Chapter 114: Corpse Puppet Substitution Technique

Catherine was in pursuit of Vivi when she noticed something hurtling through the air toward her. She hastily dodged, but the object curved in mid-air, continuing its trajectory to strike her. Catherine had no choice but to neutralize the impact with her personal defensive field.

This distraction allowed Vivi to seize the opportunity and flee further away.

Catherine caught the object Vivi had thrown. It was a potion bottle, still containing more than half of a green liquid. With her mind still fixed on chasing Vivi, she absentmindedly stowed it away in her spatial pouch.

Just as she was about to resume her pursuit, a casual glance toward the Disciplinary Committee’s combat squad and Jarvis’s corpse-puppet team caused Catherine to freeze in her tracks.

She saw that familiar figure again—the one she had spotted while tailing Peter’s group. This time, she saw him face-on.

It was Stein, their mentor, whom she and Andy had personally arranged to be laid to rest!

What was going on? For the first time, Catherine felt that her clever mind was failing to grasp the situation.

Meanwhile, deep in the dense forest, Sherlock had already collected his spoils and departed with composure, while Jarvis, who had been observing from the sidelines, had not revealed himself once.

Only after Sherlock had left did Jarvis rush, in two or three strides, to the corpse of the Silver-ranked wizard, Bell. He gazed at the body with burning intensity.

This was the corpse of a Silver-ranked wizard! Jarvis had never obtained such high-grade material before.

Just as he was about to begin refining Bell into a puppet, Jarvis frowned. Refining a Silver-level corpse required far more precious materials—materials Jarvis did not currently possess.

In truth, while Jarvis’s corpse-puppets were a great asset, they came with limitations, the most significant being the astronomical cost. Most of Jarvis’s savings were usually poured into enhancing his puppets, which was the only reason he had managed to accumulate a few at the peak of the Bronze rank.

In a sense, it wasn't that Jarvis couldn't upgrade his puppets to the Silver rank; his wallet simply wouldn't allow it.

As Jarvis moved to store Bell’s body for later use, he suddenly felt an intense emotional fluctuation emanating from his puppets.

He hurried to the edge of the dense forest to observe. He discovered that while he had been distracted by Bell’s corpse, the Disciplinary Committee squad had broken through his puppets' spell formation. They were now systematically picking off the puppets one by one, and it would not be long before they were all destroyed.

Jarvis attempted to command his puppets to flee, but Dana’s combat squad was highly experienced. They had anticipated this, using various control and slowing spells to ensure the puppets had no hope of escape.

Seeing this, Jarvis was frantic. These puppets represented years of his slow, painstaking accumulation. Setting aside the magic stones, resources, time, and effort invested, he had spent his entire wizarding career alongside these puppets; he could not bear to lose them emotionally.

"Damn it! To hell with it!" Jarvis growled. He returned to Bell’s corpse and hastily performed a crude refining process. Refining a Silver-ranked puppet properly would require many materials, but treating the body as a one-time consumable was significantly simpler.

After finishing, Jarvis pulled his cloak tight and hunched his back as he walked out of the forest.

"Hey, excuse me!" Jarvis said to Abel, who was staring blankly at the mangled remains of his comrades after the battle had ended. Seeing that Abel remained catatonic, Jarvis shook his head and bypassed him.

His sudden appearance drew the attention of Dana and the Disciplinary squad. Unsure if he was friend or foe, they intensified their assault on the remaining puppets.

Jarvis, now closer to them, gave a sly grin and produced seven tiny coffins from his waist. He opened the lids and whispered, "Collect!"

The puppets, currently being suppressed by the Disciplinary squad, suddenly shrank rapidly and flew toward the coffins in his hands. One by one, they vanished inside.

One, two, three... six!

Hmm? Jarvis felt a slight flicker of confusion. Why hadn't the seventh been collected? A quick glance revealed that the one remaining was his newly refined puppet, Stein.

