Chapter 60
Chapter 60
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: penny
Chapter: 60
Chapter Title: Puppeteer III
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shin Noah
7
As I mentioned just a moment ago, I wasn’t a detective or a police officer.
My realm of deduction spanned not just the past, but the future as well.
That was why feats like this were possible.
“The puppeteer is my daughter.”
“Pardon?”
“The puppeteer. Yul. Lee Ha-yul. She’s my daughter.”
19th regression.
I deliberately followed the exact same sequence as the previous regression and came to Fukuoka on a business trip.
Unless the butterfly effect intervened, the laws of causality were strict. Jeong Sang-guk responded just as he had last time: “Let me contact my daughter. Please wait at your lodging for a few days.”
The only difference in this 19th regression was that, whereas last time I had eagerly rushed back to my lodging to enjoy the hot springs, this time I secretly tailed Jeong Sang-guk.
A detective who catches criminals without inferring their past is third-rate. One who uncovers even the twisted history that led them astray is merely second-rate.
A true first-rate detective tracks the crime yet to unfold and witnesses all the causes in real time at the scene.
What, that’s not a detective? If it bothers you, awaken your regression ability. The contract condition is that you have to subjugate the Ten Tribes and other anomalies. Easy, right?
Knock knock.
As soon as the drinking party ended, Jeong Sang-guk headed straight for the House of Dolls. After knocking on the door a few times, the housekeeper appeared.
Normal so far.
The abnormality began right after.
“I’m home.”
Bow. Jeong Sang-guk lowered his head.
It wasn’t the housekeeper bowing to Jeong Sang-guk—it was Jeong Sang-guk bowing to the housekeeper.
I couldn’t suppress my bulging eyes. Just as my jaw was about to drop, the housekeeper spoke.
“Come in.”
“Yes.”
The Prime Minister of the Republic of Korea’s 2nd Provisional Government followed the housekeeper inside as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“......”
What in the world was this?
I felt possessed by a ghost and pressed myself close to the House of Dolls.
The walls blocked my view, but my aura-enhanced hearing aided my eavesdropping.
“How was the meeting?”
“Ordinary.”
“What’s the Undertaker after?”
“He wants to take Ha-yul to the academy.”
Murmur murmur.
Their voices carried over the wall. Jeong Sang-guk was polite yet somehow terrified, while the housekeeper remained coldly mechanical.
“Academy?”
This voice too—even more precisely, it had a stiff, segmented feel, like “A/ca/de/my.”
“Yes. He said it’s to gather and train exceptionally talented awakeners like Ha-yul.”
“......”
Ha-yul?
Attaching “-nim” to his own daughter?
“I received the curriculum too. Here. I read it over, and it seems plausible enough. Sword Saint as principal, Undertaker as vice-principal, Dang Seo-rin as honorary professor...”
“And?”
“Pardon?”
“Did you accept?”
“No. No! How could I dare. I can’t decide alone, so I arranged lodging for him at a guesthouse in the city and came straight here. He’ll stay put for about two days.”
Silence.
“You left midway.”
“...Pardon?”
“During the drinking party. You left alone with the Undertaker. What did you talk about?”
“Oh... We just stepped out for a smoke. Nothing much.”
“Liar.”
A chill ran down my spine.
‘How does she know that?’
No one had been around when Jeong Sang-guk and I spoke alone. Could one of the Provisional Government officials at the party have leaked it to the housekeeper?
Was this seemingly ordinary 40-something housekeeper truly the shadowy manipulator behind the Provisional Government?
The questions didn’t linger long. A decisive testimony soon burst from Jeong Sang-guk’s mouth.
“Come down. Downstairs.”
At the command to go downstairs, Jeong Sang-guk—who had maintained his composure until then—threw a fit.
“I swear! Ha-yul-nim! Please believe me! Please, I beg you! Spare me the puppet strings!”
My jaw dropped.
‘Lee Ha-yul!’
No doubt about it. Jeong Sang-guk had just addressed the housekeeper as “Ha-yul-nim.”
Unless Jeong Sang-guk had dementia and couldn’t recognize his housekeeper or daughter, this made no sense.
The housekeeper and Lee Ha-yul couldn’t be the same person. The housekeeper was in her 40s. Meanwhile, Lee Ha-yul’s corpse from the previous regression had been early 20s at most.
Which meant...
‘Lee Ha-yul is manipulating the housekeeper!’
Puppeteer.
Whoever coined it, it was spot on. Presumably, Lee Ha-yul possessed the [ability to control people].
The housekeeper was a marionette. No different from a puppet extension of Lee Ha-yul.
No, not just the housekeeper.
I recalled arriving in Fukuoka and receiving “countless requests for handshakes” from Provisional Government officials: Foreign Minister, Finance Minister, Justice Minister, Home Minister. Their embraces had felt oddly stiff.
‘The high-ranking Provisional Government officials are marionettes too? All of them? Or just some? If some, how far up?’
A shocking truth I’d never imagined in the 18th regression flooded my mind.
In a way, Old Man Show had been right.
“Come down. I said it twice.”
“Please, please...”
Please—those were his last words.
He couldn’t continue.
Jeong Sang-guk could no longer form words. Only faint muffled sounds like “Mmgh—hngh, glk—” reached me.
Human ears aren’t that precise. Grasping the full situation from hearing alone was difficult. But I could guess his mouth had been sealed shut.
“Mmph...!”
Jeong Sang-guk thrashed.
Given that a grown man couldn’t resist meaningfully, he’d likely been restrained by unnatural means.
Spiderwebs.
