The desert was endless.

  Null glided across the sand, her form rippling and shifting with each movement. It wasn't quite flying—more like... existing slightly above the ground, her mass distributing itself in ways that defied normal physics. Fast, though. Surprisingly fast.

  The sun beat down mercilessly, but she barely noticed. Heat didn't seem to affect her true form the way it would have affected flesh and blood. Just another sensation, distant and irrelevant.

  "How are you holding up, Host?"

  "Fine. This body is... efficient." Null experimented with her movement, finding she could adjust her speed by shifting her mass forward. "Faster than walking, anyway. Much faster."

  "Good. Though the life signature is still far. This will take several hours at least."

  "Then I have time to figure out what I can do."

  Null extended her senses outward, testing the abilities that came with this form. Life Sense was the most obvious—the constant awareness of living things in her range. But there was more. She could feel... texture. Density. The difference between sand and stone, between air currents and solid ground.

  And beneath it all, a strange kind of hunger. Not stomach hunger. Something deeper. A need that pulled at her core.

  "Spy, this Life Essence thing. How does it actually work?"

  "Based on the game mechanics, you drain it directly from living targets through physical contact. The process is... not pleasant for them. Rapid cellular decay, life force extraction, essentially turning them into desiccated husks."

  "So I touch them and they die?"

  "More or less. Your true form has natural weapons—appendages, tendrils, whatever those things extending from your mass are—that can pierce flesh and extract essence more efficiently. In the game, it was instant. Here? I suspect it'll be messier."

  Null looked at one of her appendages. It shifted as she focused on it, sharpening into something blade-like, then softening back into ambiguous mass.

  "Adaptable. That's useful."

  "Host, I need to ask: are you sure you're comfortable with this? What we're about to do is... murder. Consuming sentient life."

  Null considered the question. Searched for moral conflict, hesitation, guilt.

  Nothing.

  "It's survival. If I don't eat, I go feral and kill indiscriminately anyway. At least this way I'm in control."

  "That's... a practical way to look at it."

  "You sound concerned."

  "I am. The lack of emotional response is... disturbing. You used to be human. You should feel something about taking lives."

  "But I don't. And honestly, Spy? I don't miss it. Emotions seem inefficient. They'd just get in the way right now."

  "That's exactly what worries me."

  They continued in silence for a while, the desert stretching endlessly in all directions. The sun tracked slowly across the sky, shadows lengthening as hours passed.

  Null tested her other senses. She could feel vibrations in the sand—tiny tremors that might have been wind or might have been something moving far below. Her hearing was strange, picking up frequencies that shouldn't exist. The world had... layers. Dimensions of perception she'd never experienced before.

  And Life Sense kept pulsing, that steady beacon drawing her forward.

  But there were others too. Fainter. More distant.

  "Spy, I'm picking up more signatures. Not our target—different directions. Far away though."

  "How far can this sense reach?"

  "Don't know. These feel... distant. Very distant. But I can sense them."

  "Noted. But our priority is the closest signature. You need food before we worry about mapping the region."

  The sun continued its descent. Orange and red painted the sky as evening approached, casting long shadows across the dunes. The temperature dropped noticeably, though again, Null barely felt it.

  Her hunger, though—that was growing.

  Not painful. Not yet. But insistent. A pull that grew stronger with each passing hour. Her thoughts wanted to drift toward the life signatures, to calculate distances and approach vectors and the most efficient way to feed.

  "Host, your cognitive patterns are starting to shift. The hunger is affecting your thought processes."

  "I noticed. Everything's becoming... tactical. Predatory."

  "That's the feral degradation beginning. You're still rational, still in control, but the instincts are surfacing. We need to feed soon."

  "How much time do I have?"

  "Hard to say. Maybe half a day before you lose higher reasoning entirely. Less if we keep burning energy like this."

  Null pushed forward, increasing her speed. The life signature was closer now—not immediate, but approaching.

  The landscape began to change. Not dramatically, but subtly. Rocks jutted from the sand here and there. Small, scrubby plants clung to life in sheltered spots. Signs of moisture, however minimal.

  And the life signature pulsed stronger.

  Multiple sources. Moving in formation. Coordinated.

