Chương 655: The Corpse Puppeteer

Julian stood atop a ruined structure, hands moving as he worked the threads. Below him, his puppet attacked. The doll was enormous, clad in metal armor, easily over six feet tall.

"He's strong. Fall back!" His puppet drove a punch into one of them with crushing force. Using his Profession skills, Julian could build and reinforce puppets, even equip them with gear. A mage hurled lightning at the puppet, but it did nothing. His Juggernaut kept coming.

"It's not stopping!" With one blow, Juggernaut smashed the mage's head into the wall.

"N-no, brother!" Commands passed into the puppet through Julian's mana threads. Even stamina and mana could be transferred through them, used as fuel to strengthen its attacks. It begins. Julian dropped down, landing beside the dead mage.

"That guy doesn't look like a vampire."

"He has to be. We hit his head and he still didn't die." Juggernaut roared, mostly to frighten them, then launched into another wild assault.

"Time to wake up," Julian said, touching the mage and sending his second soul into the corpse. The mage rose and immediately fired lightning into one of his former allies. Julian appeared behind the paralyzed man and slit his throat. The mage kept attacking.

"What are you doing?" someone screamed, and Juggernaut took the opening and struck. The mage was hit and thrown aside, his body ruined. Julian cut one of them down from behind and touched the woman's corpse, turning her into his new puppet. The woman turned and drove her rapier into her friend.

"Roche..." the man choked, then dropped dead. She kept laughing as she attacked. It did not take long. Soon they were all dead, and Julian walked among the bodies.

"You fell in battle too, Juggernaut." The puppet had been destroyed. As he left the area, he found Antoine's body collapsed in an alley. It had deteriorated badly. It had not endured that long under the strain of mana threads. The body looked burned out from within.

"At least one biological part still held up well enough for mana." Julian plucked out Antoine's eye and fitted it into his favorite small puppet, a doll the size of an eight-year-old boy dressed in a butler's uniform. When he returned to his hideout, he laid another corpse on the table, one he had taken from his storage item. It was the body of a dead vampire baron. Julian continued his work, preparing the body, transforming it into a puppet.

This one would become his battle puppet, and that required a long, delicate process. The simple trick of animating a corpse by using the power of his second soul had taken years to develop, and it came with a price. The body decayed. To stop that from happening, he had to turn it into something closer to a true puppet, something almost like taxidermy. It was the only way to keep the corpse from falling apart.

"Looks like I'll have to take back the eye I gave you," he said to the butler doll. The vampire baron was outfitted with gear suited to his class.

"Now I think I'm really finished." Julian raised a hand, and mana threads surged into the baron. The corpse stirred, then stood.

"Perfect." A few hours later, Julian walked through those ruined streets. In one of the alleys, firelight flickered. A group of people had camped there and were eating. The vampire baron walked beside him. Let's begin. Julian sent the baron into the alley with a sword in hand. The puppet activated a skill and lunged forward, driving the blade through the head of a man who had been eating. The body toppled into the fire. The others in the camp shouted.

With his free hand, the vampire grew claws and slashed one of them across the throat.

"No, please!" The vampire attacked again, biting into another person's neck, tearing out a chunk, then flinging the victim aside. As he weaved around their attacks, the vampire conjured a sphere of disease and hurled it into the three who remained. They began coughing, and the vampire charged. One punch sent a man into the wall hard enough to impale him. He killed another, then lifted the last by the throat and crushed his skull in his grip. Julian walked through the bodies.

"A good debut." The vampire baron had two classes. With a scalpel, Julian harvested a few useful parts from the corpses, then left the alley behind. After walking alone for a while, he came within sight of the large settlement controlled by the Dawn Church. This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

It was morning. Luke and the others had spent most of the night awake, talking with Eddie aboard the ship. Ever since Phase 1 ended, Eddie had stayed almost the entire time on that island. According to him, there were people there from other kingdoms of the New World, even nobles, but everyone had focused on helping each other. They had established watches, patrols, and enough structure to keep the island safe.

"So this is our top priority," Eleanor said. Luke, Evangeline, Eleanor, Charlie, and Anne were gathered in one of the ship's cabins.

"Fixing... the ship... yes," Anne agreed.

"I saw halos nearby," Evangeline said.

"We already have a way to reach the next Beacon zone, but time is the real problem."

"There are eighteen days left before Phase 3 ends," Eleanor said.

"We need to clear a Beacon before then." The Phase 4 penalty was that every halo now led to the Beacon area. But once that time window ended, the halos would probably return to normal. Which meant that if they were still in the Beacon zone when that happened, the halo they used would no longer take them back to the island where they had left the ship.

"Eddie said there are people on this island who repair ships for the right price. We can settle that today," Luke said.

"I can protect... the ship... while you're gone," Anne offered.

