Chapter 70: The Puppet Progenitor and the Unpleasant Marionette Show - 7
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 70: The Puppet Progenitor and the Unpleasant Marionette Show - 7
The Regressor paused.
“…Durability?”
“Yes. Just as an Undying’s flesh is poison to a vampire’s blood, vampire blood is a curse to the Undying. Look. The flesh has hardened and turned black.”
“Hey! That’s what’s not okay!”
“It’s fine. When this happens, I just have to scrape off the hardened flesh with a small skewer. The dirty outer layer comes off, revealing the flesh underneath. The only problem is that it gets shorter each time.”
“I didn’t ask if you were okay! The Undying won’t be okay!”
So that’s how the Undying got cursed! It was you!
Well, yeah. That’s how it turned out.
I scratched my head and retorted, “You complain a lot. So, what, you don’t want me to use this?”
“…What I mean is, let’s finish this quickly before that arm wears down completely!”
“Okay. Roger that. I’m going now. Make sure you clear a path for me.”
“Just get going already! Wave Breaker, Dragon Ascension!”
This time, she slashed vertically. The wind stirred by Chun-aeng turned the world on its head for a moment. The dark knights were lifted into the air by the storm. Severed from the pools of blood and their own shadows, they were met by the Regressor’s magic.
“Skyblade Art, Thunderbird!”
Zzzzt! A bright yellow bolt of lightning etched itself into the air like a wrinkle. A thin thread, like a spiderweb, touched the bodies of the dark knights. In an instant, it merged into a single stream, then transformed into a massive waterfall.
The lightning incinerated the blood. The vampire’s true body might have withstood it, but these created familiars had no chance.
The dark knights, burning in the shadowless air, turned to ash and scattered.
“Alright, I’m off! Make sure you clean up the area properly!”
“You’re still here?!”
The Regressor leaped into the air and swung her sword. A gale swept away everything in front of me. The supporting fire from the sky was so precise that every enemy except the one right in front of my nose was either blown away or forced to duck and endure. I dashed across the now-empty battlefield.
The Regressor’s support magic, Gentle Breeze, protected me. The wind pushed at my back, propelling my body forward with just a touch of my toes to the ground. Wrapped in this breeze, I moved freely even within the storm the Regressor had created.
Damn, this buff is killer. It was just a bit of wind, but it gave me a sense of liberation, as if I’d become a superman.
With this, I could probably set a new personal record in the short-distance dash.
“Hurry up! What are you so relaxed about!”
A voice urged me on from behind.
A speed that felt uncontrollable to me must have looked yawn-inducingly slow to someone else. What could I do? This was my top speed.
“Woof woof!”
[Heeeeeigh!]
Just then, Azzy flew past my eyes and slammed Ralion into the ground. Blood splattered from the crushed flesh. Having gained the upper hand, Azzy ignored the soft flesh that would burst with every bite and instead sank her teeth into a hard, blood-smelted horseshoe, tearing at it fiercely. Ralion writhed in defiance, but it had no effect on Azzy’s grip.
Snap. The horseshoe came off. Azzy shook her head a few more times, spotted the fallen horseshoe, and flung it away with a sharp turn of her head. A heavy thud echoed off the concrete floor.
Then, my eyes met Azzy’s.
Azzy tilted her head.
“Woof?”
“Good. You’re doing a great job.”
This was the same Azzy who had been consumed by her wild instincts just moments ago, beating down the sanguine horse. Seeing her staring at me with fresh red blood smeared around her mouth was a little unnerving, but the bright smile that appeared the moment she saw me put me at ease.
Azzy lifted her chin slightly and barked.
“Woof!”
“Good girl! Azzy, get that red horse far away from here! Keep it from getting near me, if you can!”
It was too strong physically, and being a horse, I couldn’t read its thoughts. It was basically my natural enemy.
If Azzy could just take care of Ralion, there would be nothing left to stop me.
“Woof woof!”
Azzy barked as if she understood.
Just then, Ralion’s remaining hooves came flying at her.
