Shen Sui had spent a long time thinking about how to quickly replenish his Follower Cards.
The way Follower Cards were obtained inherently meant that there was a certain threshold to acquiring them.
In some ordinary Soul Card Worlds, you did not even know where to capture Followers that could become Follower Cards. However, without enough Follower Cards, it was easy to leave your field empty and get ruthlessly beaten down when your opponent seized the opportunity.
This led many Soul Card Masters to deliberately guide Soul Card Followers in Soul Card Worlds, making them find every possible way to obtain Follower Cards.
Some even turned their Soul Card Followers into pure battle maniacs, starting wars or fighting frenziedly to obtain Follower Cards by capturing enemies.
However, Shen Sui did not need to go that far. He drew inspiration from those sci-fi Soul Card Worlds.
In sci-fi Soul Card Worlds, Soul Card Followers could make or purchase robots, and those robots could become Follower Cards. So why not have Alice make her own "robots" on the Dawn Continent?
Then, under the Dawn Continent's setting, what was similar to the concept of "robots"?
The Lucky Puppet Shali Xin Yuan Ying Xue had given Shen Sui inspired him.
That was right—puppets!
They could be made, they could be given life, and naturally, they could become Follower Cards.
In the game from his previous life, Shen Sui had used the Puppet Creation spell to create massive numbers of Sacrificial Dolls, bypassing the Evil God's third condition for descending and farming materials like crazy without any moral burden.
You said a city's worth of lives had to be sacrificed.
Then if an entire city was filled with puppets, that was perfectly reasonable, right?
What? You said puppets did not count as lives?
That was discrimination! A puppet's life was still a life!
Under your guidance, Alice began making puppets from the materials.
Alice had known how to sew cloth dolls for prayers since she was young, and she was very skilled at it. Beautiful, exquisite dolls soon filled the room she rented.
Anna sat there quietly, watching Alice work. Even when she was buried beneath cloth dolls, she showed no reaction.
Alice finished making one hundred cloth dolls.
Alice named them Aida.
You activated "Puppet Creation" on the cloth dolls on the floor.
Ding! You obtained Follower Card: Sacrifice Puppet Aida
Ding! You obtained Spell Card: Puppet Creation
Shen Sui saw the appearance of Sacrifice Puppet Aida in his Life Card collection. The card art showed a great number of adorable cloth dolls with tiny bodies and cheerful smiles. With their blonde hair and blue eyes, Alice had clearly made them in her own image.
****** Card Name: Sacrifice Puppet Aida Category: Follower Card Star Rating: 5 Stars Effect: ① This effect can only be activated once per duel. When this Follower is successfully Normal Summoned or Special Summoned, create one Sacrificial Doll Token (5 Stars, 0 Spirit Value) in every empty slot of your Follower Zone; ② When you use a Life Card, you may activate this effect: Tribute this Follower or one of its Tokens on the field to reduce the Soul Point cost paid to use that Life Card by X. (X is the number of Sacrificial Dolls on the field × 3). Spirit Value: 0 ******
Not bad. One Follower Card could be used as five Follower Cards. Moreover, that effect truly lived up to the name Sacrificial Doll.
What Shen Sui modified was adding an extra effect to the card:
"③ When this Follower or its Tokens are destroyed by battle, if there is a Sacrificial Doll on the field, the battle damage you take is 0."
Soul Card Duels had battle damage, but there was no concept of Defense Position. With a Spirit Value of 0, it was simply too dangerous; one careless mistake and the opponent could seize the chance to break through.
Unfortunately, the card's star rating was not high enough. Otherwise, Shen Sui would have wanted to make it directly immune to battle damage. For now, he had no choice but to add the restriction that a Sacrificial Doll had to be on the field.
As puppets specifically used in the game to replace living beings in sacrificial rituals, Sacrificial Dolls directly replaced the number of offerings required by a ritual.
In other words, no matter how many offerings a ritual required, one Sacrificial Doll was enough. It would split itself until the required number was filled.
After making the Sacrificial Dolls, Alice's work was not over, because Shen Sui had asked her to make three medium puppets for absorbing the Evil God's power.
Of course, that was Shen Sui's lie. Absorbing the Evil God's power did not improve him in any way, but it had another use related to his plan to create the first ace Follower of this deck.
The requirements for these three medium puppets were extremely high. Alice spent a great deal of effort on them and only completed them with Anna's help.
Since they had not yet been activated with the Evil God's power, the three medium puppets had not become Follower Cards.
Alice stretched her exhausted limbs and saw that there were still plenty of unused materials on the floor.
To avoid running short on materials if her clumsy hands caused a failure, Alice had bought many extra backups. Now, none of them were needed.
There were still materials left?
An idea struck Shen Sui. Great! They could make two more puppets.
You suggested using those materials to make two more puppets as gifts for Alice, as thanks for her help this time.
Alice's eyes lit up.
She had only made Sacrificial Dolls in her own image, so she wanted to make another puppet in Anna's image. Mm! And one for Oshana too!
Uh, what was this...
With your help, Alice quickly finished making the remaining two puppets.
You used "Puppet Creation" and assigned them different functions.
The next moment, an editing window popped up before Shen Sui. Alice had already named the latter halves of the cards: one was called Jamie, and the other was called Soya.
However, material limitations meant that, like the Sacrificial Dolls, they were only 5 Stars.
So this meant Shen Sui himself could edit the card descriptors.
Assign them different functions?
On the Dawn Continent, puppets created with the Puppet Creation spell could have different functions.
Sacrificial Dolls were used to replace offerings. Besides those, there were Substitute Puppets for saving lives, Armed Dolls for assisting in battle, Maid Puppets for taking care of daily life, and Training Puppets for practicing various skills. (In the setting, Training Puppets were used to practice all kinds of skills. The developers once mentioned in the compendium that young noblemen often used them to practice certain techniques. Naturally, that line was removed in a later update.)
The latter two were not particularly important to Alice right now, so Shen Sui chose the first two and assigned them accordingly.
Ding! You obtained Follower Card: Substitute Puppet Jamie
Ding! You obtained Follower Card: Armed Doll · Soya
The next moment, a pop-up for modifying card effects appeared. It meant he could edit the effects himself.
Holy shit?
Shen Sui had suddenly discovered a whole new world.
This was way more convenient than exhausting himself raising favorability or going into the wilderness to catch magical beasts.
Decided! He would grind out a puppet mage form for Alice, then have her control seven puppets and call them the Rose Seven Warlords of the Sea.
What the hell was all that?
Shen Sui smacked his forehead and decided to clear his head. Just these few 5-Star puppets had already used up all the precious Magic Crystals he had collected at Pa Yin Jia Lake. Alice had sold ordinary gems, while even Isabella's ruby was among the most special kinds. If he truly wanted powerful puppets, even opening every Storage Box he had would not be enough.
That was because puppets were the only game mechanic that allowed players to customize and make their own wives, so their material costs were extremely expensive. The Madonna Stone that gave puppets their own lives was even a premium purchase item—you had to spend money.
And Shen Sui was a free-to-play player.
Before you continue