Crusader King

"Shield" said the one fighting against the wooden puppet, and a shield appeared, a dome-like violet structure that covered the opponents weapon, with the weapon being on the inside.

Cades had been quite interested, even forgetting about the still fighting Manug and simply getting lost in experimenting with this newfound magical application, one that was probably already known on ehetria, but one that he himself had never thought of using, to his current dismay.

Or perhaps one had to be of quite a high rank to use this power, difficult as ehetria had quite a low threshold before one would forsake the gods and be chased out of there, losing everything one had gained, namely the apex, a rank that Cades had long since surpassed, no, completely obliterated when one took into account that most of the puppets he had easily destroyed in his current states belonged to that very apex rank, to the rank that the eximimus queen had been at, to a rank that he had once desperately struggled to, maybe, one day reach.

It all felt so far in the past now, Cades fought as he deflected another one of the hunters attack, summoning a shield to once more test the durability and see if he could enhance it, causing the hunter to strike at it as hard as he could, breaking it within two tries, something that did quite impress Cades as the hunter had been adjusting his own strategy with the change of Cades attitude who now saw him as more of a lab rat, if nothing else.

Cades was quite surprised that the wooden puppets had the power to change at all, to Cades it seemed as if they were still somehow sentient, no, rather it seemed as if the being, or rather the thing, the sickness that was emulating them, was even capable of emulating their sentience, and in that case there was something Cades was a bit worried about.

Would it emulate pain and suffering, feelings and fear, annoyance and anger, would it create a true being, a being dominated by another, a being created just to be a slave, and would such a being truly be, that was the question Cades was now asking himself as he was trying to layer his shields, something he wasn't really capable of at the first few tries, and something he also didn't realize others.

But the question remained, or perhaps that was just the question one should ask, if a being was born to not be but instead be dominated and serve, then would it even be a being ?

Cades didn't think so, but rather than that there was now something more important, or perhaps something of equal importance that he had to think about.