Struck squarely by a hoof, Azzy’s body shot away like a ball. The sanguine horse, having barely managed to get up, snorted briefly and, without so much as a glance at me, chased after her. The sound of hooves shattering concrete faded quickly into the distance.
Left alone, I muttered blankly.
“This isn’t exactly what I meant by ‘get rid of him’.”
Well, at least it seemed Ralion wouldn’t be targeting me for now. That was a relief. I started moving again.
In one corner, a house-sized horse fought a human-shaped dog, while the Regressor’s wind continuously blew away an endless stream of dark knights. It was a transcendent battle, a million years removed from anything ordinary.
And in the middle of it all, I ran, barely squeezing through the gaps.
Watching a dark knight crumble to dust before my eyes, I had only one thought.
Hmm. No matter how I think about it, I’m way out of my league here.
Undying dark knights, a sanguine horse, the Dog King, the Regressor, and even the Progenitor vampire. I was just too ordinary to be on a battlefield like this.
Just then, Finlay pointed at me and roared.
“You baaaastard!!”
At his command, a vampire with hazy eyes raised its hand. Dark knights erupted from all directions, throwing themselves in my path to block me.
Watching them, I muttered to myself.
“Then again, if that bastard is here, there’s no reason I shouldn’t be.”
I’m probably better than Finlay, at least. Yes, yes.
Nodding to myself, I took out the skewer and scraped the cross-section of the Undying’s arm. The sharp tip dug into the cracks of the hardened flesh. With a crackle, the flesh split. I scraped at the split flesh with the skewer and flicked it.
“Immortal Explosion!”
The blackened pieces of flesh became shrapnel, sweeping over the dark knights. Properly hardened flesh made for good projectiles. The dark knights hit squarely by the fragments staggered under the curse’s effect.
The arm had gotten considerably shorter from all the running. I made a mental note to use it more sparingly and kept sprinting.
“Tsk. It’s my fault for teaching an old man the latest games, my fault indeed. Of course. Plenty of old folks ruin themselves when they pick up a new hobby late in life.”
I am ordinary.
Unique Magic? What’s that? Like any normal person, I can only use universal spells. I don’t have anything as grand as Qi Arts. All I have is the dexterity to perfectly shuffle a deck of cards.
In other words, anything I can do, anyone can do.
Was this the price for trying to cozy up to the powerful, for trying to earn a little favor by messing with a heart? Tsk, tsk. This is why a man must live within his means. My sin was forgetting my place just because I was in the Abyss.
“It means someone like me is easily replaceable. My actions, my words, even the kindness I offer… it’s all painfully common.”
A sigh escaped me as I was struck anew by my own pathetic state.
After running for a while, Finlay and the vampire were finally within reach. I gripped the Undying’s right arm tightly and walked toward them.
“Still, I have to survive first. Even an ordinary person would do their best to live.”
The closer I got, the clearer their thoughts became. Finlay’s hostility toward me, and the hazy consciousness of the vampire. Even the bond of blood that connected them.
Taking aim between them, I muttered nonchalantly.
“So I’ll do my best to kill you.”
“You think I’ll die so easily?!”
Finlay clenched his fists again. Veins pulsed all over his body. His neck, forehead, arms, chest. Uncontrolled blood surged, squirming grotesquely beneath his skin. It was the result of him failing to control his own blood while manipulating the Progenitor.
In contrast, the vampire was perfectly calm, save for a few slightly protruding veins. She simply looked down on everyone with a blank expression and unfocused eyes.
As I closed in, Finlay shouted.
“You, you bastard!! Who do you think you are, coming here! I’ll crush you!”
“You just wait there, you garlic pickle. I’ll stick you in a drum barrel with some concrete.”
Burying him in garlic-concrete and rolling him into the sea would be quite a sight. He’d be happy until the day he died.
The Undying’s right arm was reaching its limit. It was a race against time now. I charged forward, swinging the mostly blackened arm.
The dark knights regenerated endlessly from the floor, from the air, from the pools of blood. But they were powerless. The weapons they crudely formed with their authority couldn’t block the Undying’s arm. It might be different if they had blood energy, but that crimson aura faded before the sun.
