(Heartfelt thanks to 'I Have No Integrity' and 'Sakura Snow Fluttering' for their 1888 rewards, and to 'Heartbroken, Heartless,' 'Yume no Shouyou,' 'Lei Xiang,' 'Xing Ming Qing Kong,' 'Sui Feng Qi Wu,' 'Youcai Luobo,' 'Yunqi Qinggu,' 'Kanata Roujin-kun,' 'Frozen Little,' 'Gs Da Shi,' 'Forever Big Belly,' 'Erciyuan de Shuangxiezuo,' and 'Seven Sins Shattered' for their rewards!)
Walpurgis Royal Academy of Machinart, a clearing deep within the woods...
This clearing, which had become pitted and uneven during Wu Yan and Charlotte's previous practice session, had once again been restored to its original state.
The messy craters had all been filled in, and every trace of scorching had been completely erased, returning it to a level clearing.
At that moment, Wu Yan stood in the center of the clearing with his eyes closed, one hand extended before him as ripples of magic power surged across it.
Before Wu Yan's palm, which rippled with magic power, stood a humanoid wooden puppet. It moved with extreme awkwardness, twisting, swaying, and staggering along like a baby learning to walk, seeming liable to fall at any moment.
That was not an automaton, but a genuine puppet made entirely from wood.
It merely possessed a human shape. Its joints had conspicuous grooves, as though they had been deliberately hacked out. Its head was nothing more than an oval block of wood without even a face, and when it walked, it even made skeletal clacking sounds.
It was an ordinary wooden puppet that had not been equipped with a basic Magic Circuit like Eve's Heart.
In other words, it lacked the "self-will" that had become commonplace among automatons. It was merely a lifeless object.
Yet this lifeless thing was now twisting its stiff body crookedly amid clacking sounds, taking one step after another like a baby learning to