I was nearly burnt to a crisp. Whose smart idea was it to try to bake the people operating the puppet? This puppet is Atlantis’ greatest treasure. Back when Atlantis was still around, dragons and vermillion birds ruled the realm. Wouldn’t the greatest mind of Atlantis realize that and build the puppet’s defenses in the direction of the attacks dragons and vermillion birds could perform? With a little bit of thinking, anyone could’ve arrived at that conclusion, …which points to Lucia Fluffytail as the most obvious suspect. Once again, I nearly died because of the way her brain doesn’t work.

Even though the room I’m in is full of dead, dying, and recovering people, the puppet isn’t taking advantage of our weakness. Lucia Fluffytail is keeping it at bay, wielding its own sword against it. I’m surprised the puppet doesn’t have a way to retrieve its weapon remotely, but perhaps the creator of the puppet didn’t expect an abnormality like Lucia Fluffytail to appear. In the first place, beasts aren’t very proficient at using weapons. Even after they reach the point where they can transform into humans, their weapon skills are leagues behind their claw skills simply due to experience. Beasts survived and grew using what they were given; it takes a lot of determination to put away all that time and effort to learn a new fighting style.

Surprisingly, for how barbaric the squirrel-lady is, she’s quite skilled with a sword. It seems like she spent a lot of time working on the fundamentals, but she’s still severely lacking. Right now, she’s using spiritual energy to create a pair of giant arms and legs for herself to swing the sword like a regular person, but it’d actually be better for her if she treated the giant sword as a flying one. Its movements would be much less predictable, and she’d definitely get more hits in instead of being deflected or parried.

“Hey! Stop blocking my attacks, damnit!”

How was the giant puppet supposed to respond to Lucia Fluffytail’s demand? Evidently, no one within the puppet knew what to say either because it remained silent while defending itself. It used its sword to block the one its opponent was holding, and every so often, pulses of spiritual energy would fire towards the squirrel-lady.

“Let me hit you! I know there’s more than one of you inside this puppet. If any of you want to switch sides, I’ll give you a super-huge reward, and nothing bad will happen to you!”

The puppet still didn’t let out a response as it defended itself from Lucia Fluffytail’s strikes. It might’ve been a trick of my eyes, but I thought the response of the puppet’s left leg was slower than the rest of its body by just a beat.

“C’mon!” Lucia Fluffytail shouted. “Don’t you know who I am? I’m the disciple of the White-furred Tyrant! I eat heavenly fruits as snacks, and I wipe my butt with legendary leaves! I’m not saying this to make you guys jealous; I’m saying this because I’m a very generous person, and I’m willing to share some treasures with you if you help me defeat the puppet.”

The offer is certainly tempting. There were several demons who entered the puppet. It was impossible for all of them to have the same status, and as a result of differences in treatment, envy and other despicable feelings would brew. I can’t believe Lucia Fluffytail could come up with a strategy like this though. Since she can’t defeat the puppet with externally, she’s trying to sow enough discord amongst the demons to break the puppet internally.

“If you’re worried about what your friends might think back home when you return, don’t be,” Lucia Fluffytail said, still swinging her sword around wildly. Her actions looked uncouth and unrefined, but the sword always ended up putting the puppet in a disadvantageous position where it could neither advance nor retreat. “I’ll only let the demons who helped me return, so you guys can make up a story to paint yourselves in a better light. I can even get my teacher to change your memories, so if anyone Soul Scours you to verify your story, they’ll be fooled. And if I manage to beat this puppet without any of you helping me, then I definitely won’t let any of you go! I’ll lock you in my teacher’s thinking room for the rest of your lives!”

The carrot and the stick, one of the most classic techniques to sway a person’s heart. However, the puppet seemed unmoved. Perhaps the demons inside were only contributing their internal energy to power the puppet while all the decisions were being made by one person. Some formations operated that way.

“Seriously?” Lucia Fluffytail asked. “What do you guys think you’ll gain by fighting me, huh? If you beat me, I’ll call my teacher to take revenge against my bullies! Don’t think I’m above getting down on my knees and crawling to her for help with tears in my eyes because I’m not! If I win, I’ll capture all of you. If I lose, my teacher will capture all of you. Just give up!”

Lucia Fluffytail was the ruler of the Immortal Continent, the lower dimension Disciple Gu and Bloodmoon went to. Originally, I thought she maintained her position through unreasonable amounts of violence and force, but it turns out … she isn’t as stupid as I thought she was. When she can’t win with violence, she’ll resort to words. Most civilized people usually do it the other way around—which put me under the assumption she didn’t know how to use words at all.

“If all of you agree to give up, I can pretend like you didn’t injure my underlings, and I’ll even buy the puppet from you! You’ll leave richer than you entered, and in the future, you can even brag to your friends about this encounter with me because I’ll definitely become famous one day.”

If Lucia Fluffytail pardons the demons, am I not going to get compensated for my injuries?