138 Puppets

Swoosh. Attack. Boom.

Before Eren could react, he was struck with the hammer straight over his heart by one of the puppets. The puppet had swung his hammer with such ferocity and speed that Eren’s body was thrown into the air with a breakneck momentum.

“Aargh!”

Eren cried in pain as he felt his ribs being shattered. The vector force acting on his body has saved him from suffering a severe injury. If he had stayed in his place while facing the full brunt of the attack, he would have received a fatal injury as soon as the fight had started.

In a split second, Eren understood that it was a foolish idea to start the test without the Bear Creed’s armor. He had also underestimated the difficulty of the test as well as the opponents he was facing.

The puppets walked with strange, nonlinear strides because of their misshaped limbs and deformed joints. But contrary to his expectations, they were the puppets’ strengths and not weaknesses.

Those oddly shaped limbs and disfigured limb joints allowed them to move with exceptional speed. They even made their attacks unpredictable with the way the puppets moved.

Eren quickly activated the bear tattoo on his chest and formed the bear armor on him while he was flying away from his previous position in mid-air. When he crash-landed on the ground before getting dragged away by the vector force, the summoned armor protected him from having any more injuries.

Eren got up and finally saw the puppet that had attacked him. It was wielding a giant hammer that looked bigger than its entire body. The puppet had two heads and six arms. It had six legs like that of spiders.

Cree!

The puppet produced a strange sound and its ruby-like eyes glowed red when it saw the target wearing bear armor. Three more puppets joined him as they attempted to zero in on Eren with their incredible speeds.

“This is crazy!”

Three puppets approached Eren with their weapons slung around their bodies using their multi-limb abilities. It was difficult to last for 3 minutes if all the puppets attacked him at the same time. Lasting for 30 minutes is borderline impossible.

But that was when he wasn’t wearing the Bear Creed’s armor.

Eren activated the runes on the bear armor and it started humming. The runes on the entire hex armor set glowed as they produced a white light that surrounded Eren’s entire body before disappearing.

It looked like Eren’s face, his limb joints and his hands were not covered by the armor. But those bodies were being protected by an invisible energy barrier that worked in conjunction with Eren’s natural mana defense to protect his exposed body parts.

Meanwhile, the green gas was getting dense in the hall. Eren couldn’t identify the effects of the green gas at this point. To continue fighting, he had to keep on his toes against the gas.

The puppets screeched as they surrounded Eren from three different directions before closing in on him. Eren had decided that his conventional fighting style wouldn’t work on puppets. They didn’t share the same vulnerability as the live opponents.

A Bear’s Creed challenge was all about heavy attacks and impregnable defense. His movement spell won’t help him much. His agility won’t help him much. He needed to stick to his place instead of moving around much, holding his ground while fighting off his opponents.

Eren quickly recalled his Tachi back into his storage before retrieving the Brightsteel broadsword. This was one of the weapons that were part of the Bear Creed’s hex gear set. Of course, Malcolm had modified the runes to make them compatible with Eren’s mana.

The Brightsteel broadsword was a dual-element artifact. It supported the elementalized mana of both lightning and fire elements. It would produce lightning and fire element flying slashes depending upon which element it was imbued with at any given time.

This was one of the unique things about Hex gear. It supported multi-element compatibility, which was not found in usual non-Hexer artifacts. The specialty alone provided Eren with enough confidence that he was walking on the right path regarding his artifact smithing and battlemage class.

Eren gripped his broadsword with both his hands before swinging it around him in one quick swoop. Then he released a bunch of lightning-powered flying slashes while he was at it. He then spun in the opposite direction before swinging his weapon again. This time he released fire element slashes that focused in a different direction.

Swoosh. Bzzt. Connect.

Eren had attacked the three incoming puppets using his flying slashes before preparing himself to face off the hammer-wielding puppet which had more threatening vibes around it. He gripped his sword and prepared to attack the damn puppet which had almost collapsed his rib cage on his heart.

Cree!

The three puppets stopped approaching Eren when they saw a bunch of flying slashes approaching them at breakneck speeds. As a result, the hammer-wielding puppy was the only one who had come to face off with Eren.

The puppy seemed to have nothing to fear. It swung the hammer all around him in an artistic style that spelled juggling finesse. Then the puppet deviated from its stride easily before approaching Eren at 4 O’clock.

Clang!

The sword’s blade collided with the puppet’s hammer. Eren had managed to parry his opponent’s attack. But the puppet didn’t seem too happy about that. It screeched before retrieving a bunch of knives.

The puppet juggled three knives in its five free hands before using the weapons to attack Eren’s torso. His hands were currently busy holding the sword. Thus, he couldn’t do much about the puppet’s attack.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

The bear armor held on as it deflected the knife attacks dished out at Eren from various angles in quick succession. Meanwhile, Eren cast his lightning element spell to attack the puppet.

Blitz Shards.

A swarm of lightning shards appeared all around Eren and the hammer-wielding puppet. They all zeroed in on the puppet before it could retract.

Bzzt. Light. Boom.