Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

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Chapter 87: Divine Blood Puppet

Hearing this unexpected statement, Redding froze for two seconds.

Then he burst out laughing. “Very clever, but unfortunately, only petty cleverness. You’re not a Stargazer, sir. I know very well that you are not.”

Salaar’s button eyes stared fixedly at him. “So the ‘we’ you mentioned really does mean the Stargazers.”

“Not only that, you’ve also heard about us. Let me think… You learned it from Mr. Kai, didn’t you?”

Huh? It was one thing if Redding really was a stargazer, but how did that artifact merchant get involved too?

Myss looked at Salaar in confusion, pausing his great project of thinking.

Redding’s smile instantly stiffened, then quickly faded. “Who exactly are you?”

“Someone with a brain.” The Salaar doll jumped down from Fork and staggered forward.

“Before this, Kendrick Karns had always been at the border. Even Lady Magnolia doesn’t know my situation clearly. Yet you can state with certainty that I am ‘not a Stargazer.’”

“The only people who can confirm identity like that, apart from high-level investigators, are Stargazers themselves. But if you were a high-level investigator, with Lady Magnolia’s identity and status, she wouldn’t know nothing about it.”

“…Lastly, among the people who have previously contacted us and were suspected Stargazers, there’s only Mr. Kai.”

Salaar patted his soft cloth hands. Unfortunately, they made no sound. “And you forgot to deny it immediately. It seems both of you come from the Stargazer Society.”

Salaar didn’t mention the suspicions surrounding Professor Gentry. Myss raised his nonexistent eyebrows.

When it concerned the mystery of the body swap or Salaar, his brain always worked smoothly. Professor Gentry had a good relationship with them and also held considerable influence in the Aufon Kingdom. If Salaar exposed this matter, neither side would have any path of retreat.

…But why was Salaar walking forward again? He was almost swaying to the priest’s feet.

“You’re too young and don’t have much seniority. I imagine you can’t access the United Library’s Divine Blood, so you can’t be the experimenter.”

Salaar continued, his tiny body inching forward as he spoke. “Therefore, you probably came as a witness to confirm the result of the ‘Divine Blood experiment.’”

Redding was silent for a long time, then suddenly laughed again. “Good heavens. I thought it was impossible for me to be baited into revealing anything…”

“Kalen, go!” Salaar suddenly shouted, his tone exactly like when he gave orders in the army.

The priest obeyed subconsciously. He pushed off with both feet, but this time, there was no sound of paper tearing. In Myss’s garnet button eyes, a thin layer of golden light was clearly reflected.

During the conversation, Salaar had actually silently added protective magic to the soles of the priest’s feet!

But the dolls clearly couldn’t use magic. Myss abruptly raised his head and looked at Salaar.

At the same instant, relying on his sturdy body, the priest crashed straight toward Redding.

Redding was completely unprepared. He instinctively crossed his arms in front of his face, attempting to protect his vitals. However, his figure was thin, and he was directly sent flying by the priest’s impact.

The two “giants” rushed past the simplistic sketches of mountains and dawn, tumbling into the nearly blank title page.

The line [Dedicated to our hero Saint Salaar, and to every child who longs for courage] was knocked crooked by the two of them, letters scattering all over the ground.

Salaar ignored Mag’s scream of “What is going on?” He returned to Fork and hugged the still-stunned Myss tightly. Knife understood and charged forward, shooting toward the title page like an arrow.

“A story without a title page is still a story!”

Salaar shouted at the deathly pale Brief. “We’ll keep the battlefield on the title page. Decide for yourself what you want to do!”

“How can you use magic? I can’t use even a little!”

Myss poked Salaar’s cotton back hard. “Hey, Salaar, ever since you saw the Divine Blood, you’ve been acting weird. Don’t tell me…”

“Everyone, assist Kalen!” Salaar jumped off the snake and ran away.

Myss: “…”

This kid was definitely hiding a huge secret!

He sat alone on Fork and patted Fork’s head. “Go. First we kill the enemy, then we interrogate him properly.”

As they made their way forward, every illustration had been like an independent stage set. They were covered by some unseen spotlight and blended together.

Now, Kalen stood at the boundary between the title page and the first page of the story. His back was straight, and he firmly guarded the path that led into the story, like an immovable stone statue.

Redding, meanwhile, was blocking the way slightly farther into the title page. In the vast blank “title-page stage,” that pitch-black ink hole was especially conspicuous.

However, judging by its size, it was still some distance from them. Redding stood right in the middle, his expression incomparably troubled.

A little strange. At this moment, Redding’s aura was actually somewhat similar to Kalen’s.

“That opening belongs to us. Unrelated personnel are strictly forbidden from entering.”

Redding steadied himself and spoke slowly.

“I said before, we don’t have any ill will toward you.”

“The Stargazer Society knows what you have been doing along this journey and who you have been investigating. We have no intention of interfering with your plans… But now, all of you insist on interfering with our experiment.”

“Is that so? What a coincidence. This time, we came precisely to investigate Divine Blood.”

Salaar avoided Myss’s scorching gaze, which was as hot as a branding iron. His eyes only looked at Redding. “I happen to have a rather strong thirst for knowledge. Since the Divine Blood experiment has been shoved right in front of me, of course I have to take a look.”

“Even if this matter has nothing to do with V.O.R?” Redding hissed. “…Even if we are willing to exchange information about V.O.R for your departure from this place?”

Kalen stood completely still, as if he had heard nothing.

