Chapter 68: The Puppet Progenitor and the Unpleasant Marionette Show - 5
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 68: The Puppet Progenitor and the Unpleasant Marionette Show - 5
“Grrrrrrr.”
A low, guttural growl reverberated through the Abyss. As the bestial sound washed over us, our muscles spasmed in terror for a moment. That went for me, the Regressor, and Finlay alike.
The Dog King had always sided with humans, remaining their closest companion. When humans fought amongst themselves, she would turn a blind eye and plug her nose, refusing to interfere.
But to the monsters crafted from blood, she showed not a single shred of affection or trust. Thus, when humans fought vampires, Azzy was humanity's most powerful ally.
“Grrrr.”
Toward those that were once human, Azzy bared her fangs in the truest sense.
“S-Stop her!” Finlay commanded urgently.
From the ground, hundreds, thousands of dark knights erupted. Clad in pitch-black armor and armed with various weapons, the dark knights formed a protective line around Finlay and the vampire.
Thud.
Dark knights bearing tower shields painted with darkness blocked the front line, sharp lances jutting out from between them. The heavily armored knights held their breath, cautiously awaiting the beast’s approach, intending to surround and hunt her down if she came any closer.
“Woof—!!”
But.
Spears, shields, lances, armor, or even the dark knights themselves.
None of them could stop the Dog King.
With a great howl, Azzy leaped. The moment I thought that, she was already in the heart of the dark knight formation.
Even the Regressor lost sight of Azzy for a moment, and the wind itself seemed to lag a step behind her.
Crunch. Azzy snapped her head up. A dark knight’s head flew into the air. Instead of blood, black smoke, dark as pitch, billowed out.
The Dog King had signaled the start of the slaughter with the dark knight’s blood.
The shield-bearing vanguard turned, and the knights with spears tried to change their aim. Knights with swords thrust their blades forward, and those with maces raised them high with both hands.
But their attacks never landed. Every time Azzy stamped her foot, armor shattered, weapons broke, and black bodies were torn to shreds.
“Awoooo—!!”
The overwhelming violence of a beast raged on. Azzy was a beast in human form, a calamity for the bloodfiends who toyed with corpses.
The scent of human blood—the scent that dogs loved so dearly—excited Azzy, the Dog King. While the Progenitor had mastered her Bloodcraft to the point of concealing the scent of blood, Finlay had not. Azzy was disgusted, and that disgust fueled her desire for destruction.
A dark knight caught in her claws crumbled like smoke. The moment one was shattered, she was already on to the next. The moment one’s neck was torn out, she moved to another.
At a glance, she was simply defeating them one by one, blow by blow. But the speed at which she did so was so fast it was like a wildfire spreading. Wherever Azzy landed, dark knights were pulverized in an expanding ripple, sending sprays of black smoke and red blood into the air with each impact.
Watching the dark knights get torn apart by the second, Finlay felt a surge of terror.
“Progenitor! That beast!”
At Finlay’s cry, the vampire slowly waved a hand.
The scattered darkness and blood rose again, coalescing into a colossal figure. A giant dark knight, standing five meters tall with armor a meter thick, appeared, wielding a massive mace forged from blood.
Just as Azzy sank her teeth into the neck of a remaining dark knight, the giant knight swung its mace down. Its movement was swift, belying its size. The heavy mace struck Azzy’s head, the shockwave alone shattering the concrete in all directions.
The sound was deafening.
The calm after the storm. After the impact, all sound ceased. In the ringing silence, where only a high-pitched tone buzzed in my ears, the only things moving were the rising and settling pieces of debris.
“Finish it!”
Even in that state, the giant dark knight twisted its mace half a turn and thrust it forward. A short, powerful jab, as if to confirm the kill.
And when the giant dark knight raised its arm,
The mace was severed from the middle.
“Grrr.”
Azzy, her four paws planted firmly in the ground, lifted her head. In her mouth, the massive mace, easily three times her size, dangled, broken in half.
A weight and density like that should have crushed her teeth and forced her jaw open, but Azzy lifted her chin as if she were holding a toy and shook her head from side to side.
Thud, crash, crunch, crack.
The massive, heavy mace vibrated unrealistically. As she shook her head like a dog shaking off water, everything within a one-to-five-meter radius to her left turned to dust and smoke.
The remaining dark knights, the giant knight’s legs, the concrete floor—all were equal before Azzy’s power.
Pulverization. No other word could describe the destruction that swept through.
Snap. The mace broke in the middle, unable to withstand the force of Azzy’s swings. Unaware, Azzy shook it a few more times before spitting out the remaining handle with a ptooey and glaring at Finlay and the vampire.
As that ferocious, wild nature was directed at him, Finlay felt an involuntary pang of fear. Enraged by his own fear, he shouted.
“It’s useless!! This isn’t the full extent of the Progenitor’s power!”
A fanaticism for the Progenitor surged, birthing a wave of madness. Finlay used his ability to clutch the vampire’s heart.
The Progenitor’s body flinched for a moment as her heart throbbed. A flicker of red returned to her hazy eyes, but it was gone in an instant.
Having briefly gained control of the Progenitor’s heart through Bloodcraft, Finlay forced the blood flowing through her body to move.
“Progenitor! Show that beast your power!!”
The dark knights. The strongest force the vampire could summon without any preparation or risk. Although they hadn’t lasted a moment against the Dog King, that wasn’t their true strength.
From the scattered darkness, shadows began to congeal. A pitch-black arm shot out from a round pool of darkness, planting itself on the ground to pull the rest of its body up.
