The Hated Hero: Sigil-Powered Warrior-Chapter 27: The Black Puppet

"Take this!" The bloodied, heavily armored figure tossed his shield at the halberd-wielding hierophant, who had no trouble swatting it away with his weapon, even cackling as he did.

"And you’ll silence us again, Hawking?!"

"Dome of Restriction!" came the bloodied Hierophant Hawking’s declaration, his answer to the halberd wielder’s question, it seemed. In no time, a transparent glass-like dome appeared and contained them.

True to its name, the dome restricted sound. Immanuel tried to shout, seeing that a massive piece of stone debris was flying into the dome towards Hierophant Hawking, but no sound would come out of his mouth.

He acknowledged a sigil, only to find his mana frozen solid within the fiber of his being. The dome restricts powers too!

But Hierophant Hawking somehow knew that something was about to hit him from behind and leapt out of the projectile’s trajectory. The giant stone debris made contact with the stone structure it was once a part of and broke apart into numerous shards that flew in different directions.

Fuck!

Immanuel was not the only one astonished with the near miss. The woman, too, made known not only her astonishment, but also her frustration, on her face, with a downward snap of her arm to match.

Was this your doing? Immanuel imagined a puppet tossing a boulder their way.

But that was a question that would never be answered. She smirked as metal strings wound tight around different parts of her body.

Not so fast! Immanuel prepared himself to swing his greatsword at the woman.

But just as he swung his blade, the strings, which led back to a puppet standing at a distance behind the woman, snapped and pulled her out of the Dome of Restriction.

Rather than hit nothing, Immanuel’s attack struck something else instead—a puppet, one with more limbs than those he encountered earlier. Its upper half was human-like but with two pairs of arms. Meanwhile, its lower half was spider-like: puppet legs and arms congregated around a torso to form a more stable vertical base for the construct.

The entirety of the puppet was charred all throughout and pierced in many different places.

His attack did nothing to it.

You can be smart at times, I must admit. He tossed a throwing dagger at the woman, believing her exposed as she was being pulled back. A third limb reached forward from behind the puppet pulling her and swatted the knife out of flight.

Even with the chaos raging in silence between the two hierophants, Immanuel was focused on the enemies before him. That the monks overpowered the puppets earlier despite their numbers disadvantage while the woman’s focus was on him was all he needed to know about her combat style.

Put the pressure on her, and she loses focus on the puppets. That’s her weakness.

For the first time, Immanuel noticed the near-invisible strings that bound the whole spider-like puppet together. These must be the same strings that kept individual puppets intact despite my explosive trick. Now, to get past this wooden abomination.

Seeing how his sword swing did nothing to the construct moments ago, Immanuel thrust his sword end-first into stone once more and assumed an unarmed fighting stance. I can always take out a throwing dagger if and when I need to.

Just as he made the decision to fight without a weapon, glowing blades emerged from within its body. Immanuel counted eight in total.

Magic-imbued swords, huh? Do your worst! I’ll give you a few moments to do nothing but attack me. Make it count!

The puppet swung and thrusted its glowing blades at Immanuel, who dodged each strike attempt with almost no effort. But despite never hitting him, not even with a glancing blow, the wooden construct persisted, moving with the predictability of a theater actor playing the role of an esteemed warrior.

As the puppet showed no signs of letting up with its ineffective offense, Immanuel pulled out a handful of smoke grenades and tossed them all around him. The puppet’s offense improved in terms of speed and unpredictability, even achieving near-misses at times. Too late.

As the thick cloud of smoke continued to grow, so did the woman’s desperation, if her face was any indication. Too late.

And then the cloud reached the dome’s edge and was starting to grow past it. The construct leapt out, landing in front of its mistress to protect it. A bit more, Immanuel.

When the smoke cloud had grown much larger than the dome itself, Immanuel rushed to the edge of the restrictive space, winding side to side to make it harder for the enemy to gauge where he was within the smoke.

His hearing returned, and he was still within thick smoke cover. A cold sensation flowed all over him, as if ice cold water was poured on his body. He acknowledged a sigil and pumped more mana into its activation to let him use one of the monks’ skills.

A heartbeat later, he was standing next to the woman. Before she could even begin to process how Immanuel got there, a rage-powered fist made its mark on her face, felling her.

That was for Hierophant Hawking!

