moments ago, was suddenly standing in the doorway. Shock and terror filled her eyes as she stared at the scene before her. Or more specifically, at the corpse collapsed behind the desk.

She was still dressed in her pink nightgown. The exposed skin beneath the cold night air had turned slightly red, yet she paid no attention to it and rushed inside without hesitation. She ran straight to the corpse. Then, with trembling hands, she lifted the blood-soaked body into her arms.

“Chief Inspector! Don’t scare me like this! Chief Inspector!” Lauren stretched out a finger and placed it beneath the man’s nose. Clinging desperately to the hope of a miracle, no matter how faint. But it was impossible.

Lilith had already confirmed that there was no trace of life left in him. In fact, the corpse had long since gone cold and stiff. He was dead. Completely and unquestionably dead.

Lauren held him in her arms, frozen in place, her mind utterly blank. It felt as though the sky had collapsed. No, not felt. The sky truly had collapsed. The man in her arms, Adrian, was the central pillar of the entire Inspection Bureau. His very existence was the anchor that held everything together.

No matter how much pressure came from all sides, no matter how dire the threat posed by the Moon Demon, even when the Bureau had stood on the brink of destruction, as long as this man remained standing, hope still existed for all of his subordinates.

Because for countless years, he had always led the Bureau forward through every crisis. But now… he was dead. Dead in the silence of the night, without warning, without a sound.

Even at night, the Inspection Bureau maintained strict security. Yet until this very moment, none of those safeguards had been triggered in the slightest. How had he died? Or rather, who had killed him? And by what means?

After a brief period of panic, Lauren gradually forced herself to calm down. The most urgent matter now was finding the murderer. The grief of the Chief Inspector’s death would have to wait.

If the killer was still hiding somewhere nearby, waiting for another opportunity to strike, the situation would be far too dangerous. So Lauren scanned the room, searching for clues. And then, she saw Lilith. And after that, she saw the dagger in Lilith’s hand.

The blade gleamed with a sinister light, its surface smeared with fresh blood. Lauren’s delicate brows instantly shot upward. She fixed her gaze on Lilith, her expression turning fierce and hostile. “It was you—”