Chapter 780: Epilogue – The Boy

“Ah…”

…Oh, I remember.

The old man in front of me, I finally recalled who he was.

It was Valerie, the head of the Valerie Family.

After staring at him for a long time, the memories finally came back.

Over centuries, Puppet had encountered many Dark Sorcerers, and he was one of the most common types.

A Dark Sorcerer whose harsh upbringing made him obsessed with power and wealth, but who never had the true strength or talent to match it.

That’s why Puppet had such a hard time remembering him after all this time.

Well, it couldn’t be helped.

Puppet had lived for hundreds of years and met too many people.

Because of that, he had to categorize people: those worth remembering, those who could be briefly forgotten, and those who ought to be erased from his memory altogether.

Valerie belonged to the second group, someone who could be forgotten for a while.

He was the type you’d give a little help to, forget, and then recall when needed.

Yet, the Valerie standing before Puppet had changed from the version in his memories.

It had been decades since they last met, but it wasn’t just that he had grown older.

He had…

Sssshhh!

Replaced parts of his body with magitech equipment.

His lower jaw was made of steel, his right eye embedded with a crystal, his right arm and chest reinforced with brass-plated armor, gears and pipes, all pointing toward heavy magitech augmentation.

Ssss!

Steam hissed from the pipes on his back, and Puppet mumbled involuntarily.

“…The Guild of Artisans?”

“Oh?”

Valerie, who had been observing Puppet closely, finally reacted to his words with a surprised tone.

“You recognize who’s behind this work?”

Valerie, with his magitech-augmented body, gestured at himself as he asked.

Realizing his slip, Puppet shut his mouth.

Thwack!

A sudden flash of pain erupted on one side of his face.

His head spun, and a ringing filled one of his ears.

It was one of the Dark Sorcerers next to Puppet who had punched him.

“Grrr…”

Since becoming human, Puppet had rarely felt such pain, and he let out a faint groan, barely breathing.

The Dark Sorcerer raised his fist again, ready to strike Puppet once more.

“Enough.”

Valerie grabbed his disciple’s fist with his mechanical hand, stopping him.

“This one has more potential than the others. There’s no need for unnecessary violence.”

Despite the ringing in his ears, Puppet heard this part clearly.

It was probably because he had said something similar in the past.

Every century, Puppet would sponsor new Dark Sorcerer families, tailoring their environment to his liking, teaching them business skills and philosophical concepts.

One of the core values was efficiency.

Dark Magic was a costly art. It required energy, life force, and corpses. Efficiency was critical, and emotions should be discarded when utilizing resources.

Benevolence toward resources (humans) and needless violence were inefficiencies.

If you harmed the materials out of anger, it was your loss in the end.

Ironically, that same lesson saved Puppet this time.

“Heh…”

Puppet couldn’t explain it exactly, but he chuckled.

What could he say? It felt like a bad joke. This whole situation.

As if someone had set it all up just to mess with him.

The Dark Sorcerer next to him saw Puppet smiling.

“You bastard…”

“Enough.”

The Dark Sorcerer was about to hit him again, but Valerie stopped him once more.

Valerie appeared almost compassionate. But Puppet knew that this, too, was just a method to control his resources.

The technique of scaring the material through the disciples and then having the master show kindness to gain cooperation.

It was a method for extracting high-quality emotions or processing something delicately. Or getting answers.

“Please… spare me.”

Puppet, while still smiling, begged Valerie.

He begged for his life.

Just half a day ago, he was prepared to die, but now his mind had changed.

It wasn’t even about reviving his grandfather anymore.

He just didn’t want to die.

He didn’t want to feel this pain any longer.

Maybe it was the agony from the hit to the face, or maybe the sight of the mangled bodies around him, corpses fused with machines. Either way, he found himself desperate to live.

Thump! Thump! Thump!

Like his heart that beat despite his will, Puppet simply wanted to keep on living.

Maybe that was why he was laughing.

Experiments that had no hope at all, pathetically pleading for their lives had always seemed so foolish to him, yet now here he was.

After living for so long, he was experiencing something he hadn’t in centuries.

He couldn’t fully explain it, but the situation was terrifying and also… amusing.

‘Is this what he meant by punishment? …It’s not so bad.’

Despite the pain, fear, and humiliation, a part of Puppet thought it wasn’t a big deal.

It had been a long time since he last felt such pain and humiliation, but it wasn’t the first time.

