I Revived My Maid, Now She Hungers for My Blood

Chapter 261: Different Mentor Styles

In other words, she was going to have to adjust the things she was currently practicing. The adjustments wouldn’t be massive—her core framework was already set in stone. But considering these tweaks were subtly tied to a higher echelon like “Rank-6”, they had to be massively important. Critical, even.

During that long, dead-silent year. Extended periods of fully immersed deep meditation hadn’t just pushed her Wizard Rank to a breakthrough; they’d also given her a much deeper perspective on her past, present, and future. She’d vaguely grasped the sheer importance of a Meditation’s tier, realizing that a Wizard’s accumulation of knowledge might actually eclipse the accumulation of raw power.

That was why she was willing to take a few risks to come here. And now, she was absolutely certain. What she had felt was right on the money.

Knowledge. To a Wizard, it was far more crucial than it was for any other extraordinary system.

Taking a deep breath, she fought down the urge to snatch the still-mutating Grimoire and start binging it right then and there. Pandora dragged her gaze from the pages and looked at Amanda Adam standing behind her.

The woman gave a satisfied nod, and that languid voice rang out again: “Under normal circumstances, as your Mentor, I’d set you up with a standard array of tasks.”

She raised a hand, counting off on her slender fingers: “For instance, giving you a full physical and mental workup to evaluate your potential and hidden flaws. Tweaking your potion regimen so you don’t waste resources—or worse, turn yourself into an irreversible monster.”

“Or, offering advice on your future development path, mapping out your trajectory from Apprentice all the way to official Master Demon Hunter. Then, assigning you a few junior disciples so you can feel the difference between an Apprentice nurtured as a ‘seed’ and one left to graze in the wild.”

Amanda paused, a half-smirk playing on her lips. “And conveniently, throughout this whole process, subtly cultivating your... hmm, sense of responsibility, honor, esprit de corps—or whatever ‘virtues’ the Academy thinks a Demon Hunter should possess?”

“However...” She shook her head gently, a touch of mockery in her smile. Amanda’s gaze settled on Pandora’s face. “You don’t want that, do you?”

“You’re different from the other Apprentices. Not just the cannon fodder, but even the seeds handpicked by the Hunters—the so-called geniuses. You’re still not like them.”

“You’re special.”

“Which is exactly why it took two whole years for us to actually meet.”

“Someone as special as you naturally needs...” Amanda took half a step closer, the hem of her dark red silk negligee gently swaying in the breeze. “...a very different cultivation plan.”

Pandora remained silent, not immediately responding. She just quietly observed her new Mentor.

Amanda paused, shifting gears. “For example, why don’t you tell me what it is you want? You know yourself better than I do.”

“Don’t overthink it,” Amanda waved a hand, as if seeing right through Pandora’s budding suspicions. “I don’t have the energy to peek at your every move like some kind of pervert. Fact is, before you truly come into your own, someone who could croak at any moment just isn’t that valuable to me.”

Her smile remained elegant, but her words carried a brutal, unvarnished honesty. “Even if you were designated by ‘her’... same rule applies.”

Pandora got the picture. Even though their exchange just now made the woman seem unpretentious, even casual— The core of it wasn’t “affability.” It was something far worse: apathy.

She didn’t care, so she was casual. She didn’t care, so she couldn’t even be bothered to put up a front.

“Oh, right, my little Apprentice,” Amanda added, as if suddenly remembering something. “Control yourself a bit. Don’t go asking for the moon. I’m your Mentor, not a wishing well.”

Pandora didn’t really mind the caveat. As the owner of an Alchemy system, she was incredibly sensitive to things like “Prices.” She knew exactly what she should and shouldn’t ask for from a “Mentor.”

Very quickly, she sorted out in her mind what she truly needed. Three things in total.

First: knowledge related to Wizardry. If Meditations could at least be scraped together through certain channels in the Dead City, knowledge of Wizardry was genuinely scarce. The Academy library’s shelves on Wizardry were basically barren. That probably tied back to the reason Mentor Amanda just gave: spell pages were incredibly hard to preserve.

Second: knowledge related to the Witch bloodline. Similar to Wizards, Witch-related lore was just as scarce—if not more taboo and harder to track down. The only difference was that knowledge didn’t seem quite as vital to a “Witch” as it did to a Wizard. Even without a systematic body of knowledge, she could still harness most of a Witch’s power through pure instinct, and her bloodline’s natural growth was enough to push her Rank up. But that didn’t mean the knowledge was useless.

As for the last one... It was... The Red Moon.

The Red Moon was a very unique entity. It was a celestial body far in the distance, a gargantuan object vastly larger than herself—something that, like “Faye,” logically shouldn’t have any direct connection to a speck like her.

And yet... her relationship with It was intensely intimate.

Without the Red Moon, her Witch bloodline could still grow, but never this fast, this smoothly. Without the Red Moon, her combat power would still increase, but she absolutely wouldn’t be this strong—at the very least, she wouldn’t have these razor-sharp combat instincts. Without the nightmares brought by the Red Moon—and let’s keep calling them “nightmares” for now—honing her combat instincts to this level would have demanded massive amounts of time, energy, and resources, all while risking severe injury or death.

And yet, all these gifts seemed entirely free of a Price? It was almost as if the other party was forcing them on her. Even when she was stuck in the Sentence of the Void, practically isolated from the outside world, the Red Moon had delivered the nightmares right on time the second she broke through to Rank-3.

Why? Because she took an extra look, just like “Faye” told her to? But in her memories, she had locked eyes with the Red Moon countless times. Why that specific occasion?

She had far too many questions about this enigmatic celestial body.