The Substitute Doll

A full fifteen days had passed since I began crafting the Substitute Doll. My position in the dismantling yard had subtly shifted. I was still the lowest grunt tasked with cleaning out the filthiest entrails and blood, but Grum and the other workers no longer treated me like some disposable outsider who’d keel over any second.

The brutal labor combined with the nightly tattoo rituals had pushed my base strength and stamina stats past 15. I could now silently handle the workload of two grown men without a single complaint. That was why.

“Hey, Mokwon! Those mercenary bastards dragged back some nasty shit from the northern swamps today. The stench is fucking awful. Go prep it before we start dismantling!”

At Grum’s shout, I gave a silent nod and headed to the back yard. Sprawled across the cart was a massive ‘Decayed Swamp Lizard’ easily over two meters long. Viscous, toxin-laced mucus oozed between its dull greenish-brown scales, and the overwhelming stench made the regular workers gag and avoid the area entirely.

But to my eyes, that grotesque corpse shone brighter than any gold ingot.

The venom sac, the spine, and the heart-blood saturated with the swamp’s toxins.

I slipped on thick leather gloves and expertly sliced open the lizard’s belly. A wave of poisonous gas rushed out, stinging my eyes and nasal membranes, but I didn’t shed a single tear. With practiced care, I extracted the freshest and most potent byproducts, slipping them into the leather pouch at my waist.

These high-grade venomous catalysts would bring growth far beyond the crude proficiency I’d been grinding with rats.

Late that night, after finishing all my tasks, I clutched the now-heavy leather pouch and headed back to the slums. My steps were quicker than usual. I wanted to return to my shack immediately and grind the swamp lizard’s bones to build the frame for my Substitute Doll.

But just as I turned into a narrow alley in the stench-filled slums, a voice called out.

“Hey, you. Stop right there.”

From the shadows, three ragged figures crawled out from behind a pile of garbage. Their ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠clothes were filthy rags, but the sharp metal pipes and clubs in their hands radiated clear murderous intent.

I stopped and scanned them with dry eyes. My vision, long accustomed to darkness, revealed the pathetic state of people who had once lived in civilized society. The salaryman who had smiled warmly and suggested we team up back in the clearing now glared at me with one swollen-shut eye and nothing but venom left in the other.

“You’re… that crazy bastard who abandoned us and ran, right?”

“……”

“I see you walking through this alley every day to the commercial district. Must be doing corpse cleanup or something. You’ve probably saved up quite a few fairy tales by now, huh?”

The two other Earth men beside him swallowed hard like starving beasts. They were the losers who had fled after watching half their party get torn apart by monsters during the swamp quest. Unable to even think about challenging the natives or stronger otherworlders, they had decided to prey on someone who looked just as weak as them—a fellow countryman.

“Do you know how many days we’ve gone without eating? Huh?! You’re a fucking Korean, yet you’re the only one stuffing your face every day? Hand over all your money and bread. If you don’t, we’ll break your legs and leave you a cripple.”

Murder was impossible inside the village. But beating someone half to death was perfectly allowed. They had learned the village rules in the most cowardly way possible.

The man in the suit tapped his metal pipe and closed the distance. Three against one. A shallow calculation that numbers would win against three guys with all stats at 10.

I silently set the leather pouch I’d been carrying down on the ground. Then I slowly rolled up my sleeves and spoke in a flat voice.

“Delisted trash stocks that don’t even know their place, daring to come at me.”

“What? This bastard’s lost his—!”

Tattoo.

The moment my low, dry voice echoed through the alley, the grotesque occult patterns engraved on both forearms and thighs with monster blood and bone began writhing hideously, emitting a blood-red glow.

Sssssss—!

“Ugh…!”

A searing pain like my muscles were being torn apart surged through me as my body’s limits were forcibly expanded. My strength and agility stats temporarily broke past 20, and the explosive power of a wild beast burned hot through my veins.

“W-what the hell is that?! Magic… ugh?!”

The man who had been about to charge first froze in confusion. In that instant, I kicked off the ground.

I closed in on the man holding the metal pipe, driving my full weight into a perfectly angled right heel strike against his knee joint—just like the motion I used to snap beast bones in the yard.

Crack—!

“Aaaaaaaaagh—!”

With a horrific sound of his kneecap snapping completely backward, the man foamed at the mouth and collapsed. Dark red blood gushed from his leg, pooling on the muddy ground.

The remaining two men staggered backward in terror. Their faces were twisted with the pathetic despair of those who had been culled without even being able to awaken their otherworldly powers.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

“S-spare us! We were just hungry…!”

I didn’t answer. Instead, I pulled out a sharp rat bone fragment I had pre-sharpened—a catalyst tool prepared for basic sorcery. I soaked the tip thoroughly in the blood spurting from the suited man’s shattered knee as he writhed on the ground.

