Looking at the small puppet doll in front of her, Audrey was reminded of her childhood.
It was ten years ago, just after her first stage appearance and shortly after developing social anxiety disorder, which was also the darkest stage of her life. During those days, she stayed hidden at home, refusing to meet or interact with anyone except for her two mothers and her sister.
It was during that time that her aunt Noelle Rose happened to visit her home and introduced her to the possibilities of puppet dolls.
Audrey vividly remembered that it was a clear day, the sun shining brightly outside, but she kept her doors and windows tightly shut, the curtains drawn, trembling alone in the dark room.
Back then, even when alone, she could still feel the illusion of being watched by countless eyes. She always felt that in every corner, under the bed, and in all the cracks, there seemed to be eyes opening, all gazing greedily at her, as if they would devour her completely the moment she let her guard down.
Back then, the young her could do nothing but curl up under her beloved blanket, imagining that the angelic down comforter was an invincible barrier that could shield her from those annoying gazes.
Unfortunately, the blanket's invincibility was just a fantasy, and that psychological barrier was eventually broken. The moment she felt a foreign object in her blanket, Little Audrey screamed and jumped out of bed. At that time, having tens of thousands of magic power, she burst out violently, her magic power turning the entire room upside down and exposing the intruder in her bed.
It was a small Spider Lady puppet doll.
Yes, it was that kind of creature with a beautiful female upper body and a ferocious spider's lower half.
"Ah, sorry I scared you, I just wanted to play a joke. Let me introduce myself; I am your paternal mother's cousin, Noelle Rose. You can call me Auntie," she said.
The little puppet was smacked against the wall by the magic force, then slid down the wall and onto the floor before shakily standing up and introducing itself to Audrey in this manner.
That was her first encounter with her aunt.
The root of Audrey's social anxiety was the overly greedy gazes of the audience, filled with naked desires.
To someone less perceptive of emotions, those gazes might not seem like much. But Audrey had inherited some of the Succubus's abilities, and demons are incredibly sensitive to desires.
Perhaps those desires were just fantasies in the audience's minds—people say fantasies are harmless, as long as they don't lead to real actions, just thinking about them isn't wrong.
If you see a beautiful woman on the street and from the moment you see her you already think of future children's names, but ultimately you are too nervous to even talk to her, then those fantasies in your head really mean nothing—the woman you fantasized about won't know she just got married and had children in another timeline.
Normally that's true, but not for Audrey.
The core talent of Succubus known as the Source of Desire (ssr) is an ability to perceive and understand all desires directed toward oneself.
With this ability, to a Succubus, the desires of their prey are blatantly clear—they can instantly understand whether the person in front of them prefers mature ladies or lolis, likes large or flat, prefers black stockings or white ones, and so forth, ultimately adjusting their hunting pose accordingly based on this information.
Therefore, there is a legend that Succubi always appear in the guise that people most desire.
Audrey wasn't sure whether it was luck or misfortune to have inherited this talent from her father's side, so those desires in the audience's gazes were like a series of clear movies with her as the protagonist, and the content of these movies was rather pernicious.
A true Succubus might disdain those filthy desires and instead rejoice at them as a sign of their allure, but Audrey was just a witch, lacking the libertine nature of a Succubus.
As a race evolved from humans known as Calamity, witches might be far ahead of humans in terms of strength and talent, but they hadn't made much progress in the realm of the psyche.
Naturally, being exposed to the world's ugliness at a young age, Audrey couldn't handle it, and so developed social anxiety and introversion.
However, what Audrey feared was not people, or to be more precise, it was not the dirty desires of her witch peers, since she couldn't very well fall out with people over fantasies in their minds.
The immortals of the East had an old saying, "judge by deeds, not by thoughts; if by thoughts, no one is sacred."
Even an ordinary individual within the powerful race of witches couldn't completely control her mind, and she wouldn't just pull out a magic wand and duet someone for a bit of fantasy; that would make her seem like the mad one.
Moreover, as a witch whose goal was to pursue art, was she really supposed to duel her audience every day?