Chapter 765: Black Butterfly (3)
Skreeeek– the blade scraped across a palm that had hardened into something nearly metallic. No answer came. The Puppeteer’s feet slid back inch by inch.
Even as a transcendent, he was currently bound to the limits of this world. Han Yujin had given him a link, which let him slip in more smoothly, one step ahead of the other invaders, but his power was still suppressed like theirs.
The difference was that he had arrived first and stayed.
That meant his skills had already finished adapting to the system.
The Puppeteer’s eyes flashed gold. At the same time, the palm gripping the sword compressed a violent current and detonated it.
KWAANG!
The blast hurled both the Puppeteer and the sword’s owner in opposite directions. Seong Hyunjae, who had fallen back, watched as the Puppeteer skidded toward him across the ground.
“You look familiar.”
“He belongs to my kid.”
The golden eyes changed again. This time even the shape of the pupils narrowed.
The Puppeteer.
True to his name, he had the power to make contracts with others and control them.
And at the same time—
“I’m a puppet too.”
He could control himself as well.
Better than he could control anyone else.
Not just his movements, but his body and abilities could be rewritten. That was why he could force into himself the traits and powers of those he had contracted with and wield them as his own.
It was a trait of a being born not from a fixed species, but from a doppelganger puppet capable of becoming any race at all.
“Get Eclipse and get clear!”
The Puppeteer’s body blurred. He shifted forms, taking on the race he had encountered in another world, something akin to a goblin. His figure vanished, then reappeared behind the butterfly swarm.
Spatial movement.
Unlike teleportation, it was almost impossible to track or predict.
Sssrr—
A dozen strands danced from the Puppeteer’s fingertips. Piercing through the butterflies, they shot at the man’s black-clad back all at once. There was no time for him to turn.
Tang, tararang!
The threads struck a shield that had snapped open around him.
“I didn’t win my transcendent status at the gambling table.”
The attack had been blocked, but the Puppeteer didn’t care. He refined his control over the threads even further. A shield was still just a knot of magic, of mana. Like any other skill, it wasn’t impossible to slip through the seams.
And in the end, the threads did pass through the transparent barrier and snake toward the Gardener’s servant.
Instead of dodging, the servant let fire rise.
The threads were thin, but impossibly tough and tenacious. They had powerful resistance to every attribute. Once they bound you, getting free was no easy feat. Even flames far stronger than average should have been unable to burn or melt them.
Thud. Thud.
Black fire battered the shield.
But the shield held the mana of the fire’s owner. The flames could do nothing to it. Trapped inside, they circled and coiled, turning back on themselves, devouring each other, growing hotter and denser. Between the butterflies, a dark oval sphere began to form, so black it resembled a black hole swallowing even light.
Tuduk—
Every thread that had penetrated the shield snapped at once.
They had not endured the condensed blaze. They had melted completely.
With a rush, the shield dropped, and the imprisoned fire exploded outward. Behind it, cloth stirred, untouched, not even singed. The hand holding the sword looked strangely pale.
“…I figured the Gardener would’ve sharpened his blade well.”
The Puppeteer’s brow furrowed slightly.
A servant this strong had been unexpected.
“Keeping my kid safe is not making this easy.”
There was only one person he truly wanted to protect.
Butterflies scattered. Fire danced across them.
Sigma was a being fixed in time.
Time passed, but Sigma could not change. The moment his existence had been established lay in the future, and until he reached that day, he remained exactly as he had begun. A year, ten years, a hundred years, time merely brushed past him. He could learn something new, only to revert to what he had been. He might master cooking one day, then wake the next and fumble like a beginner again. Even if he gained a new skill, it would vanish without a trace soon after.
His stats never changed either.
Even while the puppet at his side grew, moved on its own, and eventually rose to the level of a transcendent, Sigma never surpassed SS-rank.
That was why, before the Puppeteer gained power, their lives had been one long string of danger. There had been moments of peace, but the scouts never stopped hunting them.
Because they were beings displaced from time, even Crescent Moon and the scouts beneath her could not fully perceive them. Still, since Sigma was fated to be managed by the scouts and captured by Crescent Moon, whenever they came into view, they were naturally attacked.
“God, I’m sick of butterflies!”
