#780

Epilogue – Boy (6)

"Ah…"

…Right, he remembered.

Who the old man standing before him was.

It was Valeri, the head of the Valeri family.

After staring at him for a while, he finally recalled. Among the many warlocks Puppet had encountered over the centuries, Valeri was one of the most common types.

A warlock who clung to power and wealth due to a troubled upbringing but lacked the necessary skill and talent.

That’s why Puppet only remembered him after taking a long look.

Well, it couldn’t be helped. Puppet, having lived for centuries, had met far too many people. Consequently, he categorized them based on personal evaluation: those worth remembering, those who could be forgotten for a while, and those to be erased from memory entirely.

Valeri fell into the second category—someone who could be forgotten for a while. Someone Puppet would help a little and forget, only to remember when necessary.

But Valeri had changed quite a bit from the person Puppet remembered.

It had been decades since they last met in person, but it wasn’t just a matter of aging.

He was…

Psshhk-!

…in a state where parts of his body had been replaced with magitech devices.

One glance at the steel-replaced lower jaw, the right eye embedded with a crystal orb, the mechanical right arm and chest adorned with gears, pipes, and brass plating made it clear.

Psshhk-!

Seeing the magical steam spurting from the pipe on Valeri's back, Puppet unconsciously muttered,

"…The Craftsmen's Guild?"

"Oh?"

Valeri, who had been observing Puppet as if studying him, reacted with a gasp.

"You recognized whose work this is?"

Valeri, who had replaced parts of his body with magitech equipment, pointed to his own body and asked.

Puppet, realizing his slip, clamped his mouth shut.

Thwack!

A sharp pain exploded on one side of his face, making his vision flash.

His head jerked, and a ringing sound echoed in one ear.

It was the warlock standing next to Puppet who had punched him.

“Urgh…”

Having never felt pain like this since becoming human, Puppet let out a sound as if air was escaping from his lungs.

The warlock who hit Puppet raised his fist to strike again.

“Stop.”

At that moment, Valeri caught his disciple with his mechanical arm and halted him.

"He’s more promising than the other materials. Refrain from unnecessary violence."

Despite the ringing in his ears, Puppet clearly heard those words. Perhaps it was because he had once said something similar.

Every century, Puppet would sponsor a new warlock family, shaping the soil of this place to suit his preferences and teaching them the necessary business know-how and philosophy.

The core of his teachings was efficiency.

Black magic was a costly discipline—dealing with emotions, life force, and corpses—and thus required emotionless management of resources.

Sympathy toward resources (humans) and unnecessary violence were among the things to be eliminated.

Harming captured materials out of irritation only resulted in one's own loss.

And now, that teaching had, after a long time, saved Puppet once.

"Heh heh heh…"

Though he couldn’t explain it precisely, a laugh escaped Puppet’s lips.

What could he say? It felt like a bad joke. Everything about this situation.

As if someone had orchestrated it just to mess with him.

The warlock nearby noticed Puppet’s laughter.

"You bastard…"

"Enough."

Just as another punch was about to fly, Valeri stopped it once again. His demeanor was so gentle it almost seemed kind. Puppet realized that this, too, was just another method of handling "materials."

A technique where disciples intimidate the materials, and the master shows kindness to elicit voluntary cooperation from them. It was a process essential for extracting high-quality emotions or performing special refinements—or when trying to gather information.

“Please, spare me.”

With a face where the remnants of his earlier laughter had not entirely faded, Puppet begged Valeri for his life. He pleaded to be spared.

Just half a day ago, he had thought he didn’t care if he died. But now that he was here, his mind had changed. It wasn’t because of his goal to resurrect his grandfather.

He simply didn’t want to die.

He didn’t want to experience pain.

Whether it was due to the lingering pain from the punch earlier, or because of the chunks of meat hanging around and the corpses forcibly fused with machinery, he suddenly felt a strong desire not to die.

Thump! Thump! Thump!

Just like the heart beating uncontrollably against his will, Puppet simply wanted to live.

Perhaps his laughter was a result of that.

Though he had previously thought the sight of countless test subjects pitifully begging for their lives despite having no chance of survival was pathetic, now he found himself in that exact position.

Even after living for centuries, he was experiencing something entirely new in this way.

It was hard to put into words, but the situation was both terrifying and absurdly funny.

‘Could this be the punishment he spoke of? …Not a big deal after all.’

Despite feeling pain, fear, and humiliation, Puppet thought it was nothing significant.

It had been a long time since he’d experienced such pain and humiliation, but it wasn’t something entirely unfamiliar.

In the early days, when he first began using the name Puppet after losing his grandfather and truly being left alone, he had gone through countless similar experiences.

This was nothing. Really, it was nothing.

