Monarch Chapter 190 (Patreon)

Chapter 190

Rayne froze as soon as he saw the corpse leaning against the wall.

So many thoughts moved through his mind at once that for a moment he simply stood there, staring at the unmoving figure. Were they really the first people to enter the sewers? If they were, then where had this man come from and who had killed him?

Judging by the large hole in the center of the chest, it was probably some kind of monster, but that only raised more questions.

Why wasn't he wearing armor? In fact, why wasn't he wearing anything at all? As Rayne took another step forward, he realized there wasn't a single piece of cloth covering the body.

He narrowed his eyes and moved closer, carefully examining the corpse through the dim illumination provided by Lyra's spell.

At first, there was nothing unusual about it beyond the obvious wound, but then something caught his attention. His eyes widened slightly before he turned toward Lyra.

"Lyra, come closer."

The quarter elf immediately moved toward him, raising the light in her hand so that it illuminated the corpse more clearly.

The moment she saw what Rayne had noticed, her expression changed as well.

What should have been a chest filled with blood, flesh and organs was instead a complicated arrangement of gears and wires.

The wound had torn open the front of the body, exposing a metallic interior that looked nothing like the anatomy of a human.

Even the exposed skin had a strange bronze coloration, far more metallic than anything Rayne had ever seen on a person.

He wasn't human. Rather, it was—

"It's a puppet," Lyra said, confirming what Rayne had already been thinking.

The others immediately gathered around them, their caution momentarily replaced by curiosity.

Jason crouched down and stared into the broken chest, clearly unable to believe what he was looking at.

"What is a puppet doing here?" he asked. "I thought they were really expensive."

Andrew nodded as he knelt beside the body. Unlike the others, however, he didn't simply look at it.

He began inspecting the construct properly, running his fingers along the exposed metal and examining the gears before turning the body slightly.

He then pushed his hand through the broken section of the chest and felt around inside, carefully examining the mechanisms hidden beneath the outer shell.

"They are really expensive," Andrew said. "Only the richest mages have them. A lot goes into making even a single puppet, especially the mana core. Valeria hasn't perfected the art of creating them either, so even when someone manages to afford one, they often become defunct after a relatively short period of time."

Nate looked at the puppet with an even more confused expression.

"Then it's even stranger why something like this is here. Could it be a mage came here with one?"

Rayne shook his head almost immediately. That explanation didn't make sense to him. If some mage wealthy enough to own a puppet had come to Blackstone, Prince Caelan would have certainly known about them.

Someone capable of spending that much money on a magical construct wasn't exactly the kind of person who could quietly pass through a frontier city without attracting attention.

Besides, there was something else bothering him.

Rayne looked over the puppet again, this time paying attention to its entire design rather than the damage.

The shape of its limbs, the dirt on the bronze material, the mechanisms inside its body and even the construction of the gears all seemed dated in a way.

“Isn’t this thing incredibly old?”

Andrew seemed to reach the same conclusion as he continued examining it.

"Yes," he said. "You're right. It is old. I've seen current puppets once at a mage tower, and they look very different from this. The design has changed considerably. This one..." He paused, looking over the damaged construct. "This one is probably a part of the ruins itself."

Lyra frowned as she looked toward the darkness of the tunnel.

"Do you think someone abandoned it in the sewers, or did it stumble here from the inner city?"

"It can be anything," Andrew replied. "But I don't think a battle took place here."

Bran nodded from behind them. He had already examined the surrounding area while everyone else was inspecting the puppet.

"Yeah. There aren't any marks."

There was no sign of struggle, no damaged walls, and no tracks that suggested something had dragged the construct through the tunnel. Whatever had happened, it didn't appear to have happened here.

Kesh scratched his head. "So it was just injured and came here to pass out?"

"Probably," Rayne said.

He stood up and looked farther down the sewer. A puppet this old shouldn't have been here, and if it really belonged to the ruins, then he wondered if there were more in the sewers.

But standing around wouldn't give them any answers.

"Let's keep moving," Rayne said. "When we come back, we'll take the puppet with us and show it to Prince Caelan."

Everyone nodded, and the group began moving again.

This time, however, Rayne was much more cautious. His [War Pulse] remained stretched through the darkness around them, but he also began paying closer attention to the walls, floor and every side passage they encountered.

He looked for signs of monsters, traces of movement and, perhaps most importantly, anything else that might resemble the puppet they had just discovered.

The possibility that there could be more of them somewhere ahead wouldn't leave his mind.

As they continued deeper, Rayne couldn't help but think about what he knew regarding puppets which was barebones.

They were magical constructs, somewhat similar to the robots, though the similarities ended there.

Instead of being powered by electricity and controlled by complicated computer systems, puppets were built around mana cores. Those cores could be programmed to perform specific tasks by pushing their creators' will on them, allowing the constructs to act without a person constantly controlling them.

The better puppets were even more impressive. Powerful spells could be imbued directly into their bodies, allowing them to use abilities that would otherwise require a mage.

Some could fight, some could carry supplies, some could perform repetitive tasks, and the truly advanced ones were supposedly capable of following complex orders.

All this information Rayne had actually learned during the short period of education he had received from the Fraysers.

The former soul had gotten curious about puppets after hearing about them and had eventually stolen a book about them from the family's library.

Even then, however, he had only gotten the basics out of it. He knew what they were, how they were generally made and that mana cores were at the center of their construction, but beyond that, his knowledge was limited.

And none of it explained why a puppet was lying dead in the sewers beneath the Godless Ruins.

As they continued walking, the others quietly discussed the same thing, with Bran eventually looking toward the two mages.

