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

One after another, Ike cut into the puppets. After the first failure, he was careful not to repeat his mistake and slash the puppet open at the chest, but instead, cut out windows into their bodies. If they had a core, it wasn't in their limbs or head, since he'd dismembered them, and the puppets kept going; though, now that I think about it, Rosamund kept producing goo with just her head.

He thought for a moment, then shook his head. Rosamund was the opposite of these puppets. She was an exquisite creation with her own thoughts, personality, and memories, who could progress as a mage, absorb skills, and completely replicate the original Rosamund. True, maybe that was normal for one of Brightbriar's creations, and these mass-produced puppets were the exception. After all, Shopkeep's town had been infiltrated by very humanoid puppets. But then, even if these puppets alone had a weakness, it was better to know that than not know. The mass-produced puppets were just as much a threat in battle, and something that was a weakness for them was likely, if not deadly, at least a bad hit for the more humanoid puppets. It would tell him about Brightbriar's habits when it came to making puppets, if nothing else.

The extreme damage self-destruct is nice, but come on! There has to be more. He cut a hole in the lower back of the puppet he was working on, pushing the plug he'd cut in so it fell out the puppet's thigh hole. The porcelain fell to the ground with a clunk, and the puppet immediately became inert, the goo rushing out of it in one big splash.

"Wah!" Ike lunged for the piece he'd cut. He snatched it up and flipped it over. It was already fading, but there were traces of part of an enchantment on the inside of the chunk. The magic circle glowed in mana-blue for another few moments before it vanished entirely.

"Hold on, hold on." He jogged over to the next puppet. Flipping it around, he cut out a similar, but slightly larger chunk, aiming to get the full form of the round enchantment this time. The second he cut it, he pushed it in, then yanked it out through the puppet's thigh hole. The circle blazed up at him this time, clear as day, while the puppet went completely inert.

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Ike chuckled aloud. "Nice. That's what I'm talking about."

"Find something?" Wisp returned, pushing out of the forest in front of him. Leaves stuck in her hair. She crawled up the web and down the other side, dismounting hands-first on the other side.

"Yeah. I found it. Well… I can't really read enchantments, so I have no idea what it's doing, but…" Ike pointed at the back of the monsters, right where he'd made the cut. "Right there. Stab there, smash it, doesn't matter—that's their weak point."

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Wisp looked. Her lips twisted. "Had to be on the back, huh?"

"They're not going to put it somewhere easy to hit," Ike returned sarcastically, rolling his eyes at her.

"A girl can dream." Whipping one of the dismembered puppets around, Wisp balled up her fist and slammed a punch into the place Ike had indicated. The porcelain shattered, and the puppet stilled.

"See?"

"Looks like it does work," she allowed, a bit of amazement in her voice.

"Oh, come on, now. I'm not that unreliable," Ike complained with a sigh.

Mag shot out of the sky, landing beside them like a bolt from the blue. "What works?"

Ike pointed. "Hit them here. The enchantment that binds the goo to the body is here. If you hig that, they shatter immediately, and you don't have to worry about them stumbling around annoyingly after you take their head off."

Mag nodded. He hopped over to the puppet on the ground and transformed. A giant magpie, scales shining where it should have white feathers, pecked at the puppet's back. Mag's sharp beak pierced the puppet, and it stopped moving.

"See? He had to check, too. It wasn't just me," Wisp pointed out.

Ike sighed. "No one trusts me. So sad."

At the back of the group, Palio snorted. Her eyes flicked to one of the trapped puppets, but she quickly looked away.

Ike caught the motion. He turned and smiled at her. "You can practice, if you like. I'm just making fun of these two. Or… I guess I'm really letting them make fun of me, is what it is."

"You don't let me do nothing. I do what I want," Wisp immediately proclaimed

"Yeah, yeah." Ike patted her head.

Palio hesitated a moment, then stepped forward. She hefted her spear and thrust it toward one of the trapped puppets.

The blade bounced off. The entire spear thrummed from the force of the blow. Palio staggered back, rebounded by the force of her own strike.

Ike grimaced. "Ah… that's right. We struggled to break the puppets' shells when we were Rank 2, didn't we."

"Speak for yourself," Wisp muttered.

"Yeah… look, don't worry about it, Palio. You're just here to tail us. You don't have to fight," Ike comforted her.

Palio's nose wrinkled in distaste. She stepped away from him, crossing her arms in irritation. Occasionally, her eyes flicked toward the puppets, but she quickly looked away, refusing to stare at them for too long.

Ike shook his head. Why am I the one who has to comfort the girl who's tailing us? Come on.

Putting Palio to the back of his mind, he turned to Wisp. "That mental skill…?"

"Oh! Right. Yeah. That is why we came here."

"Don't forget. You're the one who led us here in the first place," Ike pointed out.

"I'm just a tiny spider, my head is only so big," Wisp replied in a baby voice. Before Ike could retort again, she took off into the woods, gesturing for him to follow her. "It's actually this way. I wasn't going to complain, since we were heading the same way anyways, and then I forgot, and I decided I just wanted to go smash up the city full of puppets."

"I mean, I'm not against that, but let's get that mental skill so I can go beat the King into submission, first," Ike agreed, following after Wisp.

Mag took to the air once more. Palio cut one last look at the trapped puppets, then harrumphed and turned away, trotting after Ike and Wisp.