This happened in every shadow that existed in the Abyss.
The Undying dark knights, who had fallen to Azzy’s claws and fangs, rose one by one. In a matter of seconds, the legion of dark knights had restored its numbers to what they were before being annihilated.
The resurrected dark knights faced the Dog King, their red eyes glowing from within their helms.
“The dark knights rise infinitely! What you defeated were mere scarecrows that can be remade in an instant!!” Finlay screamed in a frenzy, pointing a finger at Azzy.
At his command, the dark knights began to advance as one.
A march toward a single being. Though they were many, the sight of the dark knights advancing fearlessly toward the Beast King was enough to inspire awe.
“Drown in a sea of blood and die, beast!!” Finlay shouted, spitting blood. He expected the Dog King to gradually tire from fighting an infinite legion of dark knights and eventually fall.
“Grrrrr.”
But Azzy, while perhaps not intelligent, was not stupid.
Instinctively glaring at the source of the blood scent, Azzy let out a deep growl and lowered her stance, planting her front paws on the ground.
Her hind claws dug into the concrete, and her front paws gripped the earth. The posture of a predator, crouched low on all fours, preparing to pounce.
Just as Finlay felt a sense of foreboding, his premonition became reality.
“Woof-!”
With a short bark, Azzy leaped toward her target: the vampire sitting blankly atop the coffin.
The moment her paws left the ground, her body was already soaring toward the vampire.
Sharp claws tore through the darkness. Her outstretched paw was already within reach. The overwhelming violence of the Dog King closed in on the vampire’s small, fragile body. The sheer ferocity of her charge looked as if it would obliterate the vampire in a single blow.
Finlay’s eyes widened as if they would pop out of their sockets.
“No…!”
But he was powerless to stop it with his abilities. He hadn’t even been able to sense it. All he could do was feel a vague sense of dread and react with belated horror.
Just as Azzy, moving faster than perception, was about to plunge her paw into the vampire’s chest,
A red hoof descended upon her from above.
Faster than she had leaped, Azzy’s body was flung back. She crashed into the ground, half-destroying it, before bouncing back up into the air. The Sanguine Horse twisted its body mid-air and leaped, its massive hoof, the size of a man’s torso, striking Azzy.
Thwack.
The sound of flesh meeting hoof was loud enough to reach me clearly. Azzy shot through the air like a small ball, flying much faster than any ball I could throw.
Immediately after, with the sound of crumbling bricks, a whole section of the prison’s third-floor wall turned into a cloud of dust. Azzy’s form vanished within it.
[Snort.]
The horse snorted after her.
The Sanguine Horse, Ralion. The first familiar, who obeyed only the Progenitor's command, had joined the battle in the face of its master's crisis.
Finlay, who had been cast into hell only to grasp a sliver of hope, laughed wretchedly.
“Haha! Ralion! Yes! You’re finally listening to my command—!”
[Hmph.]
Ralion snorted as if the idea was preposterous.
The Sanguine Horse’s exhale was like a gale. Caught off guard, Finlay’s body was lifted into the air. He bounced off the ground several times, tumbling across the floor before managing to flip himself over and get up.
“You bastard! I am controlling the Progenitor right now. I am the regent! If you are a retainer of the Progenitor, you must obey my command—!”
Naturally, the Sanguine Horse didn’t budge. It just snorted powerfully, its gaze fixed on the direction Azzy had disappeared.
Finlay was bewildered to see Ralion still in a combat stance.
“What? Why are you looking over there?”
The reason was revealed soon enough. Finlay’s body shuddered as he slowly turned his head.
“Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr….”
The ground trembled. An enraged beast was shaking the world from afar, from somewhere on the third floor.
The color drained from Finlay’s face.
“D-Don’t tell me. It’s fine even after a hit like that?”
The Dog King. Humanity’s greatest friend, an ever-loyal beast.
And a natural-born hunter of its enemies.
Finlay had misunderstood something.
The reason the Dog King despised vampires was because they were human corpses. Even humans were wary of what were once their own kind, so how could a dog, with its sensitive nose, welcome a human body that walked around reeking of its friend’s blood?
But that was merely an expression of aversion, a far cry from a murderous intent to kill an enemy.
In other words, the ferocious aggression that made a beast a beast was not directed at vampires.
However.
“…No, Dog King. You weren’t even fighting at full strength until now?”
If the opponent is a beast, the Dog King becomes a hunter.
A blurry figure shot forward. The wind that followed left only a trail of dust. It was so fast that the dust cloud couldn’t keep up and swirled into a vortex.
“Woof.”
A chunk of the blood that made up Ralion exploded. Half of its mane-tossing neck vanished. Blood splattered onto the ground.
Behind it, Azzy landed lightly and spat out a piece of blood-red flesh. The torn-off piece of flesh fell to the ground.
[Neigh.]
Ralion, having suffered a fatal wound, staggered badly, but only for a moment.
The red flesh on the ground melted into a puddle and slithered back into Ralion’s shadow. Immediately after, the chunk torn from its neck regenerated.
Ralion, restored by the Progenitor’s power. Despite having its neck torn out just moments before, it still burned with fighting spirit, glaring at Azzy. Every time it scraped the ground with its foreleg, the concrete was overturned.
“Grrr.”
Azzy, too, barked in displeasure at Ralion, who stood perfectly fine even after having its neck ripped out. Her rigid claws dug into the ground.
The two beasts stared each other down, then, as if by agreement, howled at the same time.
“Awooooooooo!”
[Neeeeeeigh!]
Leaving only their cries behind, the two beasts charged at each other.