An hour earlier

Bai Yin removed the Neural Crown from her head and placed it back into the box. She brushed her hair from her face, fixing it after wearing that strange device, before rising to her feet and continuing with her work. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

Although it had been disorentating at first, and surprising that such a thing could even exist, it had been simple once she got hold of what to do in this ’game’. It was her first time using such a thing, or playing any kind of game at all.

So she simply used one of the men that became infatuated with her as her pawn, as she often did. He led her around, taught her what she needed to do and helped her get through the tutorial, before she dispatched of him once his usefulness ran out.

The concept of respawning was not one that was in her mind.

It was surprising how close the ’game’ was to their real teachings, although it differed in many ways. What surprised her the most was the level of power of those within the game. If the master was correct, which he always was, then this would become very troublesome if all of this power got put into the hands of the idiotic masses.

Without control, they would undoubtedly kill everything around them and then themselves in their stupid attempts of revolution or heroism. That was why they needed to be controlled and kept on a leash, for their own good.

However such concerns were not important at the moment. With her investigation over for the moment, it was time to move onto the rest of her job.

First she checked on the ward, who was currently fast asleep in the same strange world that she had been partaking in. Since there was nothing to do there, she moved on. Preparing some standard meals that prioritised nutrition over taste and texture, as if she was cooking for some kind of infantry rather than acting as a standard maid.

But she did not care for such things, nor would she accept any complaints. She might have been here acting as one, but she was not a maid nor would she reduce herself down to one. She was here to serve, and serve she would.

If at the end of this service meant that she would slit the throat of this girl, she would do so without a second of hesitation. If it did not, then she would not care either way and simply do as the master instructed.

Finally, she did her usual sweeps of the apartment, in both meanings of the word. Although it looked like she was cleaning, as every maid did as part of their routines, Bai Yin was sweeping thoroughly for listening devices and surveillance equipment.

As technology improved, such devices got much smaller and harder to detect, but that didn’t mean no such technology to detect them existed. It just required skill to use and then deal with the discoveries. Skill that Bai Yin had trained her entire life to gain.

Thirteen cameras, and ten listening devices is what she found. Some she removed, innocently sweeping them away or placing something in place that would block their view when she was ’cleaning’. But others took some more finesse.

Her eyes glowed softly as she hacked into the cameras, which was a delicate process if you didn’t want to leave traces.

You could no longer just loop footage. Many systems had a rudimentary AI watching over and securing them, with more advanced or well connected systems, such as the Monarch main server, having a mixture of extremely advanced AI and counter-hackers on staff.

But whilst AI stopped many old tricks, they opened the door for new ones. By secretly feeding some instructions to the AI and altering its code, which was where the delicacy and finesse came in, she could change the perimeters of what it recorded and focused on.

So, when a loud thud came from the wards bedroom, and Bai Yin rushed in to check on her, the AI watching through the cameras she could not remove suddenly found itself interested in one of the other rooms as it became convinced that there was something very suspicious going on in the bathroom.

If the AI was dumb enough, it might even just invent its own evidence in order to please whoever was using it.

Barging into the room, Bai Yin’s eyes whipped around the room as she scanned for threats, before she found the ward laying on the floor in a pool of her own blood. The girl was panting heavily, her clothes clinging to her body as it coated in sweat.

Unsurprisingly, with the sheer amount of blood on the floor, the ward was deathly pale.

Bai Yin hurried over, grabbing the wards shoulder and pulling her up, so that she was sitting up against her chair, and started to check over her body for any wounds. But strangely, there was none. None at all.

So where had all the blood gone.

"What happened to you? You will tell me now." Bai Yin demanded coldly, no hint of sympathy for the victim as her eyes scanned over the blood pool. From the pattern of the spread, it was definitely the wards. There was no doubt about that, but where had it come from if not wounds? And were those... teeth?

"I’m... I’m so..." The ward muttered, as Bai Yin narrowed her eyes, counting the teeth on the floor. Thirty two. All of the wards teeth, even the wisdom teeth, were in the blood with not a hint of damage to them.

Bai Yin quickly moved her eyes to the wards face, grabbing her mouth and pulling it open, only to recoil in confusion, as she still had teeth in her mouth. Not just one or two, but all of them. An entire mouthful of razor sharp, shark-like teeth.

"I’m so hungry..." The Ward muttered again, as Bai Yin’s eyes trailed up to meet the wards. As soon as their eyes met, Bai Yin’s confusion melted away. Her face turned completely limp, as did the entirety of her body as her hand fell down by her side, and her mind became completely clouded.

She was unable to think of anything other than the image of those piercing crimson eyes, and the words muttered from the wards lips.

"Feed me."