Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

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Chapter 81: Three Little Buns

Tass beat his wings in terror, but he couldn’t fly even after trying for ages. His exquisite wings had transformed into rough cloth pieces stuffed with a thin layer of cotton, the stitches sparse and clumsy.

Then he immediately confirmed it by raising his little burlap hands, which had no fingers. Judging by his movements, he seemed to be casting a spell. In the end, he plopped down on the ground. “I can’t use magic anymore!”

Myss bent down and picked up the dejected Dragon Fae.

The Tass doll felt soft and fluffy. His limbs and body were all round and plump. Cotton and scraps of cloth had puffed out his “body” by a whole circle, and the slender elegance unique to Dragon Fae had vanished completely.

Myss gave him a couple of amazed squeezes; the doll’s body was indeed filled with cotton. The only hard things left on Tass were his eyes, which were made of emerald buttons.

“Wow… Wow, it actually doesn’t hurt.”

Tass’s mouth, sewn from red cloth, opened and closed, making him look exactly like a hand puppet. “So this is the United Library’s ‘that’? A curse that turns people into dolls?”

Despite everything, the Dragon Fae was an assassin by trade after all, so he didn’t panic for long. He twisted his soft, floppy body, cooperatively analyzing their current predicament.

Myss blinked, confidently dilated his pupils, and searched for the core of this “transformation magic.” Immediately, another chill crawled up his back. There were no traces of magic on this doll.

If it weren’t hopping, jumping, and speaking in Tass’s voice, Myss would only have taken it for an ordinary doll.

A vague, unsettling premonition began to take shape in Myss’s mind. It was entirely possible they were already inside a Divine Realm.

If that was true, then this Divine Realm was eerily silent. Myss could neither see its core nor sense that special atmosphere. If such an absurd thing hadn’t happened, he probably still wouldn’t have noticed its existence.

A crack opened in that reassuring feeling, like being wrapped in a warm blanket, and a cold wind leaked in. Myss shrank slightly and tossed the Dragon Fae doll to Salaar.

Salaar understood and caught Tass, gently turning him over to examine him. “Father, we need to adjust the plan. Take Sir Tass and leave the United Library first to see what happens.”

Kalen: “You mean…”

“It feels a little like a Divine Realm phenomenon. We need to confirm whether there’s a boundary first,” Salaar said. “We…”

Pop.

Salaar’s figure vanished. The Tass doll let out a string of high-pitch squeals, “Ahh! Ahh! Ahh!”, as it tumbled and rolled across the ground. Another doll, a black-haired, blue-eyed doll, appeared out of thin air and landed as steadily as possible on one knee.

That pose would have looked rather handsome on a normal person, but when a doll did it, it was only comical. Unfortunately, before he could steady himself, Knife fell with a smack onto the Salaar doll and flattened him.

“Mr. Salaar?!” Father Kalen’s voice cracked a little.

Myss sucked in a cold breath. With lightning speed, he picked up the Salaar doll and pinched it between his fingers.

…It actually felt pretty nice.

The black hair was made from yarn dyed dark, ash-grey, and the eyes were gemstone buttons of the same type as Tass’s.

Tass’s emerald eyes were round and shiny, but Salaar’s lapis-lazuli buttons were flat ovals, somehow making him look a little gloomy. The doll’s clothes were also simplified versions of what they were wearing. Myss cheerfully stretched out his claws and went to strip off the Salaar doll’s clothes.

Salaar: “Wait a moment.”

“Tass has wings, so he’s hard to undress. This is rigorous research.” Myss vigorously kneaded the Salaar doll’s cheeks. He had a hard time saying whether he should be wary of the current situation or enjoy it. The Salaar doll was only about the size of a fist, and Myss could knead and rub him however he liked, which was truly a satisfying experience.

Salaar: “…”

Salaar: “Fine, I’ll undress myself.”

The Great Hero raised his fingerless soft cloth hands and slid them over the tiny buttons again and again. Under Myss’s mocking gaze, he failed to undo even half a button.

The Salaar doll sighed and resigned himself to lying flat in Myss’s palm, going still.

Myss curiously pulled open the doll’s crude coat, the shirt with only three buttons, and the pants with frayed cuffs.

The clothes weren’t sewn onto Salaar’s body. However, the body Salaar revealed was also nothing more than a pure human-shaped cloth piece. Myss poked his enemy’s roughly made cotton belly and suddenly realized that tonight, there would probably be no hero cushion to sleep on.

“Have you looked enough?” Salaar’s emotions were quite steady. “Help me put it back on, please. It’s a little cold like this.”

