The Self-Destruct Puppet

Looking at the young man before him, hunched over like a cat hissing at him, Lude instinctively sensed trouble.

With vacant eyes, a stiff posture, and an odd tone of voice—and, most importantly, a rune resembling an Ankh Cross between his brows—the fellow was either a puppet created by the enemy or a human being controlled like one!

Either way, he was extremely dangerous. At the very least, Lude needed to avoid direct contact until he understood what he was dealing with.

Thinking this over, Lude swept his gaze around the carriage. It finally settled on the food cart in front of him. Automaton puppets fell under the domain of Alchemy, and such alchemical items often had rigid targeting and behavioral logic. That meant Lude had plenty of tactical options.

With that thought, Lude suddenly smacked the rim of a barrel with the iron ladle in his hand, drawing everyone's attention.

"Today's July 5th, the conductor's birthday!" Lude shouted after a moment's thought. The young man had already started striding toward him, but Lude continued calmly, "So the conductor wants everyone in Carriage Five to celebrate together!"

"In short, all the food on this cart is free. Help yourselves!"

As he spoke, Lude stepped back and left the cart open to them.

In an instant, every starving refugee in the carriage rushed forward, eyes bloodshot!

The Rhine Kingdom had suffered years of poor harvests and famine. With Emperor Kossuth III gravely ill, the electors had already begun openly competing to build up their armies. In such circumstances, countless people chose to flee their homes in search of somewhere they could sleep in peace.

They had little to begin with, and fleeing famine had left them with even less. They hadn't eaten meat in a long time.

The passengers surged forward, choking the center of the carriage until not even a drop of water could pass. The vacant-eyed young man found himself separated from Lude by a wall of people. He tried to leap onto the luggage rack and climb across, but his arms gave way, and he fell to the floor.

Lude hunched over and quietly retreated behind him, wondering if being turned into a puppet didn't actually enhance physical ability.

In that case, this wasn't an alchemical puppet. It had to be Secret Art.

As Lude disappeared from view, the young man clearly hesitated, then began turning his head to look around.

Then he spotted a tall man among the passengers.

"Target... found." He muttered under his breath. Like a cat, he sprang into the air and charged at the man.

By now, Lude had hunched over and retreated to the edge of the carriage doorway. In his left hand, he clutched a piece of dark bread slathered with butter and salt. In his right, he held an entire sausage wrapped in wax paper. He was happily taking bites from one and then the other.

Just as Lude left the carriage, the young man finally squeezed through the crowd and grabbed the tall man in a tight embrace.

Then, to Lude's shock, the rune between the young man's brows glowed a scorching red. Like cracks spreading across a surface, the light raced over his entire body. As the tall man stared in horror, the young man's body exploded!

BOOM—!!!

Only after the roiling smoke cleared did Lude lower the hand shielding his face. He sucked in a breath at the sight before him: the wooden carriage had been blasted open, leaving a hole more than two meters across. Half the ceiling had been blown away, and even the metal frame was bent out of shape!

A Secret Art that turned living people into puppets that automatically sought out targets and attacked by self-destructing—Mali Art was terrifying!

[Death-Defying] was Polina's Secret Art. By stuffing wooden figurines into ordinary people, it turned them into puppets that sought out targets with specific traits. Once they found their targets, the wooden figurines forcibly ignited the victims' souls, causing their bodies to explode.

If Aleppo's Secret Art could be called the true art of assassination, then Polina's was the instant-noodle version!

Just then, stiff figures began emerging from the opposite carriage. At their head was a dark-skinned girl. Behind her were nine shadowy figures, each with a glowing rune between their brows!

Lude immediately darted backward. With his exceptional speed, he vanished into the crowd in the carriage behind him.

Lude assessed the blast's power. It had been even stronger than the dust explosion he'd caused earlier. If even one puppet grabbed him and exploded at close range, he'd suffer at least internal injuries—not to mention that the enemy had more than one puppet.

Lude had no intention of testing the limits of this body, so he had to stay clear of the puppets.

He retreated through five carriages, making sure he was out of the enemy's sight, then opened a window and climbed out. With a nimble, swift movement, he sprang onto the roof and hurried toward the front of the train, keeping low and heading in the opposite direction.

Just then, Carriage Nine erupted in a violent explosion. Blood and flesh burst from the opening like fireworks.

Lude stuffed the last piece of sausage into his mouth and stopped.

The destruction of Carriage Nine had clearly cut off his path forward. He couldn't risk exposing himself at the breach.

The first young man's targeting logic had likely been set to attack anyone taller than a certain height. That meant the enemy had based the puppets' targeting logic entirely on the Vessel's physical measurements.

That was good news, because it meant the puppets couldn't make their own judgments. They could only act according to preset logic.

But there was one more thing he needed to test.

Lude drew the revolver he'd taken from Aleppo and silently cocked the hammer with his thumb.

They'd established that the puppets were humans who had been transformed, that they automatically sought out targets, and that they exploded violently upon finding one. But if the human serving as the Vessel for the Secret Art died, would the puppet still function? Would it still explode when it reached its target?

More to the point, if this Secret Art depended on a human being to work, how did it define a "human"?

The second puppet had now been used up—the dark-skinned girl. The remaining eight had all made their way into Carriage Nine. After vacantly scanning the area, they prepared to continue toward the rear of the train.

The instant their gazes shifted away, a smoke bomb flew through the hole in the roof.

The smoke bombs specially made by the Obsidian Hall were remarkably powerful. Though only as thick as an index finger, they were even more effective than ordinary smoke bombs. Even aboard a rapidly moving train, their smoke showed no sign of thinning or dispersing.

As the smoke filled all of Carriage Nine, Lude leaped down from the roof.

He gripped the Iron Sparrow revolver in his left hand and drew with his right the Dragon Tooth Sword forged by Professor Beshe. Its blade, made from the same source as the flesh on Lude's body, shimmered with a beautiful silver-green light, as if rejoicing at its return to his hand.

That was right: the sword's main material was the tooth of a Lion Dragon, and the heart of that very Lion Dragon beat in Lude's chest.

In the next instant, a flash of silver streaked past, and a head hit the ground.