The Puppeteer’s eyes turned pure white. Bitter cold whirled out around him. Several butterflies flying nearby froze solid in an instant and shattered into pieces. Black and white powder drifted through the air.
What had come for the two of them, as they kept running, was a white butterfly.
The White Bird had to stop Crescent Moon from taking Seong Hyunjae in order to protect the source. And the Gardener, supposedly, had helped her do it. The enemy of an enemy could be an ally. So the prince trapped forever in childhood and the immature puppet who had only just begun to see the world took the Gardener’s hand.
The garden had been vast, like someone had cut away a corner of the world and set it aside.
Safe. Peaceful.
‘Because you must never fall into Crescent Moon’s hands.’
It was a convincing reason.
Protection, until the puppet gained the power to guard its master.
It had not been free.
‘In return, one thing I want.’
They were to actively help the Gardener obtain whatever it was he desired. If they refused, or if their effort lacked sincerity, they would pay with what they treasured most.
The two of them had read the contract carefully. They added clauses: their lack of strength would not be blamed, they would not be required to risk their lives, and so on. Neither Sigma nor the Puppeteer belonged to any one world, which meant they could enter any world at all, even after the Puppeteer had become a transcendent. That, they had assumed, was why the Gardener wanted their help. It didn’t matter what happened to anything else. If they did what the Gardener wanted, that would be enough.
But what the Gardener truly wanted was—
‘Little Moon.’
Sigma’s past, and Sigma’s future.
The original self connected to him.
Once the Puppeteer became a transcendent, he realized it and left the garden.
But he could not escape the contract.
If Little Moon, Seong Hyunjae, fell into the Gardener’s hands, Sigma, who was linked to him, would meet the same fate. If the Puppeteer refused to cooperate, then he would have to hand over the one being most precious to him: Sigma.
Either way, the end was the same.
It was a trap with no way out.
At last, twisted time clicked into place, and Sigma fell asleep. The Puppeteer hid him away. Thankfully, even the transcendent contract could not reveal Sigma’s location. His sleep was meant to keep him from overlapping with his identical existence, which made it almost the same as vanishing from reality altogether.
So long as Seong Hyunjae did not die and awaken Sigma.
“Just asking.”
Whirl!
The threads, twisted together into thick cords, slammed hard against the sword. Craaang, craaang! Every time the two clashed, everything around them shook violently. The aftershock alone split the scorched earth in long cracks and sent ash and sparks flying.
“There aren’t any other servants, right?”
While pretending to help the Gardener, the Puppeteer had really been stalling for time. He had delivered the soil to Hwang Rim in the Gardener’s place and protected him. At the same time, he had whispered a new offer into Hwang Rim’s ear. Then the situation had changed all at once, and the dream world had been created.
It was an opportunity.
A transcendent could usually send only one servant into another world, two at most. In truth, that meant there was really only one chance. One powerful servant was more useful than two mediocre ones. Sending more than that meant accepting a crippling loss of power.
Protect Seong Hyunjae from dying, then betray the Gardener.
The penalty for breaking the contract would come. Unable to find the hidden Sigma, the Gardener would send a servant into the dream world to target Seong Hyunjae. Seong Hyunjae himself was the bait. Among all the invading servants, the one who came for Seong Hyunjae’s life outright, without negotiation, would be the Gardener’s.
“It was so obvious I didn’t need to look long.”
The butterflies.
One of the Gardener’s preferred forms.
The Puppeteer flicked a glance toward Seong Hyunjae. He had already pulled back outside the range of the battle with Song Taewon in tow. Before something went wrong, the Puppeteer had to bring Sigma here. Sigma had to be recognized as an independent being and take root in Han Yujin’s world. Once that happened, whatever became of Seong Hyunjae, whether he fell into Crescent Moon’s hands, the Gardener’s hands, or collapsed entirely, would have nothing to do with the Puppeteer anymore.
‘As long as I neutralize the Gardener’s servant.’
Then Sigma’s independence could begin safely within the dream world.
The preparations were already complete.
Sssizzle!
Ice melted and turned to steam. The other servant that had stubbornly held out on one side, the great swamp, had now been reduced to nothing more than a small puddle. The Puppeteer clicked his tongue inwardly.
‘Something’s off.’
