Chapter 55: You Are Similar to Me
From a great distance away and through the deep darkness of the night, Isabella, an ordinary person, couldn’t see what was happening in the courtyard at all. She could only nod in response to Sylvia’s words.
“Mm… a puppet like you?”
Hearing the other’s words, which were clearly laced with teasing, the gray-haired puppet didn’t answer. Instead, she simply raised her hand and gave Isabella a heavy knock on the head.
“Ow! That hurt!”
The blonde girl protested unhappily, but the next second, her gaze was drawn to the changing scene in the garden.
There, a puppet leapt down from a height, holding a slender sword. As it neared the border demon, whose movements were growing increasingly stiff, it drove the blade—gleaming with the reflection of pure moonlight—straight into the demon’s chest.
At that moment, a strange gurgling noise, unreal and illusionary, seemed to reach the ears of Sylvia, who stood on the second-floor window ledge, causing the puppet girl to withdraw her gaze.
“It’s over.”
“Mm… that monster was control-killed.”
Hearing her Highness use a phrase that clearly didn’t match the linguistic habits of this world, Isabella’s eyes widened as she stared motionlessly at the puppet in the garden, who suddenly raised the straight sword upward, and the monster, whose upper body had been cleaved in two, slowly collapsed to the ground.
“Dealt with?”
There was a hint of surprise in her voice.
“This… is so plain.”
Sylvia, who had just turned her gaze to the rooftop of the neighboring house, twitched at the corner of her cheek.
After a brief silence, she explained in an odd tone:
“Not all extraordinary abilities are flashy enough.”
Truthfully, she couldn’t really be blamed for her reaction.
From her perspective, what she had just seen was a terrifying monster that suddenly started moving sluggishly. Then, something indistinct leapt from the neighboring rooftop and one-shot the monster with a single strike.
Anyone who held romantic notions about the extraordinary would have felt a tinge of disappointment upon witnessing such a scene.
But this was precisely the combat style of a String School puppeteer—
The main body focused on controlling, then used the puppets they crafted to execute the kill.
Seeing the slight disappointment in Isabella’s eyes, Sylvia couldn’t help but smile.
“Mm… I can show you a more dazzling extraordinary ability.”
“Mm?”
The blonde girl tilted her head, looking curiously at the puppet girl beside her, who stood about the same height.
Sylvia didn’t respond. She merely smiled and snapped her fingers—
*Snap!*
As the crisp sound rang out, the scene outside the window suddenly darkened.
In the blink of an eye, a grayish-white fog spread across the entire garden, lowering the already cold temperature by several degrees.
At the same time, the illusionary sound of flowing river water emerged, and pale, slender arms reached out from the mist, swiftly grabbing at the puppet who was still standing blankly in place, as well as—
The next second, the gray mist dissipated, and the garden fell silent again. The puppet and the pair of garden shears that had fallen from the disintegrated border demon vanished without a sound.
Watching everything that had happened outside the window, Isabella’s eyes widened once more.
"Mm... this is the Death God path, also known as the Deathbringer path's ability."
Sylvia gave a brief explanation, then waved her hand. From the dark corner of the room, something fell out.
It was a puppet.
"Mm... using the special nature of the River of the Dead to achieve a transfer."
After this added remark, the gray-haired puppet turned around and looked at the puppet whose threads on hands and feet had been completely snapped.
The moment her gaze fell upon the other, she suddenly raised her eyebrows.
Earlier, due to the distance, she hadn't taken a close look. But now at close range, she noticed something off.
At this moment, Isabella also turned around. Under the moonlight streaming through the glass window, she cast her gaze at the puppet that had rolled from the corner of the room to near the two of them.
"Mm?"
She suddenly made a puzzled sound, then turned her head to closely examine Sylvia’s face, and again looked toward the puppet on the floor, comparing them carefully.
A few seconds later, she glanced again at her Highness with some uncertainty, then cautiously reached out and tugged at the other’s cloak.
Seeing no reaction, she slowly lifted it and examined the dress underneath under the moonlight—
Primarily black in color, paired with elaborate purple lace, it was a refined long dress.
After taking it in, she shifted her gaze to the clothes of the puppet lying on the carpet—
Primarily black in color, paired with elaborate green lace, also a refined long dress.
The next moment, her mouth instinctively fell open, and her eyes clearly showed disbelief.
"This... Your Highness, your clothes are identical in every way to that puppet’s, except for the lace color."
"Not just that, your face and its face, although not exactly the same, bear a definite resemblance overall!"
"Only the hair color and eye color are completely different."
"You two are like... mm... sisters?"
At this moment, Sylvia nodded with an unusually strange expression. She then slowly turned around to look toward a cloaked figure that had appeared in the garden at some point.
She snapped her fingers, and the gray mist dispersed.
With a scream, the figure instantly vanished from the garden and then fell out from the shadows within the room.
"What’s going on?"
"Who—who are you?"
A frightened female voice rang out instantly within the room veiled in black mist.
But in the next second, the figure steadied herself, raised her head, and looked around the room, then let out a disbelieving cry:
"Sylvia? Is that you?"
But she suddenly seemed to realize something, her brows furrowed in an instant:
"You... how are you still alive?"
...
Eplington District, 2:10 a.m.
On the empty street, a tall figure suddenly halted his rapid footsteps, slowly furrowing his brows.
He was wearing winter clothes suited for mobility, and on his back was a long object tightly wrapped in white cloth.
"Strange, I clearly sensed a spiritual fluctuation from a border demon, but why did it suddenly disappear?"
After a moment’s hesitation, he still decided to check the location he had sensed earlier.
A minute later, standing on the street outside the Lancaster estate and confirming that there was truly nothing unusual, he turned to leave, muttering quietly to himself:
"Strange. I’d better head back to St. Ruls Cathedral and report this to the Bishop."
Just after he turned a corner onto another street, he bumped into another group of people head-on.
Upon seeing their faces and attire clearly and with a wary gaze, he breathed a sigh of relief, then asked with some confusion:
"Lurk, what are you doing here?"
"Isn’t this our jurisdiction? Why is the Church of Machinery here?"