In his early days as “Puppet,” after losing his grandfather and being truly alone, he had faced much worse.

This was nothing. Nothing at all.

“You’re something else, aren’t you? Laughing even now.”

“Laughing, you say?”

The Dark Sorcerer’s disciple raised his fist again, but Valerie stopped him and continued their conversation.

“Yes, laughing, apparently.”

Puppet understood what he meant.

He was referring to when Puppet had been dragged out of the ice cave by Oliver.

Back then, Puppet had become human, and soon after had been captured by the Valerie Family who were raiding the area.

“At first, I thought you were just a madman, but then I started to think otherwise.”

Clack. Clack.

Valerie moved his mechanical arm.

“Even when you woke up in the prison, you didn’t scream or cry like the others. You remained silent.”

Although Valerie had never been to the prison, he seemed to know everything about Puppet.

Had Rasmussen betrayed him? Or was it part of the plan all along?

“That’s why you caught my attention. The timing of all this too.”

“The timing?”

Puppet looked quizzically at Valerie, who asked knowingly.

“Do you not know the current state of the world?”

“All the ‘Fingers’ are dead now, aren’t they?”

Puppet responded instinctively. Valerie and the Dark Sorcerers around him raised their eyebrows.

“Hah, you’re no ordinary brat, that’s for sure. But do you know what’s happening? Sleeping Beauty has emerged from the forest.”

Valerie explained that the Princess, who had been dormant in the Sleeping Forest for centuries, had come out and attacked many Dark Sorcerers.

Without the high-ranking figures like the ‘Fingers’ and Holy Power, many smaller Dark Sorcerers had gone wild, but she appeared with hordes of Creatures, controlling or killing them all.

While this wasn’t news to Puppet, he wasn’t exactly up to date either.

At the time, Puppet had been too focused on causing the apocalypse and stealing God’s power to worry about such things.

So Valerie’s explanation was helpful.

He explained that not only had Sleeping Beauty crushed Dark Sorcerers in the Central Continent, but she had also come to the Winter Kingdom, destroying the Chepskaya, Coppeskaya, and Vallisha families.

“That’s how I was able to take over everything so easily.”

Puppet finally understood.

How the Valerie Family managed to learn the Zombie Puppet technique.

While the Princess wreaked havoc, the Valerie Family had stayed hidden and scavenged what was left, like vultures.

Not that Puppet blamed them.

After all, Dark Magic as a field operated like that. Valerie was just acting like a proper Dark Sorcerer.

What did bother Puppet though was…

“Did the Guild of Artisans get destroyed too?”

Puppet asked, looking at the magitech equipment littering the workshop and the corpses merged with it.

“The Guild of Artisans specialized in making magitech equipment nearby, specifically for…”

“The Puppet Immortal?”

Puppet had been in command of them. The evidence was the bodies fused with magitech parts, something only his artisans had been experimenting with.

“Huh…”

Valerie’s eyes gleamed.

It was the look of someone realizing the stone they picked up was actually a gem.

“How do you know about that? Only a few people know some of the Guild of Artisan members aligned with the Puppet Immortal.”

“I don’t know.”

Clack!

Valerie’s mechanical arm shot out and grabbed Puppet’s throat, squeezing tightly.

The hard brass fingers dug into his soft flesh, choking his airway, causing intense pain.

“Ghack… Grrk…!”

For the first time, Puppet felt what it meant to be truly unable to breathe. His body flailed helplessly, tied to the bed, like a wriggling worm.

Just like the experiments in his lab had done before they died.

The only difference now…

“I… don’t… know…”

…was that Puppet could still think.

……

Valerie studied Puppet, who kept denying his knowledge, but Puppet didn’t retract his words.

Sometimes, nonsense came across as believable, especially when it looked likely to give something, especially in a situation like this.

Just like Puppet now.

Sigh…

Finally, Valerie released Puppet’s throat.

“Do you really not know?”

“…No, I don’t.”

“What were you up to before you got caught?”

“I don’t know. I was just there.”

Puppet continued to feign ignorance.

He couldn’t reveal who he really was, and he couldn’t spin an elaborate lie either.

So being someone who knew nothing at all was the safest option.

To appear like a pumpkin that just rolled in from the chaotic times.

Some Dark Sorcerers believed in such things.

That they themselves were special, and that a stroke of fortune would come their way.

It wasn’t just Dark Sorcerers. Magicians, Holy Knights, anyone who wielded magic or power often had this type of grandiose delusion.

