Chapter 91: The Mother’s Burden

Summer was brimming with anticipation, eager to find her mother and show off her incredible new accomplishment.

The thought of demonstrating how she had successfully stored all forty-two zombie puppets into her shadow domain without destroying a single physical body brought a rare spark of pride to her crimson eyes.

However, after searching through every corner of the private quarters and checking the main hallways of the Eastern cave settlement, she could not find a single trace of Salma.

Frowning in mild irritation, Summer decided to bypass looking for ordinary guards and marched straight toward the high-security command office.

She wanted answers, and she knew exactly who to ask. Without bothering to knock, she pushed open the heavy wooden doors and walked directly inside to confront the man currently occupying the Supreme Commander’s body.

"Where is my mom?" Summer asked immediately, her small voice cutting straight through the quiet room as she stared up at the desk.

Andro looked up slowly from the paperwork spread across the mahogany desk, a strange, knowing smile touching the corners of the commander’s lips.

"Oh... you have finally finished your closed cultivation," Andro muttered, his voice carrying an eerie, multi-layered resonance.

Summer furrowed her dark eyebrows. Why did he feel significantly stranger and more articulate than the last time she had spoken to him in this office?

A subtle feeling of unease brushed against her dead heart, but her immediate focus remained entirely fixed on finding her mother. Pushing her confusion aside for the moment, she ignored the strange behavioral shift.

"I asked you a question. Where did she go?" Summer repeated sharply, stepping closer to the desk.

"She went back to the Middle world to collect Lord cores for you," the Supreme Commander answered smoothly, leaning back in his executive chair.

Summer was instantly taken aback, her crimson eyes widening in surprise.

"Because of you, she was forced to return to that dangerous world where her life will constantly hang by a thread," the Supreme Commander finished coldly, his tone dripping with sharp, calculated condemnation.

"What do you mean by ’her life in danger’?" Summer asked, a sudden spike of icy worry piercing through her chest.

Andro rose slowly from his seat, his joints clicking as the tall man walked away from the desk toward the far stone wall. He stood with his back turned entirely to Summer, staring blankly at the dark damp stone as if addressing a ghost from the past.

"It is because of your worthless father... and because of you," Andro began speaking, his voice echoing hollowly in the enclosed space.

Without turning around, he unraveled a dark, hidden history that Summer had never known. He revealed how Salma had once been a powerful figure of immense status, belonging to a prestigious lineage in the higher realms.

Yet, against all expectations and facing continuous, violent rejections from her own powerful family, Salma had stubbornly chosen to leave everything behind to marry a mortal man from the lower worlds, willingly sacrificing her only opportunity to break a binding generational rule of her clan.

Summer listened in mounting disbelief as the past unspooled before her.

Andro continued, detailing how that same mortal man had ultimately betrayed her mother’s boundless devotion, abandoning her completely and disappearing into the shadows while Salma was heavily pregnant with a child.

"To protect you from her vengeful family, she even hid your existence from them for years," Andro said, turning his head slightly over his shoulder to cast a chilling glance downward.

"Now, her family has finally discovered that you exist. It would have been relatively safe if she had stayed securely hidden down here in the lower frontiers. But because you constantly require high-tier Lord cores to prevent your consciousness from fracturing and losing your mind to the zombie corruption, she was left with no choice. She is forced to go back into the lion’s den to hunt them down for your sake."

The Supreme Commander fell completely silent, letting the heavy, suffocating words settle over the room like an avalanche.

Summer stood frozen in the center of the office, her small boots rooted to the stone floor as the world seemed to tilt beneath her. Her mother had suffered so much.

All this time, while Summer had been consumed entirely by her own violent evolution, her desperate training, and her obsessive hunt for power, Salma had been silently carrying an unimaginable mountain of grief, trauma, and mortal peril.

The woman who acted so proud, confident, and untouchable in front of her had actually been shielding her daughter from the wrath of an entire higher-realm family, all while risking her own life to supply rare cores just to keep Summer’s mind stable.

A heavy, suffocating wave of guilt crashed violently over Summer’s soul.

For the first time since waking up as a zombie in this ruined world, the tears welling up in her crimson eyes were not born from the faint, distant memories of a slaughtered human friend. They were born entirely from the agonizing realization of how much her mother had sacrificed for a monster like her.

Her fists clenched so tightly inside her dark golden gauntlets that the metal groaned under the pressure, sharp arcs of corrosive shadow energy sparking wildly around her boots and chewing away at the floorboards.

"Where did she go?" Summer asked, her voice dropping into a terrifying, trembling whisper that carried the raw fury of an awakening storm.

What Summer completely failed to notice in the heat of her blinding rage was the faint, eerie grin that flashed across the face of the Supreme Commander.

"What can you possibly do anyway? You are far too weak to ever help your mother," Andro mocked, quickly wiping the grin away as he turned back to face the little zombie girl head-on. "In the end, you are completely useless."

’Forget that bastard, little girl! Do not let his words get inside your head!’ the Shadow cursed fiercely within the depths of her mind.

[Yes! Let us go snitch on him to your mother the moment she returns! How dare an ungrateful shadow treat our host like this!] the system chimed in with mechanical indignation.

Yet, despite the furious protests from her internal companions, every single biting word the entity spoke struck directly at her dead heart, exactly as he had intended. It was an undeniable, crushing truth.

Because of her endless hunger and her fragile mental corruption, her mother was facing mortal danger alone in a hostile world. She absolutely, under any circumstances, would never allow her mother to be hurt or abandoned.

"How can I go to the Middle World?" Summer asked, her voice dropping into a cold, unbreakable resolve.

’No, wait! It is not the time yet, gir—’ the Shadow yelled mentally.

With a flick of her will, Summer abruptly muted her mental connection with the Shadow, cutting off its voice completely.

[Wait, girl... where on earth did you learn how to do that—] the system protested in shock.

She severed the system’s connection just as easily, plunging her inner consciousness into absolute silence. Her brilliant ruby eyes remained locked with razor-sharp intensity onto the Supreme Commander.

"No more waiting," she stated, her small frame radiating an overwhelming aura of dark determination. "Take me to the Middle World right now."

* *

Far away, past the spatial junction of the Middle World, Salma was already returning toward the lower world. She had successfully gathered a massive stash of Lord Cores, enough for her daughter to practically swim in them for months.

A rare, soft smile touched her lips as she fondly pictured Summer’s cheeks bulging out while crunching on the crystal cores.

’Crackle.’

That pleasant image shattered in an instant.

A sudden sound like breaking glass echoed sharply inside her mind. It was a terrifying, unmistakable sound that only appeared when one of her Shadows was killed.

Salma furrowed her brows in deep confusion.

’Even the soul prism broke? Who down there is capable of doing this?’

Anxiously tracing her spiritual shadow links, she searched through the network to pinpoint exactly which Shadow had died. But the moment she locked onto the severed connection, her entire body went rigidly cold.

The shattered link belonged to Andro, the very shadow she had left in the Supreme Commander’s body to watch over the base.

"No..." Salma whispered, her amber eyes widening in pure horror.