"There's also the chance the Beacon dungeon traps us for weeks, like the Phase 2 Beacon did," Eleanor said.

"Meaning even if we prepare everything as fast as possible, we still might not make it back here."

"Then we go to the next area already assuming we probably won't be coming back," Luke said.

"Yeah, and now it's very likely Jack and Stephen won't be joining us for the next Beacon," Eleanor said.

"Layla probably won't either, now that she found Eddie."

"In that case, there's a good chance we won't see them again during this event. Who knows how far this island is from wherever the Beacons will be, and we'll be without a ship too," Luke said.

"At least they'll be able to stay on this one and look after it," Evangeline said. Once they had settled on a plan, only Luke, Eleanor, and Evangeline left the ship. Charlie and Anne stayed behind to guard it, for obvious reasons. Anne drew too much attention because of how she looked, and Charlie agreed to stay and help, especially since daylight cut her strength in half.

"I hope things work out between you and the amazons," Artemis said in Luke's thoughts. That's the last thing on my mind right now. They were walking through the island village. The people there had carved paths all across the island, and at its center stood a large main settlement, practically a small city. With so many people at high profession levels, they had spent the past few months turning the island into a place people could actually live.

They crossed the main village and headed toward the other end of the island. In the northern beach settlement, there were people who worked building and repairing ships.

"I asked around," Eleanor said.

"This place is split into four sections, each controlled by a major group. They live peacefully enough, but each section has its own rules."

"And we landed in amazon territory?" Luke asked.

"Something like that," Eleanor said.

"Think of it this way: two halves of the island are run by normal groups, and the other two are controlled by people tied to New World kingdoms. The difference is, they're acting like extensions of those kingdoms."

"Nobles?" Evangeline asked.

"Yes."

"That didn't mean much in the United States, and it means even less here," Luke said. They kept walking through the village toward the docks.

"So which kingdom controls this side?" Luke asked. They were getting close to the group Eddie had recommended, the one known for repairing ships and being trustworthy.

"Lagras," Eleanor said.

"Ring any bells?"

"Ah. Lagras," Luke said.

"And what does that mean? Is that code for something perverted?" Evangeline asked.

"Luke got mixed up with a problem involving that kingdom a while back," Eleanor said. By the time they reached the workshop, they could already hear the sound of hammers, wood being cut, and people shouting while hauling heavy materials. Eleanor knocked on the door, but it swung open on its own.

"They didn't lock it," she said, stepping inside.

"Hello?"

"We're on lunch break," someone shouted from deeper inside. Then one of them came forward. Luke almost laughed.

"You've got to be kidding me. I find you two here, of all places." They looked at him and went wide-eyed.

"You've got to be kidding me. We ran into this guy again?"

Alastair stood watching the city. Now and then, waves rolled in and struck the slope below. They had been using that castle as their residence for the past few months. The road leading up to it was guarded by trusted men, devotees of his master's church. Alastair held a position of trust, a bishop, though in practice his true role was closer to that of a personal attendant, almost a butler. The upper ranks of the vampire church he belonged to did not operate like other churches. It was more like a great family.

The Vampire Lord was the head of the organization on Earth, and Alastair served as his assistant.

"Monsieur," Olivier's voice echoed through the corridor.

"Monsieur."

"I heard you the first time," Alastair said. If there was one thing Alastair hated, it was noise. Or rather, any sound that did not belong to the natural atmosphere around him. Anything that disturbed his peace, he despised. It was a kind of compulsion he had carried since childhood.

"I bring a letter from Chevalier for His Holiness."

"A letter? Give it to me." Alastair took the letter and read it quickly.

"It was meant for His Holiness."

"His Holiness is busy," Alastair replied without looking up from the page. No one would dare read a letter addressed to his lord, but Alastair was the one person allowed to. At last, he folded the letter away.

"Bad news for us, monsieur?" Alastair looked at him.

"Did Count Chevalier write to you, or to His Holiness?" Then Alastair started walking.

"Strengthen perimeter security and inform the others that we will be receiving visitors soon." Leaving the corridor behind, he went up to his lord's chambers. As he neared the door, he could hear the sounds more clearly, female moans drifting through the wood. Alastair lifted a hand to knock softly, but did not need to. The door opened on its own. Inside, he saw his master rising from the bed, the room strewn with naked women, some of them already asleep. The chamber smelled of red rose, his master's symbol.

A pink haze hung in the air, and the women seemed slightly entranced by it.

"You interrupted me, Alastair," his master said, sitting up. A few of the women reached for him, pleading for him to come back.

"I bring news from one of the Counts... and also word that we will soon be receiving a visitor."

"Ah. I already know who it is," replied Lord Damian, heir to the Nycteris vampire bloodline on Earth.