The Burning Puppeteer (1)

It was late, nearly midnight.

The Special Warfare Brigade of the Sejong Provisional Government had left its base and deployed a large force along the northern outskirts of Daejeon.

"Here to relieve you."

"Appreciate it. She's all yours."

These were the soldiers posted to the night watch. They were out here because of a special order issued two days earlier by Minister Yoon Cheolmin, the acting president. The objective and the details had never been ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠explained, though, and that murkiness left the men thoroughly sour.

"Ha. I seriously don't get what they're thinking."

One of the soldiers who had just come on duty was among the loudest of the complainers. The man beside him glanced over.

"What's that supposed to mean all of a sudden?"

"You know exactly what I mean. Why plant a whole unit out here where there aren't any people or monsters?"

"How should I know? If the brass says dig, we dig."

"I just don't get it. If we had this kind of time, we ought to be out hunting zombies and scraping together a few more coins..."

He sighed again, but the grumbling didn't last. Beyond the fog choking the front, a black shape suddenly wavered. Both soldiers brought their muzzles up in the same instant, neither waiting on the other.

"Halt! Hands up—don't move!"

"We're the Special ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Warfare Brigade of the Sejong Provisional Government! Come any closer and we fire!"

The warnings kept coming, but the figure beyond the fog only grew clearer, and the footsteps with it drew nearer. That was warning enough. The soldiers' eyes went hard.

Bang! Rat-tat-tat-tat!

Aimed fire erupted at once. The two of them poured a hail of bullets into the black figure, and only when the burst ended and they moved to swap the empty magazines did the bewildering sight register.

"...!?"

"What? It's fine...?"

The black figure looked entirely unharmed. They were just realizing something had gone wrong when the shape stepped clear of the fog and showed itself: a presence in a black motorcycle helmet. Phantom—the replica Hanseong controlled.

Phantom paid the sentries' stares no mind. It pointed at the barricade and the outpost the soldiers had thrown up in haste, and then—

Crunch! Crack-crack-crack!

The ground caved, and a vast pit opened all around the barricade. Everything that had stood upon it vanished in the same breath: the tanks, the armored vehicles, the temporary outpost, all of it. When a single gesture erased everything before their eyes, the sentries lost the will to fight on the spot. They stared blankly at Phantom.

"Wh-what the hell are you..."

"The Fire-Lightning Mage."

Phantom answered in a flat, dry tone. The sentries froze, and in the same moment they understood. The only one who could do something like this was the Fire-Lightning Mage.

Then Hanseong spoke again.

"Bring me whoever ranks highest here. We'll talk after that."

One of the sentries scrambled off toward the tents. A dozen minutes later, a group came pounding in from the distance, out of breath—a middle-aged man wearing a lieutenant colonel's insignia. Lieutenant Colonel Park, spokesperson for the Sejong Provisional Government.

The moment he spotted Phantom he flinched, then asked in a careful voice.

"M-Mage? What brings you all the way out here..."

Hanseong didn't answer. Instead he drew an order from his Inventory and spread it open in front of the lieutenant colonel. Park took it in a daze, and before long his eyes went wide.

"This is...!"

"An order from your superior. Withdraw. Now."

Only then did Hanseong speak. Park, for his part, rolled his eyes as if still weighing the choice.

To hesitate even after being shown the order—there was nothing for it. Hanseong turned Phantom's head and swept a look over the encampment, then murmured, almost a whisper.

"In ten minutes, I'll drop lightning on this place."

"W-what do you mean..."

"If you don't want to die, get out. Take every subordinate unit you've got stationed to the northeast and the northwest with you."

At that hard threat, Lieutenant Colonel Park shuddered before he knew it. The deliberation didn't last.

"...Order every unit to withdraw."

"Sir? But there's a platoon out on reconnaissance. Wouldn't it be better to wait a little and then pull back—"

"Then order them back at once!"

Lieutenant Colonel Park shouted it. He knew what sort of man that was. The Fire-Lightning Mage did exactly what he said he would. Provoking him, or stalling, would be a bad move in every sense. Park spun around and bellowed at the rest of them.

"Move! Every life here is on the line!"

He had the order Yoon Cheolmin himself had written, besides. Even if they went back, no one would dress him down for it. Under his command the unit turned upside down, soldiers bustling through the withdrawal.

Hanseong watched in silence. Then a woman's voice cut in, sudden.

"And what, exactly, is going on here?"

As far as he knew, there were no women among the Sejong Provisional Government's commanders. Puzzled, he turned toward the sound—and in that instant he started.

"...!"

What he found was a middle-aged woman in a gas mask. She, for her part, didn't seem to have noticed Phantom yet.

"Why are you relocating the encampment? We never issued an order like this..."

She tilted her head as if genuinely baffled. Watching her, Hanseong triggered Detection. Its cooldown had just reset.

A puppet after all.

More than that, she wasn't even the same sex as the figure he had seen in Yoon Cheolmin's memories. And there was one thing more.

...Baek Yerin.

A name that was, in all likelihood, the puppeteer's own. If nothing else, that was something gained.

While Hanseong turned it over, the puppet that had been standing blankly twisted around all at once. She was heading straight for Lieutenant Colonel Park. One look was enough to see the intent: lay a skill on him and bind him with a prohibition.

Can't let that happen.

Hanseong had read her purpose faster than anyone, and he answered at once.

Blades of wind split the air. The strike flew true and sheared the woman's limbs clean away.

"Ah...?"

Black blood soaked the ground. Left with nothing but head and torso, she looked merely bewildered. Hanseong swung what remained of Wind Cutter and ripped the gas mask from her face.

Thud. Roll, roll.

The face that appeared was bloodless and pale, a face like a corpse. Like looking at a zombie.

So that's why she went around in a gas mask.