After saying that, he paused and looked at Myss with his large lapis-lazuli eyes. “Also, I can’t use healing magic… Be careful.”

“You two didn’t do anything special. This isn’t normal.”

Father Kalen picked up the Dragon Fae who had rolled far away and patted the dust off his cloth wings.

He looked deeply worried. “Sir Tass is a Dragon Fae, naturally prone to being affected. Mr. Salaar is human, so how did he become like this too?”

“I’m completely stumped,” Tass said dizzily.

“I’ve only been traveling with you guys for a short while, yet it’s been nothing by bizarre occurrences I’ve never heard of… It’s all a bit too thrilling…”

Myss had no interest in joining the conversation. But just now, he likewise hadn’t detected anything abnormal.

Now that “Kendrick Karns” was gone, their plan had to be adjusted again. They needed to think of a way to handle Cousin Mag…

Myss stuffed Salaar’s soft cloth arm back into the sleeve. He unhappily discovered that dressing a doll was much more troublesome than undressing one.

“Be gentler. You’re about to twist my arm all the way around,” the Salaar doll protested.

“It doesn’t hurt anyway,” Myss replied, casually tossing Knife onto him.

Knife curiously looked at the shrunken Salaar, using its tongue to curl over the doll’s face again and again.

“But it feels very strange, and it makes movement inconvenient.”

Salaar poked him with a soft hand and raised his round head. “How about this? Let’s go outside together first. Maybe the abnormality will wear off.”

“I agree!” Tass immediately cried.

For a Dragon Fae, being unable to fly was truly troublesome. Heaven knew how long it had been since he had properly walked.

“I have no objections,” Father Kalen said cautiously. “If leaving this place can free you from the abnormality, I can ask the magpies here, and we can all find another hiding place together.”

Myss shrugged, tacitly agreeing.

He took a small cloth pouch from his waist and fixed it to the belt across his chest. Then he stuffed Salaar and Knife inside. The Salaar doll twisted in the pouch for a moment, then poked his head out. “Let’s go.”

Myss puffed out his chest, held his head high, and took a confident stride forward—

Pop!

Myss: “?”

He discovered in terror that his body was falling. His body had become incredibly light. More accurately, it was as light as a cloth lump stuffed with cotton.

…What the hell? This damn place was completely unreasonable!

Myss landed on the floor in shock; the floor tiles looked dozens of times larger than he remembered. The Salaar doll, still wrapped inside the cloth pouch, failed to make a proper landing and smacked right onto his body.

Fortunately, Mr. Hero wriggled in time, and the two cotton lumps rolled aside, avoiding being hit by Fork and Knife immediately afterward.

“Wow.” Fork shook the tip of its tail, its snake eyes looking at Myss. “Want me to fetch you a tea towel?”

Myss subconsciously lowered his head. Then he tragically discovered that he was stark naked. With his magic ineffective, all that remained on his body was a bright pinkish-white.

He turned his head and saw smooth cotton thread dyed gray-white. Looking down again, there were two round, bulging rough-cloth paws, almost identical to Salaar’s.

Myss had just been about to get angry when something warm suddenly appeared over his back. He rubbed his head toward it, and the thing in front of his eyes was clearly Salaar’s coat.

Salaar’s navy coat was somewhat long, while a doll’s cotton limbs were too short. Once covered by this thing, Lord Archdemon looked much more respectable.

“Just in case, you should still wear it. Otherwise, if we suddenly recover, you’ll be running naked in front of everyone.”

Salaar waved his soft cloth hands, working hard to help Myss put the coat on.

Myss sniffed the coat. He was surprised to discover that although he had no nose, his sense of smell was still there. And that rough navy coat was indeed soaked with Salaar’s scent.

He grumbled twice and struggled to stuff his body into it.

Tass: “Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk.”

Seeing the huge human turn into a little thing about the same size as him, the Dragon Fae’s mood lifted quite considerably.

Kalen looked at the three palm-sized little dolls and fell into bewildered silence.

Apart from tragically losing his clothes, the Myss doll looked as if he had been made by the exact same pair of hands as the other two.

Only, the Myss doll’s hair used finer cotton thread with more luster, and his eyes were half-round garnet buttons, making him look somewhat furious.

…Is it my turn next? Father Kalen couldn’t help thinking.

His right hand unconsciously moved to his chest, and he prayed a couple of sentences to the Lord of Shadows.

The other three dolls clearly had similar thoughts. Three pairs of gemstone buttons stared straight at the priest. The clock pendulum swayed back and forth like a noose, but the moment of the priest’s transformation never arrived.

