384 How Did It All Started

384. How Did It All Start

While Baiyi pondered about the capabilities of the monster, in a distance very far away, the Wise Mad King was spectating the battle using a Far-distance Surveillance spell. Gripped by hysteria, he was close to pulling his hair out.

As the mastermind behind the plan, the Wise Mad King knew how powerful the monster should have been. It should not be getting pummeled this bad. It was not supposed to be a punching bag for that bastard Hope and his black energy!

'Where the hell did it go wrong?!' The Mad King thought over and over; it was like an itch he could not scratch. Their most glorious leader, the Director of Godsfall, was in control of the monster. As a god, the Director was supposed to have an immense amount of power at his disposal. He was supposed to be skilled in the usage of Holy Power and in Rewriting Laws.

The Director had the makings of a great 'controller' of the Gundam-like monster — or as Godsfall called it 'Lawful Marionette'. Should the term be 'pilot', not 'controller'? Or, should it be 'driver'?

If the monster was being controlled by someone other than the Director, then such an abysmal performance would have been excusable. However, despite being controlled by a real god, the monster was an immense disadvantage.

Godsfall plan was intricate: creating the monster, which was the avatar of a god, was not their true aim. They had actually aimed to steal the God of Power's Privilege!

They were inspired by the God-Descending Formation used by the followers of God's Grace to summon angels. Godsfall created a similar summoning formation, but they made their formation much more massive because, unlike the followers of God's Grace, they intended to summon the God of Power. An Abyss Lord helped the cult with some minor parts of their formation, while a real god aided the plans by disrupting the God of Power. This was according to plan because, once the formation was activated, only the God of Power's power and Privilege would descend into the monster. The god's consciousness would remain stuck in the Divine Realm because of the interference of the god supporting the cult. 

Hence, their end goal was to create a "marionette" with no self-awareness yet possessing the Privilege of the Power God. And that was how the name of their operation came.

And what was the reason for calling their cult "Godsfall"? It wasn't because they worshipped a heretical god, nor do they seek to drag a god down to their world. It was because they aimed to steal every Privilege of all gods, hence making the gods "fall" from their pedestal of divinity as they lose the one thing that identified them as gods.

To facilitate the God of Nature, Krachlon— who was the true leader of the cult— in controlling this Marionette, they had chosen to fashion a body from a material most familiar to the Nature God himself so that he could control them easily. The material? Trees. Compared to the other materials where unstable variables may lurk, a body constructed from plants would have provided this particular god the most versatile set of capabilities as well as endurance.

Then, to make sure that the control over the Marionette was smooth, they needed to make sure that there was no other consciousness interfering the possessor's control. To ensure that, there must not be any live being within the body of the Marionette. If they were ever be used as one of the materials for the creation, then their consciousness would have tainted the purity of its control. This was the reason why the cult had made sure that every forest critter had scrammed before initiating the operation, as well as why the Mad King had rejected the proposal of sacrificing those Demigod fighters into the Marionette.

After all, should these scattering consciousness ever unite together to rebel against the controller, even the Nature God may not have an easy time to suppress them fully— and that would impact the exactness of control towards the Marionette.

After all, didn't a very specific anime back on Earth with "Alchemy" as its theme and backdrop featured the end boss being defeated, due to the rebellion formed from the lingering consciousness of living sacrifices?

That was basically what Operation: Marionette was about. There were two key points in the plan: first, they must ensure their success in siphoning the Power God's Privilege, which meant that when the empire complex was being activated, the power source and the formation structure must be complete; And two, they need to ensure the purity of the Marionette to remain an absolute optimum, with any other living creature's consciousness being a no-no. To ensure that, they picked trees— not famed for having sentience— to be their materials.

Yet, this great, crazy scheme that no one in history had ever attempted before had failed— all because of the forceful entry Baiyi had committed. Parts of the empire complex were desecrated to a certain degree, and towards the end, they had to begin the plan sooner than they had scheduled, causing the Marionette's manipulation of Laws to be less than flawless.

According to their original plan, should the Power God's Privilege be successfully stolen for the cultists themselves, it wouldn't have been just their dissenters' mana and combat chi being nullified. Instead, every strength humans had, including the strength to stand up on their feet or even the strength to breathe, would have been forcibly taken away! The Marionette would have been able to kill every living creature within a hundred yards just by standing at an area!

That was the full extent of a powerful god's Privilege. Comparably, the Nature God, who could only control the changes in nature, was way too weak. Their power gaps were just so wide… And that was why he had not wanted to Descend with his own, original body and instead planned to steal his colleague's powers.

The hastily-completed Marionette may not have been as strong in manipulating the Laws as the cultists had hoped, but even the ability to remove everyone's control over their own mana or combat chi had been enough— it wasn't an outcome that Godsfall would find hard to take advantage of, after all. They just had to put a little bit more effort into killing those annoying but depowered pests that come into their way. By and large, the plan was still considered largely successful.

