Chapter 453: No one gets away.

Once every single one of them had swallowed, the roots unwrapped and dumped them in a messy heap on the floor.

Zyra stood near the portal silently, watching them cough and sputter. She counted to two minutes in her head, waiting for the truth-serum magic of the Oath Sap to settle in their blood.

Finally, she walked closer to Eugene, staring into the woman’s eyes fiercely. "Now. Answer me truthfully. Were you forced to work here against your will?"

A male engineer in a greasy jumpsuit suddenly broke out into a loud, obnoxious laugh. "Against my will?! Are you kidding me?! Erik paid me three times my normal salary to build and monitor these blood pumps! I bought a three-story mansion with my paychecks! My children all got first class citizenship."

"I got a sports car!" another scientist yelled out, unable to stop his mouth from spilling the truth. "The money was amazing! Who cares about a few missing soul maidens from small clans and poor families anyway? It wasn’t like anyone was going to miss them. Soul maidens pop babies every two years. The ones we took were being replaced anyway."

Zyra’s chest felt hollow. She held her anger inside while listening to the confessions. One by one, the workers spoke up. None of them showed a single shred of remorse. No one was blackmailed. No one was forced. They had traded human lives, tortured women, and grown baby weapons... all for extra cash.

Zyra slowly turned her gaze back to Dr. Eugene. "And you, Doctor? What was your excuse?"

Dr. Eugene’s face twisted into an ugly, bitter sneer. The Oath Sap burned in her chest, forcing the hidden hatred right out of her mouth.

"I was a nobody!" Eugene spat, her voice shrieking with petty rage. "I was a low-born beast-stable cleaner! Do you know what my old master did to me?! She made me eat beast waste with my bare hands just because she felt the stable smelled bad! I was garbage. The sad part was that I used to be the top of my class in the academy. I had to drop out because of the expensive tuition. Why should stupid rich people and soul maidens get to live better than the rest of us?"

She wiped her mouth, her eyes wild. "When Master Erik found me, offered to train me as a doctor, and promised to make me rich and powerful... I didn’t think twice! I took the offer! Why should I care about these soul maidens?! They always walked around carrying themselves like they were so high and mighty! I loved taking them down a notch. Here, I was the master and they were the stable cleaners." She laughed in an unhinged way. "No, they were worse than stable cleaners. They were beasts."

Zyra controlled her rage, tuning out the gasps from others.

"How did you even find them?" Zyra asked, her voice dangerously quiet. "How were the soul maidens brought here in the first place?"

Dr. Eugene swallowed hard, her voice sharp as the truth forced its way out of her throat. "The... the Sanctum! They had a secret deal with Master Erik!"

Zyra’s eyes narrowed into slits. "What kind of deal?"

"Someone in the Sanctum gave Master Erik the exact locations of the Soul maidens," Eugene stammered, wringing her shaky hands. "And in return, Master Erik gave them the coordinates to the Somnivore labs and warehouses so they could raid them! They were all in on it, the Sanctum and the Black Flower guild."

Zyra pinched her lips tightly together, her jaw clenching so hard her teeth echoed in her head. She stared at the doctor with a look so terrifyingly cold that it felt like the demons inside her soul were on the absolute brink of being unleashed.

"What about Zena Scorpion?" Zyra pressed. "She was not poor or weak. She never worked alone....well not alone because Abel Price, my father was always with her."

"That was Holly Demerides." Dr. Eugene whimpered, looking up with wide, terrified eyes. "Holly was the one who gave up Zena’s location. She delivered her straight to Erik."

Zyra slowly lowered her head, looking at the cold steel floor. A sad, heavy silence fell over the room.

Eugene’s past was awful_ no one deserved to be treated like garbage. But to turn around and do something ten times worse to innocent women? To turn suffering into a business? There was no excuse for that. None at all.

As Zyra stood there, trying to process the sheer evil standing in front of her, the Grand Elder stepped up beside her. His old voice was shaking with anger.

"Do any of you..." the Grand Elder asked, looking at the crowd of scientists, "...do any of you regret what you have done here?"

"Regret?!" a young lab assistant laughed nervously. "I was just trying to live a better life."

"Why would we regret it?" another shouted. "Those soul maidens deserved it! Bitches, all of them!"

"We’d do it again for the right price." Eugene declared.

That was it. That was the final straw.

Zyra didn’t say another word. She didn’t scream. She didn’t punch or slap anyone. She pulled her sharp dagger from her belt, the metal gleaming cold in the dim lights.

With a blur of motion, Zyra moved. She cut through the neck of the first engineer before he could even blink. Blood sprayed across the metal floor. The crowd erupted into shrieks of pure terror as they realized what was happening.

"Run! RUN!" they screamed, tripping over each other to reach the portal.

But Zyra was a force of nature. Whenever someone tried to break away and run, the team shoved them brutally right back into Zyra’s slaughtering field. She moved like a phantom, her blade slicing through necks, chests, and hearts without a drop of hesitation. One by one, the monsters who had built this factory of horrors fell to the floor, pool after pool of blood spreading across the floor.

Dr. Eugene was sobbing hysterically, scrambling on her hands and knees through the pool of her colleagues’ blood, trying to crawl toward the elevator shaft.

"No, please! Please, spare me! I was just--"

Then she froze. A heavy spear shot through the air, tearing through the air with violent speed. It struck Eugene directly from behind. The sharp metal blade slammed through the back of her head, puncturing straight through her skull, and burst out violently right through her open, screaming mouth.

Silence returned to the silo.

Zyra stood still, panting lightly. Her skin, her hair, her clothes, and her hands were completely soaked in red, blood. She walked over to Eugene’s corpse, grabbed the shaft of the spear, and yanked it free with a wet squelch.

Using a clean corner of Eugene’s white lab coat, Zyra wiped the blood off the spear blade. She didn’t feel happy. She didn’t feel satisfied. She just felt tired.

Without looking back at the pile of dead scientists, Zyra turned around and walked through the portal and returned to the ship.

The Soul maidens stared at her in utter shock as she walked past them, looking like a terrifying blood-soaked demon. But Zyra didn’t care. She didn’t care about the blood on her face or in her hair, and she didn’t care about the stain on her clothes.

She just walked straight back toward the ship, waiting to check the timer on the pod. All she cared about now was her mother. If her mother died, anyone that had been involved in this operation in the smallest way would be buried with her.