Chapter 333

Everything within ten kilometers of the spot they chose to sit is cleared by the time that night falls, and Cain has gained an even twenty levels today. It’s been an incredible level of advancement by any standard, and Cain is looking forward to doing it again tomorrow, getting him from level 240, which he just reached, to hopefully level 255 before he moves on to the beastkin dungeon.

Hopefully there are a load of new classes and combinations in there for him to record, so he can get Nemu up to Legendary quality. That might be a bit too much to hope for, since he’s told that it’s a standard dungeon, an underground labyrinth best known for its mining potential. The rarity of materials is relatively low for their level, but the quantity is high. 

That’s perfect for Cain, with his puppets he can mine it out and load up the Guild bank once he’s back in range. None of their crafters are even close to level 300, so it’s all going to be good stuff to them.

But first, Cain is going to use up the skill points that he gained yesterday. He bought that Soul Gem specifically for the day that he could test out his [Living Art] ability. It transfers a Soul into a Puppet body and places the physical body in a Stasis Gem, or alternatively pulls a Soul from a Soul Gem into a Puppet body.

It’s not quite resurrection, but in some cases, it might be conditionally better. The condition being that the one brought back to life isn’t upset about becoming Cain’s Puppet.

First, Cain goes through his secondary skill tree, looking at the second rank, where he has the option to add points into life skills. Mostly, the puppets clean or mine out dungeons, except the custom puppets who already have high level skills, so Cain looks over his options, finding that Cleaning and Household Maintenance are separate skills. He’s got twenty points though, so he puts five into each. That brought them from Apprentice 1 to Apprentice 6 Cooking and Household Maintenance. Then he puts 10 points into Mining, bringing it to Journeyman 1.

That should keep everyone happy. It still didn’t unlock the next rank of skills though, which is unfortunate, but they’ll be doing more dungeons in the next few days, so there’s a good chance he can add more useful skills to the puppets along the way.

At only 10 points to give them all a Journeyman level of a trade skill, he could use them to open a variety of construction facilities as well. Journeyman carpenters and smiths to make basic furniture and tools, while the Guild’s skilled artisans make the good stuff.

Cain decides to put that proposal to the Guild members at a later date, since he himself has no intention of actually running the shops that would be needed. But if they want to take him up on the offer, he would certainly be willing to spare them some staff.

Before leaving the secondary skills menu, Cain looks through the options, which are much more extensive than the first rank, which was only attack power and defense. There’s every basic trade skill listed here, so if Cain does want to specialize in a life skill later, he only needs to add points to his puppets and they can quickly become very competent at it.

Of course, he could just duplicate the skill of an already trained Professional, but that’s beside the point, and limited to making a new puppet.

With the life skills taken care of, Cain moves on to activating [Living Art]. It only takes a second’s thought, and the moment he activates it he gets a notification.

[Contained Soul Available: Create Body?] Y/N

Cain has no idea what sort of Soul is trapped in the Soul Gem, so he’s not sure what to build for a body, but he can always alter the shape of his puppets afterwards.

[Creation Selected. Use Default for Soul?]Y/N

[Default Form Selected]

Cain watches happily as the puppet begins to take form. Fair skin, Long Brown Hair, long brown ears and a cute little round tail. The trapped Soul is a Bunny kin. The puppet slowly looked round once it was formed and then realized it was in fact standing nude in front of a strange man and made a run for the tree line.

“Stop.” Cain commands and the bunny comes sliding to a halt halfway across the clearing.

“Equip this.” He directs the bunny, handing them a buttercup yellow sundress from the chest full of clothing he is holding in his inventory.

The bunny looks a little more relaxed now, but still confused and lost. Understandable really, they’ve essentially been resurrected into a strange place, by someone they don’t know, who can force them to do whatever they say.

“Who might you be and how did you end up in the Soul Gem that I extracted you from, little bunny?” Cain asks and he can see the Puppet struggle not to answer for a fraction of a second before succumbing to the restrictions placed on puppets.

“My name is Daisy, Most beloved of the Consorts to the King of Lucca. Or at least I was, since it seems I’m your property now. It is tradition that when a Consort’s King dies that the necromancers trap their soul in a Gem to rest beside him for all time. If you’re a grave robber, you’ve made a grave mistake in taking my Soul Gem.” The bunny informs him.

“The King of Lucca? Lucca fell a thousand years before the Great War. You’ve been in that gem a long time, Miss Daisy. Long enough that it was most likely an archaeologist that removed you from the grave where you were buried.” Princess Paige explains and the bunny looks stunned.

“But the Might of Lucca is eternal? What could have even toppled the Kingdom?” Daisy asks her suspiciously.

“Of all things, it was a slave revolt. If you would like we can ask the Elders here in Munan for the answer, some of them are over 1200 years old and would have been children at the time.” Paige suggests, and Daisy collapses down in the grass.

Cain can see Cyrene making her way over to comfort the shocked girl, but stops her with a warning.

“Cyrene, hugging the bunny is probably not going to relax them. At least not one of your full body hugs. The great of being constricted is instinctive to them.” Cain explains and the bunny looks alarmed at the mention of being wrapped up by the Lamia.

“Oops, sorry. I’ll remember that for later. But for now, what do we even do? It’s not like we can send her home, and she’s a Puppet.”