A puppet to one side caught her—this time, three large, half-man, half-spider constructs were huddled around her. They retaliated, swinging and thrusting their many glowing blades, almost in unison, only to hit air. Immanuel had disappeared, reappearing farther away, but still facing them.

It turned out that there was a fourth spider-like wooden construct enclosing her, and two of them were unscathed. More of them now, huh?

The first cloud of smoke did not reach them, and was starting to fade.

Just as three constructs flung themselves towards Immanuel, smoke grenades popped, and a second cloud of smoke was starting to grow around the woman and the lone puppet guarding her. Immanuel disappeared from his position rather than dodge their attacks as they come. He then reappeared over the woman and the puppet guarding her and dropped black-striped stick grenades above them. Before they could pop and flash, Immanuel disappeared.

PAP-PAP-PAP-PAP-PAP-PAP!

Blinded by multiple flashes and deafened by the rapid succession of deafening pops, the woman instinctively covered her face and ears with her arms. As for the puppets, they kept turning their heads around, searching for Immanuel with their glowing blades ready to swing. In that case, is their vision only affected by smoke?

At that point, the cloud of smoke now covered the woman and the puppets’ legs as it continued to grow and widen. No matter. I got that covered.

Immanuel, already in the form of a shadow entity, darted along the floor to where the woman and the constructs were positioned. Along the way, he willed a continuous flow of mana towards the Explosive Clone sigil. And so, as he sped towards them, a black figure was rising out of the cloud of smoke next to one of the puppets. Just as it was about to fully stand upright, it brought out its own arsenal of swords that glowed purple. If only the woman could see it, she would have ordered the other constructs to attack it.

With the fifth spider-like construct being an exact copy of the others—except in color—the other puppets perhaps recognized it as one of their own. In the absence of the woman’s next command, they continued looking around for Immanuel.

The Explosive Clone stomped towards the woman. Immanuel fused his shadowy form with a tiny patch of darkness. Tendrils as thin as strings—parts of Immanuel’s essence—stretched out of that tiny patch of darkness, passing along other patches of darkness within the cloud of smoke and melding with them, until they were long enough to reach the other constructs.

The Explosive Clone reached the woman and was standing in front of her facing outward, as though protecting her. Immanuel then tightened the tendrils around the other constructs and pulled them towards the woman.

When he had all of them in one spot, however, he paused to think. The two hierophants were still inside the Dome of Restriction, their weapons and armor glowing with pulsing light as they clashed.

If I blow up this puppet, I’d kill Hierophant Hawking too!

"Pathetic bitch! You’re all glamor but no substance!" came the roar of a man on an upper hallway that was visible from their position. The man had the massive build that matched his roar, and his pitch-black armor added to the menacing energy that was emanating from him.

He slung a massive blood-soaked axe over his shoulder. "We brought you here thinking you and your toys would be of help!"

Immanuel released his hold on the woman’s puppets and moved every tendril to the black one. "But all you’ve done is kill a few low-ranked clerics and be defeated by another one of them later!"

The woman was still covering her face and ears with her arms.

Immanuel counted down. Three... two... one...

With mana flooding within the depths of Immanuel’s being towards the use of the Mouse, Explosive Clone, and Reach sigils, he willed the tendrils to control the black construct and get it running. And without delay, it dashed away from the other constructs and their controller.

"Oh, turning on us now, are you, Priscilla?!" growled the man in black. "The audacity! When you can’t even fight!"

The black puppet leapt up high. It landed crouched and balanced on the railing near the man in black armor. With both entities’ weapons ready to swing at each other, they wasted no time and clashed.

"You’re a persistent one, huh?! You think that’s enough to make me go all out on you?!" The man in black armor mouthed as he shielded himself from the swings and thrusts of Immanuel’s puppet that were aimed at his head and neck.

Very well. Maybe I should not blow this puppet up yet.

As the clash of steel with steel showed no signs of letting up, with either side taking turns in gaining and losing the upper hand, Immanuel’s black tendrils of his essence were retracting, darting towards the black puppet. Just as it seemed that they would spool into the construct’s body, the tendrils fused into one large mass behind the puppet.

Cautious, the man in black armor backed away. The mass enlarged further a heartbeat later. Then it transformed into Immanuel, who wasted no time and tossed daggers at the armored man the moment he reverted.

This time, the swing of the axe produced black flames, which reduced Immanuel’s throwing daggers into ashes.

Menacing.

The man said no word, only flashing a grin as black ash flew and settled on his face and hair.