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

Clad in white robes and the matching featureless masks, they strode into the white city. Wisp didn't hesitate, but immediately led them into one of the white buildings. To Ike's surprise, the door swung open, not locked or barred in any way. A small, pristine room awaited them, completely cleaned out. It lacked any form of furnishing or anything to make it a home, save the curtains Ike had seen from outside that allowed the empty box to masquerade as occupied. Wisp walked to the room's center and bent. Slotting her fingers into an almost invisible dip in the wood, she pulled open a trap door and descended into darkness.

"Creepy," Ike muttered to himself.

Wisp turned back. "Shh."

He raised his brows, but nodded. If Wisp was telling him to be quiet, she did it for good reason.

A staircase descended into the darkness. Unlike the pristine buildings above, this staircase actually sported dust. Not a great deal of dust, but some. Enough to stand out, after wandering around the empty town for so long. The center of the stairs was brushed clean by the passage of feet, and the floorboards were worn in the center, polished from time and wear. Unlike the rest of the city, this part of it looked lived in. Used. Functional. It had dirt and signs of life. Ike frowned. Was the outer city just an empty shell? A protective façade, to appear vacated, while the puppets churned beneath?

But why? Brightbriar had won. This region was his. Why would he need to make the town look empty?

He supposed Brightbriar wasn't the most powerful mage imaginable. It was very possible there was some Rank 6 or higher threat that legitimately scared Brightbriar, or maybe a dragon lurked in the vicinity and liked firebombing anything that moved. He didn't know.

But hey, I'm about to find out.

The stairs descended deep into the earth. The thin beams of light that sifted through the edges of the trapdoor lit the stairs just enough for Ike's aether-enhanced eyes to guide him down the staircase. The stairs slowly wound around on themselves, down into a tunnel of stone. Mag stiffened and froze as the tunnel slowly closed in on him. Ike put a gentle hand on his shoulder, and Mag took a deep breath and pushed on.

Up ahead, the tunnel downward flattened out and expanded into a wide room with a low ceiling. The room extended as far as Ike could see, fading into the shadows at the limit of his vision. The stairs dead-ended here. They could go no further. He glanced at Wisp, who nodded back and took the lead again. Mag and Ike continued to follow her.

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White shapes loomed out of the darkness. Puppets hurried around the space, rushing from one task to the next. Looms worked, crafting fabric out of white thread. Others crafted pillows or mattresses, or sewed clothes.

Ike stared. What the…

Wisp nudged him and kept going, as if this was nothing. Ike jolted and followed her lead. He was one of them, one of the faceless white puppets. He saw this every day. There was no reason to be startled.

Past the textile puppets, they came across farming puppets. Puppets worked under artificial, mana-powered lights, using more mana to force crops to swiftly grow to their full potential. A puppet raised a hoe high, tilling dark, mana-rich earth. Behind it, another puppet sowed the seeds. Yet another puppet heaped earth over the seed and watered it, then knelt, pouring mana in to force the growing process to begin. A stack of puppets stood by in a strange procession, stepping in to grow the plant whenever the first two were done sowing a seed.

A cow mooed. Ike startled, only to find a cow standing placidly to the other side, chewing on a mouthful of cud. A puppet put a hand to its side, feeding it mana. A calf slid out, and another puppet caught it and placed it beside its mother, using mana once more to grow it to full size. Another puppet drew milk from the cow's udders.

What the fuck, Ike thought for a second time.

At the far end of the strange, quietly horrific process, another puppet led the prime-age bulls into a dark shed. The sound of a blade echoed from the darkness, and the stench of blood oozed out.

Something tugged at his robes, urging him to keep moving. Ike glanced down. A spider thread attached to the front of his clothes, pulling him forward. He shook his head. Can't loose focus now. Whatever these puppets were doing here, however bizarre and disgusting it was, it would only be worse if Brightbriar had his way and the puppets spread everywhere. He shook his head, a little out of it. But still… what the fuck.

Beyond the slaughterhouse, the puppets continued. A thousand household tasks, done at an incredible scale all at once, all by these puppets. They were all the same puppets, at that, the same black-haired, obviously-jointed models they'd fought outside the town. Despite the fact that Ike, Wisp, and to a lesser extent Mag, obviously had different hair, none of the puppets acted any differently toward them. The three of them might as well have been puppets themselves, for all the puppets reacted to them.

Ike glanced at one of the puppets as he passed. Its glazed eyes stared dead ahead, completely focused on its task. Were the puppets in here not looking for intruders? Maybe they simply assumed no one would get past the external puppets to come down here, or they thought no one would find the entrance. Or maybe they simply didn't react to anyone wearing the white clothes, and their minds were too simple to overcome even a simple disguise like theirs.

After all, the low-rank puppets do seem to have less-than-human intelligence. They're simple, task-oriented things, that can't really think for themselves. That being said… He glanced over his shoulder. They can do pretty complex tasks, it's just that they can only do that one task. They aren't self-aware, just repetitive, mindless, automated things.

"Hey! What are you three doing?"

Ike jumped. He whirled, one hand dropping to his sword. Or—maybe not!