"Do you know if the people who lived in the inner city were rich enough to make puppets?"

Lyra seemed to think about it for a moment before answering.

"I can't say for sure. There isn't a lot of information about their wealth, but there were a lot of capable mages who followed the Sage here. They might have been working on them."

Hearing that, Rayne couldn't help but wonder if there was some kind of laboratory somewhere in the ruins.

The sewers were enormous, and during their journey they had already seen a few sidewalks branching away from the main passage. Any one of those paths could lead to a place containing more information about the puppet, perhaps even a workshop or laboratory where it had been created.

But that wasn't their goal right now.

They had been given a route by Prince Caelan, and their objective was to reach the other side of the inner walls.

If Rayne allowed himself to get sidetracked every time they found something interesting, they would lose the precious time they had.

They couldn't stay inside the sewers all day and night either. Returning to the city after dark would be a death march because many nocturnal monsters would emerge once the sun went down.

So for now, they kept moving.

Another hour passed, and their pace gradually increased as they became more confident that the area around them was safe.

They still hadn't encountered a single monster, although the smell continued to grow worse.

At some points, they had to walk along the edge of a dirty canal where water had pooled and overflowed onto the stone walkway, leaving the entire area wet and filthy.

Kesh eventually looked toward Rayne in disgust. "How much more time do you think we'll move for?"

Rayne was inspecting the wall beside them when he answered.

"An hour or so more, then we'll make our way back. Since we now know there's no danger here, we can rush through this area the next time we come."

Everyone nodded. If the sewer remained this quiet, their next journey would be considerably faster, and they might even find the exit.

Like that, they continued forward until they reached another turn and paused in surprise.

Rayne had already sensed something ahead with [War Pulse], but he hadn't expected what they eventually saw when they rounded the corner.

Scattered across the stone floor were pieces of bronze. Rayne looked down with the others.

There were broken limbs, fragments of a torso and several small mechanical parts spread across the passage. They looked remarkably similar to the puppet they had discovered earlier.

"More of them," Jason muttered.

Rayne stepped forward and picked up one of the severed arms. The bronze surface was scratched and covered in dirt, while several thin wires hung from the broken end.

He turned it over in his hand, examining the strange construction before looking toward the rest of the remains.

Andrew had already moved toward the largest piece.

The severed bronze head lay a short distance away, half-covered in grime.

He crouched beside it and carefully lifted it from the ground, turning it over in his hands as he inspected the damage.

Putting down the severed arm, Rayne looked around and immediately noticed that there were at least three severed puppet heads scattered around them.

Their bronze surfaces were covered in grime, with some of them missing large portions of their faces. There were also pieces of their bodies scattered across the water passage, making it difficult to tell how many puppets had actually been destroyed here.

With [War Pulse], however, Rayne could sense that there were more objects beneath the sludge pooled inside the nearby water. He couldn't tell exactly how many were buried down there, but that didn't really matter.

What mattered was who had done this to them.

It was clear that someone—or something—had grabbed these puppets and torn them apart.

The damage wasn't precise either. Their bodies had been broken apart violently, gears ripped from their sockets and wires hanging from shattered limbs. Yet as Rayne looked around, there was no monster in sight.

Other than the dirty water surrounding them, he couldn't see any marks of a battle.

There were no deep scratches on the walls, no damaged sections of the floor and no signs that anything had been dragged through the passage.

It wouldn't be wrong to think that the puppets had simply been here when a monster attacked them out of nowhere, destroying them before they even had the chance to react.

But then, where was it?

Rayne slowly looked around the sewer, his eyes moving from one dark corner to another. He couldn't see any signs of a monster, and [War Pulse] hadn't sensed anything either.

Then his heart suddenly fell.

Something had moved. Deep inside the filthy water beside them, the sludge shifted.

Rayne's mind immediately returned to the conversation they had before entering the tunnel. The possibility of swamp monsters living inside places like these.

At the time, it had been nothing more than an unpleasant thought.

Now, standing beside a pool of stagnant water filled with broken puppets, it no longer seemed so amusing.

"Get back! Right now!"

Rayne immediately jumped backward and shouted.

The next moment, the water exploded.

A massive amount of filthy water and sludge erupted into the air as something enormous surged out from beneath the dormant surface. The force of its emergence sent waves crashing against the walls, throwing pieces of mud and debris in every direction.

Rayne barely managed to retreat far enough before the creature rose completely from the water.

It was a monstrous mass of sludge.

There was no head that Rayne could recognize, no eyes watching them from within the grime and not even a mouth through which it could breathe or roar.

Its entire body appeared to have been formed from thick, dark sludge that constantly shifted and rolled over itself, as though the creature could barely maintain its own shape.

Several limbs extended from its body, but calling them limbs felt wrong.

They were long tendrils of condensed filth, twisting and writhing independently before ending in jagged, blade-like edges.

Some were thick enough to smash through stone, while others were thin and flexible, moving like enormous worms beneath the surface of the sludge.

Every movement caused chunks of grime to drip from them, splashing onto the floor.

The creature had no fixed shape.

Its upper body swelled and contracted as though something inside it was constantly moving, while countless smaller tendrils shifted across its surface.

Pieces of broken stone, moss and even fragments of bronze puppets were embedded within its body, trapped inside the sludge as though they had been swallowed whole.

The stench that came from it was overwhelming.

Rayne instinctively covered his nose, but even that did little to block the smell of stagnant water, decay and something far fouler hidden beneath it.

Then one of the creature's tendrils suddenly snapped toward them.