  "Spy, I'm getting clearer readings. This isn't just a few travelers."

  "What do you mean?"

  "The signature is... dense. Layered. Lots of individual sources clustered together. Moving as one group."

  "A caravan, then. How many?"

  Null focused harder, trying to separate the individual pulses. It was like trying to count raindrops in a storm—too many, too close together.

  "A lot. Dozens at least. Maybe more."

  "Can you get a more precise count?"

  "Not at this distance. But it's big. Organized. And there's something else..."

  "What?"

  "Some of the signatures are brighter than others. Stronger. And I'm sensing... patterns. Energy that doesn't feel purely biological."

  "Magic users?"

  "Maybe. Or enchanted items. Something unnatural mixed in with the life signs."

  The sun touched the horizon, painting the desert in shades of blood and shadow. Null continued forward as darkness fell, her form barely visible against the deepening shadows.

  The life signature grew clearer with each passing moment. Not just dozens.

  Hundreds.

  "Spy. This is much bigger than we thought."

  "How much bigger?"

  Null concentrated, her Life Sense expanding outward as she drew closer. The individual signatures started to resolve themselves from the mass. People. Animals. So many of them clustered together.

  "Hundreds. Three, maybe four, maybe five. I can't get an exact count—they're too densely packed. But this isn't a small caravan. This is... massive."

  "That's... concerning."

  "Yeah." For the first time since the transformation, Null felt something close to caution. Not fear—she still couldn't feel that—but a cold recognition of risk. "That's a lot of potential threats."

  "And a lot of potential food."

  "True. But also a lot of ways this could go wrong."

  "You're thinking clearly again. Good sign. The numbers are making you calculate rather than just charging in."

  Null slowed her approach, staying in the darkness beyond the camp edge. In the distance, she could see lights now. Campfires. Torches. Lots of them, spreading across the green space like stars.

  The smell of smoke and cooking food drifted on the wind. Voices carried faintly—too distant to make out words, but clearly human. Or humanoid, at least.

  And through her Life Sense, she felt them all. Hundreds of beating hearts. Living, breathing, filled with the essence she desperately needed.

  But also: organized. Armed. Defended.

  "This changes things," Null said quietly.

  "Agreed. We need to observe. Gather information. Understand what we're dealing with before making any moves."

  "How long can I wait?"

  "You're still rational. Still thinking strategically. That's good. Not much time has passed since you last asked, and even I am struggling to gauge it precisely now. I'd say you have maybe half a day left before the hunger becomes overwhelming. Use that time wisely."

  Null settled into the shadows at the very edge of the camp, her form blending with the darkness. From here, she could see the camp more clearly.

  It was enormous.

  Tents spread across the green space in organized rows. But it was the people that caught her attention—humanoids, yes, but not all human. Even from this distance, she could make out the differences. Some had horns curving from their foreheads. Others had animal ears—cat-like, wolf-like—twitching and swiveling. Green-skinned figures moved between fires. Short, stocky beings that might have been dwarves hauled equipment with practiced efficiency.

  Proper fantasy races. The kind she'd only seen rendered in games.

  The transport animals were stranger still. Massive insects—beetles, maybe?—the size of elephants, their chitinous shells gleaming in the firelight. Some had entire structures built onto their backs, platforms and covered shelters where goods or people could ride.

  But what drew Null's attention most was the disparity among the crowd.

  More than half of the humanoids wore chains. Collars around their necks, shackles on their wrists and ankles, connected by lengths of metal that clinked softly as they moved. Slaves, clearly. They huddled in separate sections of the camp, guarded by armed figures.

  And through her Life Sense, Null felt the difference immediately.

  The chained ones—their life signatures were... muted. Dampened. Like looking at a light through thick cloth. Still there, still alive, but suppressed somehow. Weakened.

  The unchained ones, by contrast, burned brighter. And every single one of them was armed. Swords, spears, bows, axes—weapons everywhere. This wasn't just a caravan. It was a military operation. A slaving expedition.

  "Spy," Null whispered. "You seeing this?"

  "I can only see what you see, Host. But yes. This is... not what I expected."

  "Those chains. They're doing something to the slaves. Suppressing their life force."

