Let's Turn Maestro Into a Real Doll!
At some point, Maestro had gone completely still, frozen upright in place.
"From here on, we need to keep our heads on straight."
"Nnngh..."
That said, this was by no means a good sign.
Because this was where the final phase of the Maestro fight would begin.
"Reine Fremde."
"fes."
And then the waltz of death came crashing down on us.
"Hhk—?!"
KRAAAAAAAAAANG!!!!
A dark crimson melody lashed out from the conductor's baton like a whip. The audience seating split clean in two, debris spraying in every direction.
"Große Terz."
"deses."
WHIIIIIIISH!!!
KRAAAAANG!!!!
Musical notes shot out like artillery shells, tearing the concert hall apart.
"You've gotta be kidding me... he's hitting us from range now?!"
"The two of us just don't have the firepower."
Trying to rein in a Maestro gone berserk was beyond us. The correct answer to this rampage pattern was to dump as much damage as possible — but we were critically short on both tanks to hold aggro and DPS to actually put out numbers.
At this rate...
"Tch..."
My mood soured on its own. This was a raid where coordination mattered more than any one person's raw power. The whole party was supposed to make it to the final phase without anyone dropping, then shut him down together. And the situation we were in now, with only two of us left standing...
...If we go all-out, the best-case scenario is a wipe.
I swallowed hard, tightening my grip on the carrot blade.
"All I wanted was to put on a puppet show with the one I held dear. And yet... why does this world insist on stealing even my little musician from me?!"
"How wretched!! What even is war?! What could possibly be worth throwing yourselves into those hideous screams and gunshots?!"
"And so I thought. If everyone became a puppet — if everyone became an actor in a happy play — then there would be no more agonized moans. Only beautiful melodies, and days spent in joy."
"He's lost it."
Yes. He had gone mad. Maestro was nothing more than a marionette who had snapped after losing someone precious. This mania, this obsession — it was all just a desperate thrashing, a refusal to let go of the past.
KUUUNG!!!
"If this lands..."
Maestro was winding up to take flight — his strongest, and final, finishing move. Getting hit by that attack would be the end of us.
"Ultimate — Stri—"
I was about to go all-in and try to brute-force the damage through when—
"Time to switch the pickup."
Boom-chik, boom-chik.
"?"
"?"
Jinwoo suddenly launched into a dance, striking the most bizarre poses.
Whale right now~ there's no pickup window left~
It's gonna moon~ you already know it will~
I already trucked three copies
Ownership rates going up~ salt posts going up~
I'm fully limit-broken~ I'm already fully limit-broken~
At a glance, it was just a ridiculous, stupid-looking dance. But the melody was somehow familiar.
No way. Is this...?!
"What... what is that garbage song...?"
Even Maestro, seething with rage, went blank for a moment, staring in sheer disbelief.
"Listen to my song!"
Jinwoo paid that reaction no mind whatsoever and just kept belting out his bizarre number.
The whales are threatening to close their wallets 'cause of inflation~
Always terrified the super-whales will bounce, trying to grit their teeth and ignore it~
Three-banner pickup, aagh you son of a—! Meta normalization, OUT!!
A broken pickup that massacres the playerbase~ cheering for those five letters: F2P purge!
As expected, the one who normalizes is New Raby! At last, Great Raby is normalizing Genesis!!
"...!!"
This song was that viral AI mashup track that had taken the community by storm. But only now did I realize why he'd chosen this exact moment to start singing.
Vmmmmm.
Right on cue, a red light flared from Maestro's chest. That had to be the Corrupted Angel's Heart...!!
"I'm asking you what the hell you think you're doing!!!"
Convinced he was being ignored, Maestro roared at Jinwoo in a fury.
"A singing battle...? As if! I was just trying to get your attention!"
"?!"
The wooden marionette finally caught on — but it was already too late.
"Ultimate — Stri—"
"...!!!"
I already had my hand on the hilt, ready to deliver the finishing blow.
"That's impossi—"
...ble Heartfelt Bunny-Bunny Carrot-Carrot Pew-Pew Usapyoi Slash!!!!
Hm. Maybe it was just me, but it felt like the finishing-move name had gotten unnecessarily longer.
Didn't matter. My blade had already driven straight through to his heart.
Shk.
"Oh, no...!!"