I recalled the spiderwebs tightly binding the housekeeper and Jeong Sang-guk’s corpses. And those covering the House of Dolls.
Perhaps they weren’t spiderwebs, but “puppet strings”?
“Mmghmph...!”
Swish.
The sound of a body being dragged. The vibrations from the first floor steadily descended.
I quickly grasped the situation. The housekeeper was dragging Jeong Sang-guk to the basement.
No more substantial sounds came. The walls were too thick. This was the limit of the aura mastery I’d built in the 18th regression.
Basement. That must be the puppeteer’s true lair.
My judgment was swift this time too.
I resolved to storm in.
8
Exceptional awakeners have extraordinary memories. To survive the Void, you must memorize countless rules.
Among them is a proverb that circulates like common knowledge.
-A well-established awakener’s lair rivals the Void.
Personally, I find it a bit exaggerated, but it means to tread carefully.
Take Dang Seo-rin’s trains, for example—her lairs. They all have ironclad security systems without fail.
Uninvited guests who board without a “ticket” learn just how efficient a train can be as a killing machine.
This place was no different.
In the previous regression, the last time I visited the House of Dolls, it had been an empty shell after its owner died.
She’d probably deliberately lowered security for my first visit too. She needed me to witness the housekeeper’s death and return to my lodging.
-Click. Click. Click.
In other words, this was my first true entry into the House of Dolls as a lair.
The moment I blasted the door and charged in, clicking noises erupted from all directions. The dolls.
Entryway. Hallway. Ceiling.
Marionettes hung on puppet strings snapped their jaws ferociously.
Their joints creaked with the clicks. Blue, black, yellow, red eyes swiveled.
-Clickclickclickclick.
Territorial marking. A signal alerting to the intruder.
And the preprogrammed process to eliminate the impurity.
The marionettes’ movements were clearly meticulously calculated.
Their joints squeaked like piano keys as the strings thrashed, faintly laced with golden aura.
‘Aura!’
At the time, Old Man Show and I had monopolized aura operation techniques. It was a specialty of Freyhite Academy.
That meant this puppet show of aura before me had been self-taught.
‘Not only controlling people, but infusing puppet strings with aura too!’
I was inwardly impressed but didn’t hesitate.
Like that famous opening scene from the movie Cube, semi-transparent strings closed in from all sides. An ordinary human would lose limbs on contact.
Fortunately—or unfortunately—my life was far from ordinary.
I didn’t use my sword. Instead, I barreled in with my whole body wrapped in aura.
Slash—whoosh! Snap! Snap! Snap! The strings lunging with murderous intent snapped on contact with my body.
-Clickclickclick.
The dolls thrashed even louder. The web’s mass doubled, quadrupled, octupled—exploding geometrically.
But it was futile.
Old Man Show had rated me: “Fifth-rate martial talent, first-rate aura talent.” Compensating external arts with internal.
And I had the [Continue] skill. Muscles and other physical abilities carried over to the next regression.
Aura quantity included.
In wuxia terms, my internal energy had already surpassed one jiazi by the 19th regression.
Crack!
I reached out and crushed a doll’s head. They swung endlessly up, down, left, right along their strings, but couldn’t evade my grasp.
No matter how this world was a paradise of power-inflated anomalies, one jiazi was a realm requiring a lifetime of training for a human.
I’d spent that lifetime on the battlefield.
No awakener hunkered down in relatively safe Fukuoka rear lines could block that.
-......!
Entryway breached. Hallway, living room fell one after another. Roughly 300 dolls crumbled in my hands.
Soon, even the killer strings quieted. The dolls’ precise formations must have been the core of this lair’s security.
High-level awakening ability. Deep understanding of her power. Caution in hiding her true form. Ruthless audacity. Self-taught aura at a young age. Meticulous calculation.
...The test was over. Hate to admit it, but Old Man Show’s hunch was spot on.
Prodigy. The puppeteer was undoubtedly worth recruiting.
Even without legs, it wasn’t a major hindrance. She couldn’t charge battlefields herself, but her potential as a rear support was immense.
“Lee Ha-yul. Are you listening?”
Silence.
“I’m the Undertaker. Colleague of the Sword Saint and the Grand Witch. Sorry for barging in like this. My mistake.”
Silence.
“Lee Ha-yul. I want to talk with you. I used brute force to show my skills. I could storm the basement too, but I don’t want our relationship souring from the start.”
Silence.
“My goal is to convince you and bring you to the academy in Korea. Give me a chance to persuade you.”
Creak.
The basement door opened.
“Come in.”
The housekeeper gripped the knob. Hearing her voice up close made the mechanical tone even stranger.
Come to think of it, since ancient times, humanity’s ideal machine—its pinnacle—has always been the doll. Whether paper, spring-wound, or AI chip.
So calling it a mechanical sound was wrong; puppet sound fit better.
I passed the housekeeper and stepped into the basement. Thud. The heavy iron door shut behind me.
“......”
Finally, I met Lee Ha-yul herself.
Also a first. Her corpse had had its eyes closed last regression.
Golden eyes.
Light brown hair.
A girl without legs.
Awakener manifestations sometimes altered hair and pupil color. She sat in a wheelchair, bearing no resemblance to her father, Jeong Sang-guk.
“Mmph! Hngh, mmphmph...!”
Jeong Sang-guk, dragged down earlier, was also in a wheelchair.
In terms of mobility issues, his were worse. His legs were fine, but his whole body was bound tight in puppet strings. Like prey in a spiderweb.
Even his fingernails oozed blood, as if freshly manicured.
‘...Ah.’
Right.
That’s why Jeong Sang-guk wore gloves in the 18th regression.