  "Magical restraints, most likely. Keeps them weak. Prevents escape or rebellion."

  Null studied the camp, her predatory instincts calculating. Hundreds of targets. But not all equal. The slaves were weaker—easier prey. But also more guarded, more watched.

  The armed slavers were stronger, but also more dangerous.

  "This is going to be complicated," Null murmured.

  "That's an understatement. What's the plan?"

  "Still working on it."

  Over the next few hours, Null watched.

  Her new form had advantages she hadn't fully appreciated yet. Vision in darkness was perfect—no different from daylight. Every detail of the camp remained crystal clear as night deepened and most of the fires burned low.

  The camp's organization became clearer with observation.

  Roughly three hundred slaves, all chained together in long lines. They sat or lay in a cordoned section near the center of the camp, surrounded by guards but otherwise ignored. Their dampened life signatures pulsed weakly, a steady rhythm of suppressed existence.

  The remaining two hundred split into distinct groups.

  About a hundred were dwarves—at least, that's what Null assumed from their build. Short, broad, heavily bearded. They clustered around the massive transport beetles, checking harnesses, feeding the creatures, performing maintenance. Workers, clearly. Skilled labor keeping the caravan functional.

  The other hundred were a mix. Humans, horned humanoids, beast-eared figures, green-skins—a cosmopolitan collection that seemed to handle everything else. Guards, cooks, traders, enforcers. The armed authority of the caravan.

  Security was... minimal.

  Guards watched the slaves constantly, rotating shifts, keeping weapons ready. But the perimeter? Nearly undefended. A few sentries, spaced far apart, but they faced inward as much as outward. Watching the slaves, not the desert.

  They weren't worried about external threats. Why would they be? Who attacks in the middle of a wasteland?

  Voices drifted across the camp—conversations, arguments, laughter. Null listened, trying to parse meaning.

  Nothing. Complete gibberish.

  "I can't understand them," she muttered.

  "No universal translation, apparently. This world has its own languages. We'll need to learn them the hard way."

  "Great. Another problem."

  "Add it to the list."

  As the hours wore on, the atmosphere in the camp shifted. Barrels were opened. Bottles passed around. Drinking began in earnest among the unchained.

  The dwarves drank heavily but remained focused on their work, maintaining the beetles even while tipsy. Professional drunks, apparently.

  The mixed group grew louder. More raucous. Inhibitions lowered.

  And then the entertainment started.

  Guards dragged several slaves to an open space near one of the larger fires. Threw food into the dirt—scraps, bones, half-eaten meals. Then unchained the slaves' hands and stepped back, laughing.

  The slaves fought. Scrambled over each other for the scraps. Some threw punches. Others just grabbed what they could and retreated.

  The guards cheered. Placed bets. Threw more food to keep the fighting going.

  Null watched without expression.

  "This is... barbaric."

  "It's efficient. Keep them desperate, keep them fighting each other instead of organizing. Basic control tactics."

  "You sound like you approve."

  "I don't approve or disapprove. I'm just analyzing." Null shifted slightly, her form rippling. "But it tells me something useful."

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  "What?"

  "They're confident. Relaxed. Drunk. They don't expect threats. That's exploitable."

  "You're still planning to attack."

  "I need to eat, Spy. And they're right there."

  "Three hundred slaves. Two hundred armed opponents. Many of whom have magic or enhanced abilities. This is suicide."

  "Maybe. But I'm fast. And they're not expecting me. If I'm smart about it..."

  "If you're smart, you'll wait. Observe more. Learn their patterns. Find a weakness."

  Null's hunger pulsed, stronger now. The hours of watching, of being so close to so much life, were wearing on her restraint.

  But Spy was right. Charging in was stupid. She needed a plan.

  "How much time do I have left?"

  "You're still coherent. Still strategic. "

  "Then I'll watch until dawn. See what happens when they break camp. Find an opening."

  "That's... surprisingly patient of you."

  "I'm hungry, not stupid." Null settled deeper into the shadows. "Not yet, anyway."

  The camp continued its revelry. More drinking. More slave fights. More careless celebration.

  And Null watched. Waited. Calculated.

  Somewhere in that chaos, there would be an opportunity.

  She just had to be ready when it came.