Walk around with a face like that and nine times out of ten someone would get suspicious. Satisfied, he spoke to her at once.

"Burning Puppeteer."

"...! How do you know that..."

"Why did you station Sejong's troops here? What's the objective?"

The questioning began. The woman, who had been staring blankly at Phantom, nodded as if she had only just grasped the situation. The stiff corner of her mouth crept upward, as if she meant to smile.

"I see. So you're the Fire-Lightning Mage."

"..."

"Strange. I was quite careful about my range of activity, so that you and I wouldn't cross paths."

The longer she went on, the more unnatural her voice became. The heavy bleeding had likely made it difficult to work the muscles of her jaw. She seemed to notice it herself, and offered an awkward smile—a rather grotesque one, finished by hauling at skin that twitched and spasmed.

"I'd like to speak with you a little longer... but I can't manage any more words in this state. I'll come find you soon. We can have a proper conversation then."

With that last, suggestive line, the puppet's head rotated a full three hundred and sixty degrees.

Crrk. BOOOOM!

A violent blast followed. She must have used the puppet's Self-Destruction. Faced with a blast radius considerably larger than he had expected, Hanseong let his expression harden in silence.

She'll come find me?

Did that mean she knew where he was? And if so, how? The words nagged, and a sour unease stained his thoughts. It passed quickly.

Then I can't just sit here.

He would go looking himself—for wherever the Burning Puppeteer was. Find the puppeteer's true body, and the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠victory was his. No questions, no debate. Launch a Magic Sphere and cut her life short. That would be the end of it.

Once he had settled the thought, he spread the map at once, fixed the coordinates on the city of Gwangju, and began the search in earnest.

Some time later.

The search that had begun around midnight ran on until morning. To put the conclusion first, he came away with nothing worth calling a result.

The puppeteer is one of Gwangju's named survivors.

He had combed Gwangju and the country around it all night, and found neither anyone by the name of Baek Yerin nor anyone whose job was puppeteer. In a way, that was only natural. Being a named figure of Gwangju didn't mean she was obliged to stay there. The enchanter of Uijeongbu, for one, was living in Suwon at this very moment.

I'll have to widen the search to the whole country.

This was going to take longer than he had thought. Hanseong let out a sigh.

Still, it hadn't been a complete waste. Over the course of the night he had picked up two things that qualified as anomalies.

First, the kinds of puppets.

The ones he had run into while searching the Gwangju area fell into two broad classes. There were the puppets that wore gas masks, and there were beings like Yoon Cheolmin, who went about looking ordinary until some particular condition was met ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and then turned puppet-like.

And...

He had also witnessed the gas-mask puppets controlling perfectly intact people as if they were puppets themselves. The place had been Gwangalli in Busan. He could hardly leave that alone, so he had dealt with the puppet by remote, and before long the people had their minds back whole.

One thing more.

The gas-mask puppets shared a single trait. From them he had felt no breath at all, and no pulse. Even so, they were fundamentally different from zombies. Their flesh wasn't rotting, and unlike the zombies, every one of them level 1, the puppets were all level 10 or higher.

And the second thing I learned...

The gas-mask puppets were not living beings. Perhaps because they were treated, quite literally, as objects, they didn't appear on the map—not as red marks, and not as blue dots either. For Hanseong, who had depended on that map all this time, it was a fatal gap. That was why a full night of searching had produced nothing he could use.

Best to send Phantom, or ask the ones who can actually search in person for help.

The first person who came to mind was the pigeon trainer of the Daejeon Vigilante Group. She could share her sight with the pigeons she had tamed. With that, they could hunt down the gas-mask puppets far more efficiently. He was just thinking he ought to ask for her cooperation when a familiar whisper reached him.

It was Jihye.

"Yeah. What's going on?"

Good timing. He had been meaning to explain the puppeteer to her anyway.

"Sure. I'll be waiting."

The brisk reply ended, and before long Jihye arrived at the base. Hanseong shared his blood with her and, while he did, told her everything that had happened the day before. When the whole account was finished, she spoke.

"I see. A puppeteer..."

Jihye turned the word over again and again, her face unusually grave. Then she looked back at Hanseong as if something forgotten had just returned to her.

"Oh, right. Now that I think of it, I heard something a little strange from my uncle last time."

"Strange how?"

"He said someone active on the Information Strategy Board under the name Puppet Master suddenly posted a weird inquiry."

Puppet Master. An alias the puppeteer used. Hanseong asked at once.

"What did it say?"

"It was asking about the Suwon Provisional Government's range of activity. Taking Sejong as the line, did we mean to operate to the south as well?"

The moment she finished, yesterday in northern Daejeon came back to him.

What the woman-shaped puppet had said while looking at Phantom. He hadn't understood it then. So that was what she had meant.

"So what did you tell them?"

"We ignored it. And I told the Special Mission Battalion and everyone else not to answer, either."

Good. No need to hand information over on purpose. Hanseong nodded, satisfied, and Jihye spoke again, careful this time.

"What are you planning to do now?"

"Hmm. Well..."

He had meant to return to Japan once his business here was finished, but he had changed his mind. The puppeteer had turned out to be a more dangerous existence than he had thought. So he would deal with her first. When he said as much, Jihye nodded as if she understood.

"Should we look, too?"

"Look? How?"

"Some new members just joined who have detection skills. If you want, we'll search for where the puppeteer is."

"Yeah. I'm counting on you."

"Yes! I'll contact them right away."

Jihye took out her smartphone and began a call with someone. Left alone, Hanseong turned his eyes back to the map, ready to resume the search for the puppeteer.

That was when it happened.

Brrrr!

His smartphone rang. Who? He had given Yuna a phone yesterday, so was it Yuna? Hanseong pressed the call button. The voice that came through was not the one he expected.