Chapter 59: A Puppet’s Story (2)
Major was a poor Arcanist.
At the very least, he believed that to be the case. Even though the Arcanists stood atop every other race, even though the poorest Arcanists had slaves and were served, Major was not satisfied.
He wanted more.
His household could not support his ambitions of becoming a powerful Arcana Master. To pursue his dreams, he placed his target on Miss Donna.
Ever since he got together with Miss Donna, he would constantly request resources from her to support his research.
Miss Donna satisfied his needs every time out of love, but her reward was only his ever-increasing greed.
His appetite grew greater and greater, and Miss Donna found it harder and harder to
Because of this, she was treated terribly.
At first, he was only verbally abusing her, but eventually he began hitting her.
The first time I saw the wound on Miss Donna’s face, Mis Donna told me that she had gotten them from falling over.
Then, I saw as she fell more and more.
Every time Miss Donna couldn’t satisfy his requirements, he would beat her.
I really wanted to help Miss Donna, but I was just a puppet. Without my master’s command, I could not do anything. Perhaps I was the only puppet who knew how to disobey orders, but I didn’t want to disobey Miss Donna’s orders.
As such, I could only quietly watch. As the situation got worse, Major cared less and less. He even began to hit Miss Donna right in her own room.
Right in front of my face.
Miss Donna’s father, Sir Roger, didn’t notice this at all.
He only cared about his business, not his daughter.
Miss Donna capitulated to Major again and again. When she ran out of money, she began to steal her father’s.
One day, her theft was discovered by her father.
Her father beat her viciously, then locked her in her room.
On that day, Major came again.
Major was incredibly unhappy that his demands were not being met yet again. He cursed loudly at Miss Donna, saying that he was only with an ugly woman like her for the sake of his research on Arcana Techniques and that he had lost so much reputation and so many opportunities, yet she wasn’t helping him at all, what a useless woman – things like that.
He began to beat and whip her again.
She begged for mercy, but it was of no use.
Terrible cuts and lacerations covered her body. Perhaps because she could no longer endure it, she called out for me.
She said, “Sbasse, help me stop him!”
The heavens can vouch for me that I was waiting for this moment.
I charged forwards and grabbed him, then began to beat him savagely. As a protective puppet, my strength was not something an upstart Arcana Master could handle.
Even though he tried to fight against me, I managed to destroy his barrier with two punches. My third punch knocked him to the ground.
Then, I pulled out my sword.
Yes, at that moment, I wanted to kill him!
I swear that it was my thought and my thought alone, if puppets have the ability to swear on something.
However, Miss Donna realized that something was wrong. She yelled, “Stop! Don’t kill him!”
I heard those words.
I didn’t want to obey.
But I didn’t want to ignore Miss Donna’s command either, so I chose to slow down my reactions.
Before the command took effect on me, I pierced my sword into his throat
Then, I stopped.
At that moment, I felt incredibly satisfied in my heart.
I discovered, to my surprise, that this kind of feeling was really nice!
However, I could not have foreseen the disaster that would befall Miss Donna……
Miss Donna was arrested.
An Arcanist had died, and as the master of the puppet that had committed the crime, Miss Donna was charged as the chief culprit.
The crime of murder with intent was pinned on her.
I wanted very much to tell the court that I had acted on my own, and that my actions had nothing to do with Miss Donna, but I could not speak. I had no way of explaining my actions, and later on my ability to move was taken away. I could only sit there silently and watch this all unfold, watch Miss Donna suffer through their merciless interrogation.
However, this was not what caused me to feel despair.
I was present in the courtroom because I was being considered the murder weapon. As such, I watched as Master Roger exploded with rage upon discovering that his losses had far exceeded what he had anticipated.
He could have saved his own daughter, but he was so enraged by her actions that he gave up on spending more money to clear her name. In the end, Miss Donna was sentenced to life imprisonment, and I was tossed in the garbage.
I don’t know how long I lay in the garbage pile for. All I know is that my body slowly began to corrode. Even so, my mind remained intact. I lay there, staring at the sky and the earth, no longer sure of what my purpose in life was.
More than one homeless person had picked me up and then thrown me back in.
They thought that I was not worth fixing, so I could only sit there waiting.
Waiting for more news to come my way.
Finally, a Craftsman was the one who gave me a second life.
His name was Gold.
I can still clearly hear his shocked cries when he found me. “Look, I found a puppet’s head! Even though it has been destroyed beyond recognition, its internal components are still operational. I can tell this is a high-quality puppet for sure. If I give it a new body, it will definitely be able to move again. I will make it my most outstanding creation!”