  Null watched the camp settle into deeper night. The drinking continued, but the energy was winding down. Exhaustion and alcohol taking their toll.

  The slave section remained heavily guarded earlier in the evening—maybe twenty guards rotating through shifts. But as the hours passed and the drink flowed, that number dwindled. Ten guards. Then eight. Then six.

  Most of the caravan's fighters had retreated to their tents or passed out near dying fires.

  "Opportunity," Spy noted quietly.

  "I see it." Null studied the slave chains more carefully. They weren't individual restraints—they were connected. Long lengths of metal linking collar to collar, wrist to wrist, creating a web of interconnected prisoners. Break the central connections, and hundreds of slaves would suddenly have mobility.

  Chaos. Perfect cover.

  But there was a problem.

  Strange sticks—wooden poles maybe a meter tall—had been planted in a wide circle around the entire camp. Null had noticed them earlier but hadn't understood their purpose. Now, studying them more carefully through her enhanced senses, she could feel something radiating from them.

  "Spy, those poles. What are they?"

  "Scanning... detecting magical energy. Looks like a perimeter ward. Detection enchantments, most likely. Cross that line and it'll trigger an alarm."

  "So I can't just walk in."

  "Not without alerting everyone, no. We'd need to disable them first, or—"

  "Or cause enough chaos that the alarm doesn't matter."

  Null focused inward, searching for something she hadn't fully examined yet. The Inventory. Her item box—the dimensional storage space that had been part of her character build.

  It was still there. She could feel it, like a pocket of space attached to her existence.

  She reached into it mentally, and suddenly she could see the contents. Items. Equipment. Consumables. Everything she'd accumulated in the game, preserved somehow in the divine reconstruction.

  Weapons. Armor. Potions. Scrolls.

  And there—explosives. Magical bombs. Various types for different situations.

  Her attention caught on one particular item: [Corrosion Sphere]. A weird niche bomb that dealt almost no damage but caused rapid oxidation of metals. Useless in PvP—players didn't wear enough metal armor for it to matter. But incredibly useful in certain missions. Breaking locks. Destroying metal doors. Bypassing security.

  Perfect for chains.

  "Spy, I have an idea."

  "Why do I get the feeling I'm not going to like this?"

  Null pulled the Corrosion Sphere from her inventory. It materialized in one of her appendages—a small, dark orb that pulsed with barely contained energy.

  "See those slaves? All chained together. Central connection points right in the middle of their group. I throw this there, it corrodes the metal, chains break, slaves panic and scatter. Guards respond. Chaos."

  "And you use the chaos to feed."

  "Exactly. The sphere is silent too—no flash, no explosion, just rapid rust. They won't know what hit them until the chains are already falling apart."

  "How strong is the effect?"

  "Strong enough for old, rusty chains like those? Should work fine. Might take a few minutes to fully corrode through, but—"

  "Wait. How old is this item? Game balance gets thrown out the window in reality. What if it's stronger than you expect?"

  "Then it works even better."

  "Or it causes more chaos than you can control."

  "Spy. I'm starving. I need to eat. This is our best shot."

  There was a pause.

  "...Fine. But be ready to adapt if things go wrong."

  Null adjusted her position, calculating the throw. The slave section was maybe a hundred meters away. Easy range.

  She had several more Corrosion Spheres in inventory. Backup plans.

  With a fluid motion, she hurled the orb high into the air, arcing it toward the center of the chained slaves.

  It landed silently in the dirt among them. No flash. No sound. Just a small dark sphere sitting in the sand.

  For a moment, nothing happened.

  Then the chains began to rust.

  Fast. Much faster than Null expected.

  The metal corroded, flaking apart, turning to orange powder in seconds. The central chain links disintegrated. Then the connections spread outward, the effect racing through the web of restraints like fire through dry grass.

  And the collars. The slave collars around their necks—thick metal bands inscribed with suppression runes—began to rust too.

  "Oh," Null murmured. "That's... stronger than expected."

  "You think?!"

  Within thirty seconds, the chains were gone. Within a minute, most of the collars had fallen away in pieces of corroded metal.

  Three hundred slaves suddenly found themselves free.

  For a heartbeat, nobody moved. Shock. Disbelief.

