Translator: ThatLazyPotato
Translation Checker: Rin
Editor: DragonFae
The helicopter landed in the middle of the Laurentian Mountains. There was a snowstorm today, so they could only make a forced landing and hike the mountain.
Black Panther jumped off the helicopter, his black trench coat was blown in all directions by the cold wind mixed with snow. Both his hands were in his pockets. He raised his eyes, the golden feline pupils turned into a vertical line. After indifferently identifying the direction for a bit, he slowly walked west.
He made a trail of footprints in the rugged snow-covered ground, but his steps were unsteady due to the light injury he received.
It was impossible to take something from Rimbaud’s hands without getting hurt. His current condition was because Rimbaud stopped halfway and was too lazy to continue chasing him.
Black Panther actually heard Rimbaud say in his earpiece, “Randi, there’s no need to waste your energy on such a small gem. The treasure chest I got from the seabed has many bigger ones in it. Just choose a red one to give to them. I just want to go home and be intimate with you right now.”
He smuggled out of the country and stopped at an island before getting picked up by someone. After flying to Canada, he boarded a reserved helicopter. It took several twists and turns to get close to the destination with the gems.
After walking for nearly an hour, some snow-covered building spires gradually appeared among the rugged mountains, and a warm halo shined through the windows.
He continued walking for ten minutes before he was able to catch a glimpse of the entire building. A whole castle sat among the snow-covered mountains. The spires of the castle were continuous, the light blue bricks and tiles were close to the color of snow, and every window exudes warmth.
Although the terrain was remote and hidden, to buy such a building also needed strong financial resources, and routine maintenance costs would be prohibitively high.
Black Panther dragged his stiff and cold body and approached the main entrance. A human-sized doll butler standing guard at the entrance bowed politely to him. The doll butler wore a proper tuxedo and white gloves. Except for the spherical joints on the limbs, he looked no different from an ordinary caucasian person, and his expression was lifelike. Puppet Master’s portrayal of the face and body could be described as a genius, being comparable to the top sculptors in today’s world.
Black Panther didn’t say much, tread lightly on the ground, hooked his hands on the protrusion of the outer walls, and quickly flipped inside.
The walls weren’t high, but it isolated the snowstorm outside. The inner walls weren’t covered in even a bit of snow, and the temperature was very warm inside. There was a doll elderly sweeping the floor, and a doll gardener tending the roses in the garden.
Black Panther turned to look at the sky outside. Unexpectedly, it was a cloudless blue sky. It was like an isolated world here.
The doll butler waiting outside gracefully entered, closed the door, and swept off the snow on his shoulders. He nodded toward Black Panther, inviting him inside.
Upon entering the corridor of the castle, a doll maid inside the castle rushed over, then handed a cup of hot cocoa to Black Panther. She led him to the reception room to have a seat.
It was quiet all around. It seemed like these doll servants couldn’t talk, they could only do things according to the default procedure.
There were slightly opened doors at intervals on both sides of the corridor. Black Panther gently opened one of the doors when the doll maid wasn’t paying attention and took a quick glance inside.
The layout inside looked like a kindergarten classroom for children, with a few children sitting sparsely on some small tables and chairs. After smelling the scent of a stranger, they turned their heads to stare at Black Panther in unison.
Some of them had big mouths like a toad, some had spider lower halves, some had an almost transparent body, and some had wings on their back. They were all experimental subjects.
And standing in front of the blackboard at the front of the classroom was a doll teacher wearing a lolita skirt. Some simple English words were written neatly on the blackboard.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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She turned around and looked at Black Panther, halting the hand playing the violin, and gave him a defenseless smile. She released a bit of her pheromones as a polite greeting for meeting for the first time.
From her pheromones, Black Panther judged that her grade was low, and extremely weak in aggression. Normally, such experiments would be used as fodder for powerful experimental subjects and wouldn’t have been able to grow up to be this big.
The corridor was long and there were many rooms. Black Panther roughly calculated; there were hundreds of experimental subjects and larvae in just rooms along one corridor. The entire castle building was similar in size to a small city. It could accommodate at least tens of thousands of experimental subjects.
The doll maid led Black Panther to the reception room, bowed, then left silently.
A female alpha was reclining on the sofa in the reception room, wearing a dark green satin cheongsam. Her long golden and blue peacock tail feathers were dangling on the carpet, and she was fanning her snow-white fan. The flames burning in the fireplace beside her cast a warm red glow on her cheeks.
Odd Bones raised her eyes and looked at Black Panther. She covered her mouth and nose with the fan and coughed a few times.
“You are getting sicker.” Black Panther sat across from her, with his back straight, and the index finger wearing the gemstone ring tapping lightly on his knee.
Odd Bones shook her head. “I left the cultivation pod ahead of time, so I’m congenitally deficient and won’t get any better. New wounds piled on old wounds, very annoying. Where have you been these last few years, Zhou?”