Blood energy is life force drawn from the body. A shadow without it is no different from a doll. Since its power doesn’t circulate, it cannot withstand the Undying’s curse.
Crumble.
An echo of what might have once been a promising knight disintegrated in an instant. If it had been wearing real weapons and armor, it might have put up a good fight, but unfortunately, it only had a weapon hastily conjured by authority. That echo met its end as its shield was shattered and its chest pierced by someone’s right arm.
“Is that all you’ve got, Finlay?”
The distance between me and the vampire was now about ten steps. With the Gentle Breeze buff, I could cover it in just three leaps.
Finlay’s mind grew frantic.
As long as the sun is up, I can’t use blood energy to strengthen the dark knights! And without it, the dark knights can’t stop him. But!
“Progenitor!! Lend me your strength!!”
Finlay drew upon his Bloodcraft. Unlike before, when he only borrowed it for his retainers, this time he received the blood energy and wielded it himself.
In an instant, a hundred times the amount of blood energy he normally controlled gathered in his body. He ignored the bursting veins all over his body and shouted.
“This is the power of the Progenitor! Take this, you commoner!”
Dozens of red spears materialized in the air, aimed at my shoulders, stomach, and legs. Most were just for show.
They would be fatal if they hit, but their trajectories were laughably simple. Of course.
That’s a feint! The real attack is the whip I sent behind his back!
So obvious. I could predict it even without reading his thoughts.
If he had focused all his attention on each spear, I might not have been able to dodge. But he just had to get fancy.
A crimson whip approached from my blind spot. Simultaneously, the red spears shot toward my body.
Dealing with it was easy. I’d bat away the red spears with the Undying’s arm and twist my body to evade the whip. All I had to focus on was the whip behind me.
The whip cut through empty air.
He dodged it without even looking? In that case!
Finlay, his hands full of crimson energy, thrust his arms downward. The shadows on the ground expanded dramatically.
I’ll pierce the soles of your feet!
Oh, now that’s a new one.
I twisted my advancing foot at an odd rhythm. A blade of shadow shot up from the spot where my foot would have landed.
Having dodged the hidden blade, I staggered my steps and rhythm like a drunkard, and each time, the blades Finlay created sliced through nothing but empty air.
How is he…! Then, the entire ground!
Thousands, tens of thousands of blades erupted from beneath Finlay’s hands. He was trying to turn the entire ground into a field of blades.
Nice try. I ducked my upper body slightly and scraped the ground with the Undying’s arm. Scrape, scrape. Each time the cross-section of the arm scraped the ground, the hardened flesh stretched out and consumed the shadows. Before the blades could reach me, the domain of shadow itself crumbled away.
The distance was now negligible. Cornered, Finlay desperately created a wall of blood. There was no strategy anymore. Just the thought of stopping me.
“Why! Why can’t I hit you?!”
A crimson wave washed over me, but that only served to block his own vision.
I cut through the wave with the Undying’s arm. If that had been water and I’d been holding a sword, I would have been swept away.
But what a vampire commands is blood, and what I happened to be holding was an Earthener’s arm.
The blood that touched the Earthener’s arm instantly hardened and turned black. I emerged from the discolored wave, shrugging it off my shoulder. The droplets of blood that tried to cling to me were blown away by the Gentle Breeze.
Finlay was horrified. I met his gaze and charged.
“You want to know why you can’t hit me?”
You’ll be disappointed if you find out.
So, of course, I had to tell him.
I pulled the Undying’s arm back and gave him the answer.
“Because you’re the one attacking! You’re so damn predictable I couldn’t get hit if I tried!”
“You… bastard… you…!”
“Haha! Neither your skills nor your character are befitting of a noble! A mosquito has more substance than you!”
“I’ll kill you—!”
Fool. Reacting to my taunt was a waste of time.
“Immortal Finish!!”
I took a large step with Gentle Breeze and swung the Undying’s arm, clobbering Finlay. The Undying’s proud bicep collided violently with Finlay’s face. The point of contact turned black, and the impact sent Finlay’s body flying. A few teeth flew from his mouth.