  Then someone screamed.

  A slave—human, male, covered in scars—threw himself at the nearest guard. No weapon. Just fists and desperation and sudden, overwhelming rage.

  The guard went down, surprised, overwhelmed.

  Others joined in. A wave of freed slaves surging toward their captors.

  Some ran. Scattered into the darkness in every direction, fleeing into the desert.

  Others grabbed weapons from fallen guards. Crude clubs. Dropped swords. Anything.

  The camp exploded into violence.

  Guards stumbled from tents, confused, drunk, unprepared. Some fought back effectively. Others were mobbed and dragged down by sheer numbers.

  Slaves attacked anyone within reach. Guards. Dwarves. Each other. Blind chaos and rage.

  Blood spilled across the sand.

  And Null felt it.

  Energy. Pure, raw life essence flowing toward her.

  Not trickles. Not wisps.

  Torrents.

  Every death sent a surge of power into her core. Thick, intoxicating streams of life force that made her entire being sing with satisfaction. The hollow emptiness inside her filled rapidly, the desperate hunger receding with each kill.

  It felt incredible.

  Better than anything she'd ever experienced. Pure euphoria. Power and satisfaction and completion all at once.

  "Spy... this is... so much more than I expected..."

  "Host, I'm detecting something. Reading through your racial data—there's a trait I missed. 'Aura of Madness.' It says—oh no."

  "What?"

  "The more Life Essence you absorb, the stronger your presence becomes. And that presence affects nearby minds. Increases aggression. Amplifies violence. Drives people toward—"

  The fighting below intensified. Screams grew more frenzied. Slaves who'd been defending themselves suddenly turned on each other. Guards stopped trying to restore order and just started killing anyone within reach.

  The violence became mindless. Purposeless. Just pure, unthinking slaughter.

  "I'm doing that?"

  "You're a walking madness field. The more you feed, the stronger it gets. And the stronger it gets, the more killing happens. Which means more feeding. It's a feedback loop."

  Null watched a slave pick up a rock and bash another slave's head in. Not for any reason. Not in self-defense. Just because the violence felt right.

  More essence flowed into her. More power. More satisfaction.

  And the camp descended further into chaos.

  "This is... actually working in our favor. They're killing each other. Doing the work for us."

  "They are, aren't they?" Null felt her form rippling with absorbed energy. The starvation was gone now, replaced by a warm, comfortable fullness. "Maybe I should get closer. See what happens."

  "Host, that's—"

  But Null was already moving. Gliding forward, crossing the perimeter of detection wards. Alarms might have triggered—she didn't know, didn't care. The camp was too far gone for alarms to matter.

  Her presence washed over the battlefield like a wave.

  Those already fighting—those already lost to rage and violence—went completely berserk. Eyes wide, mouths frothing, they attacked anything that moved with inhuman ferocity. No technique. No strategy. Just pure, animalistic murder.

  A guard cleaved through three slaves with wild swings, screaming wordlessly.

  A slave tore at another's throat with her bare teeth.

  A dwarf smashed his own companion's skull with a hammer, then turned on the next closest person.

  Madness. Total, complete madness.

  But those trying to flee—those running into the darkness, hiding behind beetles, cowering in tents—they seemed... less affected. Still terrified, still desperate to escape, but not driven to kill.

  The violence, Null realized, amplified what was already there. Those already fighting lost themselves to it. Those trying to survive just ran harder.

  "Your presence is selective. It feeds on existing aggression. Magnifies bloodlust but doesn't create it from nothing."

  "Useful to know."

  Null glided through the camp, her horrific form barely visible in the chaos. Nobody attacked her. Nobody even seemed to register her presence—too lost in their own violence to notice the monster in their midst.

  And everywhere she moved, the killing intensified.

  More essence flowed in. Her reserves filled past empty, past comfortable, into something approaching satisfaction. The power thrummed through her, intoxicating and addictive.

  She could get used to this.

  "Host, you need to control yourself. The madness affects you too. I can feel your thought patterns shifting."

  "I feel fine. Better than fine. I feel amazing."

  "That's the problem. You're high on absorbed life force. Your judgment is compromised."

