Chapter 36: The Final Stage (2)

Chapter 36: Chapter 36: The Final Stage (2)

"Is that... a combat automaton? How can a puppet move with the footwork of an Imperial Knight?"

?"You have sharp eyes, little girl! Every single puppet inside that forest was personally designed and forged by Grandmaster Gorden, the Empire’s supreme master of runic puppetry! They do not fight like mindless dolls. They feint, they lay ambushes, they coordinate in squads, and they fight with the combat instincts of real human veterans!"

?In the back of the crowd, Veera’s lips curled into a cold grin as he watched the panicking nobles.

Having communed with the ancient spirit inside his forbidden Grimoire, he had already sensed the thousands of puppet cores hidden beneath the northern canyon earlier that morning. While these pampered noble brats were terrified of close-quarters combat, fighting human-like enemies was where he thrived best.

?Up in the sky, Chief Proctor Ronin held up two fingers as the water-mirror vanished.

?"The rules of the final stage are simple! Inside the Ironwood Expanse, a high-density dampening field has been activated. Your Grimoire spells will be suppressed by seventy percent, and your casting range will be restricted to five meters, forcing you to rely on your flesh, your bone, and your close-combat reflexes! Standard academy weapons have been placed at the entrance racks for anyone who wishes to use them."

?He swept his one-eyed glare across the trembling examinees.

?"Scattered throughout the forest are three thousand ordinary humanoid puppets and one hundred Giant Puppets. Destroying the core of an ordinary puppet will automatically transfer 10 points to your registration badge. However, if you have the guts to venture into the inner zones and bring down one of Grandmaster Gorden’s Giant Puppets, its core will grant you between 50 and 60 points depending on its combat grade!"

?Ronin raised his right hand high into the air, violet lightning gathering around his palm like a storm cloud.

?"You have until sunset, four hours from now! Stealing points from other examinees is permitted, though lethal blows against fellow applicants will result in immediate execution by the patrolling proctors. When the sun touches the western mountains, only the top one thousand scorers on the leaderboard will become students of the Imperial Academy! The remaining seven thousand will be thrown out of the capital!"

?"What?! Seven thousand eliminated in four hours?!"

"And we have to fight Grandmaster Gorden’s human-style puppets with suppressed mana?!"

?Yet, standing right beside them, Aegon was neither panicked nor surprised. In fact, as he stared down at the dark canopy of the Ironwood Expanse, a calculating glint flashed in his dark eyes.

?"Grandmaster Gorden’s Seventh-Generation Combat Puppets. To anyone else, they are flawless human warriors. Too bad for Gorden, I was the one who designed their three hidden joint blind spots when I wrote the Siege of the Clockwork City."

?BOOM!

?Proctor Ronin brought his lightning-clad hand down, shattering the golden seal along the cliff’s edge as eight thousand teleportation circles activated beneath the feet of the applicants.

?"The Final Stage begins now! If you die, the Academy will not be held responsible!"

---

When the blinding violet flash of the teleportation array finally faded, the first thing Marcus felt was a suffocating weight pressing down on his chest.

?He stumbled forward, his boots sinking into a thick layer of damp, rotting leaves, and barely caught himself against the trunk of a massive tree.

Shaking the dizziness from his head, he quickly looked left and right.

?"Zane? Clara? Aegon?"

?His voice died in his throat after a few meters, swallowed up by the dense, shadowy gloom of the Ironwood Expanse.

?There was no sign of his cousins anywhere.

Surrounding him were only gnarled, fifty-meter-tall ironwood trees whose interwoven canopies blocked out nearly all of the afternoon sun. A few paces behind him, a simple wooden rack held a dozen standard-issue iron weapons left behind by the academy proctors, confirming his worst fear.

?The teleportation circles were completely random. It means we are scattered across the entire canyon.

?Trying to calm his nerves, Marcus attempted to circulate his mana to summon his B-Rank Earthen Bastion Grimoire.

Instantly, he winced.

The air inside the barrier felt as thick as wet cement. Just drawing a tiny thread of earth energy to his skin required three times his usual effort, and when he tried to project a simple stone shield, it fizzled out less than four paces in front of him.

?The 70% suppression field was no joke. In here, a sorcerer could not hide behind long-range bombardments.

?"Stay calm, Marcus. Just find a high boulder to scout the area and link up with Aegon or Clara."

?Ahead of him, the dense bushes parted slightly into a quiet, sunlit clearing where a moss-covered hill offered a clear view of the surrounding woods.

Relieved to see an open path free of bushes, Marcus took three brisk steps toward the center of the clearing.

?However, just as his boot reached the edge of the tall ferns, a sudden memory of Aegon’s calm warning back in the auditorium flashed through his mind: You all should worry about the next stage.

?Marcus hesitated, stopping in his tracks for a split second to check the canopy above the clearing first.

?At that exact moment, some rustling sound broke out from the bushes to his right.

He noticed another examinee, an 11-year-old noble boy wearing an embroidered blue cloak and carrying a silver rapier, burst out of the foliage.

Spotting the open hill ahead, the boy let out a breathless laugh.

?"Hah! Finally! An empty vantage point!"

?Glancing disdainfully at Marcus, who was frozen at the edge of the ferns, the boy sneered and sprinted straight past him into the sunlit clearing, stepping directly onto the patch of moss Marcus had been about to cross two seconds earlier.

?Then, the bark of the towering ironwood tree beside the hill quietly peeled open.

?It was not tree bark at all. It was a humanoid puppet cloaked in a layer of mud and dead moss to mask its silver-wood frame.

?There was no mechanical whirring, no warning glow of runes, and no clumsy buildup. Like a veteran assassin who had been holding its breath for hours, the puppet dropped noiselessly from the trunk right behind the boy in the blue cloak.

?"Behind you!" Marcus choked out, his eyes widening in horror.

?The noble boy spun around in panic, raising his hand to cast a wind spell from his Grimoire.

But because of the dampening field, only a weak gust of air puffed from his palm.

As a result, before the boy could even bring his silver rapier up to parry, the puppet charged with fluid human-like grace, knocked the rapier aside with the flat of its iron gauntlet, and drove its twin-edged broadsword straight through the boy’s throat.

?Shhlk!

The cut wss clean, and delivered without mercy.

SPASH—!

?Hot crimson blood splattered across the green moss.

?The boy’s eyes bulged wide in shock and disbelief. He opened his mouth to scream for a proctor, yet only a wet, gurgling sound came out as the puppet coldly twisted its wrist and wrenched the blade free.

?Thud.

?The lifeless body collapsed face-first onto the dirt, twitching once before going completely still.

After that, the crimson-runed puppet leaped back into the upper branches of the canopy and vanished into the shadows, searching for its next target.

?Hidden behind the bushes ten paces away, Marcus clamped both hands tightly over his own mouth, his knees trembling so violently they knocked together.

?He could not breathe. Looking at the expanding pool of dark blood soaking into the exact spot where he had been walking ten seconds ago, his body became drenched in cold sweat.

?No proctor had descended from the sky to save that boy. Chief Proctor Ronin had meant every single word.

His eyes now had a shadow of fear. Fear of death.

"I must find Aegon... Yes, yes... Only he can save me. I don’t want to die!"