The Gardener had no connection to this world whatsoever. Naturally, his servant shouldn’t either. And yet the man in front of him had started wielding overwhelming power the moment he stepped into the dream world, as if he needed no adjustment period at all.
“You… were you from this world?”
The Puppeteer’s eyes changed again, one black-red, the other white. Mismatched eyes drew on two powers at once. Cold blasted outward, driving back the fire curling toward him. Scales from a race that drank lava rose over the backs of his hands. Claws sharp as blades tore through the black fire, weakened by cold, and met the sword head-on.
“And one who only became a servant recently.”
If the Gardener had someone like this, there would have been no need to put forward Hwang Rim, whose hold was weak because he had only scattered seeds. He could have spirited Seong Hyunjae away long ago.
Black fire.
Awakened people who wielded fire were common enough. Across multiple worlds, there would be plenty who could use black flames too.
But in Han Yujin’s world—
“There should’ve only been one.”
Now those black flames carried a trace of blue.
But there was no way that fire should have appeared here as the Gardener’s servant.
The venomous black blaze raged. The Puppeteer barely managed to ignore it, protected by cold and lava-drinker scales with powerful fire resistance. But even in simple physical force, he was being pushed back.
It made no sense. A being with this level of stats should have had to be shaved down heavily to enter another world.
Thud!
The sword hammered against his scales and drove the Puppeteer back. He staggered for a split second, and in that instant the black shape before him vanished.
A chill ran over the top of his head.
Moving on instinct, the Puppeteer dropped low. The servant had already shot upward above him, stepping upside down off black butterflies as he swung his sword down.
He had no flight skill.
But using the butterflies as footholds, he moved more freely and more quickly than any flight skill, as if gravity itself had ceased to matter. Long hair whipped out in a sweeping arc. Scales erupted along the strands with a crackling sound, slicing through the air like blades. The tips of that hair grazed the black coat. For a moment the servant seemed to drop straight down, then he planted his fingertips on a butterfly and vaulted back up in front of the Puppeteer like an acrobat. Fire surged along that path with him, veiling everything from sight.
The Puppeteer retreated in a hurry. He kicked off empty air to evade the flames. Black fire already filled the battlefield in every direction. Unless your fire resistance was high, getting close at all would have been impossible. Heat saturated the air above and below. Even breathing inside those flames was difficult. His body, once soaked through by rain, had long since been baked dry.
Every thread he had been using was gone.
The Puppeteer looked at the servant with a trace of disbelief.
The figure standing atop the butterflies had not wavered at all.
“You don’t even feel human.”
He was a puppet himself, but this one felt even less like a person.
Thinking back, he hadn’t heard a single rough breath. Maybe it had all been buried under the clash of weapons and the roar of fire, but still, the silence was wrong.
The Puppeteer’s eyes changed once more.
Black and gray.
He kicked off the air.
This time he moved even faster than the servant before him. A sword formed in his grip, and he plunged straight into the butterfly swarm.
Flutter!
The butterflies scattered all at once.
At the same time, the last remaining puddle vanished. The surrounding area had now been burned completely.
[Temporary damage nullification and recovery of injuries and mana after completely burning a set area]
The additional effect of Footsteps of Ash (SS) activated.
The servant did not dodge the Puppeteer’s strike. His arm moved with calm precision, and his sword rose. By the time the Puppeteer sensed something wrong, it was already too late.
Both swords drove into the other’s chest at the same time.
One stopped short with a blunt jerk, blocked by damage nullification.
The other—
Crunch—
pierced straight through.
The Puppeteer blinked.
No blood flowed.
Instead, he grabbed the servant’s arm.
Whoosh.
He teleported.
They reappeared above a chaotic spread of threads laid out across the scorched earth and hidden by it. The trap he had prepared in advance activated. The servant threw the Puppeteer off and tried to evade it, but he was already too late.
“You won’t be leaving this area for a while.”
It hadn’t gone according to plan. He had failed to destroy him. But binding him here was enough.
The servant lowered his gaze.
Faint, glowing lines of thread crisscrossed below.
Could he burn them away?
Fire that consumed all things.
His head lifted again.
Beyond the black flames, someone was looking at him.
Han Yuhyun looked at Han Yuhyun.
–TL Notes–
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