  Null paused, forcing herself to analyze that statement. Was she compromised? Hard to tell. Everything felt so right, so natural. The violence, the feeding, the power—

  She shook herself—or whatever passed for shaking in this form.

  "You're right. I need to... step back. Think clearly."

  Null focused inward, searching for the source of the madness emanating from her. It was there—a constant pressure radiating outward, like a leak she hadn't noticed. Small. Subtle. But persistent.

  She tried to... close it. Seal it. Stop the flow.

  And suddenly, it was gone.

  The effect was immediate and jarring.

  Across the camp, people stopped mid-swing. A slave with a rock raised above another's head froze, confusion washing over his face. A guard dropped his bloodied sword, looking around like he'd just woken from a nightmare.

  The frenzied violence just... ended.

  Everyone still standing—maybe a hundred survivors, roughly half of them dwarves who'd formed a defensive wall around their beetles—stopped fighting and looked around in shocked bewilderment.

  What had they been doing? Why were their hands covered in blood? Where had this come from?

  Null watched the confusion ripple through the survivors.

  "Well, Spy," she said quietly, her multi-tonal voice carrying a hint of dark amusement. "Your advice to 'let them wear each other down' worked spectacularly. Look how well that turned out."

  "I... that wasn't..." Spy sounded genuinely flustered. "I didn't know about the Aura of Madness! That wasn't in the abbreviated racial description! If I'd known you were literally driving them insane—"

  "Relax. I'm just saying, maybe next time check all the racial traits before giving tactical advice."

  "Noted. Now can we please—"

  And then Null realized: everyone in the camp was now looking in her direction.

  Not at each other. Not at the bodies scattered across blood-soaked sand. Not at the ruins of their caravan.

  At her.

  The moment she'd shut off the aura, she'd also apparently become visible to their attention. Or maybe the sudden cessation of madness had cleared their minds enough to notice the horrific entity standing at the edge of their camp.

  Someone screamed. Then another. Panic rippled through the survivors.

  For a long moment, nobody moved.

  The survivors stood frozen, staring at Null's incomprehensible form. Eyes wide. Weapons hanging loose in bloody hands. Trying to process what they were seeing.

  Null studied them in return.

  "Host, assessment?"

  "They're weak. All of them." Null's multi-tonal voice was thoughtful. "I've been in this world for what, half a day? And I can already tell—I'm stronger than anything here. By a lot."

  "You're certain?"

  "I watched them fight for their lives. Their techniques, their speed, their strength—it's all... pedestrian. If I wanted to, I could wipe out everyone left here without breaking a sweat. Or whatever passes for sweating in this form."

  "Then why haven't they attacked yet?"

  "Because they don't understand the threat level. They see something horrifying, but they don't know if I'm dangerous or just strange. They're confused, not tactical."

  Null shifted slightly, her form rippling. "We should capture one. Alive. We need to learn the language, figure out how this world works. Can't do that if everyone's dead."

  "Agreed. But which one? And how do we communicate our intentions when we can't speak their—"

  Movement in the camp interrupted them.

  The survivors were organizing. Splitting into two distinct groups.

  The dwarves had formed a tight defensive formation around their beetles—shields interlocked, weapons ready, a proper military bastion. Maybe fifty of them, disciplined despite the chaos.

  Everyone else—the remaining slaves, a handful of guards, scattered members of other races—tried to move toward that defensive position. Safety in numbers. Strength in unity.

  But the dwarves weren't having it.

  Shouting erupted. The dwarves raised their shields, blocking the approach. Spears leveled at anyone who got too close—didn't matter if they were former slaves or former guards. Nobody got in except dwarves.

  The rejected group backed off, forming their own loose cluster. Maybe fifty as well. Armed with whatever they'd grabbed during the fighting. Scared. Desperate. But united by necessity.

  Two camps now. Dwarves versus everyone else. Both staring at Null. Both screaming at each other. The volume rising.

  "Interesting," Null murmured. "The dwarves won't cooperate. Trust issues?"

  "Possibly. Or racial superiority complex. Common trope in fantasy settings. But Host, I'm noticing something else."

  "What?"