Black Panther was silent.
“Found your controller?” Odd Bones caught a glimpse at the sapphire ring on his index finger, raised an eyebrow and looked at him curiously. “I thought your controller would be Satan.”
Black Panther tilted his head, obviously not wanting to talk about it. He indifferently changed the topic. “Are you planning to stay here?”
“There’s nothing wrong with staying here. Although there are a lot of kids, the house is big enough, so it’s not noisy either.” Odd Bones laughed, then coughed again.
Black Panther wasn’t good at conversing, so he became silent again.
“He had me give a gem to Puppet Master. Where’s Knicks?”
“He hasn’t left the workshop for three days now. I’ll have Specter get him.”
In a closed but spacious workshop, the tools for making dolls were placed in an orderly manner. There were wooden display racks on the wall, and there were many unfinished dolls on them with different postures and a myriad of expressions. They weren’t colored, and had no clothing to cover the ball joints.
The tabletop was covered with a suede non-slip mat. This mat had been used for many years, the toner and varnish staines could no longer be wiped off it. Under the antiquated iron desk lamp, Puppet Master was buried in his work.
He was wearing a leather apron and a pair of thin black half-palm gloves. An engraved silver loupe was stuck to his eye socket. He was concentrating on assembling a delicate object in his hand with fine forceps—it was a mechanical core of a doll.
The shape of the mechanical core was very similar to that of a human heart. It was a slender and complicated frame made of copper. There should have been a red core inside to drive the whole thing. The chip inside the core replicates the combat memories transplanted in experimental subjects, including the understanding of weapon structure, melee combat knowledge, and massacre tendencies. The factory setting of Eris was a revolt experimental subject, named after the goddess of strife and discord, Eris. It was his mission to provoke war.
As long as there was war, the arms trade would become more and more profitable. This was exactly the original intention of the Red-Throated Bird terrorist organization to customize and purchase such an experimental subject.
The main container that held the chip was a heart-sized ruby carved by a CNC machine in the institute’s deep sea pressure well, and filled with argon between the chip and the gemstone.
It was difficult for buyers to find gemstones of the same quality and carats as imitations. The Research Institute had a lot of money and wealth. They choose this material as the container for the core to prevent buyers from pirating or repairing their products. If it was broken, it could only be thrown away, and they’ll have to go back to them to buy a new one.
However, the inside of this mechanical core had been completely damaged. The ruby the chip was in was blown to pieces, while the chip itself was mostly burnt. Even with Puppet Master’s proficient skills, he could only restore the outer frame of the mechanical core. Tens of thousands of precision copper wires and chips form blood vessels that wrap around the heart. Puppet Master had already been working on repairing it for three straight days.
He brought the mattress over from his room and placed it in the corner of his room, yet he still hadn’t used it yet. He was a human after all, so working nonstop made his body wear down quickly.
After three hours passed by, Puppet Master finally raised his head, and slowly removed the loupe from his eye socket. His eyes ached when he closed them, and when he sat straight, his spine and waist made a cracking sound.
Puppet Master habitually looked at his feet, wanting to tell the sleeping Eris to move out of the way so he wouldn’t trip over, but there was nothing there. Puppet Master was momentarily stunned. He stiffly put the loupe on the table and stood up. Bloodshot, cloudy eyes glanced around the corner.
On the mattress in the corner lay a tattered ceramic doll. Half of his face was shattered, and the remaining half of his face was also covered with cracks. He had no lower body; only a right hand resting on the broken chest. More than half of his chest was shattered, and his shell-like chest cavity could be easily seen, which was empty inside.
The make-up on the doll’s face was wiped off, the silver hair was removed one by one from the roots and put into a ziplock bag, the broken eyeballs were also removed, leaving only the empty eye sockets. It was just a scrapped doll, now, no different from those moldy limbs in sacks. Even if they are placed together, it would be so confusing that it was impossible to pick which one was him.
“Eris.” Puppet Master called him.
The broken doll moved, reacting to his voice. But it was just a movement, no different from the nerve reflex of a skinned frog.
But Puppet Master revealed an expression of relief. His tightly wrinkled brows relaxed, leaving a slight crease between the brows.
Knock knock.
There was a knock on the door. Puppet Master looked outside, it was Specter standing on his tiptoes between the crack of the door.
“Knicks, he…arrived.”
Puppet Master responded. He took off his leather apron and gloves and put them on the table. He left the workshop and locked the door.
Walking into the reception room, Puppet Master saw the ruby placed by Black Panther on the table at a glance. Based on his accurate judgment of the material, the carat of this ruby was enough to serve as Eris’ new core.
“I’m only responsible for delivering it to you on his behalf.” Black Panther said, “Just pay the money to IOA.”
“IOA?”
“The gem was stolen from them.”
