Chapter 330: Puppets and Runes
The night finally arrived, and Christian, who hadn’t allowed himself any rest, spent the hours making light preparations for the task awaiting him tomorrow — creating Iris. His hands eventually stilled, and he let out a quiet breath, deciding it was enough for today.
"Okay, you can rest for now. We’ll continue tomorrow," he said, his tone calm as he addressed Beta.
He knew well that she was an android and that rest wasn’t something her kind required.
If he were a man purely chasing efficiency, he could have had her working through the night without pause, forcing progress to advance at an unbroken pace.
But that was never his goal. What he wanted for them wasn’t mechanical perfection alone — it was something far rarer.
He wanted them to grow, to develop emotions, to become more than machines bound by cold programming.
And for that, even something as small as instilling the habit of rest mattered. Habits were anchors, after all, bridges from imitation to genuine feeling.
After he dismissed her, he lingered for a moment, watching her back as she disappeared, before finally returning to his own room.
Laying on the bed, his eyes drifted upward, drawn to the simple decorations of the ceiling above. He stared for a while, his mind wandering, until restlessness pushed him to rise again.
He summoned three items in front of him, and his gaze fell over them in turn. A small box. A crystal. A puppet.
He let his gaze linger on them, his thoughts deep. The puppet and the matter of Iron Fire taming... for those, he wasn’t prepared to assign any Idle slots just yet.
His path was already tangled enough.
But the crystal — that inheritance sealed within its depths — it tugged at him. He reasoned that, at the very least, he should glimpse what knowledge it held.
After hesitating for a moment, he finally pressed his senses into the crystal.
Instantly, a torrent of information surged into his mind, so vast and dense it was unlike anything he had experienced before. The sheer weight of it made him stagger, his hands clutching his head as some pain tore through him. For long moments he endured, until the storm finally eased, leaving him gasping for air.
When he calmed down, his eyes returned to the crystal, but now with unease flickering in them.
It turned out there were restrictions hidden within it. What he had gained now was only the first fragment of the inheritance sealed inside. To access the rest... he would need strength. Much greater strength.
Would his head have exploded if there hadn’t been a restriction?
Was this Anastasia’s way of getting back at him?
Christian wondered for a moment, seemingly forgetting that with his Danger Awareness skill, such a thing would not have happened in the first place.
He shook his head in the end, deciding to put this experience behind him, before turning his focus toward the knowledge of puppetry.
Unlike the androids he made, puppets had ranks and stages, just like essence masters, and himself, who was currently at Mortal first stage. Puppets were also divided in the same manner.
They could be created from almost any material, so long as the maker was capable of handling it. Yet, toughness of material was only the beginning. If one wanted the puppet to possess the corresponding power of its stage, the techniques required to construct it grew more intricate and demanding, step by step.
And though a puppet could display greater strength than its maker’s physical body, there were still limits. At the end of the day, essence was involved, and the true source remained the original body feeding that puppet.
Up until this point, nothing struck him as truly remarkable. But then came the detail that made his heart quicken, the one that made him itch to immediately assign an Idle slot to it.
Mental strength.
To control a puppet — and to command it from a great distance — one required sufficient mental strength, as well as the ability to mold and manipulate it with precision.
Many methods for doing so were included in the knowledge he had just absorbed, but that was not the point.
The point was a technique within the inheritance that could help strengthen mental power itself.
Christian found himself drawn to it immediately.
If one could reach a certain mastery, the technique even allowed for the faint perception of one’s soul.
How could he not want that?
The existence of the soul had always been an intriguing subject for him.
After all, one of his lingering doubts was whether an android, even after developing a personality, could truly be considered a person without possessing a soul.
It was a debate worth having, but not now.
For now, his thoughts moved on to the other knowledge he had gained.
Runes.
Not the so-called ancient languages he had once read about — those no more than cheap imitations.
But real Runes.
This, he considered, was the greatest gain from all that Anastasia had given him.
Runes could be engraved on items... no, on anything. Through them, a sword with the strength of ten could be pushed to a hundred, or even a thousand.
And that was only the beginning.
There was also the Pattern power system he had acquired from that outsider tribe in India, which he intended to study later.
Its foundation too was Runes.
Runes were not only tools for enhancing strength — they could function as a full power system in their own right. Their potential was immense.
And the most important key to traversing that path was comprehension.
Was it not, then, tailor-made for him?
An eager gleam flickered in Christian’s eyes before he forced himself to look away. That could wait for later.
After all, his plans for how he would climb in power had already changed, ever since Anastasia explained that advancing through stages in a superior technique granted not only greater strength, but also deeper comprehension.
Besides, it wasn’t as though the only value of Runes lay in acting as a power system. For Christian, they could be applied to nearly everything.
Starting with his androids.
By studying Runes and engraving them directly onto his creations, their power could grow more than tenfold. The thought alone left his mind racing with possibilities.
And if he also combined that knowledge with what he had learned about puppets...
Then perhaps he wouldn’t need to fear anyone on Earth at all.
... Okay, maybe he was getting ahead of himself.
Groups like the Eternal Light Order would hardly be moved by such a "cheap" upgrade. But then again, they were also known to be the most peaceful of the outsiders, provided no one provoked them. Perhaps there was no need to worry too much.
While Christian’s thoughts seemed to spiral down on darker paths once again. He caught himself midway and forced his mind to a different subject.
The benefits of a puppet that could not act on its own.
He had already discovered one clear and fantastic point. If a puppet were advanced enough, then through it, he could replicate nearly everything his own body could do... and in certain ways, even surpass it.
And he just so happened to possess a puppet far stronger than himself. One so far beyond his current strength that he knew he wouldn’t overcome it for years to come.
If he could master the method of linking his mental strength to it, then the power he could display through that puppet might exceed what his own body was capable of.