Hey system.

  Yes?

  Any advice on how to better control my voice? It tends to just do whatever it wants, and that’s annoying. I feel like I sound more silly than threatening at times… Like, the overlapping and swift speech is fine, but when it’s all distorted? I sound like a boy going through the most exaggerated voice change in existence.

  Miss Nebulo, is it really wise to wonder about such things in the current situation?

  I am paying attention to my surroundings! I can do multiple things at the same time, don’t worry about that, and just answer while I- Oh crap, if he wasn’t already, then he is definitely dead now.

  Sure enough, I feel the stream of experience entering me just a few seconds later, a sensation I was already somewhat familiar with before becoming what I now am. Unlike before, however, it felt as though the experience wasn’t flowing to the same place.

  Not that there was a physical place where that thing was stored–As far as I am aware, at least–But I assumed that it was because the system that spoke to me and The System are not one and the same.

  In any case, my metallic fingers, long and slender, yet durable and powerful to a delicious degree. They were covered in gore, but under a bit of focus, ‘Living Metal’ was doing its work and eating all of this up.

  Since it was so efficient in absorbing without leaving a trace, I felt like there was no need to be careful about getting myself dirty, and before I could even form a coherent thought, my jaw unhinged, my victim’s head already stuck between my jaws as I realised what I was doing.

  That’s a bit weird, but oh well…

  I wasn’t truly eating, but anyone who stumbled upon me right now would definitely think that I was some sort of man-eating monster as I tore into flesh and crushed bones, blood pooling underneath the corpse as I held it in place by the shoulders, having already, inadvertently, crushed the flesh and bones I was holding into a soft mess.

  Weird, I seem to absorb better when I actually use my jaw, must be why it felt so instinctual to do so… A bit weird that my innate abilities can just imprint instinct onto me, but I guess it is quite useful.

  My body of living metal was insatiable, and in fact, it seemed as though the more I feasted, the quicker I was able to consume, so despite the colossal task that it should be to devour a full-grown man, it only took me about ten minutes before all that was left when some pieces of torn fabric.

  Even the bones and teeth were not spared. I didn’t even allow the blood that had flowed onto the ground to be left behind. All that was left of this old acquaintance of mine were scraps of clothing that didn’t even sport a single trace of blood.

  He’s just gone. It’s like I erased him.

  That can definitely be used to my advantage, can it not? I restrained myself from laughing like a maniac and collected what was left of my meal’s clothes, shoving everything into my pocket before casually heading out of the room and then back into that of the shy boy.

  By the way, you didn’t tell me anything about how to deal with my voice system.

  Unfortunately, I can only know what you already discovered yourself in that regard, and merely provide a reason why, but I am unable to find solutions or ways around it

  Huh…

  Due to you having become fused with the metal skeleton of an automaton, it seems like speaking in a singing voice allows you to go around the garbling of your speech due to the automaton’s previous function having been to act as a singer

  As for why the way your voice is corrupted differs from usual at times, I am unable to provide an answer, but I believe that you will find a solution to this problem as long as you accumulate enough XP

  Sure… Not so subtly hinting that I should focus on progressing there…

  I do a motion with my head as though I were cracking my neck as I stand over the shy boy.

  “~You~ You have been a veryyyyyyy good boy~ As a reward~ I’LL LET YOU KEEP YOUR LIFE, YOU LITTLE SHIT”

  “~Be gratefuuul~”

  I bop his nose with one of my fingers, and with the grace of a beast of steel weighing about one hundred and a half kilograms, I slip out of the room, leaving the terrified and probably traumatised boy behind as I head straight back to where I came from.

  ___

  “Keep your doors and windows locked at night!”

  “Trained knights for hire!”

  “Junior mage offers services to set up a protective array!”

  It was safe to say, Mara caused quite an uproar in just a few nights of activities.

  Naturally, since she was targeting the important people, the news spread like wildfire, and countless vultures swarmed from all over to share their services… Defensive measures like guards or arrays were selling at incredible rates, and for never-before-seen prices at that.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  The city-controlled newspeople were active outside of running propaganda for the city lord and covering his sorry self when he was caught doing something that would get most other people executed.

  The first kills Mara had committed in the very beginning could be chalked up to a one-time occurrence, merely the result of bad blood between the victims and someone else, but following her discovery of the incredible appetite of her ‘Living Metal’ ability, she had changed her modus operandi.

  Rather than leaving brutal scenes of slaughter behind, she left basically nothing.

  Not even scraps.

  No bodies. No blood. No bones. Not even a fingernail.

