Doll Girl

"Who are you?"

Duanmu Huai stared at the mechanical girl before him in surprise, then hurriedly asked. The mechanical girl merely waved her hand.

"Ah, please don't be nervous. Although I look like a doll, I'm actually a human whose soul was sealed in here by some evil wizard! Could you help me find my original body?"

"..."

What kind of ridiculous development was this?

Faced with the mechanical girl's request, Duanmu Huai found it rather baffling, but he nodded anyway.

"No problem."

No matter what, he had finally met someone here who could communicate with him. He might as well hear what she had to say.

And so, a strange mechanical girl joined Duanmu Huai and Okegis's party.

She introduced herself as Mia. She had originally been human, but an evil wizard had used magic to seal her soul inside a doll. This Sky City was that evil wizard's Rook. He had placed her and the others here as exhibits. In fact, the other dolls on the table had also been victims of that wizard, except their souls had fallen asleep and could not be awakened...

"Th-thank you so much, sir, and miss."

Following behind the two of them, Mia looked deeply grateful.

"This body is so stiff that it's really inconvenient to move around in. And what makes me even more uneasy is that these clothes even have cute lace trim... If I weren't in a doll's body right now, I definitely would have cried already. But now that I'm with you two, I feel like I'll definitely be able to find my original body!"

"Uh..."

Duanmu Huai was completely dumbfounded by Mia's words. Honestly, he felt that something about this was strange. Sky City? Evil wizard? Dolls? Magic? No... Miss, this had nothing to do with magic at all, did it? Ever since arriving in Sky City, almost everything he had seen had been technological creations.

Mia's body was included. Although her appearance resembled Okegis's, Duanmu Huai was certain that if Mia were smashed apart, the inside would be packed with dense steel frameworks and cables—completely different from a doll like Okegis.

Wouldn't it make more sense to say her consciousness had been transferred into a robot body by some device?

Or perhaps Mia's consciousness came from some native? If that was the case, then it was not strange for her to think this way. After all, technology like consciousness transfer was indeed practically magic in the eyes of natives from low-level civilizations.

Forget it. He would know once they got there.

Although he had doubts about Mia's story, at least her guidance gave them a goal. Thus, Duanmu Huai and Okegis followed Mia's directions and continued toward the "evil wizard's residence."

Naturally, they encountered more enemies.

"Roar—!!!"

Duanmu Huai charged forward with Warhammer in hand and slammed heavily into a burly mechanical guard. Its appearance resembled the Magic Steel Lion from before, except this robot had a tiger's head rather than a lion's.

Steel Tiger
LV 30

Compared with the Magic Steel Lion, the Steel Tiger was higher level. Its attack power was not as strong as the Magic Steel Lion's, but its defense was exceptionally impressive. Duanmu Huai alone was still somewhat lacking when facing an enemy of this level. Fortunately, with the dolls he had summoned and Okegis supporting him from the side, he still managed to destroy the Steel Tiger before him. Seizing the moment when its claw missed, Duanmu Huai roared and smashed his Warhammer directly into the core on the Steel Tiger's back, knocking it to the ground. Then he swung again and smashed it into scrap.

"Phew..."

Only after the last tiger robot fell did Duanmu Huai finally let out a breath. He then summoned the Repair Servo Skull to repair his Power Armor. Just a few Steel Tigers had reduced his Power Armor's durability to below twenty percent. If there were any more, the armor would probably shatter outright.

What frustrated Duanmu Huai even more was that killing monsters in Soul Fragments gave no Experience Points. The same had been true in the two Soul Fragments he had experienced before: Okegis's Dollhouse and that scholar's Haunted Mansion. Killing monsters inside gave no experience, and completing quests gave no experience either. He only received Soul Cards.

The game was designed that way to stop players from farming levels. Just like the Haunted Mansion from before, players could return again and again as long as they had not completed the quest. Thus, some players might deliberately exploit that feature, repeatedly treating Soul Fragments as dungeons, intentionally refusing to complete the quest so they could grind monsters and level up. Therefore, the game made it impossible to gain experience from killing monsters in Soul Fragments, and completing quests gave no experience either—only Soul Cards.