And yet again, this bloody Hope had once again acted as the persona non grata, employing a sort of mysterious black power completely ungoverned by the Laws, and then curbstomping the cultists' most prized and precious Lawful Mariotte into a pitiful toddler! Sure, he was only fighting a puppet of a god, but every time Hope dished out an attack with those black power, it was like he was walloping the face of the Nature God himself. The optics just stung!

He was named Hope, but all he had brought to his enemies was hopelessness.

The Mad King was befuddled: sure, some part of the Privilege was lost and incomplete, but the pilot of the Marionette is an actual, genuine god, right? He should be able to use the Laws they had successfully siphoned out even more skillfully, right? Even if the Marionette contained pollutants such as other people's consciousness, thus lowering its purity— the pilot is an actual, genuine god, right? He should be able to suppress those unruly, intrusive thoughts, right? And even if that black power that Baiyi used is too strong, the pilot is an actual, genuine god, right? With that humongous size, he should have an advantage right? Didn't he use Holy Power to retaliate successfully for a brief moment there? So why is he being beaten so badly? Why can't he even retaliate?

The pilot is an actual, genuine god, right?

Just as the Mad King was still haunted by a series of questions, a voice suddenly boomed inside of his head awkwardly. It was once again, the Director speaking.

Once the Mad King had finished listening, the latter's puzzled face had vanished. Instead, it was replaced by a look of earnest panic and hopelessness.

The Director's words were clear and short. "Molocchus had betrayed us. He had stolen control over the Marionette. Destroy it, whatever cost necessary!!!"

The questions swirling in his mind were finally solved. Why had the Marionette's powers so thoroughly defanged? Why had the First Reverend so generously donated his elites, and even allowed the Mad King to sacrifice them?

Time and again— there is no talk of loyalty in a demon.

The Mad King had expended every single worthwhile thing he had on the Lawful Marionette, and now the Director had issued a very clear command to destroy it. This struck a bolt of lightning directly into the Mad King's heart, even more so than if he had ever found out that his daughter was really his own granddaughter.

For this plan to have worked, the Mad King had sacrificed everything. He had offered the birthplace of his species, offered his Kingdom's most powerful fighters, burnt bridges through political polarization, and even placed a bet on his legitimacy as the King of the Fairy Kingdom. If this crumbled into a failure… then even a quiet, normal death would have become a luxurious dream.

Because everyone would have been delighted in tearing him into pieces. Hope. The surviving families of the Morningstar Sage and the Green Knight. The Traditionalists. And that First High Reverend who had so passionately extolled the virtues and greatness of their "Great Work" and yet did not skip a heartbeat in singlehandedly betraying everyone else, the Abyss Lord Molocchus.

He felt every strength leaving his body until his weakened knees gave up to his weight. He crashed onto the floor, and the ever-observing half-fairy, Gru, quickly came to his side to help him up.

The Mad King waved Gru's goodwill away, however. He lowered his head, his usual flair of grandeur completely gone, and whimpered like a beaten dog. "The future of the fair folks… The hope of our kind… They are lost…"

"We lost?" Gru's voice was low and cold.

The Mad King did not answer him directly. Instead, using his title as the Fairy King for the last time, he issued his last command to his general. "Go. Dispatch every last man we have in the imperial army…. And destroy that Marionette. Maybe then our species could still survive..."

"As you command." Gru stood up. Before he left, his eyes studied the sunken Mad King one last time, before placing a dagger— exquisitely crafted by the most dexterous of artisans— softly by the Mad King's side. It was once one of the King's prized possessions, taken from a Dwarf thane's corpse. It was the King's favorite and most satisfying loot, and to show how much he valued and cherished Gru, the King had gifted the dagger to him.

Now, however, it was time to return it.

Just as the Director of the Godsfall cult had issued that cold command to the Mad King, far in the battlefield where Baiyi was engaging in a one-sided fight with the Marionette, the Fifth Walker had also realized that something was quite deviating from his expectation. For example, all of the Gundam's defensive measure and struggles were abruptly abandoned and instead, from the trees where the body of the Gundam was fashioned from, green sinister flames suddenly burst out.

It was such a drastic change that Baiyi had to stop attacking, and instead spaced himself out with the enemy. He scanned the "Nature God" questioningly, not entirely sure why it started bursting into green flames after realizing it wasn't going to win.

When the green flames had died out, the Gundam stood up again. This time, its shattered kneecaps were somehow completely healed, but not with trees— instead, it was filled with wriggling, disgusting blackened flesh. Even other parts of this marionette were filled with similar disgusting flesh until it looked even more like a human.

A curious thought flashed in Baiyi's mind. 'Did the Enemy Boss just transform?'Yes, the thoughts of the Wise Mad King or the author somehow trailed off into this.]