Chapter 355: A Unique Puppet
"So Evelyn... what should I do?" The marionette I just created asks, sitting in the sea of blood while I decide to explain her objective in detail.
"Your objective is simple," I say to this marionette that is a copy of myself and will help me with something important.
"I really need to find something, but I don't know where it is, at what point in time it's in, or where it could be found, and I want you to play Treasure Hunt with me. It's a children's game of looking for things," I tell the marionette, who nods.
"Okay, what are the rules?" The marionette, who was made entirely to play this game with me, doesn't question anything.
"First thing to be found: I hid a sealed magical map somewhere in this whole chaotic scenario. You'll have to find it! That map reveals the location of a marionette." I obviously can't find the marionette from Esther's corpse by searching normally.
So I thought of using my powers to make the marionette in question become part of the children's game.
"The rules are pretty simple. Whoever finds the map must show it to the other competitors. All objects must be within the players' reach, including the reward. The map is mandatory to find the reward."
"The map is no more than 400 meters from this position! And the reward MUST be at most 2,000 meters away from the map's position."
"Of course, the hidden map exists in some reachable position within the scenario, while the reward must exist and be in a position where it can be found... The game ends when the reward is found."
"With these rules, I think we can start our game, don't you think?" I ask the marionette. Though I'm nervous, I have no idea if this will work. After all, I'm not sure if the marionette from Esther's corpse still exists, nor do I know how the ability could bring that marionette here, but I hope it works.
"Alright, sounds pretty solid. Let's play, Evelyn." The marionette that looks like me accepts, extending her hand. I shake it with a smile on my face, and so our game begins.
"You can go look for the map..." I could go search, but it seems really difficult, so I'll just wait. As soon as the map is found, the treasure should automatically become something we can find.
'Good thing I remembered this ability...' Instead of just waiting, going back, and losing this wonderful chance, I thought maybe I could try to find the marionette made from Esther, and with some luck, maybe I'll succeed.
'Although I don't know if she'll be that strong...' There's a "ceiling" for marionettes depending on their type. Considering what I heard from the "Original" Evelyn, the Esther Marionette is probably not a living marionette.
It's a corpse turned into a puppet that is manually controlled, which means this marionette's powers depend 100% on how much Hikishin I'd have to spend and on my vitality.
"...All I can do is wait... I don't even know if I'll succeed in this." I stay waiting for the marionette that went out to search for the map while I observe the bloody scenery around us.
'My old house alongside a computer... an empty white scenery... and a bloody scenery...' They all seem quite symbolic, especially considering the moments they appeared.
"So many enigmas..." I keep thinking about it for a few minutes, until the minutes turn into an hour and a half, and finally the marionette comes back drenched in blood with a dirty map in her hand.
"I found it. It was inside the guts of a broken mature Evelyn," the marionette says, waving the map. I smile, seeing that the first part worked. The map has been found and should tell the marionette's location.
"Let's see what's inside," I say to her. She opens the map and shows me. The map is entirely red with several little black dots, and four little purple dots, along with one little golden dot.
'...?' I don't really understand the map. It's a bit confusing, but we go together toward the first purple dot. As we get closer to it, the bodies stop appearing, leaving only the blood beneath us and nothing else.
"...Ohh!" In the distance, I see a pedestal. Excitedly, I run toward it and immediately stop, confused for a few seconds until I understand what I'm seeing.
"A... leg..." Without a doubt, it looks like Esther's leg. I pick it up carefully, feeling the softness of the skin, and then I realize the map makes sense now. If I follow the logic, it would be the four limbs and the torso.
'But what about the head? Does it come with the torso?' I think so. So together with the marionette, I follow the path to the next one. Fortunately, Treasure Hunt is a children's game that can be competitive, but it can also be cooperative, and the current game is one of cooperation with my marionette.
"Hey, could you carry me?"
"Sure." She lets me climb onto her back and starts walking fast while I hold Esther's leg, examining how it works.
