#779

Epilogue – Boy (5)

With a chilling silence, the creaking sound of screws echoed, and Puppet’s time began to flow slowly.

In that sluggish world, Puppet saw it.

Click!

One of the armed personnel’s mouth hung wide open.

It was closer to a doll than a human—like a nutcracker, like a Corpse doll.

And that "like" was, in fact, reality.

Between the parted lips, a dark gun barrel emerged.

Thunk! Thunk!

The tranquilizer rounds fired and knocked the children unconscious on the spot.

The children hit by the tranquilizer gun collapsed without a single scream, while the remaining children's faces slowly contorted in fear.

At that moment, another armed person—or rather, a Corpse doll disguised as an armed person—threw open its chest like a door.

Inside the opened chest, instead of human organs, was a tangled net made from a woman’s hair.

Whoosh—!

The net shot out, covering the sky, and engulfed the children beneath it.

The net made of women’s hair seized the children like a living creature and dragged them away.

The children caught in the net screamed and cried for help, but no one could assist them.

All the other children either screamed and ran or froze in place.

Embarrassingly, Puppet belonged to the latter group.

Despite the outer appearance being well-crafted, it was a second-rate Corpse doll that creaked due to poorly tightened screws, and yet he was too frightened to do anything.

Puppet, who was a grand warlock and the foremost authority on manipulation-type black magic, was terrified by such a crude Corpse doll.

Thump! Thump! Thump!

Because of the boy's body that wouldn’t obey him.

At that moment—

“Run!!”

Leboski grabbed Puppet’s frozen hand and forcefully dragged him along.

Puppet fled, led by Leboski, as if he had truly become a child.

***

As the children used each other as bait to escape, Puppet thought.

About why Leboski, who was holding his hand and running, had helped him.

At first, Puppet didn’t understand his actions and was bewildered, but as they ran, his fear gradually subsided, and he naturally began to guess the reason.

Perhaps Leboski judged that staying with Puppet increased his chances of survival.

Such cases were rare but did occur.

There were humans who, despite being intelligent and quick-witted but unfortunate enough to be captured as materials for a warlock, still helped others.

People who, even when they were too busy saving themselves, knew how to assist someone and make allies to prepare for the future.

Puppet, who had existed as a warlock for hundreds of years, occasionally witnessed such instances, and Leboski seemed to be one of those cases.

Though he was a child, he was smarter and braver than the others and had taken on the role of leader, so in a way, it was natural.

Perhaps he had judged that there was something unusual about Puppet after seeing his decisive actions right after escaping the prison.

Well, that didn’t mean Puppet wasn’t grateful.

Whatever the reason, the fact was that he had been helped, and more importantly, he knew he would need Leboski’s help to survive going forward.

“Huff—! Huff—!”

Knowing this, Puppet barely managed to catch his breath after escaping and answered Leboski’s question.

“Th-that thing, what… what was that? D-do you know anything?”

Leboski, panting so hard that his words were barely coherent, forced himself to squeeze out the question, showing just how curious he was.

“C-Corpse doll…”

Puppet, too, was breathless, but he mustered the strength to answer.

“C-Corpse doll? What’s that?”

“A zombie doll crafted from a corpse.”

Puppet, who had created more Corpse dolls than anyone else in the world, explained.

A Corpse doll is not just a simple zombie but a carefully crafted doll created by a warlock.

Beyond simple control, it can be equipped with various mechanical devices, cast magic and black magic depending on the corpse, and even disguise itself as a human. It is the pinnacle of manipulation-type black magic.

“Like making a corpse act like a person?”

“Yes, just like what we saw earlier.”

“How is that even possible?”

It wasn’t Leboski but another child who asked. The child had ended up escaping with them, and the question, separate from his presence, was quite sharp.

How?

Puppet looked up at the sky.

It was still dawn.

But how had they deployed Corpse dolls and captured them as if they were waiting?

Puppet started speculating.

The first hypothesis: they knew in advance that they would escape today.

That didn’t make sense. If they had known they would escape today, it would have been more reasonable to block them inside the prison beforehand.

