Chapter 19: Living Puppet and Unique Abilities
"..." After crying for a few minutes, feeling all the pain of the past, I decided to check my status. If it follows the pattern I know, there will be some notable changes.
For example, a change in my ability and a change in the ranking of my stats, like my stamina which was E, it will probably drop to F.
What matters is that Magic and Magic Defense will rise to S, basically I won’t get much stronger in the others, but I’ll gain more magic and defense against magic in my current body.
And of course, the skill area that is currently empty should also change a bit with the addition of useful things for my puppet skills.
"Ok... Status" I call my status, let’s see what’s new.
[Status
Name = Evelyn Ashcroft
Race = Demon (Demonic Living Puppet)
Title = Tragedy/Master of Puppets
Status Classification =
Strength = F
Stamina = F
Defense = F
Physical Defense = F
Magic = S
Magic Defense = S
Vitality = SSS+
Total Skills =
Lifeline Thread (Description = Ability to share your vitality with your puppets, allowing you to survive even if you lose your body as long as a puppet still exists with your vitality)
Master of Puppets (Description = Ability to telepathically control your puppets without the basic need for magic strings)
Main Body (Description = Your body is now a living puppet, you have all the capabilities and freedom of body control that a puppet has, your magic are the strings that move your body)
Vital Core (Description = Your heart is now the core that allows you to share and fragment your life with your puppets, if it is broken, it can easily be restored)
Theatrical Evolution (Description = Your puppets can evolve through experience and materials, gaining new abilities and becoming stronger)
Fragmented Theater in Acts (Description = As a master puppeteer, you have the ability to divide everything into acts like a play. This means that when using this skill, the user can circumvent restrictions and weaknesses temporarily, like a play script where the user controls each act, although the more acts, the greater the cost)
Theatrical Anomaly (Description = The user is both the puppeteer and the puppet, their physical abilities, although lamentable, are just one side of the theater. The mask is divided into tragedy and comedy, your body, to compensate for your physical weakness, receives much less magic damage, any physical pain is radically reduced by 95% and your senses never deteriorate permanently)
False Immortality of the Crazy Puppeteer (Description = As a living puppet, you can never be permanently affected by a negative effect. Your arm was affected by a magic that prevents recovery? Simple, just discard it and create a new one! So the Crazy Puppeteer dismantles and reassembles his body to continue his performance on any stage, never letting his body decay, after all the show must always go on even when the curtains close)
Suicidal Theater Stage (Description = Every Show needs its climax, and nothing is more beautiful than the pure tragedy represented. With this skill, the user can sacrifice puppets to fortify or "donate" the ability to another puppet, but sacrificed puppets are irretrievable, after all, no one likes a tragic act where the dead come back)
Tragedy’s Toy Box (Description = Nothing like the most beautiful stage of disaster accompanied by children’s toys. When using this ability, the user can manipulate children’s games to always win, after all, isn’t it funny to see the other side trying to win when the script itself says they lose?)
Blessings and Curses =
Blessing = Sixth Layer Puppet Control [Evolved] (Description = Allows the user to assemble and control small puppets/ Evolution Extra = Allows the user to create, control, possess, rebuild, and shape living puppets without a limit of numbers, although the strength of the puppet has limits based on what was used to create it and how many upgrades the user has made to the puppet along with the puppet’s own experience)
Skill Rank = F (Evolution Extra = As the Master of Puppets, the user does not need to be above Rank F, precisely because all power comes from the puppets, which is "comical" and "tragic" considering that the Master of Puppets can never get strong, being the saddest of puppets, a queen without a crown who depends on her people)
Curse = Destiny’s Misfortune (Description = Fate hates you, but can’t interfere too much, so it grants you misfortune, recommending extra caution with small things in daily life)
Blessing of System Favorability (Description = The user can see the favorability of others as numbers that can range from 0 to 100, negative favorability means enmity or hatred, but only works for romantic route targets)
Domains/
Domain = Puppet Theater (Description = Creates a large stage where the user can control multiple puppets and fight against their enemies, enemies much weaker than the user can be temporarily transformed into puppets)]
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"Oh... my status... is impressive..." There are new things, the skills with more serious and simple descriptions already existed in the game, but some of these did not exist and I don’t know them.