“You’re not ordinary, as I’ve heard. Laughing even in a situation like this.”

“As you’ve heard?”

Puppet’s question prompted Valeri’s disciple, the warlock, to raise his fist once more. But Valeri stopped him and continued the conversation.

“Yes, they said you laughed.”

Puppet understood what Valeri was referring to.

It was when he had been dragged out of the ice cave by Oliver’s hand.

At that time, Puppet had become human, and he had encountered the Valeri family, who happened to be pillaging nearby, and was subsequently captured.

“At first, I thought you were just a lunatic, but then it started seeming like something else.”

Click. Click.

Valeri moved his mechanical arm.

“They said that when you woke up in prison, unlike the others, you didn’t cry or scream. You just stayed quiet.”

Though Valeri had never personally been to the prison, he knew everything about Puppet.

Had Rasmussen betrayed him after all? Or had it been part of the plan from the beginning?

“So, you caught my interest. Given the current state of affairs.”

The current state of affairs?

Puppet didn’t understand what Valeri meant and stared at him in confusion. Valeri, noticing this, asked,

“You don’t know about the current situation?”

“All the Fingers are dead.”

Puppet instinctively responded. Valeri and the surrounding warlocks raised their eyebrows in surprise.

“Well, you’re definitely not an ordinary kid. But it looks like you don’t know about this? That Sleeping Beauty has come out of the forest?”

Valeri explained. The princess, who had been sleeping in the forest for centuries, had come out and attacked numerous warlocks.

With the disappearance of major figures like the Fingers and the Holy Order, countless minor warlocks had run rampant. But then she appeared, accompanied by numerous creatures, subduing and forcing them into submission—or outright killing them.

It wasn’t the first time Puppet had heard this story, but at the time, Puppet had been entirely focused on bringing about the apocalypse and stealing the power of the god, so he hadn’t paid attention to such stories.

That’s why Valeri’s explanation was quite helpful.

According to him, she had not only dealt with warlocks in the central continent but had also come to the Land of Winter, where she crushed the Chapskaya family, the Kopskaya family, and the Balishah family.

“That’s how I managed to devour almost everything.”

Puppet finally understood how the Valeri family had learned the Corpse doll technique.

When the Sleeping Beauty swept through the surrounding areas, the Valeri family hid and then scavenged the remnants like stray dogs.

Not that he blamed them for it.

Black magic, by nature, was that kind of field. Valeri was simply behaving like a proper warlock.

However, what bothered him was something else.

“Did the Craftsmen’s Guild also get destroyed?”

Puppet asked as he observed the magitech equipment scattered throughout the workshop and the corpses fused with magitech devices.

The Craftsmen’s Guild was a group specializing in magitech equipment, located near the Land of Winter. A portion of them had been…

“Craftsmen’s Guild under the immortal Puppet?”

They had been under Puppet’s control. The presence of corpses excessively fused with magitech devices was evidence of this, as only the magitech craftsmen working under Puppet had conducted such research.

“Huh…”

Valeri’s eyes gleamed.

It was the look of someone realizing that a stone they had picked up was actually a jewel.

“How do you know that? The fact that part of the Craftsmen’s Guild in the Land of Winter allied with Puppet is only known to a select few.”

“I don’t know.”

Crunch!

Valeri’s mechanical arm extended and grabbed Puppet’s neck, squeezing tightly.

As the hard brass fingers pressed into his soft flesh, Puppet’s airway was completely blocked, causing him extreme pain.

“Grrk…! Guh…!!”

For the first time in his life, Puppet experienced what it felt like to be suffocated. He thrashed his body, but being tied to the bed, all he could do was squirm like a helpless larva.

Just like the test subjects who had died in Puppet’s lab in the past.

The only difference between Puppet and those test subjects was one thing.

“I… Guh… I don’t know…”

He could think.

“…”

Valeri stared at Puppet, who continued to insist that he didn’t know, without retracting his statement.

Sometimes, even absurd claims could sound plausible—especially if they came from someone who seemed like they might offer something valuable.

Just like Puppet now.

“Hah…”

In the end, Valeri released Puppet’s neck.

“You really don’t know?”

“…Yes. I just know.”

“What were you doing in the place where you got captured?”

“I don’t know. I was just there.”

Puppet continued to feign ignorance.

He couldn’t reveal that he was Puppet, nor could he come up with a plausible lie.

So the safest option was to pretend he knew nothing at all, making it seem as if he were some random bystander who had stumbled into this chaotic situation.

Like a pumpkin that had rolled into the right place during troubled times.

Among warlocks, there were occasionally those who believed in such coincidences—who thought they were special and that some unexpected stroke of luck would bring them a great opportunity.