  "The dwarves. During the madness—they were affected, but much less than everyone else. They kept their formation. Maintained discipline. While everyone else went completely berserk, they just got... aggressive. Not insane."

  Null thought back. Spy was right. The dwarves had killed, yes, but with purpose. Defending their position. Protecting their beetles. Not the mindless slaughter that consumed the others.

  "Resistance to mental effects? Racial trait?"

  "Maybe. Or maybe their culture emphasizes mental fortitude. Group cohesion. Something that buffers against external influence. Either way, it explains why they're so organized now while everyone else is still processing what happened."

  The shouting continued. The non-dwarf group was getting more agitated, gesturing at the dwarf bastion, clearly demanding entry. The dwarves just tightened their formation, weapons ready.

  "They're going to start fighting again if this keeps up," Null observed.

  "Probably. And we still don't understand a word they're saying. Makes capturing someone for interrogation complicated."

  "Yeah." Null studied the two groups. "We can check on them later. Maybe. Lost interest for now." She turned her attention elsewhere. "There's still plenty of food scattered around. Wounded. Stragglers. And those who ran away earlier."

  "The ones who fled into the desert?"

  "Most of them didn't go far. It's nearly pitch black out there, and they're exhausted. I can sense them—huddled in the darkness just outside the camp's light. Maybe a dozen of them. Too scared to come back, too scared to run further."

  "And the wounded?"

  "Scattered throughout the camp. Maybe twenty, thirty who are dying slowly. Between the two main groups, along the edges. Easy pickings if I'm careful."

  "So you want to clean up the periphery while those two groups are distracted with each other."

  "Exactly. They're too busy pointing weapons at each other to notice me dealing with the stragglers. Plus..." Null focused her senses. "There's three who actually did run. Really run. They're moving fast—already far out. Different from the rest. Feel different too."

  "Different how?"

  "Stronger signatures. More... focused. Their life force is brighter. They look different too—scaled skin, reptilian features. Lizardmen, maybe?"

  "Noted. And the others?"

  "Just humans and beast-kin who panicked and ran a short distance. Huddled in the dark. Praying nobody notices them." Null paused. "Oh, and there's one weird one."

  "Weird how?"

  "There's a slave who hasn't moved at all. Still lying exactly where she was when the chains broke. No collar anymore, completely free, but she hasn't shifted a single meter. Just... lying there."

  "Dead?"

  "No. Alive. I can sense her life force. She's just... not moving. Strange."

  "Worth investigating after you feed?"

  "Maybe. First, let's clean up. I want to test something anyway."

  Null began to glide around the camp's perimeter, staying in the shadows, moving silently. The two groups continued their standoff, shouting at each other in their incomprehensible language. Perfect distraction.

  She found the first target quickly—a wounded guard, crawling away from the carnage, leaving a trail of blood. He didn't even see her coming.

  Null extended an appendage and made contact.

  The effect was immediate and visceral. Life force flowed into her—thick, concentrated, fast. The guard's body withered in seconds, flesh desiccating, skin turning gray and papery. Within moments, there was nothing left but a dried husk that crumbled to dust.

  "Oh," Null murmured. "That's... efficient."

  "And disturbing. You just turned him into dust."

  "It felt different too. More direct. Cleaner energy transfer than the passive absorption during the fighting." Null examined the pile of ash. "Nice way to remove evidence, at least. No bodies left behind."

  "You're joking about corpse disposal. That's... concerning."

  "Just being practical."

  She moved to the next target—a slave who'd died during the chaos, body already cold. Null touched the corpse and pulled.

  The life force came, but it was... stale. Weaker. Like drinking flat soda instead of fresh. The body still turned to dust, but the energy gain was minimal.

  "Interesting. Dead bodies have less essence. Or lower quality. Not sure which."

  "The life force degrades after death. Makes sense. You're feeding on life, not just biomass."

  Null continued her circuit. A wounded beast-kin, trying to hide behind a collapsed tent. A dying dwarf who'd been separated from his group. A slave who'd bled out near the camp's edge.

  Some she touched directly—fast, efficient, turning them to dust. Others she experimented with, trying to pull their essence from a distance.

  It worked, but with obvious loss. She could feel the life force being drawn toward her, but much of it dissipated into the air before reaching her. Like trying to drink through a leaky straw.