The second hypothesis: they routinely deployed Corpse dolls here for patrol.

That also didn’t make sense.

Even though Corpse dolls seemed incredibly convenient, they weren’t something that could be handled easily.

It required manipulation-type black magic, corpse crafting techniques, medical knowledge, and mechanical engineering. Leaving aside the difficulty of learning these, operating a single Corpse doll incurred high operating costs.

Even if they could have deployed them in case the materials tried to escape, they were not something that could be used merely for "surveillance."

Not unless one had vast resources, like Puppet did.

It was impossible, at least for someone at the level of the Valeri family.

‘Then the only remaining possibility is that they knew we had escaped and acted accordingly…’

Puppet trailed off in thought.

They were back to square one. How had they known about their escape? It wasn’t yet time to notice since the sun hadn’t even risen. The biggest question remained...

“Did someone betray us?”

After a long silence, Puppet finally spoke, and everyone glared at him.

Puppet’s words implied that one of the elders who had lived with them had sold them out.

“Don’t say something so ridiculous!”

One of the children, who remembered the kindness of the elders, immediately objected.

As he said, it sounded absurd.

After helping them all this time, it didn’t make sense for the elders to suddenly report them. It was contradictory. But, fundamentally, people were inherently contradictory beings.

Parents who claimed to love their children while beating them, or societies that preached love for neighbors while waging wars—such contradictions were everywhere.

So it wouldn’t be surprising if one of the elders, suddenly overcome with fear of death, had revealed their escape.

Humans were creatures who only showed their true nature when faced with death.

“Apologize!”

One of the children, unable to contain his anger, grabbed Puppet by the collar.

He was enraged at the insult directed at their benefactors, all over a few extra bowls of porridge they had received.

Puppet observed the child, whose eyes were brimming with tears.

Tears caused by the fear of being chased and the fear that they might have been betrayed.

Puppet decided that calming the child would increase their survival chances and prepared to apologize.

He was about to say it was merely a hypothesis. Just as he opened his mouth—

Smack.

Leboski intervened, calming the child.

“Hey, don’t fight. This isn’t the time for us to be fighting among ourselves.”

The taller Leboski’s words had an effect, and the child calmed down.

“But what he said is…”

“It was probably just something he said in passing, right?”

Leboski glared at Puppet as he asked, and Puppet nodded.

Honestly, the possibility of betrayal seemed the most likely, but saying it out loud didn’t seem wise.

What mattered now wasn’t the truth but survival. They needed to minimize conflict and cooperate with each other.

“You heard him, right? Calm down. If we start acting like this among ourselves, it’ll only get worse. We have to escape so the sacrifice of the grandpas and grandmas won’t be in vain.”

“Can we really escape?”

Another child asked in a voice full of despair.

It wasn’t just that child’s thought, as another child sat down and began to sob.

“We shouldn’t have come here in the first place.”

The sobbing began to spread like a disease, threatening to infect the other children.

It was at that very moment.

“Don’t sit down!”

Leboski grabbed the collar of the child who had sat down and forcibly pulled him up.

“Sitting down won’t bring anyone to help! Get up!!”

Leboski, who had taken on the role of leader, shouted loudly, and one by one, the children began to react, lifting their bottoms off the ground.

Once the atmosphere had somewhat calmed, Leboski approached Puppet and abruptly asked a question.

“Can we escape?”

“What?”

“Is there a way to escape? Think carefully before you answer. You need us too.”

Leboski demanded an answer as if threatening him. It was clumsy and almost amusing since it was coming from a child, but he wasn’t wrong.

Puppet also knew that staying with the children was safer than being alone.

In the past, it wouldn’t have mattered, but now that he had a reason to live…

“…I’m not sure.”

“That’s good enough.”

***

Let’s start with the outcome.

The escape failed.

Clatter, clatter, clatter.

In truth, it was a predictable result.

It was clear from the beginning that this escape would fail.

To escape successfully, it was crucial to get far away before the warlocks noticed or find an organization to help them beforehand, but now both had failed, and worse, they had been caught.

Encountering the Corpse dolls already meant that Puppet and the children’s escape attempt had effectively failed.

