Skill Hunter -Kill Monsters, Acquire Skills, Ascend to the Highest Rank!

Porcelain-white figures lunged out of the forest. Ball-jointed dolls leaped and sprinted toward them, bursting out from all directions.

They slammed into a thin, nearly-invisible netting and tangled up in Wisp's web. Their momentum was instantly cut short as the spider thread caught their limbs and twisted in their joints. The dolls contorted to unnatural, horrifying angles, but still struggled, not at all injured even if their heads had been whipped around backwards.

Ike looked over them. These dolls were all… generic. There was nothing special about them. They had the same neutral, expressionless face, without even a joint for the jaw. Their bodies were proportioned like dolls', without any variance. Even their hair was all the same, pitch-black, shoulder-length, and impossibly smooth and shiny.

He frowned. Huh? Didn't Brightbriar make the dolls impossible to tell from ordinary people? But these are all obviously inhuman, and identical. Did he refine his techniques after he conquered this region? Or… is something else going on?

There was no more time to think. The first of the dolls broke free of Wisp's web and lunged at the group. Ike raced to meet them. They showed no fear at the Hungry Sword, and allowed the blade to smash into their neck. Only then did their mouth split open, the porcelain creaking as it formed into a rictus of a smile. Its porcelain took the blow of a blade without so much as scratching the surface.

Ike smiled right back. "Fucking idiot. This isn't just any old sword."

The Hungry Sword keened. The teeth on the blade's surface spun. It chewed into the doll's neck, sending white powder flying. The doll had enough time to widen its eyes before the sword sawed through its neck, leaving nothing but a ragged stump. Black goo poured out of the stump, boiling over.

He didn't wait for the rest to break free. Instead, he charged directly toward the dolls bound in the net, slicing them up one after another. There was no such thing as a deadly blow on the dolls, not unless he found their core, so he took their heads and limbs, leaving them as limbless torsos that couldn't do much but twitch. I'll go back and find their core after they're all immobilized. If they have cores.

The little puppets had been full of goo, the metal ones he'd found in Clarina's town. He hadn't really looked for a core on them, but then again, Roderick had definitely had a core. The big metal monstrosity that he'd become had had his brain and vital organs shoved in there. He hadn't found one on Rosamund, but he hadn't looked for one. He hadn't been able to hack her open enough to find one, to be fair. But why wouldn't they have cores? It only made sense, if there was some kind of enchantment producing the goo. Sure, the goo was made of people, and it self-replicated, but something had to bind it to the puppets. Otherwise, the goo would just replicate on its own outside of the puppets, and, well, forget the puppets. The goo would be far more dangerous.

In other words, he had no proof that there should be a core, but when he thought about it, he also had no proof that there shouldn't be a core. Since he'd never really looked for one, he figured he ought to take this chance to find out.

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The one he'd beheaded staggered around the battlefield, searching for its head. In a moment of brilliance, Mag swooped down, grabbed the head in his claws, and flew up, into the sky. The body kept staggering around, but it no longer had a head to find.

They were definitely Brightbriar's work. There was no doubt about that. Their construction was exactly like Rosamund's, from the ball joints to the black goo inside. But they were so much more unrefined! Nothing but basic lumps, mass-produced bodies with the same face over and over. From the way Scar had described it, infiltrating populations with replica dolls had been Brightbriar's MO for a long time now. This surely wasn't the first region he'd infiltrated… right?

Come to think of it, Scar didn't know which region Brightbriar came from initially, Ike realized. He pursed his lips for a moment, then shrugged. If that was this region, then great! He'd learn more about the man than he'd intended to. But a part of him suspected that Brightbriar came from somewhere far from here, somewhere even Scar didn't know of… though maybe Shawn would. He made a mental note to ask Shawn later, though given the mountain's history of being tossed from one treasure vault to the next, doubted he would know much.

The remaining puppets that Ike hadn't cut up were quickly dismembered by Wisp, or lifted into the sky, just to be dropped by Mag and shatter. Ike whistled, calling Mag down from the sky. "Any more puppets headed our way?"

Mag shook his head. "Not immediately. There's some roving bands of puppets wandering the area, about ten of them to a group—the same as this group."

Ike turned, counting. One, two… nine, ten, eleven. He nodded. "Got it. But none of them are close?"

"Not too close. They don't seem to be aware that we killed these puppets, either."

That tracked. No puppets had ever reacted to other puppets' destruction, unless they directly saw the puppets shatter. Ike turned to the dismembered bodies hanging in Wisp's web. The headless body staggered past; he tripped it, then took its legs. It crawled on, desperate, but there was no longer anywhere for it to go.

"What are you thinking?" Wisp asked. She walked beside him in human form. Gods only knew how long she'd been beside him, but Ike didn't startle. He was used to it, and anyways, Wisp would only lord it over him.

"I'm thinking there should be something that anchors the black goo—formed by a body and soul mashed together—to the porcelain body, since there's nothing to naturally hold the two together, but the black goo never leaves the body or forms outside it. If we break that, the puppets should stop directly, and we won't have to worry about things like dismembering them."

Wisp nodded in approval. "We can just kill them in one strike. I like that."

Ike lifted the Hungry Sword and cut open the first puppet's chest. The body cracked open, and black goo oozed out… but only for a moment. In the next, magic frizzled. Bright white-blue light flashed, and the black goo lost all its mana. It became inert, nothing more than a mess. Slopping out of the body, the goo puddled on the ground.

"What the…" Wisp muttered. Read latest chapters at My Virtual Library Empire

Ike scowled. "It's some kind of failsafe. Brightbriar doesn't want us to find out too much about his puppets, so he has them self-destruct if we inflict too much damage."

"That's a weakness on its own," Wisp commented.

"True, but it still requires massive damage to each puppet. I'm more imagining a single, precise strike. Though… the fact that he has them self-destruct hints that there is such a strike possible. We just have to find it."

Wisp snorted. "Ever the optimist. I'll go set up some tripwires, so we have a secondary warning system if the patrolling puppets get too close."

"I'll try not to take too long," Ike promised. It wasn't like they'd come here to exterminate the puppets, after all. They were here for Wisp's mental skill, and to investigate Brightbriar. If they triggered all the puppets to come after them, their primary purposes got much more difficult.

Wisp vanished, fading into the forest. Lifting the Hungry Sword, he approached the next puppet.