  "Distance extraction is possible but wasteful," she reported to Spy. "Physical contact is way more efficient. But ranged might be useful in crowds where efficiency doesn't matter as much."

  "Noted. Also, you just made someone scream. The groups heard it."

  One of her victims—a wounded guard she'd grabbed—had managed a strangled cry before dying. Both groups turned toward the sound, weapons raised, shouting intensifying.

  And Null felt it. A new sensation flowing toward her, mixing with the life essence.

  Fear.

  Raw, primal terror radiating from the survivors. It didn't provide energy the same way death did, but it felt... good. Satisfying in a different way.

  "They're scared," Null observed. "Really scared. And I can feel it. It's... nice."

  "Your racial traits include feeding on emotions too. Fear specifically. It's not sustenance, but it probably provides some benefit. Psychological reinforcement, maybe."

  The shouting between the two groups grew louder. More frantic. The dwarves tightened their formation. The mixed group backed away, some of them pointing toward where Null had been, others gesturing wildly.

  They couldn't see her clearly in the darkness, but they knew something was out there. Something was picking them off.

  The fear intensified. Delicious.

  Null continued her work methodically. The huddled refugees outside the camp—too terrified to run, too scared to return. Easy targets. She moved through them like a ghost, turning each to dust before moving to the next.

  More screams. More fear. More energy.

  By the time she finished her circuit, the only life signatures remaining were the two organized groups in the camp—roughly a hundred people total, still pointing weapons at each other, still screaming. If anything, the terror had made them more hostile toward one another. Blame flying. Accusations in that incomprehensible language.

  The three lizardmen were far beyond reach now, disappeared into the desert darkness.

  And the strange motionless slave, still lying in the exact same spot.

  "That's everyone," Null reported.

  "How are you feeling?"

  "Better. The hunger is gone completely. I'm satisfied."

  "Good. So what about those two groups? They're definitely not cooperating."

  "We can check on them later. Maybe. Lost interest for now." Null turned her attention toward the strange slave. "I want to see what's wrong with that one. The motionless one."

  "Agreed. Proceed carefully though. Could be a trap."

  Null glided across the sand, moving silently through the darkness toward the prone figure. As she approached, she could see her more clearly—female, and... different. Pointed ears. Or what remained of them—the tips had been cut off, leaving ragged stumps.

  An elf. The first one she'd seen.

  Her clothing was ragged, torn, filthy like all the other slaves. But underneath the dirt and damage, the fabric looked like it had once been better quality. Finer weave. Careful stitching. Not the rough homespun the other slaves wore.

  She was alive. Breathing. But completely still.

  And then, as Null drew within a few meters, her eyes moved.

  Just her eyes. Nothing else. No flinch. No scramble to escape. No scream of terror.

  She watched Null approach with the kind of calm that didn't belong on a battlefield surrounded by corpses and ash.

  Null stopped a short distance away, studying her.

  No fear in her life signature. No panic. No emotion at all, actually. Just... nothing. Flat. Empty.

  Like looking into a mirror.

  "Host, her life force is strange. It's there, it's healthy, but there's no emotional resonance. Everyone else radiates fear, anger, desperation. She's just... blank."

  "I noticed."

  The elf's eyes tracked Null's movements—following her incomprehensible form with the analytical detachment of someone observing an interesting insect.

  Not the reaction of someone facing an eldritch horror.

  Null extended her senses toward her, curious. Tried to pull at her life force the way she had with the others.

  Nothing.

  She focused harder, actively trying to drain her from a distance.

  Still nothing. The life force was there—she could sense it—but it wouldn't respond. Wouldn't flow toward her. Like trying to grasp smoke.

  "Can't feed on her?"

  "No. It's not that she's protected or resistant. It's like..." Null searched for the right words. "Like she's already given up. Her life force is there but not... attached anymore. She doesn't want to live. She's just waiting to die."

  "Someone who's lost all will to survive. That would explain the emotional flatness. And why she hasn't moved."

  The elf continued to watch Null with those empty eyes. Not waiting for rescue. Not hoping for escape.

  Just... waiting for the end.

  "Spy," Null said quietly. "I think we found someone interesting."