“There must be another reason.” The Salaar doll symbolically scratched his head. “Assuming it’s an indiscriminate change, there wouldn’t be so many people outside.”

“Also, Mag knows there’s a Dragon Fae in our team. If the environment were this terrible, she definitely would have told us in advance.”

“But do the three of us have anything in common?” the Myss doll asked suspiciously. “And it has to be something the priest doesn’t possess.”

A Chaos Archdemon, Saint Salaar, and a pure magical lifeform that only appeared after the Night Scourge. The commonalities among them could be counted on one hand.

“Let me think… Have you killed people?” the Salaar doll ventured a guess, taking the strictly factual approach.

Father Kalen was silent for a moment. “I have killed people before.”

“Could it be because the three of us all know magic?” Tass rubbed his chin. “No, that’s not right. That’s too broad. The humans outside must all be proficient in magic.”

“We all don’t have parents?” Myss pondered aloud.

Salaar, Tass, and Father Kalen: “…”

Salaar: “…Probably not. Father Kalen doesn’t either.”

Myss: “Oh.”

Father Kalen: “…………”

The three of them chattered and guessed for several minutes but truly couldn’t unearth any clues. Salaar habitually pressed his temple and almost pressed his head into a funnel shape.

To be honest, if Tass hadn’t been affected, he could have steered his guesses toward the body-swap ritual, or even that so-called “Child of Divine Blood.” Now, however, the change had come without any trace. They couldn’t even pull out a loose end for a clue.

Father Kalen uneasily waited for a long time. After discovering that he truly hadn’t changed, only then did he breathe a sigh of relief.

He looked around the room, grabbed the small bread basket, placed the three dolls that looked like little buns inside, and gently covered them with a bread cloth.

“May His Veil shroud you,” the priest prayed, his words fitting the occasion perfectly. “Let’s go. First, we’ll leave this place.”

He looped the basket over his arm. Just as his body turned toward the door, he heard a knock.

Knock, knock, knock.

“It’s me, Redding,” the young man who had led them here called. “There are some problems with the procedure. You need to come with me… Hello? Is anyone there?”

The priest opened the door a crack. “Now is not very convenient. Could you come back in ten minutes?”

Redding’s gaze immediately became wary. He raised his right hand, revealing the bracelet-style wand on his wrist. Along with several quick breaths, a large number of bubbles gurgled out from the crack in the door. They expanded larger and larger, pushing open the door without allowing any refusal.

The priest had wanted to stop him, but considering the “little round buns” on his arm, he could only retreat two steps.

“I knew it.”

Redding walked into the room with a stern face. “Where are Kendrick Karns and Myss?”

Father Kalen was silent.

The premise of “the two of them went out on a date” was that Salaar and Myss could appear at the appropriate moment. Now the two were tucked under a bread cloth, and no one knew when they would recover.

He had to think of a more natural excuse.

“Listen. This place is not an inn or a tavern, and we’re not attendants. Even if you are guests introduced by Professor Gentry, you still have to follow the United Library’s rules.”

Redding raised his voice, enunciating each word with deliberate precision. “I clearly told you not to run around.”

“I’m sorry.” Father Kalen said with complete sincerity, “I turned around, and they were gone… I don’t know where they went either.” In a certain sense, this was the truth.

“…Since there’s a problem with the procedure, Tass and I are willing to leave this place first. Once you find those two, you can discuss it with them.”

Redding let out a short laugh, his expression a little bitter.

“I’m afraid that won’t work. You can’t leave,” he said. “The procedural problem is that we need to change your visit into a long-term visit.”

“A… minor incident has occurred. The latest notice is that before the matter is handled, no one can leave.”

Father Kalen looked at the bread basket, then at Redding, then again at the bread basket.

Whether the Lord of Shadows would use His veil to wrap and hide the three of them, he didn’t know.

But in this moment, Father Kalen understood. Next, he would have to use the bread cloth to wrap and hide his companions, who were as fragile as little buns.

“All right. We will cooperate.”

Father Kalen’s hand, still clutching the basket, drooped a little lower. “I have only one request. Please let us meet Lady Magnolia once more.”

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The author has something to say:

Salaar: ???

Myss: ??? [baffled]

Tass: What’s so great about being tall? Once everyone turns into dolls, aren’t we all the same size? [dog head]

Kalen: (Lord of Shadows roleplaying game begins!)

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Good news: This time, the Divine Realm’s aura is quite weak (?

Bad news: The aura on our side is even weaker (???

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