  If it were not for people swearing up and down that a malevolent creature had been roaming around, and for the physical evidence that was broken locks and doors, or the occasional sign of struggle, it would seem as though the victims had simply vanished into thin air.

  And surprisingly, it was not an unheard thing for some people to be sucked into another realm at random.

  But it was an occurrence rare enough to be counted merely with one’s fingers. Clearly, even if the people believed that the killer was capable of erasing people, it was clear that they needed to physically get inside the house and close to their target.

  Otherwise, using doors and being seen at all would be easily avoidable.

  The city lord was quick to make a decision for once, dispatching the best people he had available to catch the culprit.

  He could shrug if thousands of commoners were to disappear, but his main source of income for the city- And thus, his own personal income? Absolutely, utterly, unacceptable!

  Not to mention that the people being targeted could actually put pressure on him if push came to shove, this problem needed to be solved quickly.

  But the victims, apart from being picked from the bourgeois neighbourhoods, shared basically nothing in common, and with the dire lack of bodies or clear murder scenes in most cases, the people deployed had very few leads.

  They only had witnesses.

  But… Unfortunately, the witnesses seemed to always lack trustworthiness. The vast majority were young children who claimed that a dark, tall woman with small purple eyes had scared and spoken to them, threatening to kill them if they did as much as make a noise.

  Their stories shared common points, so it was highly unlikely that they had all imagined the same thing, but the ‘tall woman’ in question seemed to behave exactly like a boogeyman.

  She hid in closets, came out from under the bed, appeared only in the dark, and apparently spoke by singing. They also said that she made strange noises when she moved around, and the way her jaw was described clearly indicated that she most certainly was not a human.

  But that did not say much, many residents of the city were not human, and already, rumours were circulating about the identity of the killer, people would attribute this heinous murderer to whatever group of people they disliked, brewing unrest.

  Dealing with this strange killer was already difficult enough, but the people themselves seemed intent on making everything more complicated as well.

  Still, there was fear in the air. Many suspected that the witnesses were not telling everything they knew, presumably fearful of the repercussions if they revealed something the killer did not want them to speak about.

  They couldn’t be rash about prying the full truth from them. These were people of status as well as children, and some of them had just inherited the familial wealth…

  This was all cause for a headache.

  ___

  I feel… Good, I feel very good.

  A constant stream of negative emotions was making its way to me. There was a lot of fear, terror, anxiety and the like, but as my infamy grew and became more widespread, I began to earn myself good quantities of animosity, wrath, and even unexpected ones, such as sadness, or more notably, envy.

  It seemed like some commoners, who lived away from these neighbourhoods, were under the impression that I was like them, but that, unlike the cowards that they were, I dared to take action and ‘take revenge’ against those of a higher class.

  But instead of being happy that what they wanted was happening, they were filled with jealousy about not being like me.

  The minds of people were truly an enigma.

  I ignored that for now, focusing on the stream.

  Although ‘Tormentor’ did not have a clear usage for all that stored negativity and for the captive souls, it was still useful in the sense that using it in any way, shape or form was akin to practising with it.

  And so, every so often, I would feel a rush of experience as some sort of threshold was passed… It changed absolutely nothing about the ability itself, but it was adding to my stock of experience.

  Mmh… That really hits the spot. I shouldn’t have to come back out for a little while now. I can just let things marinate as I continue to reap benefits.

  This would also leave me time to prepare a little project I had in mind.

  Projects rather, but they all came down to the same thing in the end, and that was digging tunnels.

  I ‘sourced’ a few tools as I went around harvesting at night.

  The idea was simple: Dig tunnels from the basement of my old house.

  Firstly, I would like to have a way to escape if needed.

  Secondly, it would give me something to do instead of just lying dormant during the day.

  And lastly, I had the nifty idea of acquiring the assistance of some people to harvest even more negative emotions. To do so, I would dig out an underground system and then unleash those helpers, chase them around a little bit for fun and giggles, and then simply let them wander around as their negative emotions went directly to me.

  Whether that was something I would be able to put in place, I honestly doubted, but it was something to look forward to as I displaced dirt and stone.

  Though I had forgotten how large the basement was, I never really paid attention to what was in there. This was mostly the room my brother used to do his research and whatever.

  It had been scraped clean of everything it once had.

  Damned bastard, who was it who always helped you get up and down those stairs? I did everything I could to take care of you after mom and dad went and croaked… And yet you left me to rot in some filthy backroom for nearly a quarter of a century?!

  When I find you I’ll-

  Miss Nebulo, you have reached a threshold. Please choose from the following upgrades:

  -Mmh? Perfect timing…