Chapter 184: Secret Meeting

Ishiki’s blade hung suspended in the air, invisible edge trembling mere centimeters from what should have been flesh.

They didn’t have faces.

Where human features should exist—eyes, nose, mouth or any obvious feature—there was only smooth wood grain.

The realization struck with the weight of absolute wrongness.

These weren’t people. Had never been people.

The two figures stood motionless in the alley, their forms carved from wood into humanoid shapes with disturbing precision.

Their joints bent at proper angles, fingers possessed correct articulation, torsos that suggested musculature without truly possessing it.

They were terrifyingly human like puppets.

“Fall back!” Filch’s voice cracked through the silence like breaking ice.

Ishiki jerked backward, blade still raised, as the wooden figure he’d been about to strike suddenly smiled. It was a terrible grin carved into grain as if it had always been there.

Then, both the puppets collapsed.

It fell with none of the weight or resistance of a living body.

“Don’t breathe!” Filch shouted, already moving. His hands slammed against the white marble, blue luminescence flooding outward. “Ishiki, hold your breath!”

Ishiki obeyed without question, drawing one final gulp of air and sealing his lips.

He watched with widening eyes as flowers began to bloom.

They erupted from the fallen wooden bodies with obscene speed—pale blossoms pushing through wood.

Their petals unfurled in vivid colors.

Within seconds, the two collapsed puppets had transformed into gardens of corruption.

The flowers released their pollen.

It billowed outward in clouds of fine particulate matter that caught the crimson light.

Filch’s skill responded faster than Ishiki could track.

White marble around the two wooden puppets… tore free from the ground. The material converged on the wooden corpses, wrapping around them in layers that compressed with each rotation.

Within three heartbeats, a perfect sphere of rock encased both puppets and their poisonous harvest.

The pollen that had already escaped continued drifting, but the source was sealed.

“Stay back from the spores,” he rasped without looking at Ishiki. “Don’t let them touch your skin.”

Ishiki held his breath for another ten seconds, watching the pale clouds dissipate slowly. Only when the last visible traces had settled or blown away did he risk drawing breath.

“What the hell was that?” Ishiki managed, voice rough.

“No idea.” Filch released the air and took in a long breath. “But I have seen something similar before and those spores do no good.”

“Wooden puppets controlled by… skill? Or a vestige?” Ishiki’s mind raced through possibilities, discarding each as insufficient. “Someone sent those to follow you.”

“Yes.”

“Someone who can manipulate and create humanoid forms sophisticated enough to move, track targets, and—” Ishiki gestured at the sealed sphere. “—carry biological weapons.”

“Yes.”

The flatness in Filch’s voice suggested he had already reached the same conclusions and found no comfort in them.

Ishiki closed his eyes, drawing Ghost Blade to its fullest extent.

His consciousness exploded outward in a sphere that encompassed five hundred meters. Every building within range resolved into perfect clarity in his mind.

The black and white imagery showed structural details down to individual cracks in masonry. Every person within that radius appeared as distinct shapes.

He searched for any sign of the puppeteer who had sent those wooden hunters.

But he found nothing.

The Secondary Ring sprawled around them in ruins and silence. A few scattered Players moving through distant streets, but none paying particular attention to this location.

He opened his eyes and deactivated the skill, frustration bleeding into his features.

“They’re not here,” he said quietly. “Whoever sent those things… they’re either beyond my range or can control these from their bed.”

The implications settled like stones in Ishiki’s stomach.

Another terrifying Player. Someone with abilities sophisticated enough to create proxies and send them to follow people, and detonate them into biological hazards.

All while sitting comfortably in some place kilometers away.

“How many monsters does this place have?” Ishiki muttered.

“We’re about to find out.” Filch gestured down the alley, away from the sealed sphere. “Come on. We’re late.”

They moved quickly through the Secondary Ring’s labyrinth of destruction, taking routes that avoided main thoroughfares. The Crimson Moon tracked their progress overhead, indifferent and absolute.

After several minutes of silence, Ishiki posed the question that had been building since the puppets revealed themselves.