But taking down Finlay wasn’t the end. This whole mess was because of the vampire. I had to wake her up.
Leaving the fallen Finlay behind, I ran toward the vampire.
Finlay’s despairing howl echoed behind me.
“Stop him!!!”
Finlay flailed his arms. The blood energy flowing from his hands spread in all directions.
The authority Finlay squeezed out, even at the cost of his own defense, tirelessly blocked my path once more.
Newly risen dark knights, whips of blood, crimson stigmata, thorns erupting from the darkness. Even a fog that filled the world.
All of it was aimed at me and the Undying’s right arm. All to stop the Earthener’s flesh from defiling the bloodfiend’s blood.
If I can just get that thing away from him! He can never stop the immortal legion! Without the Earthener’s right arm, he’s just a common swordsman!
No one could blame them.
They must have felt a sense of crisis watching me, swinging the Undying’s arm left and right, ‘contaminating’ the dark knights, watching the immortal legion, which should have risen again, lose its power and fall.
The Undying’s arm was clearly a fatal poison to vampires. Therefore, Finlay must have thought that while it was his most dangerous weapon, it was also the only thing he needed to stop.
“Knock it away!”
To stop the Undying’s arm from corrupting the blood with its curse, what was needed, above all else, was quantity. There was no choice but to crush it with immense weight.
So Finlay forcibly gathered blood energy from all over and tried to push me—or more accurately, the Undying’s right arm—away.
With all his might.
“Ta-da.”
As expected, it paid to emphasize it.
Thanks to that, no one was paying any attention to the single card in my left hand.
A wave of fresh blood swept over me—or more accurately, my weapon, the Earthener’s right arm. The Undying’s arm was flung high into the air.
The greatest misdirection of my life. Their eyes stolen by the soaring arm, they noticed my presence a beat too late.
Shit! The warden?!
By the time Finlay turned his head, I had already thrown the arm away and was charging the vampire, a single card clutched in my hand. Seeing this, a look of triumph flashed in Finlay’s eyes.
Fool! Did you think I would leave the Progenitor completely defenseless?!
My card grazed my wrist and transformed into a skewer. The sword stick, glowing with an ominous light, headed for the vampire’s chest—for the fissure that was still leaking streams of dark red energy.
That’s a storm of Bloodcraft! It’s not my power, but the Progenitor’s rampaging authority! A simple weapon can’t even get close…!
Just then, Finlay saw it. The tip of my skewer was tinged with a familiar, blood-red color.
…Original blood?
The most important component of blood is iron. Likewise, it is iron that wounds the body and makes it bleed. The two have been inextricably linked since the dawn of the Iron Age.
So much so that they were often referred to together as ‘iron blood’.
Their relationship only deepened throughout history. Iron weapons were ritually fed blood for mystical purposes, and some physicians had anemic patients lick rusted iron. The smell of blood and the smell of iron were winds that came and went together.
For this reason, the alchemy of mixing blood and iron was considered a fundamental practice.
And I had just tried some basic alchemy with a slightly more precious material.
“I’d hidden it in a card, planning to sneak it out someday. Never thought I’d use it like this.”
Into the open chest, into the gap she still showed to keep the threads of her dominion from snapping.
I thrust the skewer, steeped in original blood.
I felt resistance. A fierce current of blood energy was trying to push my hand away.
But this was something I had done dozens of times before.
As if I had a map, I expertly navigated the inside of the vampire’s chest. My skewer reached her heart as easily as if it had always belonged there.
Thump.
An artificial tremor traveled up the skewer in my hand.
This was the heartbeat Finlay had forced. It was unpleasantly regular, like a cheap metronome. A forced imitation of a heartbeat, and a curse audaciously created to dominate his own blood-lord.
“Trainee Tyrkanzyaka. You were having quite the nightmare. You’ve dreamed long enough. It’s time to wake up.”
I drove the skewer into the heart of the curse and summoned mana from my entire body. Drawing out more mana than I had ever used in the Abyss, I shouted.
“Bolt.”