She stepped forward and hurled Little Leonora from her arms.
“I choose you, young lady! Use Flaming Headbutt!”
With a startled shriek, the girl shot through the air like a meteor, crashing onto the floor barely two steps from Shiya.
Her forehead slammed hard against the ground with a resounding thud.
The overseer, who’d been about to bolt for the door, couldn’t help turning back with his stomach clutched, roaring with laughter as he showered Shiya with a stream of so-called warm greetings.
Little Leonora scrambled up in a sorry state.
She pointed a small finger at Shiya, then promptly cracked the knife handle into the overseer’s forehead.
At the same time, without looking back, she flicked the hand in its armored guard, sending a bone dagger flying.
The man didn’t even manage a muffled grunt before he toppled over with a plop and fell into a peaceful sleep.
Shiya trussed up the dragged-in overseer as the young lady silently shut the door.
“What do we do now?”
The young lady crept up and squatted down her tiny frame, gazing down from above at the man who had always bossed them around.
Shiya pondered for a long moment, then raised her hand and slapped the unconscious overseer across the face.
“First, wake him up and squeeze some intel out of him.”
The slap landed.
The overseer’s head lolled to the side, still out cold.
Shiya frowned, grabbed the man by his collar, and delivered another backhand.
Still, he didn’t stir.
Little Leonora, intrigued by the spectacle, grabbed a thick book from the room.
“My turn. I guarantee his head splits open.”
The man’s eyelid twitched, and he hastily raised both hands to shield his head.
“Okay, okay. I’ve been awake for a while now.”
Shiya dropped him to the floor, stood up, and cut straight to the point.
“Where is the person in charge of the Flesh Sedimentation Pool?”
Hesitating briefly, she tossed her Performance Enforcement Unit badge onto the man’s swollen face.
With the official backing of the Longevity Factory, Shiya had assumed she could easily get answers.
But to her surprise, the overseer shook his head like a rattle drum after seeing the badge.
“No way. If I told you, that person would kill me.”
The interrogation had hit a wall before it even started.
Before Shiya could think of her next move, the tiny young lady lifted a slender jade-white leg and stepped onto the man’s chest, again and again.
The room filled with his pained groans…
And some strange sounds.
“Oh… slower… slower…”
“Hiss… that’s it. Press down harder!”
Even Little Leonora finally noticed something was off.
Seeing the man grinning at her with an infatuated smile, she stumbled backward in fright, bumping into a woman’s warm embrace.
Shiya had entirely shed her earlier deliberately cold facade.
Her pale-golden, autumn-water eyes were utterly serene, like an ancient well of fathomless depth.
“Are you enjoying this?” she asked softly.
The man, completely unaware of the danger creeping closer, grew audacious in his excitement.
“Heh heh. If you let that little girl sit on my chest, I might just confess everything.”
Shiya let out a snort of a laugh.
She tilted her head and pulled out the magic-conductive taser Ilya had given her, its glow filling the break room.
With her fair fingertip flicking the switch, a powerful electric arc crackled to life.
Then, in an instant, her gaze turned sick and vicious.
She raised the taser and drove it into the man.
“Perverted trash who likes little girls—die!”
Silver-white lightning tore through his body.
He convulsed and thrashed wildly, foam spilling from his mouth.
Little Leonora was petrified.
Watching Mama Shiya morph into someone completely different, she couldn’t help shrinking her neck.
Only when the faint smell of charred meat began to seep through the room did Shiya barely recover a shred of sanity.
After dealing with the disgustingly vile man, she turned around.
Her bloodshot golden eyes locked onto Little Leonora.
“Young lady, from now on, whenever you meet a degenerate like this, you hide behind me. Understand?”
Crushed under the woman’s dark, obsessive aura, the tiny, delicate Leonora froze in place.
Her slender shoulders quaked as she nodded desperately to show she understood.
“But, like, is he kind of dead?”
The young lady raised a hand, pointing at the overseer, who was nearly a charred lump.
Miraculously, despite wounds that severe, the man’s chest was still rising and falling, greedily gulping air.
“Young lady, I was just about to mention—whether it was the assembly line workers ordered to have their arm flesh carved off earlier, or that body we just dug out of the coffin… they’re all really good at staying alive.”
As she spoke, the girl rummaged through boxes and shelves, producing a rusty sharp knife that she pressed against the man’s throat.
“How about we chop his head off and see if he can still be that tough?”
Just as Shiya predicted, the overseer’s mouth burst open, releasing a puff of black smoke.
“I’ll talk! I’ll talk!”
“The person in charge of the Flesh Sedimentation Pool went into hiding well in advance. Before leaving, he swiped most of the workers’ supply quota for this month.”
“The workers have recently begun secretly plotting a rebellion. To be honest, you Performance Enforcement people should be helping me suppress…”
The man was cut off mid-sentence.
The door was kicked open with a single blow.
Like an empty bottle tossed into the ocean, a dense, dark crowd flooded in.
“There you are, bastard!”
“Spit out all the supplies you pocketed!”
The clamor crashed into Shiya’s ears.
She instinctively turned her head and exchanged a glance with Little Leonora.
Just as the young lady slowly moved her hand behind her back to draw out the magic-conductive shotgun, one of the lead workers spoke first.
“Not bad. You caught this grasping bastard pretty quickly.”
Shiya let out a dry laugh, crossed two fingers together, and guiltily averted her gaze.
“Just doing my duty.”
The overseer stared at her in disbelief and tried to speak, but Little Leonora was quicker.
She stuffed a rag into his mouth.
“Enough.”
The lead worker glanced at the overseer, who was being yanked by the hair and beaten from all directions, then gestured with his chin toward the girls.
“Since you’ve made such a big contribution, once we crack this guy open and find out where the supplies are, we’ll give you a bigger cut.”
Shiya couldn’t help asking, “Does he always dock your supplies?”
The workers, who had just settled down, immediately burst into a chorus of grievances.
“That bastard keeps increasing our working hours! We can barely find time to lie back in our coffins and rest properly!”
“Yeah! And the makeup he promised to the overtime sisters to cover their lividity spots—he never once delivered!”
As the atmosphere grew more and more heated, Shiya got swept up in the emotion.
She sniffled, wiped the corner of her eyes, and thought back to her days in the original world—when her family fell into decline, she was forced to drop out of school and enter a factory as a factory girl.
“Wuuu… I just wanted to work hard and earn money to support my younger sister… but I always ran into nasty workplace harassment.”
Under Little Leonora’s utterly shocked gaze, Shiya hugged the female workers and burst into loud wails.
The lead worker from before gave her shoulder a firm pat.
Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted her badge fallen on the ground and kindly bent over to retrieve it.
“Don’t cry for now, child. You dropped something…”
His words trailed off as he saw the simple portrait photo on the badge, along with the words “Performance Enforcement Unit.”
His face darkened instantly, and he bellowed in fury.
“Wait—you’re a lapdog slaving for the factory higher-ups! What are you empathizing with us for?!”