The Villain Rising: Ascension of Arcane Trickster.-Chapter 212: Shut Up and Die, You Singing Dolls.

Meanwhile, Sera struggled in a room filled with nothing but blinding light and overwhelming waves of happiness.

Her hair was a slightly darker shade, a clear sign that this was her Umbra personality but the frown on her face made it clear, she wasn’t even slightly happy.

Small, cheerful puppets danced and laughed as if they were alive, their joy so intense it felt suffocating. She couldn’t understand how she was supposed to escape from a place like this.

Unlike the others who were dragged into the treasury without any warning, she was different.

She had known it was going to descend.

She was even waiting for that so that she could let herself loose and fight to her content.

Although she couldn’t understand why the early arrival happened or how a peak E-ranker like her was allowed to enter when the treasury was supposed to be restricted to D-Rank, she recovered quickly.

Confusion or not, she began searching for a way out while being eager to face whatever threats her Goddess had warned her about.

But instead of danger, all she found were puppets and happiness.

She even tried killing them but they only smiled in death, their bodies fading away before instantly being reborn again, still grinning.

"Lala lala la~"

"Lala lala la~"

The damned puppets kept singing in perfect rhythm, their voices echoing endlessly.

Her eyes twitched.

"Shut the fuck up."

She slaughtered them again violently and without restraint but just like before... they popped right back into existence, laughing and singing as if nothing had happened.

"Lala lala la~"

"What the fuck am I supposed to do?"

She cursed again, her patience finally reaching its limit.

Just then, one of the puppets stopped in front of her and blinked innocently.

"Lala la?"

It stretched its tiny hands toward her... as if inviting her to join them.

Am I supposed to join them to get out of here now?

Tsk.

This was the only thing left to try after the last few days she spent doing other things. With clear reluctance, she stepped forward and joined them.

Her movements were stiff at first as she copied their strange dance. Then, hesitantly, she tried to sing along, closing her eyes just to hide her embarrassment.

"Lalala... lalala..."

But instead of welcoming her, the puppets suddenly stopped as the eternally carved smiles on their faces vanished in an instant, their expressions turning blank and hollow.

Slowly their necks turned creepily toward her face.

But Seraphina was too focused on her own awkward singing to notice any of it.

"Lalala... lalala..."

Her voice had no rhythm whatsoever. It was like a crow trying to sing a lullaby but before she could embarrass herself any further, a cold voice echoed through the room.

"Shut the fuck up, you bitch."

"How dare you mock the music?"

"How dare you even try to sing with that foul voice of yours?"

Seraphina’s eyes snapped open in shock as she saw the smiles on the puppets’ faces were replaced by twisted and furious expressions and then their bodies began to move unnaturally, being dragged toward one another as if pulled by an invisible force before merging and becoming something far worse.

A giant puppet now stood before her, a flute resting in its massive hands.

Only then did she understand that the objective was never to kill the puppets, it was to make them angry enough to transform and what violence couldn’t achieve or what even death itself couldn’t trigger was done effortlessly by her voice.

And somehow, that realization felt more insulting than terrifying.

But instead of fear, a crazed smile slowly spread across her face.

"Finally... a battle."

She muttered as a greatsword materialized in her hands and without a second of hesitation, she lunged straight toward the giant puppet.

She could feel it.

The exit was finally within her grasp and who knew, maybe after defeating it, she might even find some artifact.

After all, this was a treasury for a reason.

—

The battle raged on as Seraphina relentlessly attacked the giant puppet while it used its strange flute to warp and shift the terrain around her.

Whenever she needed more power, she activated her internal gravity skill, making her strikes heavier, sharper and far more destructive.

The clash continued for nearly half an hour and by the end of it, she finally managed to bring the monster down...

But her entire body was drenched in blood, wounds covering her from head to toe as she stood there, breathing heavily.

She took out a healing potion and gulped it down in one go, her gaze shifting toward the door that had appeared where the puppet had fallen but that wasn’t the only thing that had manifested...

A small puppet floated quietly beside it.

She walked toward it and touched it lightly. In an instant, a blinding light swallowed her vision and when it faded, the puppet was gone and a status window appeared before her eyes.

[Puppet of Life has bonded with you.]

[Effect: Neutralizes death once by taking damage to itself and restoring the soul of the user. The puppet would be destroyed once it saves you once.]

A smirk slowly formed on her lips.

"Heh... not bad at all."

But before she could say anything else, her hair began to lighten in color and her usual timid expression slowly returned as her normal personality started taking over once more.

As her Umbra self faded completely, she muttered one last thing.

"Tsk... why now? I won’t be able to bear the pain... still, I guess, it’s better than shifting while fighting."

The transformation was never in her hand and was mostly random but thankfully she couldn’t shift while in battle.

As soon as her normal personality surfaced—

"Oh... shit."

She muttered as her body slumped onto the ground almost instantly, a sharp wince escaping her lips.

The backlash struck her all at once and before she could even hope to endure it, her vision blurred, her strength drained and her body finally gave in.

She passed out just as the healing potion she had taken earlier began to do its work.