Barbarus, Southern Swamps, Diderot Highlands.
.
The alien lord Dursley stood beside the workbench, deep in thought. His conversion experiment had just suddenly failed.
On the workbench, lower-tier corpse parts, seemingly hacked apart at random, lay quietly arranged in a certain order. Coarse black hemp thread crudely stitched these pieces together, and some yellowish-black pus slowly oozed along the wounds.
Yes, the minor lord Dursley was manufacturing an advanced puppet. Generally speaking, whether low-tier or high-tier, puppets were pieced together from the corpses of the sturdy lower tiers. The only difference likely lay in the psychic sorcery applied to them.
Crafting advanced puppets consumed a vast amount of psychic power. By Dursley's standards, creating one would plunge him into a period of weakness.
Yet if it were the true master of Barbarus, the great lord Nac'Lare, that guy could wave his hand and instantly manufacture a dozen advanced puppets.
Although Dursley could also wave his hand to make a dozen low-tier puppets, the chasm between low-tier and advanced puppets was difficult to cross.
These mass-produced low-tier puppets only knew how to fight. Unlike those advanced puppets, they could organize their own tactics, use simple psychic power, and command the lower-graded puppets.
Furthermore, the combat strength of a single advanced puppet was several times that of a low-tier one.
Prior to this, however, the minor lord Dursley had always adhered to the philosophy of brute force and quantity over quality. As long as he had enough low-tier puppets, he could grind an opposing individual advanced puppet to death.
--Yes, these lords of the south favored simply made puppets, while some also kept other monsters. Only those lords with sufficiently ample territories had choices other than puppets.
Take Dursley, for instance. He had previously relied on human-wave tactics to grind several neighboring minor lords to death, after which he raised quite a few foul hounds.
Yet now, nothing worked anymore.
Dursley thought with gnashing teeth. Ever since the arrival of the Death Guard from the north, and the arrival of that scythe-wielding monster roaming about at night, harvesting the lower tiers had become increasingly difficult.
At first, they merely thought that conquering villages at night would become somewhat more complicated.
In fact, initially it was just like that. The Death Guard led by the one called Typhon actively organized nighttime defensive operations in various villages.
.
Yet they all overlooked the fellow who, just like them, roamed within the poisonous mists.
What was going on?! That guy was clearly a lower tier himself, and unlike Calas Typhon, he was not a half-breed possessing psychic power. He was simply a tall and sturdy lower tier! How on earth did he manage to slay those minor lords?
No lords knew, for those involved were already dead.
That fellow carried a scythe, appearing soundlessly within the poisonous mists, and then severed the heads of those alien lords who came down from the mountains to hunt.
Dursley felt somewhat glad that he never went down the mountain to hunt, but his own slave-catching party had suffered heavy losses, with nearly a hundred puppets perishing in several hunting trips down the mountain.
--No, that could not be. If he went down the mountain, he would surely kill that damned bastard.
That lowly lower tier!!!
That being said, the alien lord Dursley had remained quietly within his territory ever since.
News of alien lords being struck down one by one within their territories continuously spread out.
To say he was not panicked would be a lie.
Yet the roads leading down the mountain to hunt the lower tiers were blocked. No matter how many slave-catching parties were sent, the outcome of descending the mountain was to be slaughtered.
Without the raw materials to manufacture puppets, Dursley could not continue his quantity-based tactics.
Therefore, the lord Dursley had no choice but to bite the bullet and attempt to manufacture an advanced puppet.
Yet his first attempt just now had failed.
It felt as if he had suddenly been cut off from his connection to the High Heavens.
Dursley stood beside the workbench in contemplation. Other experimental apparatuses operated in other parts of the room: the roaring turn of the steam engine, the movement of mechanical arms, creaking noisily.
A figure slowly emerged from the shadows at the doorway, the face beneath the gas mask blurred and hard to truly distinguish.
That shadow stood approximately three meters away from Dursley, while the lord Dursley still stood beside the workbench, completely oblivious as he turned his back to the door.
The lord Dursley knew that if there were an assault, his puppets and foul hounds would have started stirring long ago.
Yet, he miscalculated--
--In the blink of an eye, it was as if someone had suddenly seized his throat in a stranglehold. His vision went black in an instant, as though the connection between soul and flesh had suddenly skipped a beat!
The figure at the door violently burst forth!!! Wielding a blade, he charged straight for Dursley's face to strike!
Dursley instinctively raised a hand to parry, while his other hand employed his most frequently used conflagration witchcraft!
"Ah!!!!"
The hand attempting to use witchcraft instantly burst apart, while that scythe shifted its angle, bypassed the parry, and hooked straight for his internal organs!
The curved blade of the scythe cleverly avoided the obstruction, its tip parting Dursley's bulky and bloated torso as though gliding through tofu.
The blade tip probed further, sinking deep inside. A string of blood-red viscera hung upon it like plump grapes, tumbling out together with the downward cleave of the scythe!
"You!"
Dursley stared fixedly at this uninvited guest. In the final second of his life, he caught sight of that wraith.
Compared to other lower tiers, a tall and robust physique, clad from head to toe in deep-black leather protective gear. Above the gas mask, beneath the hood, was a pair of pitch-black pupils devoid of any soul, deep, as if about to suck in everything!!!
This was a cursed wraith!
Those black pupils gazed at him without any emotion, raising the blade to cleave once more.
Blade rises, head falls.
Today is a good day.
Hades thought cheerfully. The assassination was successful, and he had run into a fool.
It seemed this alien lord was already dead. Just to be safe, Hades gave it a few more stabs.
Afterward, he looked with some disgust at the thing upon the workbench, the corpse parts scattered all over it, body fat spilling across the floor.
Damn it.
Hades did not bother with those corpse parts first. Now that the lord was dead, those puppets should also feel the change in psychic power; they ought to be routing.
Hades swiftly ran upward along the route he had scouted earlier, quickly sprinting to the top of the ramparts.
A few puppets were running about in a meltdown on top of the castle roof. Hades soon granted them mercy.
Then he looked toward the edge, where several cannons stood prominently over there.
Unlike medieval cannons of imagination, the weaponry here was all electronically severely modified--"--it looks like a medieval cannon on the outside," "--it operates just like a medieval cannon," "--the shells it fires are just like medieval cannonballs, except the firepower is somewhat greater," "--yet it is simply not a medieval cannon," magic-modified cannons.
Hades ran over, looking outward through the observation port. The earliest routing puppets clearly had almost reached the place where he buried his mines.
Hades adjusted the cannon muzzle, aiming them at the shed where Dursley kept his foul hounds. Affected by the commotion, a few hounds had already snapped their iron chains and run out.
It did not matter.
Hades ignited the artillery platform, then rapidly sprinted away, running to five meters out.
If he stood where he was, Hades wagered that the cannon would either misfire or blow up in his face.
Several cannons were ignited in succession. Hades repeated the trick, and after blowing up the hound house, he began blasting the puppet crowd.
--The landmines buried in the distance also began to detonate.
The scattered puppets had completely lost the desire to flee. These corpse parts animated by witchcraft possessed only the desire for slaughter and torture.
Amidst countless roaring, flashing detonations, Hades crouched and leaped down from the fortress, dancing with his blade to reap.
Once upon a time, he had watched Mortarion so ruthlessly reap puppets.
And now, it was his moment to let the flower of slaughter bloom!
The soul of chūnibyō, ignite!
Before you continue