Just like that, Gold became my new owner.
I obtained new life at his hands.
Gold was a young Craftsman with lots of creativity. Because he lacked rare ingredients, he could only use common materials to construct a makeshift body for me. I was stuffed with all kinds of junk that he had managed to procure from many different places, and I looked like I had just been cobbled together. However, Gold also gave me a new ability at that point in time – he gave me the ability to speak.
Speech was an entirely new challenge for me to face. It took me lots of effort to even speak a single word. However, learning to speak wasn’t the most difficult part for me. I just didn’t know what to say.
My intelligence was still quite shallow, and my will was very faint.
Most of the time, I sat there quietly.
Gold would sit next to me and talk when he wasn’t doing much. He talked much more than Miss Donna did.
However, I never replied, which greatly disappointed Gold.
I would often think of Miss Donna when I had nothing else to do.
I sat on the pile of trash and stared off into the distance, wondering how Miss Donna was doing.
I had killed Major, and had also destroyed Miss Donna in the process.
I felt that I needed to take responsibility.
Now that I had a body and could speak, I felt that I should go and find Miss Donna and tell her everything.
As such, I decided to leave.
That evening, I left on my own.
I went to go look for Miss Donna.
When I arrived at the prison, I told the guards there that I was the puppet who had killed Major. I wanted them to capture me in return for Miss Donna. The guards howled with laughter and said that they didn’t know who had cobbled together a puppet to assume someone else’s sentence. This was the most creative yet most stupid way of trying to save someone that they had ever seen. It would never have succeeded, and Miss Donna no longer needed to be saved anyways – she had contracted a serious illness not long before and was close to death.
She wouldn’t live for much longer, so she was allowed to leave the prison to die at home.
I didn’t know how I left that place. I can still remember their cold, unfeeling laughter as I departed.
I felt incredible sorrow and despair.
When I came to Master Roger’s home, I wanted to go in and see Miss Donna, but I found that Master Roger had married a new wife.
I snuck into the backyard into Miss Donna’s room. I found her lying on her bed. She was still alive, but death was knocking at her front door.
I picker her up. She gazed at me, her eyes glittering.
She said to me, “Is that Sbasse? It must be you. I always knew that you would come back to find me.”
Even though my appearance had changed greatly, she was still able to identify me in an instant.
As I embraced her, she said everything that she wanted to say, then died in my arms.
In that moment, I could sense a beautiful soul flying into the air.
The ability of the Spirit-Devouring Beast had awakened in that moment.
That was when I knew that it was the beast that had given me my intellect and my unique set of abilities.
I put Miss Donna’s soul away so that she would be with me forever. Then, I picked up her corpse and left.
I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I felt that Miss Donna should not remain in that house any longer.
I buried her underneath a tree near her house. There was a beautiful view there, and Miss Donna had loved to go there when she was young. As I laid her to rest beside the stream, I could sense the joy in Donna’s soul, which was now in my body.
Perhaps because of Donna’s soul, my intelligence began to advance at a staggering rate.
I suddenly wondered why I couldn’t just kill all of those Arcanists who had murdered Donna?
I didn’t need to fear anything. I was not alive, after all. I was merely a puppet. No matter what I did, they would only believe that there was someone controlling me behind the scenes.
That was why Donna had died.
Since that was the case, why not use my actions to demonstrate their error?
I sprang into motion as soon as the idea surfaced in my head.
I returned to Master Roger’s house and murdered him and his new wife.
Even though Master Roger was a powerful Arcana Master, and I was a puppet cobbled together from spare parts, it was for this reason that he was not on guard against me.
After I killed him, I went to the prison and slaughtered the guards there. They were the ones who had allowed Donna to get sick.
I unleashed a massacre. Because I was a puppet, almost no Arcanists were on guard against me at the beginning. Only later did they discover that it was a puppet who was doing all of these things, and they began to rack their brains to try and think of a way to find me and the person controlling me.
However, I had gotten smarter. I used Master Roger’s equipment to improve myself and alter my appearance.
Now, I only had one more target to kill.
The judge presiding over the court had known that Major had abused Miss Donna yet still declared her guilty. He could have spared her, but he insisted on Master Roger paying a large sum of money to do so. When Master Roger refused, he intentionally sentenced her to the prison reserved for slaves. It was because that prison was for slaves that Miss Donna had been subjected to such cruel, inhumane treatment.
This bastard must die!
This time, however, I failed.