Maestro regretted it a second too late. The carrot blade quietly split the wooden block apart.
Whirrr!!
The Corrupted Angel's Heart burst free from inside, and the marionette stretched out a massive hand, trying to snatch it back.
"G-give it back!!!!"
Of course, I wasn't the only one who'd been waiting for that opening.
"Hhhhhhhhhhhhk!!! Gulp!!"
"?!"
Raby — the game's guide fairy, and an angel — inhaled like a certain pink monster and swallowed the heart whole.
"Pwahh! That hit the spot~!"
"No!! My eternal puppet show!!! My... my Maestro..."
The wooden marionette wailed in a hollow, broken voice, the heart stolen right before its eyes.
CRRRRRRRRK!!!
Full Moon Pew-Pew!!
And I unleashed my final technique on a Maestro whose source of power had been ripped away.
SHHHHHHK!!
The carrot blade wrapped itself in moonlight and sent out a crescent-shaped slash.
Shk!!
"N-no... don't leave me..."
That single strike sheared off Maestro's arm and carved his torso to pieces.
"The play is over, miss."
Heh...
I appeared before him as if from nowhere — right in front of those vacant eyes, still reaching out as if to catch the hem of someone already gone.
Shk.
And I cut him down.
A hill where a fresh breeze was blowing. Standing there were a girl in a pretty dress and a man with a splendid mustache.
"M-Mr. Maestro, will you teach me music someday?"
The girl asked, her plump cheeks flushed pink, her pale rose lips barely moving.
"Hmm? Of course!"
Stroke, stroke.
"Hyah...?!"
When the man gently, clumsily ran his rough hand through the girl's beautiful black hair, she let out a startled little sound, as if caught off guard.
"Th-then! Besides music and puppet shows... will you teach me something else, too...?"
"Hm? And what's that?"
The girl looked up at the man with bashful eyes. The person who had given voice to her dry, silent puppet shows. The person who had made a real play — not a one-person, two-role act, but something they performed together. And... the person who had shown her the world beyond puppet theater.
"...Love."
"Haha! That's a very important feeling too! An artist can't do without it!"
"Th-then!"
He rested his hand on her head.
But Maestro just smiled kindly, cupping the girl's head in his palm as he spoke.
"The problem is, you're still a bit young, I'd say?"
"I-I'm all grown up, you know?!"
"Hahaha!!! You'll need at least another ten years!"
The man and the girl ran around playing tag. And then the girl finally understood.
...In the end, he never did tell me what it was.
That he hadn't taught her everything after all.
"Whew. We made it thanks to you."
"Haha! It was nothing!"
Maestro's enormous body had already shattered, tumbling across the floor in pieces.
"Uugh..."
"May we not be harmed."
Iflata and Elia had come to, and Arkis was groaning as she received treatment from the Saintess.
"But Jinwoo, weren't you a complete newbie? That song was a fan-made video roasting the devs. How did you even know it...?"
"The whole reason I started the game was because that AI song slapped?"
"What."
No, I did not expect a song like that to have actual recruitment power. Then again... it had hit ten million views on Nube and gotten clipped across every community under the sun, so I supposed it tracked.
"You can't play the game to save your life, but you're weirdly good at the weird stuff."
"That's a compliment... right?"
Anyway, the boss fight was over. The patterns had shifted in some odd ways, and the timer had felt faster than it should have, but we'd taken him down somehow.
"Raby. Hand over the Corrupted Angel's Heart."
"Busted..."
Time to settle accounts. Surely she wasn't planning to swallow a rare drop that only specific chapter bosses gave and then make a run for it?
That heart was a premium resource that substituted for Memory Shards — the kind you could normally only get from pulling duplicate characters. On top of that, it was an F2P relief system that let you forge exclusive 5-Star signature weapons.
"I... I really needed that..."
"Hah?"
Was this emergency ration seriously talking back to me right now? She was crossing a line...
"In that case, I'll just have to cut your stomach open..."
I held back my sorrow, drew the carrot blade, and threatened her with it.
"W-wait!!! Hold on!!!"
The little white mochi dumpling seemed to finally grasp the gravity of the situation. She frantically rummaged around for something, and then—
"U-uweeeeeeeegh."
"Gross..."
—she regurgitated something from her mouth.
Plonk.
It rolled across the floor...