The bone fragment stained with my fellow countryman’s blood emitted an unpleasant vibration of mana in my palm.

I aimed the blood-soaked fragment at the two men and activated the skill without hesitation.

The blood on the bone fragment and my mana tangled together in a vicious chain of causality, exploding into a sinister curse.

An invisible, insidious wave swept through the alley. The two men who had turned to flee convulsed and collapsed.

“Aaaagh! My eyes! There are bugs… bugs in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠my eyes…!”

“My head feels like it’s going to split… ugh!”

It was nothing more than simple phantom pain and nerve interference. A weak sorcery at skill level 2. But it was more than enough to shatter the fragile minds of men already suffering from extreme fatigue and starvation.

Overcome by severe dizziness and hallucinations, the two men rolled on the ground, vomiting violently.

I slowly approached and roughly grabbed the suited man by the hair as he tried to crawl away.

“Listen. A few days ago on the main road, I saw one of the women from your group getting fucked by a back-alley mercenary for fifty fairy tales.”

“Hiiik…! S-spare me…”

“Goodwill and solidarity? Common sense from modern society? If you have the luxury to spout such well-fed nonsense, prove the value of your own body first. If you loiter in front of me one more time, I’ll drag you outside the village boundary and grind your blood and bones alive into materials for my sorcery.”

I slammed the man’s face into the mud, then picked up the leather pouch I had set down earlier.

In the alley where only screams and groans remained, the burning pain from the tattoos that had gripped me gradually subsided, replaced by crushing fatigue. Yet a cold smile curved at the corner of my mouth.

The notification windows filled my vision with red. The wall of proficiency that had refused to budge no matter how many thousands of rats I slaughtered had finally crumbled.

Why did the proficiency suddenly rise? Perhaps using the blood of intelligent beings filled with malice and reason as a sorcery catalyst—rather than the blood of mere rats—was the driving force that shattered the wall.

If my guess was correct, it meant Primal Magic reacted strongly not just to taking life, but to the intellectual and emotional density of the target.

I gave the unconscious men one last cold glance before walking off into the darkness.

At last, the door to the most perfect insurance for my survival had opened.

In the slum shack with night fully settled, I locked the door tightly and carefully laid out the swamp lizard byproducts I had smuggled from the yard.

The sticky heart-blood saturated with venom, and the finely ground powder from the lizard’s spine.

I drew the dagger from my chest and cut off a neat handful of my own hair. I mixed the hair with the bone powder and began kneading it together using the lizard’s blood as a binder.

Every time the lizard’s toxic blood touched my bare hands, the acidic burn ate into my skin and released acrid smoke. My brow furrowed at the pain of peeling flesh, but in the face of my ferocious will to survive, it was nothing more than a fleeting sacrifice I had to endure.

Finally, in my hands was a crudely shaped, palm-sized blood-red doll in human form.

This was the essence of Primal Magic and the Substitute Doll that would guarantee my survival.

I picked up the dagger beside me. Without hesitation, I slashed deeply across the back of my left hand.

“……!”

But there was no pain. I felt no sensation of skin tearing, and not a single drop of red blood welled up.

Instead, the back of the left hand on the blood-red doll resting on my knee split open with a sharp crack, oozing the murky blood of a beast.

The reversal of causality. The physical damage dealt to my body had been perfectly absorbed by the Substitute Doll.

I grinned like a beast, the corners of my mouth curling upward.

This time, I focused my mind on the venomous monster tattoo engraved on my chest and forcibly activated the skill. Normally, a horrific rebound should have crushed my heart and burned my veins with poison, but the pain felt faint, as if filtered through a thin membrane.

Instead, from the doll’s torso came a grotesque sizzling sound. Black smoke rose as fine cracks began to spread across its surface. Through those fissures, an eerie chill flowed out—like countless vengeful spirits glaring at me with resentment, ready to tear me apart at any moment.

This is the limit.

I instinctively realized the doll was overloaded and immediately stopped the tattoo’s activation. There was a clear ceiling to how much fatal physical trauma or tattoo backlash it could endure.

A doll made from the blood and bones of a single lizard could probably block one potentially fatal wound that would have taken my head, or endure the tattoo’s side effects in my place for at most ten minutes.

If I exceeded that limit and the doll shattered?

The vengeful chill and suppressed horrific damage pouring from those cracks would surge back into me, the main body, and burst my heart in an instant.

But ten minutes was enough.

I carefully tucked the Substitute Doll—now covered in hairline fractures like a spiderweb—deep into my chest pocket and closed my bloodshot eyes.

Outside the shack, the night air of Shedborax filled with the howls of beasts felt colder and clearer against my skin than ever before.