The belief that, because they held some power, they were truly unique.

Puppet had met those types for centuries, manipulated them, and now he was doing it again.

“Maybe he’s like some kind of walking encyclopedia?”

“Like someone whose memories were erased and only key knowledge was implanted?”

“Yeah, I heard about research like that from the Puppet Immortal’s Dark Sorcerers in this area.”

As Puppet threw out the bait, they began to create plausible theories themselves.

One of Puppet’s former disciples had attempted to make information gateways with humans, like a World Tree, but it had been scrapped due to capacity and practical concerns.

Now, the Valerie Family had started to wonder if Puppet might be one of those failed experiments.

Their overblown egos and the current strange state of the world, along with Puppet’s mysterious presence, all contributed to them believing this wild theory.

‘This just might…’

It might lead to a way out for Puppet.

He might end up tightly chained, his marrow sucked out bit by bit, but at least, for now, he could survive.

Unlike the meat carcasses hanging around him in the butcher’s shop.

For now, that was enough.

“What’s your name?”

Valerie asked Puppet for his name.

A good sign.

Still, Puppet didn’t rush to answer.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t even remember your own name? Then what do you recall? Think carefully before you answer unless you want to end up like the other materials.”

“The other materials.”

Puppet paused.

Right, there were other children caught too.

The ones who had escaped with him.

He didn’t know why, but suddenly, he was curious about them.

“What happened to them—”

“What happened to the others?”

Valerie, noticing Puppet’s change in demeanor, spread out his mechanical hand and used magic as a medium to display an image.

The other children who had escaped were being harvested alive into products.

[························!!!]

[──!────!!!────!!──]

[······?!! ···! ────!!!]

Puppet recognized the faces. In fact, he knew every single one.

The only one he truly knew by name was Leboski, but after days in the prison, he had seen them all enough to know them.

Those kids were now being processed into products, their blood drained, bodies gutted, organs—including their eyes—excised and packaged, all by the system Puppet had established.

‘Well… It couldn’t be helped, right?’

Puppet mumbled inwardly, indifferent.

It was an inevitable outcome.

There was no guilt, no regret. No sentimental feelings were welling up inside him.

It would be laughable if he even felt that way at this point.

But still.

Just.

Just.

“Was it Rasmussen who betrayed me?”

He just wanted confirmation.

Who had betrayed them during their escape? Who had snitched before the sun even rose?

Puppet’s heart began to pound, though he didn’t know why. Who had turned on them?

Ah, yes. As a Dark Sorcerer, knowing the traitor was an obligation.

Yeah, that’s what it was.

“Hah… Do you think we moved just because someone tattled on you?”

Valerie’s words puzzled Puppet for a moment, but soon, he got the message.

When using ‘bad guard, good prisoner’ tactics, there’s an option to place Dark Sorcery surveillance tools as a precaution against unexpected events.

Though costly, with the resources of a large family like Valerie’s, it was feasible.

So, there had never been a traitor after all.

“Take a look at this.”

Valerie manipulated his mechanical hand to display another image.

There was Rasmussen.

Or more accurately, Rasmussen’s corpse, heart removed and replaced with a magitech engine.

Unlike augmenting appendages, replacing organs with magitech machinery was still in its early stages.

The success rate was abysmally low, especially for someone of Rasmussen’s age.

In the end, Rasmussen, who had apparently tried to regain some semblance of honor, became an experiment and died for it.

He never even realized he was under surveillance. What a fool.

…

“It was unexpected. We had tasked him to test your loyalty, but…

“…

“For him then to betray us first… what a laughable fool indeed.”

….

“The man who played the good prisoner, just to save his own skin, when his grandson died… and now this.

“He had a grandson?”

“Yes, around your age. Not bad at all. In fact, we needed a sample of that particular age for our experiments.”

“Ha… Hahaha…”

Suddenly, Puppet let out a strange sigh.

A deep, shallow, yet paradoxical sigh.

His unexpected reaction drew the attention of all the Dark Sorcerers, and he muttered something under his breath.

“This is disgusting… To be forced to witness bastards like myself at times like this…”

Though no name was mentioned, everyone knew who he meant; the disdain was clear.

The Dark Sorcerers’ brows furrowed with anger, but Puppet continued staring at the ceiling, mumbling.

“Is this supposed to be some kind of punishment? Don’t make me laugh.”