Beauty Corpse.
The first to be called this was also named the 'one who enchants' by countless others in her era.
Gardenia held records of each generation's 'Beauty Corpse' or any other in their list.
It is no name but a title.
Title given to those who have harvested a factor of sin, more precisely in this context.
The Factor of Sin, Lust.
Lust currently possessed a pair of lavender eyes, enchanting them beyond the comprehension of human knowledge.
Martha found it, or at least 'It' found her.
She didn't know much about the factor of sins, but being in possession of one....She just couldn't suppress the grin that had plastered on her face.
Still, the process of installing the eyes....was unbearably painful.
Two of her original eyes were devoured and replaced with the enchanted ones.
Martha remembered the day vividly.
A mere glance was all she sneaked at it, but just that was enough to steal her heart.
They were beautiful, she muttered.
An expanse of stars was all she saw in them.
Beauty so incomprehensible, that understanding just a fraction of it brought tears and maybe even salvation to her.
Even as she brought her face closer, removing the glass case shielding the eyes with her own hands.
Martha couldn't help but feel tears stream at the ethereal eyes winking at her.
Her tears never stopped, even when they turned red from it devouring her sight.
And she could feel it, her heart, charmed so much by the eyes that it just....stopped.
Each blood vessel stopped their labor, taking a long, eternal break admiring and expressing their love and happiness for merely existing as a factor of sin's host.
Martha saw a shift. Suddenly, people flocked at her mere presence, each time she would touch something, they'd try to steal it and smell it, fights broke out for attention and were stopped at her soothing voice.
'Miss Martha!'
'Look here I beg of you!'
'Shut up! I'm in line'
When they spoke, it made her annoyed, like mosquitoes that kept buzzing.
Yet, when she brought attention to them, just like mosquitoes.
They stopped. Gazing at her as if they were purely looking at stars.
Her voice fished many, and many hearts. Martha knew though, that in the end, her voice.
Was merely angelic for deceit.
But that deceit made her so much money.
And it made countless starve for her glances.
'With this....'
She smirked.
'The medical bills would become a breeze'
Finding out that she had terminal brain cancer, broke her to the brink. Gardenia, being the one to repair her.
When going back to Gardenia, while she didn't have the intention to do it, she ended up as the third strongest.
There was one sole reason for this to happen.
Martha had charmed an entire army to do her bidding.
The past couple of months, ever since the start of the school year.
She actively hunted everyone. Except for animals.
Experiments on what her charm could do were conducted, either turning the victims into crazed psychopaths unable to live without a drink of her succulent attention or turned suicidal.
In all of this, she found that if she neglected them for even a day, the army would disperse after turning mad and self-deprecating.
Loyal dogs who could not even think of life without her.
Even in death they wouldn't stop to express their love towards her.
And, she loved it, loved the attention they gave her, the constant begging to give them even an ink of her eyes to them.
They would undoubtedly praise and love her even if she tortured them.
'All of this love, just for my sight?'
Such a thing was a steal, what kind of idiot would not want this?
Throughout her hunt, the ones she enjoyed wringing dry of their sanity would always be lovers.
Like the two she recently caught in the practical exam.
"Samuel, Clara?"
She called out, two figures appearing from the shadows. Standing right before her.
Wide and eerie smirks on their faces.
"Aren't you happy that you can still be together? Despite loving each other deeply for years"
When she spoke. Samuel kneeled, licking the snowy floor out of loyalty. Clara did the same.
A trick she told them to always do when meeting her.
Those who break out of their control lose their memories, so this was a good verification process.
Carefully, they placed the bare feet of their goddess to the soil.
"Especially you Clara, do you not hate me for warping your preferences entirely?"
Smack!
Clara smashed her head to the floor, a spider-web spread open as her chest kept heaving uncontrollably at being permitted to steal away such a being's precious time just by answering her questions.
"Not at all!"
She yelled, voice booming.
Samuel clicked his tongue in frustration, not liking the attention his girlfriend of three years received.
Hearing the clicked tongue, Martha called out.
"Samuel, would you mind getting me my blindfold?"
"....!"
Samuel shivered, the voice melted his heart completely, with shaky breaths he spoke.
"R-Right away!"
Leaving, he snatched the item from a despicable lucky man.
"If only you weren't there at the right time and place...."
Muttering those words under his breath, he returned to Martha's presence.
