The Creatures That We Are

Chapter 363: Pride Marionette

Just like what Team Vermilion Bird had seen, a makeshift altar had been set up on the clearing under the hillside cemetery, surrounded by kneeling monsters in white hood and robe. They each had a dagger in their abdomen to fill the grooves on the altar with their blood, drawing a crimson symbol of the Godbearer Cult.

Giant beam of white light shot toward heaven from the altar, while red tendrils of blood fog climbed along the beam to turn it into an eerie pillar of blood.

Azure Dragon didn’t have the others get involved. With his energy concentrated to his fist, he went up to destroy the altar with one serious punch, then he killed the robed monsters.

The beam of light disappeared.

Half a minute after the mission was completed, however, the enemies showed up.

Roughly a hundred elite monsters of different kinds swarmed up to them from all directions. Unable to flee, Team Azure Dragon was forced to put up a fight.

The bloody battle lasted twenty minutes.

Every awakener fought elite monsters to the best of their abilities, and when the battle came to an end, the clearing was covered in piles of dead bodies. The survivors ached and raged, but all that was left in the end was an exhausted silence.

Among Azure Dragon’s nine subordinates, one was killed, one seriously injured, and one mildly injured.

Among Joker’s subordinates, five were killed, two seriously injured, and one mildly injured.

Azure Dragon walked up to the body of an adult man. He had died from getting his heart pierced by an overtaker’s bone stings while protecting another companion.

Azure Dragon knelt down to close the man’s eyes, saying mournfully, “We’ll bring the bodies back to...”

Before he finished, he noticed something, his brows furrowed.

His dead companion suddenly widened the eyes he had just closed, and the eyes were flickering with a strange blue light.

“Get away from the bodies!” Azure Dragon shouted, while the body had already picked itself up and lunged at Azure Dragon.

Azure Dragon’s hand shot out to grab the body by its neck, keeping it from moving.

What he felt made him tense up. The neck in his grip wasn’t flesh and bones, but hard, smooth wood that was cool to the touch.

What’s going on?!

With a swing of his arm, Azure Dragon threw the body away from him.

It flew for a few meters before hitting the ground. Then two seconds later, it climbed to its feet, its body going stiff and its joints becoming crackly.

Under the crimson moonlight, everyone saw that the body had turned into a wooden marionette.

It cocked its head and opened its mouth to cackle strangely. A closer look revealed the two vertical cracks by its mouth as the jaw moved up and down, like the mouth of a marionette would.

“Watch out!”

“Back off!”

Their other dead companions stood up one after another, having turned into strange marionettes—no, the killed elite monsters had stood up and turned into marionettes as well, their movements stiff and unnatural.

Kya, kya, kya.

The marionettes’ eyes glowed a cold blue as their squarish mouths opened and closed, their laughter a chorus of unnerving cackles.

All the while, their hands and feet were transforming into sharp, pointed wooden stakes.

“Prepare for a fight! Don’t pull back!”

Azure Dragon made the order decisively.

All fourteen surviving awakeners, including the three suffering serious injury, moved toward Azure Dragon.

On the clearing, more than a hundred marionettes staggered to surround the awakeners, their movements bizarre. They cackled loudly while their stiff bodies shook violently.

The chorus of laughter was strangely oppressive and anxiety-inducing. They also found themselves losing the clarity of their minds.

Ten seconds later, the laughter stopped abruptly.

Two thirds of the marionettes charged at the awakeners at the same time.

Rather than running in straight lines, the marionettes danced a strange dance of twirls and jumps, alternating between approaching the humans and moving away from them.

Not even the marionettes themselves could predict their next moves, it seemed. It was as if they were merely dancing in a mad state.

The seemingly random moves, however, concealed the most insidious killing intent.

One dancing marionette had its back to Four Rainbow a second before, yet its head and limbs rotated 180 degrees the next second and stabbed at Four Rainbow’s face with its stake of a hand.

Conjuring a glowing sword of light, Four Rainbow cut it in half without mercy.

Light, serial number 15, Element-type. It allowed one to manipulate the light elements.

“Max luminance!”

With a shout, he raised his other hand to the sky.

Suddenly, light converged above his head before morphing into an oval glowing orb, tinted with red under the blood moon.

Boom!

Swish, swish, swish!

All at once, the orb exploded, turning into countless arrows of light and shooting at the marionettes like rain.

Marionettes collapsed one after another, getting hit by the arrows like walking targets.

Four Rainbow’s eyes glinted with pleasant surprise. It seemed that light-element attacks worked on the marionettes...

Just when the thought flashed through his mind, however, his sharp eyebrows knitted back together as the felled marionettes picked themselves back up, their bodies shaking as they cackled madly, as if mocking Four Rainbow for the wasted effort.

It didn’t take long for the arrows of light to be shaken off. The few that remained in their bodies did nothing to slow them down. In fact, the arrows became their weapons and made them more dangerous.

To make things worse, even the marionette Four Rainbow had cut in half moved to piece itself back together, slowly rising to its feet.

“It doesn’t work,” Azure Dragon said in a grave tone. “We must destroy them completely.”

“Damn it!” It was the first time in his life that Four Rainbow lamented the fact that his Talent wasn’t Fire. If he had Fire, he would be able to burn all the marionettes in one fell swoop.

The marionettes continued their mad dance, while the awakeners started slaughtering them.

Four Rainbow continued to swing his sharp sword of light, cutting the marionettes approaching him into halves or thirds. However, they quickly reassembled.

Azure Dragon, on the other hand, was having a better time. His punches were so powerful that he could shattered a marionette into small pieces with raw power, preventing them from getting back together.

However, it was still too slow.

While Azure Dragon could protect himself, his companions would die in the endless battle of attrition sooner or later.

And on his own, it would take at least twenty minutes for him to render all hundred and some marionettes into wooden shards, and he would exhaust much of his stamina.

In a minute, he already heard his companions scream, hurt.

Someone came up to Azure Dragon then. It was Joker.

“I smelled a pride monster, our three!”

Azure Dragon turned to look at the dozen marionettes in that direction. Indeed, one of them stood out.

While the other marionettes were dancing in frenzy, it alone was barely moving.

To control more than a hundred marionettes of cadavers to fight, Azure Dragon believed the marionettist must be here, in close proximity. It should be nigh impossible for them to be controlling the marionettes from a long range.

Azure Dragon destroyed the marionette suddenly lunging at him and took a deep breath. Leaping with both feet, he shot toward the suspected marionette like a bullet.

It took him only two seconds to move thirty meters, almost as fast as War Tiger with Killing Expert pushed to the limit.

Knocking off the marionettes attempting to intercept him, Azure Dragon charged toward the almost stationary marionette.

—Got you!