Still... the BOSS here would not be above level forty, would it?

Duanmu Huai frowned as he looked at the Steel Tiger's wreckage. From the Magic Steel Lions to the Mechanical Soldiers and now the Steel Tigers, most monsters in this Soul Fragment map were between levels twenty and thirty. If all these robots had been created by the "wizard" Mia mentioned, then he was likely around level forty.

Of course, that was not certain. Like the scholar in the Haunted Mansion, whose own level had not even reached ten, individual strength levels in technological worlds were generally not high. At least so far, the monsters Duanmu Huai had encountered in Sky City were basically technological creations. In that case, it was also possible that the "wizard" himself was not very high level.

Of course, in settings like this, the other side would usually create a powerful robot. But if the wizard himself was weak, Duanmu Huai could use his dolls to assassinate him and bypass the BOSS battle.

In short, he just hoped it would not be too dangerous.

With that thought, Duanmu Huai glanced at Okegis beside him. Although Okegis could fight enemies around level seventy, he did not want her taking risks. Duanmu Huai did not yet have any cards in his hand that could retrieve cards from the graveyard. Dolls could multiply endlessly, and ghosts could be converted through dolls, so losing them was not a big deal.

But if Okegis entered the graveyard, getting her back out would be much harder.

According to the Soul Card system, after a servant entered the graveyard, it could only be awakened and returned to the field through a card with Undead Summoning. As for Magic Cards and Spell Cards, after they were used and entered the graveyard, using them again required spending experience equal to one thousand times the card's cost to reset them back into the hand.

Duanmu Huai currently had no cards with Undead Summoning, so he had to proceed carefully.

Duanmu Huai had already made up his mind. If the final BOSS here was truly too difficult, he would temporarily give up on clearing it, go elsewhere to improve his strength, and come back later to finish it.

He could not let Okegis die here.

After once again crushing the mechanical army's assault, the group finally arrived before Sky City's Palace. At that moment, Mia suddenly raised her hand and pointed ahead.

"Ah, there! That evil wizard!!"

Hearing Mia's words, Duanmu Huai and Okegis both looked up in the direction she pointed. On the balcony of the Palace's second floor stood a robed figure, staring coldly down at them.

"I never expected you to find help, Mia."

"Evil wizard, give my body back!!"

"Hehe, you foolish idiot. Your body has long since become part of my collection. I had originally been kind enough to let you continue living as a doll, but now it seems... I'll have to teach you a lesson...!"

"...???"

As Duanmu Huai listened to the wizard and Mia's conversation, he frowned slightly. Something felt off. Logically speaking, the situation in this Soul Fragment was already clear. A wizard... whoever he was, he had extracted a girl named Mia's soul from her body and placed it inside a robot body. Then Mia sought help, hoping someone would defeat the wizard and recover her original body.

That seemed to be the whole story, but... Duanmu Huai felt that something did not quite add up.

Compared to the Puppet Master's regret and the scholar's conflicted emotions, Mia's feelings did not seem intense enough to anchor an entire Sky City here as a Soul Fragment.

Especially since the monsters in this Sky City were not low-level, and they were quite powerful... Could a Fragment World like this truly have been created by a soul like Mia's, one sealed inside a robot body?

Could there be some hidden truth behind this?

Just as Duanmu Huai was thinking, the cloaked man raised both hands.

"Awaken, my guards! Destroy these foolish intruders!"

"Thud... Thud... Thud...!!!"

At the man's call, the Palace gates slowly opened. Then, one after another, large robots nearly as massive as Duanmu Huai marched out. Not only that, strange mechanical creations that looked nothing like humans floated above them—diamond-shaped or spherical cores surrounded by rings of iron, like marvelous works of art suspended in the air.

Large Mechanical Soldier
Ancient Creation
Analyzing Creation
Mysterious Creation

"They're here!!"

Duanmu Huai's heart tightened at the sight of the steel army before him. He immediately pushed aside his thoughts and activated his Soul Cards again. Soon, an army of dolls appeared before him, facing the steel legion across the way.

"Attack!!!"

With the cloaked man's furious roar, the battle between steel and dolls began.