The Puppets Among Us
I'll be honest. I had this naive thought that if I just scattered hundreds of one-eyed bugs around, everything would somehow sort itself out. After all, no matter what anyone says, Insect Magic is a cheat skill, and the mobility and stealth of the one-eyed bugs are both top-tier. I figured the puppets controlled by the Puppet Master would reveal their true colors quickly enough for us to catch them.
But that wasn't the case. The one-eyed bugs were never discovered, yet the enemy was far more meticulous than I had anticipated. It had already been five days since we arrived in Cloud City. During that time, we'd scoured the city thoroughly, but we still hadn't found traces of every single one of them.
Of course, we had found some. After all, there were a whopping 190 scouts who had visited that village. No matter how skilled the enemy's control ability was, there were bound to be signs.
For example, some hadn't eaten for several days straight. Others would sit motionless like broken dolls whenever they returned home. Based on those clues, we were able to identify nearly sixty individuals who had almost certainly been brainwashed.
Sixty people in just five days. At this rate, it was safe to assume the entire scouting force had been compromised. We had more than enough circumstantial and physical evidence, yet we didn't make a move.
Why? Because he was watching us too.
Just as I used the one-eyed bugs as my eyes and ears, he was undoubtedly using his puppets in the same way. The moment we acted, he would notice something was wrong. Who knew what might happen? If we moved to capture the sixty, the remaining 130 might start a massacre. The civilian casualties would be devastating.
So if we were going to act, we needed to be absolutely certain. We had to strike like a raging typhoon, all at once.
Besides, we still hadn't located all 190 scouts the lord had mentioned.
Where the hell did they go…?
Even with thousands of one-eyed bugs, completely monitoring an entire city was beyond our capabilities. Unlike CCTV that provided constant surveillance, the bugs had to physically walk back to me with information. That created inevitable gaps in both time and space.
As a result, even when we found someone, we often lost track of them again quickly. Especially with the first scouts who had left—Rickby, Nelby, and Kelvin—we hadn't caught a single glimpse of them.
There were problems piling up from every direction.
And that wasn't all. It had already been five full days since we'd arrived in this city. That was more than enough time for rumors about the hero's party to spread. Including the fact that there were some issues with this particular hero.
As a result, the footage replayed by the one-eyed bugs began to fill with all sorts of "noise." My head was already aching from having to review hundreds of videos a day. The added chatter only made the stress unbearable.
"Haa… let's take a break."
After watching footage for what felt like forever, I finally threw up my hands. Too much information was flooding in at once, and my head was pounding. I needed to rest.
Of course, resting didn't mean doing nothing. There were things I could do even while taking it easy.
I poured my magic power into the magic circle floating in the air. Excluding the power needed to maintain resonance with the one-eyed bugs, I dumped nearly every ounce of mana I had into the formation. I even sacrificed bugs from my gourd as offerings and used my personal wealth to replenish the mana I lacked.
Surprisingly, the Authority of Sacrifice accepted even material things like jewels and money as valid offerings. Thankfully, I'd earned quite a bit of money last time, so I still had some to spare.
I poured all the gathered mana into the magic circle before me. The amount was truly enormous—enough to have dropped a meteor once or twice. Yet nothing happened within the circle.
I didn't question it, though.
Of course not.
This wasn't a magic circle that activated with ordinary amounts of mana in the first place.
The circle that summons a calamity once capable of drowning the entire continent in despair.
⟨ Solitude Summoning Circle ⟩
A status window flickered before my eyes, displaying the circle's completion rate.
Completion: 3.7%
It was the magic circle used to summon something like the Gluttonous Maw. No wonder such a tiny amount of mana barely made a dent. Still, after spending the last several days pouring mana into it nonstop, reaching 3.7% felt like an achievement.
The Insect King had needed a long preparation period and had sacrificed nearly all the insects in Insect Assembly Castle just to complete his summoning. At this rate, the circle was filling up rather quickly.
I continued feeding it mana for a few more minutes, taking a short breather. Once I felt slightly refreshed, I dove back into the investigation.
To be honest, I was mentally exhausted. The stress from the prolonged work was no joke, and on top of that, expending such massive amounts of mana had left me with a fierce wave of fatigue. But I couldn't give up.