A golden sphere that had come flying out of Raby's mouth tumbled across the ground.
"T-ta-dah! It's a Pickup 5-Star Guaranteed Exchange Ticket!"
5-Star / Guaranteed
A premium exchange voucher that guarantees a 5-Star character from the current pickup banner. Slightly... damp.
Squelch...
And with that, she held the drool-soaked item out toward me.
"Ugh... that's, uh. A little much..."
"Eeeh?!"
So this golden ball was a 5-Star exchange ticket... It was definitely a good item. It was also definitely kind of disgusting.
"Jinwoo, you take it for me."
"Me?"
I dumped the job on the newbie standing there in a daze, and he just stared at me with a look of pure horror.
"I'm the one giving it to you... you don't want it?"
"Uh..."
I stepped in close and asked him, and he couldn't meet my eyes, glancing every which way, completely at a loss.
Press.
Our chests touched. Our eyes met.
"Hhk..."
And Jinwoo's face went redder and redder.
"Great! I'm counting on you!!"
"H-hey, wait—!!!"
Anyway, I pawned it off on him while he was still flustered and immediately ran for it.
"Nnggggh! Unforgivable...!! What the hell even was that grotesque song?!"
Thump, thump!
In a dark corner of a room, a black-haired girl in a white dress was kicking her legs in a tantrum, trying to swallow her rage. All around her, broken dolls lay scattered in heaps.
"Sorry, Maestro. Looks like this performance ends here."
Clack.
She grunted and strained for a long while, then stared hollowly at the severed strings dangling from her short finger joints.
"Every last puppet was destroyed... but someday, I'll hold a grand performance again..."
Clack.
When the girl stood up, the sound of wooden joints knocking together echoed through the room.
"The finale fell through... so I'll definitely steal the Corrupted Angel's Heart back later. And when that time comes..."
The girl clenched her fist tight as she muttered, and the clatter of wooden joints rang out once more.
Creak.
"This body will shed its doll form and evolve into a true artist..."
Maestro, the Eighth Finger of Redanis. She operated through a wooden marionette roughly 180 centimeters tall, but no one knew her true identity. A faceless puppet with no particularly distinguishing features, whose bizarre track record and eccentric way of speaking only made people more uncomfortable. She called herself a musician, yet was suspiciously obsessed with love, and harbored an extreme hatred for anyone who cheated or committed adultery. A complete enigma — a weirdo through and through. Not a single member of Redanis wanted to get close to Maestro if they could help it.
"I'll turn every person in this world into my marionette and create a beautiful puppet show... and I'll be a godlike presence in it, while also being the musician who plays the songs that fit the story..."
In truth, her real identity was a doll that looked like a young girl. Delicate, finely crafted features, an adorable appearance, and ball-jointed limbs. Her childhood look in that white one-piece dress had remained unchanged even after decades — as if the last moment she'd spent with Maestro had been preserved exactly as it was, taxidermied in time.
"Ryushia... just you wait! Someday you'll be my marionette too..."
The girl was gathering up the broken dolls, about to leave, when—
"Yoo-hoo~ here I am!"
"Hgyaaaaaaaaah?!"
—Ryushia appeared out of nowhere.
"Heheheh... you sly little doll. Where do you think you're going? You still have to answer for everything you've done."
"Eek... eek..."
Step. Step.
A woman with those eerie slit eyes approached her like a reaper. As if she had no intention of letting her escape.
"S-spare me..."
The girl began to tremble. She was a spectator, a playwright — standing on the stage herself was... far too terrifying.
"First, let's pull off those arms and legs so you can't run, shall we?"
"...Eh?"
POP!!
"Hyaaaaaaaaaaah?!"
Ryushia proceeded to disassemble the girl with brutal efficiency.
"Eek... eeeek?!"
"And then we just pick Maestro up~"
The girl's arm and leg joints popped free. Left with only a torso and a head, she dangled by the armpit, swaying back and forth.
"What shall we do with you? I can hardly wait..."
"Y-you pervert!! You pulled off my arms and legs — what are you planning to do with me?!"
Maestro shrieked and thrashed.
"Did you know...? There's this thing in the world called a Real Doll."
"Hic..."
And at Ryushia's shocking threat, her mouth snapped shut all on its own.
Target acquired.
Subject:Maestro
Status:Disassembled / Secured