'It has a lot of Hikishin... much more than I expected...' I think if I collect all the pieces, the messages from the Original Evelyn will probably never happen again, I guess.
After walking for a few minutes, we soon arrive at the next limb, which is one of the arms, more specifically the right arm. Since the maximum range each part has to be within is small, in just half an hour we manage to gather four pieces, all of the limbs.
'She doesn't have a ring...' I look at her hand, seeing that she doesn't have our wedding ring. A reality where Esther lost to Evelyn seems unreal, but this body is living proof—or in this case, dead proof—that this actually happened at some point.
'How insane...' The marionette carries me to the last piece while I hold all of Esther's pieces with some difficulty. They are very soft and preserved. Each one has a lot of magic, and I can see that the joints are almost like those of a marionette. On the outside, they look like pieces of a normal body.
But inside the legs, the ligaments are like the exoskeleton that keeps a marionette standing, showing that it's not really a corpse, just a disassembled marionette.
'It's so strange to hold the remains of my wife... even though this isn't really my wife...' In the distance, I see a pedestal larger than the others, and this one is made of gold.
There's also a very large chest on top of it. As soon as we reach the base of the pedestal, I climb down from the marionette that was carrying me and carry the four pieces we already have up to the pedestal, placing them beside it.
"It seems like everything worked out... I'm glad..." I say to myself that this is something joyful, but I feel so... monstrous? It's still the girl I love, even if she isn't really my girl.
"..." I open the chest very slowly, finding the rest of what was missing. The torso and the head. Both are separated, but they're in the same chest. I pick up the head and see Esther's serene face, perfectly preserved.
I take all the parts and sit on top of the pedestal, starting to assemble her with magic and threads, while feeding her my vitality and Hikishin. She consumes a pretty high amount of vitality, but as I imagined, she isn't a living marionette, so the cost is something I can afford.
'If this were a living marionette, making her work again would cost more vitality than I have... what a frightening marionette...' I don't think she's stronger than Shizuka, but still, it's a marionette that has Esther's powers, the ability to make the universe favor you by giving you the best path.
"Rise," I give a command to the marionette. Her whole body contorts as her fingers contract, and then she stands up. Her head spins four full rotations as if correctly realigning its position, while I hear a sound like a soft "thump" of a drum.
"..." Soon she opens her eyes. Her expression is so empty, and she says nothing. As expected, she's like a doll moved by strings.
"The game is over..." Since the game ended, the pedestal starts to disappear into golden dust, but the reward remained. I undo the marionette that looks like me while I observe my reward.
"Ha... hahaha... I had forgotten you had that look..." Her gaze was perfectly preserved, that coldness of a genocidal who only wishes to destroy all lives in the world, the gaze of someone almost devoid of emotions.
It's very different from the obsessed yet loving gaze Esther has when she looks at me. I had never realized how much I had completely changed Esther and who she was in the past.
"..." I think about how to use this marionette and how to always carry her with me, and I have a great idea. Recently, to defend myself from strong attacks, I usually use what I learned from Nerina to manifest a single-use strong marionette that performs one action and disappears.
It's possible to make this marionette from Esther's body be similar. She'll be stored inside me at all times, as if attached to my soul, and can be manifested partially or completely to defend me or attack.
"Yes... I think it's great, don't you think, Esther? The you of this world wants to protect me from everything... so you are my new shield." I give her a mental command to embrace me from behind.
She obeys, and immediately I make this connection. The marionette seems to disappear, but I feel her here, ready to be manifested.
"..." To test it out, I attack forward. Her fist is manifested, but such a violent wave of magic is generated that it creates a sonic explosion just from her throwing a punch.
"...Wow..." I'm impressed. Since I can't fight directly, having this powerful shield will be very useful against the queen of angels, and since she moves through my soul, even if I start controlling another body, she'll follow me.
'Now... how do I use her powers?' I don't know. I'll have to train that, but for now, I'll hide the fact that I have this marionette from Esther.