“If we leave, you’ll immediately destroy this book to make sure we can’t return,” Salaar said calmly. “So there is nothing for us to discuss.”

Brief jumped down from Knife’s back. He gripped his little sword tightly and stared blankly at the Salaar doll.

Bedsheet Archdemon ran to Myss’s side. As he wailed, he used his body to nudge Myss’s foot toward the ink hole, afraid they hadn’t noticed it.

Redding laughed in exasperation. “You’re insane. This is only a children’s picture book! Even if it has been affected by Divine Blood, it’s still only a picture book!”

“Yes. For this picture book, we’re not much different from gods. One thought, one breath, and we could reduce it to ash.”

Salaar said, “I simply can’t bring myself to abandon such a pitiable world. I just can’t.”

At this point, he finally turned his cotton head and looked at Myss.

“This is my book, bastard.” Myss retorted without a shred of politeness, baring his (nonexistent) fangs. “You actually dare destroy my things” You deserve to die.”

Stick-figure Mag looked from side to side. In the end, she dashed to the priest’s feet and sat down on the tip of his shoe, finding herself an excellent observation spot.

Tass followed her closely and sat on the priest’s other shoe. Only, the Tass doll’s expression was unusually serious, more like he was observing the battlefield terrain.

Redding let out a long sigh. “So this is your answer.”

“The Stargazer Society goes to such lengths to stop the apocalypse, yet the two of you turn against us—all for the sake of a picture book… The world truly is mad.”

Before Redding’s sigh had faded, his body twisted first.

His wrists, elbows, knees, ankles… even his neck. Every joint capable of movement twisted, cracked, and separated out of thin air.

Redding’s body split into a dozen pieces and rearranged itself. His head remained in place, but the body blocks that formed his limbs broke apart. Between the body blocks, long and slender black bone connected them, forming new abnormal limbs that didn’t belong to any human.

Redding suddenly became two or three times larger than Kalen. He moved his new bead-like body, resembling a phantom spider with a human face.

Following his movements, spiderweb-like black threads crisscrossed and danced. Redding wove between heaven and earth, and layer after layer of black spiderwebs appeared around them like cracks in this snow-white world. The sound of paper warping rang endlessly, and countless folds appeared in the pure white space.

Within the deformed space, the spiderwebs rapidly closed in. An unquestionable killing intent rushed toward them.

“I gave you a chance.”

Redding was expressionless, his head turning a full one hundred eighty degrees, upside down.

“That is a Divine Blood Puppet, the alchemical lifeform closest to humans!”

Mag clutched tightly at Kalen’s shoe tip and shouted at the top of her lungs. “That thing doesn’t have brain and can’t use magic. They are remotely controlled by a living person!”

Brief hurriedly picked up the thread. “How do we deal with it?”

“I don’t know, damn it!”

Mag didn’t ignore the other stick figures. “That is wartime technology from the Night Scourge era. It won’t stop operating unless the core is shut down!”

Kalen wanted to charge forward and fight Redding in close combat.

But the moment he moved, Redding propped up his body and made as if to rush toward the inside of the story. Kalen turned his hand back and tried to grab Redding’s legs, only for the puppet to evade him effortlessly. The Divine Blood puppet’s physical capabilities were astonishing. Its speed was actually no way inferior to Father Kalen’s.

While protecting the ink hole, Redding extended those twisted limbs, attempting to crush the swaying Salaar doll underfoot. Unfortunately for him, things didn’t go as he wished. Myss clamped tightly onto Fork, relentlessly harried Redding with a barrage of thrusts, making it impossible for him to aim.

But Redding was far too enormous, and they were too small. The moment Fork pierced one of Redding’s body blocks, black smoke surged from the hole, and the wound quickly vanished.

Myss angrily clenched his cloth fists. At the same time, a certain strange sense of déjà vu rose in him—himself, weak and insignificant, pitted against a colossal, nearly invincible opponent.

Now, he was facing the former “himself” from “Salaar’s” perspective. Only, one battlefield had been buried deep in darkness, while this battlefield floated in pure white.

Myss took a deep breath. “Salaar, come here!”

Salaar gave a whistle, and the riderless Knife obediently rushed over. The Salaar doll jumped onto Knife’s back, and in the next moment, snake and doll slid to Myss’s side together.

“I think you know where his core is, right? Just now, you were staring so hard you almost burned holes through him.”

Myss spoke extremely quickly. “He moves too fast. It’ll be hard to aim. Next, I’ll guide his movements, and you shout the direction you want.”

Salaar’s button eyes flashed. “You…”

“I was tormented by you for three hundred years. I know how a ‘big guy’ attacks and defends.”

Myss pressed his soft cloth hand against Salaar’s forehead. “Do what you should do. I already said, this is my book! If anyone’s going to destroy it, it’s going to be me!”

Salaar was silent for a few seconds, then suddenly moved closer and lightly bumped Myss’s face with his own.

Myss: “?”

Myss: “Are you trying to pick a fight with me right now?”

“It’s meant to be a passionate kiss, though pity, it didn’t quite land,” Salaar said. “Thanks to you, I thought of a brilliant idea.”

“I almost forgot. This time around, ‘Brave Salaar’ has an army of his own…”

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The author has something to say:

Salaar doll: Wants to give an excited yet dignified light kiss.

Myss doll: ? Why is my mortal enemy bumping his face against mine? Is he picking a fight?

The downside of chibi bodies! [dog head]

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