As if to prove this, by the time dawn broke, the warlocks’ pursuit began.

Grrrrrr…

Throughout the dense forest, packs of zombie-wolves, crafted from wolves, tracked them by scent.

Shahaaaa-!!

Giant zombie-spiders crawled between the trees, shooting webs to snatch the children one by one.

“Help me! Help!”

“Eek—!!”

“Mom! Mom…!”

The children, who had barely managed to stand again, screamed in panic, but honestly, there was nothing Puppet could do.

It might have seemed foolish and powerless, but that was the reality.

Wisdom, experience, strategy, and trump cards only worked when backed by at least minimal strength.

As a boy, especially one who couldn’t use black magic, there was nothing he could do except run.

And even that, he didn’t do well.

“Aaaah…!!”

As they fled, the children were caught one by one and dragged away.

“Save me! Help!!”

Some were bitten and taken by zombie-wolves, whose bodies had been modified like patchwork dolls.

“I can’t get free! Someone help me!!”

Others got trapped in webs spun by the zombie-spiders.

“Ah…!”

Some were grabbed by zombies suddenly emerging from the ground, while others were caught in nets made of hair that flew from somewhere and disappeared.

All Puppet, Leboski, and the other children could do was take comfort in not being caught yet and keep running.

However, they didn’t just run blindly.

During the escape, Puppet realized one fact and raised one question.

The fact was that the Valeri family had changed slightly from what Puppet remembered.

Previously, the Valeri family was just a supplier of raw materials like many other black magic families, but they had managed to grow secretly, evading the eyes of the disciple Puppet had sent to monitor them.

The Corpse dolls they encountered earlier were proof of that, as Puppet had never taught them such sophisticated Corpse doll crafting techniques.

Not only that, but they had also secretly seized control of the surrounding forest, preventing competitors from settling in and solidifying their foundation, contrary to the reports.

The presence of zombies and Corpse dolls scattered throughout the forest, as well as traps disguised as camps for bandits, rebels, and revolutionaries, testified to this.

Having witnessed countless black magic power struggles, Puppet noticed that the Valeri family was in the process of learning new forms of black magic through their own means and building their influence.

However, this realization naturally led to a new question.

The question was why, despite being able to capture them all at once, the Valeri family chose to capture the children one by one, wasting unnecessary time and resources.

Clatter, clatter.

As already mentioned many times, Puppet’s current body was that of an ordinary boy, with no particular speed or agility.

Despite this, instead of capturing them all at once, the zombies deployed by the Valeri family captured the children one by one, dragging out the process unnecessarily.

It was a difficult action to understand.

Yet Puppet couldn’t ask or speculate.

He was too busy running to have time to think.

Being powerless was this unfair.

He had to suppress all his questions and desires and simply run to survive, though he wasn’t even good at running.

Clatter, clatter, clatter.

In the end, Puppet was the last to be caught after Leboski, blindfolded, and dragged away.

‘Indoors?’

Blindfolded, Puppet tried to guess his surroundings based on the sound of the wheels of the mobile restraint bed he was on, the air, the faint smell of chemicals, the stench of blood, and the odor of oil.

It was a setting all too familiar to him. The only difference was that this time, Puppet was not the experimenter but the subject.

Thump! Thump! Thump!

Puppet’s heart pounded uncontrollably, and cold sweat trickled down his body.

Just moments ago, he had thought it wouldn’t matter if he died, yet now that he was captured, fear crept up, causing his body to shake beyond his control.

Was it because he now had a goal to save his grandfather, or was he simply afraid? Puppet questioned himself.

Creak.

Before he could find an answer, the mobile bed came to a stop, and the bed frame rose vertically, forcing Puppet into a standing position.

With his limbs and torso bound, Puppet had no choice but to stand as the bed moved.

Rip!

Someone roughly pulled off Puppet’s blindfold.

What appeared before him was a familiar scene and a face he had seen somewhere before.

Who could it be?

At that moment, the figure spoke.

“Is it this kid?”

The master of the Valeri family—Valeri—revealed himself before Puppet.