Monsters Are Coming

As Ding Xiao anticipated in advance, he and the warband members once again entered the Oath Space for evasion, launching a second wave of counterattack after fully recovering.

After three rounds of such back-and-forth, Puppet No. 2's body was already in a state of disrepair.

Finally, Puppet No. 2 knelt on the ground, the crystal core in its chest crackling and shattering.

Yet Puppet No. 2 still used its only remaining left arm to support itself, attempting to stand.

Like a stubborn dancer, insistent on completing the final curtain call.

The players did not hold back, ending the battle with a concentrated round of fire.

Puppet No. 2's body gradually collapsed like a sandcastle.

Before reaching the ground, various fragments turned into specks of light, silver threads turning into ash like a spent fuse.

At that moment, a sizzling sound arose, and countless fragmented images erupted from Puppet No. 2's pupils.

Within the images, a humanoid alien girl cheers at a mirror, with Puppet No. 2, only half a meter tall, visible on the mirror's edge.

Various fragmented images quickly flickered.

Each image was related to this alien girl.

Through the fragmented images, players could even see the rapid growth of this alien girl.

In the fragmented images, the last appearance of the now-adult alien girl showed her smiling and patting Puppet No. 2's head, as if saying something before turning away.

With that, the images stored by Puppet No. 2 came to an end.

Accompanied by the shattering images, a tunnel appeared beneath Puppet No. 2.

Ding Xiao led the warband members into it, finding a floating space node crystal and piles of derivative energy crystals.

They could also see numerous remains of alien invaders, neatly piled up.

Players in the live stream room were all cheering for this victory.

It seemed unbelievable to everyone that Puppet No. 2, which appeared invincible, was taken down by the Stargazer Guild.

As the full-channel notification sounded, a blue territory brand appeared on the "Rule Divine Pillar" of Imperial Tomb Village.

...

Just as all players were cheering for this.

Players highly interested in the game's historical background had already started to take action.

A research post quickly gained popularity in the forum:

[I finally understand why Puppet No. 2's combat logic is so clumsy, completely inconsistent with the intelligence of a level 179 monster. For those interested in the background story, come in.]

Poster: Most Beautiful Food.

Content:

I have been following the Stargazer Guild's challenge actions these past few days.

A question has constantly perplexed me.

Why is Puppet No. 2's intelligence so low, even having predictable attack cycles?

This is clearly inconsistent with the Monster World setting.

Even the combat-type mechanical lifeforms introduced when Cave World first opened were more intelligent than Puppet No. 2, lacking preset attack cycles.

Just now, when the battle ended, I saw broken image replays, and curiously asked Guidance about what these image scenes represented.

Guidance's answer revealed a long-buried past.

Puppet No. 2 was originally just a very ordinary companion and housekeeping robot.

The earliest image stored in its memory chip was a father gifting her as a present to a girl, who named it "Little Porcelain."

This was also the girl's second companion toy.

Once grown up, the girl became a guardian of the resource storage node — the semi-independent space the Stargazer Guild had entered.

The girl brought "Little Porcelain," who had grown up accompanying her, to the space node as well.

But everyone is aware of the situation in Monster World, where annihilation could occur in an instant.

Facing the "Prisoner Clan" that came to Bright Star Sea Area, the Yuan Crystal Clan, where the girl came from, decided to fight to the death.

The girl also received the order to go to the battlefield, which was the entire clan's last desperate gamble.

Every bit of strength would be a chip toward victory.

In Puppet No. 2's memory, the last image of the girl was her patting Little Porcelain's head, actually saying: Little Porcelain, take good care of the house.

With that, the girl never returned.

Through node information decomposition, we all learned that the Yuan Crystal Clan was utterly defeated in this battle and withdrew from the stage of history.

However, in the semi-independent space, the puppet that once used silver threads just for cleaning remained executing its master's last command before leaving.

But it wasn't a combat-type creation, lacking an implanted combat logic sequence.

It chose to rewrite its cleaning program into thread manipulation combat, combining pruning techniques from gardening to create a silver thread cutting weapon, and even pinned itself to the passageway leading to the energy node, maintaining operation by absorbing spatial energy.

Just as the Snow Ridge Wilderness evolved with the assistance of a Snowball at the Kong Yuan Peak node.

Puppet No. 2 grew rapidly through passive node energy assimilation.

However, Puppet No. 2's core code never changed.

Without a combat module, it mimicked the battle moves from the cartoons it watched with the girl.

Lacking tactical logic, it treated all invaders as garbage needing "clean-up."

Most tragically, to its dying breath, it remembered the promise of "guarding the house," thus always only acting within that fixed area, even if it turned itself into an easy target.

Behind its stupidity was Puppet No. 2's absolute loyalty to its master.

When the Stargazer Guild's group finished it with a final round of attacks, destroying its energy crystal, perhaps the shattered memory replay was its final farewell across time to its master.

Within were the girl's childhood smiles, warm bedtime stories... and at last, the promise to "take good care of the house."

Every year (as we understand it, every three years), Puppet No. 2 would stand in the empty node base, make a small cake for its master, and wait for her return to celebrate together.

Before its death, it released an image featuring a message (video screenshot.jpg).

The message meaning roughly: Little Porcelain took good care of the house today, too.

Puppet No. 2, a housekeeping robot born of love and companionship, fell in the end with the stance of a warrior.

Devoid of medals of honor, without funeral orations, only an endless passage beneath filled with enemy remains and an unshakeable will to protect until death.

Though born a puppet, fate granted it a warrior's funeral.