Extending a black blindfold towards her, he asked in a flushed tone.
"M-May I?"
Martha nodded, the movement stunned many and frustrated just as many.
With trembling hands, Samuel began putting the blindfold on her picturesque face that made people rip their faces just from seeing. Clearly out of affection.
Carefully, he avoided touching her skin, remembering the stark contrast of how much she brutally mutilated one of them from trying to touch her without permission despite the innocence she usually shows.
Gulp
He gulped, the sound reached Martha, lips curled into a wide smirk as she brought almost folded eyes to his face.
Samuel felt his heart leap out, he had almost touched her without explicit permission.
"If my own assets are scared, how will they protect me perfectly?"
Her lip curved as if to sneer at her 'comrade' that could barely hold himself from having his heart explode.
"Well, whatever, you wouldn't understand why I killed your best friend anyway"
The blindfold fell on her. Everyone wore sad expressions when seeing her cover herself.
"Say, do you hate me for killing your childhood friend"
Samuel shook his head erratically.
"No! He deserved it!"
Martha chuckled, remembering how he had been one of the only few to break out of her control.
The blindfold covering her eyes, being the only proof he existed to use it.
Lalia's Blindfold.
An artifact that allowed the user to 'see' those they wanted to see, allowing one to even make out the outline of the figure clearly.
Around her, the world began to shift, overlaying white lines that outlined each object and living being.
White lines twisted and formed a single pathway, pointing at a cave in the distance.
In the cave, two humanoid monsters walked. The one she followed and another troublesome one that almost fatally wounded her at the very beginning of the exam and at the start of the school year.
Martha stroked her chin.
'They don't seem to be together'
Seeing them avoid each other made her think this was the best time to invade.
Soon enough, the world of pure black and white outlines ended.
Her finger raised itself, not at the cave.
But at the one tailing them.
"Bring him here, you are getting a new follower"
At the words, everyone. Samuel, Clara and the ones still hiding in the shadows grinned, smirks tearing through their cheeks just to reach the ears.
Soon, they all disappeared, only a few stayed behind to protect her just in case.
"Tch, take the blindfold"
Feeling her eyes bleed and trickle, she threw the artifact at her first comrade and follower.
Without a word, they took it and hid it in their pockets, also taking out a handkerchief to cleanse the blood off of her beautiful smooth skin in the process.
"Hm?"
Hearing steps coming, she tilted her to the source.
"Kugh!"
A human was being dragged through, an adult one by the sound of his voice she noted.
Martha couldn't help but be surprised, clasping her hands, she walked closer.
Closer and closer. Eventually, face centimeters away, the adult male human subtly avoided her gaze.
He knew her and how dangerous she was.
"Old man"
She called out, tongue twisting strings around her.
"Are you perhaps from that so-called Bureau?"
In the instance the words left her, the man trembled.
Expression twisted rapidly, skin paling along.
But his lips remained as sealed as an aged wine bottle.
"Come on~ Can't tell cute lil ol' me?"
She hurried him to snitch. He still didn't.
The Bureau had many connections to Gardenia, one of the most profitable ones being the auction in Erymos, which housed over a million sets of artifacts with otherworldly power.
Martha had killed many such people, charming them was attempted, but because the Bureau were only 'Spiritually' there, it never went anywhere.
To her, they were like insects that kept buzzing in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
"I don't really like hearing screams...."
She said, the ground below her glowed with a blue pulse.
"If you tell me, I'll stop killing you all"
Whispering, her eyes started to pulse a blue hue as well as the ground.
"A good deal no? Your mission is not obstructed and I'm also more than satisfied"
Her voice shifted from its angelic tone to a more human one, a voice that was believable to the ears.
The body shifted, the environment changed for a moment, furniture riddled everywhere, a TV hummed to life as their bodies stood still in the living room.
The man was now in a house, oddly resembling his.
"Can't you tell me?"
A familiar voice snapped his reason, it shouldn't have, but it also couldn't be helped.
Because the figure before him.
"Honey?"
Was his dead wife.
His vision overlapped with her torn and stitched body from the countless surgeries done on her fragile body.
"If you tell me...."
Blonde hair brushed against his shoulder blades, pale sickly fingers brushed against his neck.
Pale blue eyes sucked him in.
The moment they did.
Ba-Thump—
His heart held its breath.
For eternity.