As it turned out, Catherine had seen someone trying to claim Stein and had used a spell to interfere with the function of Jarvis’s relic. She then quietly approached Stein. Though she still did not fully understand the situation, she could see that Stein was in a state that was profoundly wrong, and she was determined to observe him up close.

Jarvis had no time to ponder why Stein had not been collected, as the Disciplinary squad had surrounded him.

"Who are you?" Dana demanded fiercely. He was in a foul mood and had been looking for someone to vent his frustration on. Seeing the enemy he was about to finish off suddenly snatched away by this stranger’s bizarre methods, his tone was anything but polite.

Jarvis suddenly extended his right hand, causing the squad to tense up. When they saw him simply give Dana a thumbs-up, they let out a breath of relief.

Dana found it mildly amusing; he knew the law and school regulations were heartless—he could not be bought by mere flattery. Still, he puffed out his chest slightly.

Unexpectedly, the situation did not develop as he had envisioned. Jarvis slowly rotated his right hand, the thumb shifting its orientation until it pointed directly downward!

"Death wish!" Enraged, Dana immediately ordered his team to use binding spells, determined to capture and punish this man thoroughly.

"Hehehehe!" Jarvis let out a dark, raspy laugh. As the spells struck his body, he silently whispered, "Shift!"

Jarvis vanished, and in his place appeared the corpse of the Silver-ranked wizard, Bell. The Disciplinary squad’s binding spells struck the corpse instead.

*Spell: Corpse Puppet Substitution!*

Reappearing at the edge of the forest, Jarvis watched the scene unfold. He twitched his lips in regret, let out a dark chuckle, and muttered to himself, "Enjoy this—detonate!"

*Corpse Explosion, using the body of a Silver-ranked wizard as the medium!*

*Boom!*

The members of the Disciplinary squad had never expected that the enemy they had surrounded would become a lethal hazard. Caught completely off guard by the super-powered Corpse Explosion, three of them had their defensive fields shattered, and their physical bodies were blown to pieces on the spot.

Two others, having some savings, were protected by alchemical items that activated in the nick of time, saving their lives, though they were left critically injured and unable to fight.

Dana, the captain, fared no better. After the explosion, his mind remained in a haze, and he had suffered significant injuries. However, he was still able to move, so he scrambled to find healing potions for himself and his subordinates.

Because Jarvis had deliberately kept the puppet Stein away from the blast radius, Catherine, who was following Stein, was also unaffected by the explosion.

Yet, Catherine felt as if her own mind were exploding with buzzing thoughts. She had reached a point close enough to see Stein clearly: his face was green, his fangs were bared, and his fingernails were like hooks—he was clearly no longer a living being.

Stunned and in a state of shock, Catherine didn't even notice as Jarvis commanded the puppet Stein to flee into the forest amidst the chaos of the explosion.

"Ah... AHHH!" Just as the puppet Stein was about to reach the forest to rendezvous with Jarvis, Captain Abel, who had been catatonic since Peter’s death, suddenly let out a grief-stricken roar. He hurled his longsword toward the puppet Stein with all his might, the weapon whistling through the air the moment it left his hand.

Jarvis steered the puppet nimbly to the side; the sword grazed the puppet’s arm, merely breaking the skin.

Shortly after, Jarvis retrieved the puppet Stein within the dense forest. He glanced back once more toward the site of the Silver wizard’s explosion, his eye twitching, before wrapping his cloak tight and hunching over to disappear into the woods, never looking back.

Catherine wandered toward the capital in a daze. She desperately needed to find Andy, to tell him everything she had seen, and to use the Magic Mirror to uncover the truth of it all.

Only Abel and Dana remained, staring at each other in silence. Dana looked at the two unconscious wounded, then at the devastation across the canyon, his expression darkening with fury.

Suddenly, his gaze fixed on something.

He walked to the spot where Abel had thrown his sword, bent down to pick it up, and frowned at the black bloodstains on the blade.

"Just wait," he muttered to himself. "I won't let you get away with this!"