I have to find them.
I had to find them before he did something irreversible. We needed to strike first.
Thankfully, the mafia search operation was proceeding relatively smoothly. The only delay was due to the time lag in information delivery. At this pace, we should be able to apprehend all 190 within a few days. Then we could sweep them all up at once…
Knock, knock.
Just as I was thinking that, I heard a knock at the door. After a moment, Ulyse von Yugrasia entered. When she saw me squatting and resonating with the bugs, she immediately frowned.
"Are you doing this again?"
She sounded quite displeased.
"I told you yesterday, didn't I? You'll really collapse at this rate. It's good to be passionate about your work, but shouldn't you take care of your body too?"
"Haha…"
I could only laugh awkwardly. For the past few days, she had been visiting me occasionally to scold me like this. I didn't know what she was thinking, but hearing a mother's nagging after so long wasn't entirely unpleasant.
And in the end, her visit also meant my workload would decrease.
"This won't do. Send some of your one-eyed bugs to our inn as well. It will be faster if multiple people are watching instead of just one."
"But… you hate bugs, don't you…"
"After what I went through in Insect Assembly Castle, this is nothing. Stop talking and just send them. If you don't, I'll come back here and complain again. I'll tell the others to watch too, so hurry up."
"Haha, yes…"
In the end, I had no choice but to send some of the bugs her way. Honestly, I felt good about it. I'd felt awkward suggesting it myself, but here she was, coming to take some of the burden off my shoulders. Thanks to her, I could rest a little more…
"Honestly, what an obstinate person…"
Some time later, after returning to her own inn, Ulyse grumbled to herself for quite a while. Thousands of replayed videos? She knew full well that one person couldn't handle that much alone, yet he was still trying to shoulder it all. What a foolish man.
Of course, she understood how he felt. If he had asked her directly, there was a high chance she would have refused because of the curse. So he had probably decided to push himself and finish it alone. It was such an obvious thought.
And the saintess didn't like that thought one bit.
If he had just asked me, I would have helped without hesitation…
Did he still not trust her that much? Even though she had approached him so many times, his heart still seemed firmly closed. That fact left a bitter taste in her mouth.
…Well, it will open someday.
Thinking that, she began working just like him. She distributed some of the bugs to her party members as well. They might ignore the hero's words, but they would listen to hers.
The party members accepted the task with clear reluctance. After finishing the simple distribution, the saintess immediately got to work.
She held a one-eyed bug in her hand and resonated with it. Videos began flowing into her mind.
Searching for the brainwashed scouts was like trying to find a needle in a desert. Each video contained far too many people, and just as many useless pieces of information. Conversations like these offered no help to the investigation whatsoever, yet they were always included.
It had been five days since the hero's party arrived. That was enough time for rumors to spread among the residents, and naturally, there was plenty of gossip. Most of it was backbiting, no doubt thanks to the curse's influence.
And the conversation she'd just seen was actually one of the milder ones. The other one-eyed bugs were surely carrying even worse content.
…
Everyone thought the saintess only ever received praise and adoration. But that wasn't true at all. There were twisted people everywhere in the world, and she had overheard others badmouthing her more than a few times. Failed saintess candidates, corrupt nobles trying to undermine the church, even vagrants from the back alleys.
Whenever she caught snippets of their venomous words, her heart would ache. Even when she tried not to care, those words would replay in her head over and over. That was the nature of slander.
If just a few such comments were enough to upset her, then the hero was hearing dozens, hundreds of times more through thousands of videos. It was something no ordinary person's mind could endure. He was undoubtedly accumulating immense stress, whether he realized it or not.
Yet he couldn't stop until this matter was resolved…
In the end, there was only one thing she could do here. She would help him finish the investigation as quickly as possible.
With that thought, the saintess focused on her work once more.
*
And so, on the eighth day, the hero's party finally managed to capture all of the puppets.
Working together with the lord, they struck simultaneously at every location where the controlled individuals were scattered throughout the territory.
The puppets they caught included the scouts Rickby, Nelby, and Kelvin—along with the full 190 scouts… and six civilians. A total of 196 people.
Fuck.
I felt that something had gone terribly wrong.
Why the hell are there civilians mixed in?