And it wasn’t just warlocks. Wizards, Paladins, mana users—anyone capable of becoming a superhuman often shared this kind of delusion.

A sort of mental illness where they believed that being a little stronger or possessing some unique power made them truly special.

Having encountered countless such people over the centuries, Puppet exploited that belief to manipulate them. This time was no different.

“Couldn’t he be the living encyclopedia that Puppet’s side was researching?”

“The one where they erase memories and implant only the necessary information in the mind?”

“Yes, I heard that the warlocks under Puppet stationed here were conducting such research.”

When Puppet threw out the bait, they began to construct a plausible hypothesis on their own.

It was based on a former disciple’s idea to turn humans into a source of information, like a world tree—an idea that had been discarded due to issues with capacity and practicality. A trash concept that Puppet had rejected long ago.

Now, the Valeri family speculated that Puppet might be one of the experimental subjects from that abandoned research.

With the current turbulent situation, their inflated egos, and the fact that a mysterious boy (Puppet) was in their hands, they gradually started to believe their delusional hypothesis to be true.

‘This might actually…’

…be a way out.

Though he might still end up chained and drained to the marrow, for now, it seemed he could survive—unlike the people hanging like slabs of meat in that butcher’s shop.

For now, that was enough.

“What’s your name?”

Valeri asked for Puppet’s name.

A good sign.

But Puppet didn’t act hastily.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t even know your own name… Then, what do you know? Think carefully before you answer. If you don’t want to end up like the other materials.”

Other materials.

Puppet hesitated.

Right, there were other kids who had been captured. The ones who had escaped with him.

He didn’t know why, but he suddenly felt curious.

What had happened to them—

“What happened to them?”

Valeri, noticing the change in Puppet’s reaction, opened his mechanical hand and projected a magical image. It showed the escaped children being dismembered alive and processed into products.

[………………!!!]
 [──!────!!!────!!──]
 [……?!! …! ────!!!]

There were faces Puppet recognized. No, he recognized all of them.

The only one whose name he knew was Leboski, but since they had all been imprisoned together for so long, he couldn’t help but know their faces.

Those children were now being processed into products. Their blood was being drained, their stomachs cut open, and their organs, including their eyes, were being extracted and packaged—by the very system Puppet had created.

‘Well… it can’t be helped, I guess.’

Puppet muttered inwardly with indifference.

It was an outcome he had already anticipated.

He didn’t suddenly feel guilt or regret—such soft emotions didn’t arise.

It would have been ridiculous to feel them now.

Still.

It was just.

Simply.

“Was it Rasmussen?”

He wanted to confirm it.

He just wanted to know who had betrayed them and revealed their escape.

He couldn’t explain why his heart pounded irregularly, but he felt compelled to find out who had betrayed them before dawn.

Ah, yes. Puppet was a warlock. He had a duty to identify the betrayer.

Yes, that was all it was.

“Hah… You really are just a kid. Do you think we acted because someone ratted you out?”

Puppet frowned at Valeri’s incomprehensible words, but soon he understood.

It was a method sometimes used when employing the “bad guard, good prisoner” strategy. Though optional, some families with resources added surveillance black magic items to prevent unexpected incidents.

The method was costly, requiring the production of the items and personnel to monitor them, so only wealthy families could afford it. Given the Valeri family’s status, it was plausible.

In other words, there had been no betrayer from the beginning.

“Here.”

Valeri manipulated his mechanical hand and projected a new image.

It showed Rasmussen.

More precisely, it was Rasmussen’s corpse—his heart had been extracted, and a magical power engine had been implanted in its place.

Replacing organs with magitech devices was still in its early stages, with a near-zero success rate, especially when performed on an elderly person like Rasmussen.

Rasmussen, who had belatedly tried to protect his conscience, had ended up as a corpse due to that experiment.

He hadn’t even realized he was under surveillance. Like a fool.

“…”

“It was a bit surprising. I thought he was testing you in advance, but…”

“…”

“Who would’ve thought he’d be the one to betray us first… What a ridiculous man.”

“…”

“He even acted like a good prisoner, hoping to survive after his grandson died, only to end up like this.”

“...He had a grandson?”

“Yes, he did. About your age… Not bad. We happen to need specimens around that age.”

“Hah…”

Puppet suddenly let out a sigh. A shallow yet deep, paradoxical sigh.

The warlocks stared at Puppet, puzzled by his sudden behavior, while he muttered quietly.

“This feels disgusting. Showing someone like me at a time like this…”

A disdainful comment that made it clear who he was referring to.

The warlocks’ foreheads twitched with veins of anger, but Puppet didn’t care. He continued staring at the ceiling, muttering,

“Is this punishment? Don’t make me laugh.”