Manic Puppets

Without having enough moment to recuperate from the swarming layers of pain, another scythe was already on its way to behead the infamous Holy Witch. Albeit still preoccupied with the torment, Lothair still had enough willpower to grab the flying scythe out of its destructive trajectory and then swung it back to the sender.

Flying four meters away, the scythe grotesquely latched onto the chest of its invisible owner, before the stealth spell was unveiled. Witch hat and frilled black dress was revealed to what seemed to be a 'weapon-mancer', a magus who specialized in controlling all sorts of weapons telekinetically.

The soaring witch fell from her grace into a fluttering black feathers under the red sky — disappearing completely as her traces were swallowed by the fall.

A moment after, the weapon-mancer reappeared with a lengthy amount of gap shortened with jagged-shark teeth displayed in a large grin along with another of hurled scythe. As it was swung, a large portion of the area were ruptured by the sheer power of the slash that was dragged to the sky.

The rupture of the ground, air, and sky was following one of the lines within the great red X symbol on Lothair's chest, leaving a clean but disastrous cut as his upper half suspended in the air.

Right after that attack, the hand that was still connected to Lothair dismembered upper half began to twitch uncontrollably in such a short time, before sprouting a 7 meters long scythe from the heel of his palm as it was swung down to complete the other portion of the X outline that was supposed to be cut.

This time however, the cut was on the weapon-mancer side. While it didn't permanently damage her like before, the devastating reap was enough to create a wave of black feather that replaced her blood to splash out, obscuring the weapon-mancer's vision for a half second.

After that exact half second, the fully unharmed weapon-mancer were met with a synchronous punch to the neck and liver from a two separate demons — both of those demons were Lothair independent respective bodies, who shared the same thoughts with one another — both were also equally furious for having to face her on the most important recuperation. As if being made off guard by the attack, those simultaneous strikes connect with her real skin and caved flesh.

While the weapon-mancer were sent rolling on the ground before crashing at a boulder in its trajectory, one of the Lothairs began to sprung a long sword from the heel of his palms, and swiftly cut the other Lothair in the head and the heart.

Right after the self-execution, he pressed his arm towards his clone's damaged heart before absorbing the entire flesh of and structure onto his own to prevent any complication.

There might be two bodies and one mind, but there was only one soul and Lothair had yet trained nor expertised himself in that area to be experienced enough in maintaining the dual-body without rupturing the soul and the mortal link of the spirit and the body.

As if he had just been saved on from the verge of drowning, he desperately gasped for air despite the dubious harness resided in his bloated lungs.

Anger filled every corner of his eyes.

Not wanting to waste any more minute, he conjured a harpoon made out of a perfectly-carved duplicated chunk of his bones and veins as the rope attached to it, before dreadfully threw it onto the staggered weapon-mancer.

The vein-made rope was then aggressively pulled, along with the body of the weapon-mancer. Not even giving her a single breath, Lothair immediately pushed a knife that sprouted from the heel of the palm of the other hand, towards her face, brutally piercing her manic yet beatious face into a gore of mutilated skull before being brought down to the ground for another set of beating.

"... You think you're cheeky."

Lothair then creepily shifted his gaze towards his back with a sharp crack on his neck in the form of a giant red eye that engulfed the entirety of his face. Despite the terrifying gesture, the last challenger sent out a ballista bolt into a bullseye with the menacing eye as the target board.

It pushed the flinching Holy Witch's body for a couple of meters before he regained his footsteps.

As Lothair's veins tightened, the bolt embedded through his skull was melted into cauterizing magma that not only had no effect on the freakish demon, but created an even more horrifying sight to see.

Undaunted, Lothair began to advance towards the last challenger in a slow, menacing strode.

He grabbed the melted steel that was flowing on his skin and began to overheal their material property into duplication, printing the identically similar ballista bolt alongside the large hypothetical ballista launcher that was able to send the bolt back to its original user.

With a couple of improvements like the steel and demon's dermis variant of strings as the ballista's spring, the mini artillery were brought to the battlefield in less than twenty seconds.

The trigger was then loosed, hurling the ballista bolt towards the location of the unknown assassin. Seeing how a ballista of such a length would render its lone user into stationary position, Lothair launched his bolt after bolt until there was no sign of resistance made by the sniper.

"That should be an overkill." He then grinned before cackling as he slumped over. "This is not within my calculation. Still, I couldn't have much better timing. More of them should be arriving after dwindling out enough of my lesser puppets on the frontline."

Without further ado, he thrusted his arm to his spine and grabbed a pen-like equipment from one of the vertebrae.

Hurriedly, he drew a clean square in the air that unlocked a portal to spatial storage of his. He reached out his hand, prodding his fingers to re-familiarize with the unstable pocket space before pulling out a sophisticated black and green-jade needle with rough exterior akin to that of an obsidian formation.

The size was also bigger than the needle made for turning demons into Lesser Puppets.

Not to mention, the comprehensible placeholder for some sort of canister that was ready to be inserted on the reverse side of the injector.

He then finally drew out the see-through canister confining a glowing green liquid, fitting it nicesle to the large needle before he found his first victim for the advanced version of his puppet.

The first injection of the complex puppet solution was bestowed upon the blade dancer — not before stitching her out into a frankensteined demon with some ol' reliable healing spell.

Like an energized pet, the blade dancer immediately sprung into a fighting stance with a rather confused look on her face.

"I-I'm still alive??"

"What is the name of the Cradling Leech's current leader?"

"Totycrea Sankrezstein." The blade dancer answered immediately, still with a confusion on her face.

"What would you do if you were to fight seven copy of you with 10% lower speed than the one you currently possess."

"Maintain distance, disperse them and hunt them one by one if possible. If they keep on clumping into a group no matter what, direct them into a cramped killing zone and sweep all seven of them in one swoop."

"Ask me anything."

"Am I still alive?"

"Not really, now go back to your companion and murder them out of their spine. Don't make a mess of them, though."

"Aaaaaaa, affirmative, master."

Like a brainwashed soldier, the blade dancer immediately followed the command without a second thought.

"Hmm." Lothair caressed his chin in amusement. "So they still retain their memory. Judging from her leap, the prowess output should be around 150%. Well then, I'll name them Manic Puppet for now. Heh."

Lothair found hilarity on the thought that if it truly became the official name of this version of puppetry, the amount of demons who would deem them as a mere brutish version of the Lesser puppets would skyrocket for their first encounter, only to find that they were intelligent enough to construct a plan on a sophisticated level that their former self would use.

The rest of the early challengers were then turned into Manic Puppets, except for the ballista user who was too far away from the vicinity.

Satisfied of the result, Lothair put the injector to make Manic Puppets back into his pocket space for latter use. He then commanded the surviving Lesser Puppets to march onward along the newly recruited fallen fiend of the coalition.

The continuous layered torments were still haunting Lothair's mind and body. While there was a slight relief for a moment — which, in itself, was still a factor that was unknown to him, the amount of agony he was currently bearing was enough to knock the most veteran of warriors from the land of constant conflict and war.

Wryly grinning, he put his unwavering will onto his shoulder so that he was able to keep marching until the current skirmish was done so that he could finally rest and take a look at this new phenomenon later.

"There was a slight timeframe of momentary ease after that weapon-mancer cut me into two..." Lothair took a deep breath before he slumped forward, marching his never-tired legs. "Maybe there is some kind of trade that needs to be done... Not that I can experiment on it now..."