“Why are they targeting you specifically?”

“I don’t know? How would I? Its not like I abducted someone’s wife.” Filch shrugged.

Ishiki looked at him and blinked a couple of times and continued onwards.

They turned down another narrow passage, this one barely wide enough for two people to walk abreast. Collapsed buildings leaned inward from both sides, creating a tunnel of broken stone and twisted metal.

“Could it be connected to the dragon directly?” Ishiki asked.

Filch considered for several heartbeats before responding.

“Possible. But it doesn’t feel like his style.” He ducked under a low-hanging beam. “The dragon is direct and has overwhelming force. He kills with his hands, not with poison flowers and remote proxies.”

“Fair point.”

“Which means,” Filch continued, voice dropping lower, “someone else is hunting me… either working for the dragon or pursuing their own agenda. Neither option is comforting. Its a Good thing I asked Nina to live in the inner ring.”

They emerged from the passage into a wider street that ran perpendicular to their path.

“There’s something else,” the burgundy-haired man said as they crossed. “We found others who refused to submit and surviving in the Secondary Ring, avoiding the Inner Ring entirely.”

Ishiki’s interest sharpened. “Who?”

“You’ll meet them shortly.” Filch led them toward an area where the buildings were rather unharmed. “There are two of them and both are strong enough to have value in a fight.”

“Desperate people make mistakes.”

“Desperate people also have nothing left to lose,” Filch countered. “That makes them dangerous. To everyone, including themselves.”

They reached a secluded alley that dead-ended at what had once been a food store.

Filch approached the door, which hung at an angle from a single surviving hinge. He pulled it open with a screech of protesting metal that made Ishiki wince, then gestured inside.

“After you.”

Ishiki entered the abandoned store, eyes adjusting to deeper darkness. It was neatly adjusted and mostly unharmed by any of the things that happened a few days ago.

Filch moved past him to the back corner, where a trapdoor lay concealed beneath fallen merchandise. The man cleared the debris with practiced efficiency, revealing wooden planks that opened onto stairs descending into absolute black.

“Underground,” Filch explained unnecessarily, already descending. “Away from prying eyes and listening ears.”

Ishiki followed, each step groaning under his weight. The stairs went down perhaps three meters before opening into a basement room lit by a single oil lamp.

The space was cramped—maybe four meters by five, with a low ceiling that forced everyone inside to remain seated or perpetually hunched. The walls were bare stone and the floor was packed earth.

And seated around the lamp’s feeble light were three figures.

Yuki sat cross-legged on the ground, her pink hair darkened to wine-red in the lamplight. She looked up as Ishiki and Filch entered, relief flickering across her features before being replaced by the perfect expression she always wore like a mask.

Beside her sat two others Ishiki didn’t recognize.

The first was a woman in her mid-twenties with short black hair and a beautiful face. She wore only a shirt that ended somewhat above her stomach… but was skin tight like an armor.

Her eyes tracked Ishiki with wariness at first, of someone who’d been betrayed before and refused to allow a repeat. But then soon enough softened.

The second was a broad-shouldered man who might have been in his early thirties. His hands bore the calluses of manual labor.

Filch settled into one of the remaining space chairs… around the lamp. Ishiki didn’t sit down and instead took a position standing near the stairs, back against the wall, positioning that let him watch everyone simultaneously.

Yuki looked at all of them and then at the map on the tale that she had prepared with her knowledge and with the help of Ishiki and Filch.

Meanwhile the new girl and the broad guy waved at Ishiki with a smile. Ishiki greeted them back and said nothing.

Filch introduced them and Ishiki. The girl was named Jeanne and the broad shouldered guy was named Santiago.

The girl seemed a bit cheeky and energetic. While santiago seemed like someone who withholds laws.

’’Sure thing he has a weird enough name…’ Ishiki lampooned in his heart but said nothing outside.

Then after the initial introductions… finally Yuki spoke.

“Now that we’re all acquainted,” Yuki said, her voice cutting through the underground chamber’s close air, “let’s address reality.”

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