“…”
Black Panther didn’t have anything else to say, so he turned around and left.
“Wait.” Puppet Master stopped him, took out a medical kit from under the table, and took out a scalpel and a set of sutures. “Take off your shirt.”
Black Panther frowned, but the man in front of him seemed friendly, and he couldn’t resist his orders. As if being manipulated by a puppet string, Black Panther took off his shirt as he said.
Rimbaud left three deep claw marks on his shoulder, so severe that it couldn’t heal on its own. The wound was still bleeding, soaking through his shirt.
Puppet Master skillfully cleaned the rotten flesh from the edge of his wound with a scalpel, then used a medical needle and thread to suture it. This was his profession, the skills were engraved in his head and couldn’t be easily forgotten.
Black Panther gritted his teeth subconsciously but discovered that it didn’t hurt at all, which was somewhat surprising.
“My associated ability is Creator’s Hand, so you won’t be hurt even if I open you up. Suturing is even easier.” Puppet Master cut the suture and put away the medical kit. The tiredness that could not be concealed on his face made him look very haggard.
“You can leave now.”
Black Panther was startled. He glanced at the perfect seam on his shoulder, picked up his trench coat, and left with the doll maid.
After seeing off Black Panther, Puppet Master picked up the ruby on the table and wordlessly went back to his workshop.
Opening the workshop door, Puppet Master kicked something. He lowered his head to look; the tattered ceramic doll was lying on its stomach by the door, struggling to support its body with its elbow. The only remaining right hand pinched the corner of Puppet Master’s pants. It tugged on it, raised its head, and looked at Puppet Master with empty eye sockets. It was expressionless, but its panic could be seen through at a glance.
Puppet Master sighed lightly. He bent down to pick up Eris, fixed him to the bust frame with clay, and placed him on his workbench, so that he could have a support point to straighten his upper body.
Then he put on the apron and gloves again, sat down and got to work.
As Puppet Master was about to put on the loupe and continue repairing the core, a ball-jointed ceramic hand reached over and covered his eyes. The ceramic was cold and cooled his eyes, which were bloodshot and swollen from overuse.
In this brief darkness, Puppet Master couldn’t help but think of the night when the operation to snatch the experimental subject started a few days ago. He looked at the emptied shelves of the doll shop, feeling a little shaken and hesitant.
He was a human—occasionally doubting one’s firm purpose and lifelong aspirations was a human condition. This was a common human disease and Puppet Master wasn’t immune to it.
However, at the time, Eris leaned over and said nonchalantly, “I don’t care if you’re right or wrong, I’ll always fight for you.”
In the store, Odd Bones often quarreled with Eris, and the poisonous-tongued woman often spoke very harshly, never caring whether it was in front of the person involved. “Knicks is just using you to complete his revenge on humanity. For someone like him, what is there he can’t give up on? Who do you think you are? He’s just using you, what are you so happy about?”
Puppet Master thought that she was right.
But Eris would always refute, “He’s not using me, he just needs me.” The told off Odd Bones was left speechless. She could only roll her eyes mockingly.
The light from the desk lamp only illuminated this side of the workbench.
Puppet Master took off Eris’ damaged head and placed it on his legs to fix it in place. He pressed a thin grinding needle against the inner corner of the doll’s head in front of the eye, and ground it bit by bit.
It took a lot of patience to make something as delicate as tear ducts. It took Puppet Master seven hours to finish.
After he finished them, Puppet Master straightened his back, and moved his sore neck. He placed the head back to its original place.
It was already completely dark outside. The snowstorm outside was getting stronger, and a howl-like sound was hovering outside the window. The decorative fireplace in the room was still burning vigorously, and the sound of the flames sounded quiet and warm, making people want to live in such a peaceful place forever and never go out again.
Puppet Master closed his eyes to rest for a while. He raised the ruby up, roughly planning how to cut it in his mind, then put it aside. He took out a microchip from the drawer with a tweezer, and held it under the lamp to look at it carefully.
This was Athena Shield’s combat chip, which was the same version as Eris’ previous one. It could be used as a replacement for Eris. This chip was picked up from the rubble when he risked escape from the pharmaceutical factory. This chip was intact, meaning the combat memory it carried, as well as weapon use and massacre tendencies were still intact.
Puppet Master stared at the tiny chip held by the tweezer, lost in thought for a long time.
He thought for a long time, then silently put it back in the drawer. He picked up the ruby on the table, put it in the drawer, and locked it.
He put a hand in his pocket, tightly held the scalpel in it, hesitantly, and slowly rubbed it. He raised the other hand against the left side of his chest, as if thinking about a major decision.
The dedication to bring Eris back both hurts and heals my heart and soul 🥺
Thanks for the chapter! ❤
Thank You for the new chapter (♡ >ω< ♡)
why bother making tear ducts—
was that gem his (soon to be eris) heart >.>turning eris into a human huh?