Especially this one of the Toy Box, Evelyn never ever had a skill like this, although it doesn’t seem so useful, after all they are just children’s games, like tag, hide and seek, rock paper scissors and others.
"The power... exactly the power I need to survive..." Normally I would be very happy, but I’m still a bit shaken by what I saw in that memory, the cruelty, the pain she felt, the sensations.
Everything felt raw and cruel, something I never expected to feel, at least now that I’ve evolved, it’s unlikely they’ll kill me, I’m "strong" enough to stay alive even if the whole castle collapses on me.
Vitality, Magic and Magic Defense, my stats are limited to these three, other stats are almost impossible to raise even if I train, this is the weak point of what I am.
It’s the weakness that comes with this ability to create "balance", I’m weak, my puppets are strong, so if they focus on me I can have some problems.
’False Immortality of the Crazy Puppeteer, Suicidal Theater Stage and Tragedy’s Toy Box... these three abilities did not exist’ There was one similar to the Suicidal Theater Stage, but it was different.
These three abilities are not things that Evelyn had, in other words, they are mine, they are my fault.
Evelyn also had something similar to False Immortality of the Crazy Puppeteer, but it was just similar, not this skill, and the Toy Box one didn’t even exist, so it’s 100% new.
"I think I need... to learn to deal with this" I feel like I know how to use it, it’s like a manual that came pre-installed in my head, but I need to learn when and where to use it.
They are all useful, and I’ll probably use them all no matter how silly they seem, this world will attack me with everything, so I need to determinedly attack with everything if I want to live.
"Let’s see... I need to practice moving my body" It’s strange, it no longer moves like before, probably because my joints have very unnatural folds.
I can literally spin my head in a perfect 360, and I can twist my arms, legs, and fingers in a way that I would look like that girl from the exorcist movie.
"Let’s see..." I stand up, my own blood dripping on the floor, although I’m no longer bleeding, the blood that came out of my body before still stains the floor and my room, and it’s still liquid.
"O-Oh..." I make an "Oh" in surprise, my body has its head tilted back and one arm twisted down and the other up in an unnatural way for a normal body, I try to contort myself more.
My waist is in an very unnatural and super arched backwards and slightly to the right vertical angle, in a normal body the spine would break in this position, but for me it doesn’t hurt, it’s even kind of funny.
I spin again and my waist, head and torso become so unnaturally twisted that it seems like while my torso is down, the middle is up and the waist is back.
It’s more a matter of perspective, but it’s still creepy to see someone so bizarrely twisted and dripping blood.
’H-How crazy’ I try to go back to normal and immediately everything goes back to its place in a single spin, spraying blood around the room due to the speed of the spin.
’I think I need to train moving this body for a while’ Spinning it in this bizarre way seemed easy, now walking and grabbing things is proving to be a real challenge.
It seems that this thing of me being moved by magic as if the magic were my strings is super literal, I feel like I can move every little piece of my body separately, but it’s difficult.
There are so many "pieces" to move, and the worst thing is to have an awareness of all of them, I can even move my organs that are inside as if they were little pieces to assemble and disassemble, which is bizarre, but strangely convenient?
’On Halloween I would be the girl with the most terrifying "costume" of all’ With these bizarre folds and curves I can do, there is no more terrifying horror monster than me.
Imagine you’re walking down the street at night and suddenly you see a girl with a sickly twisted body dripping blood, suddenly she runs towards you, I’d be screaming like a madwoman if that happened to me.
’Hmmm I don’t like this, being scary overshadows my beauty’ I’d rather not be contorting myself like this, it’s kind of funny and fun, but it gives a negative image of myself.
"Haaa..." I let out a sigh as I slip on the blood, falling chest-first to the floor and getting even dirtier, I want time to adapt to all this, I felt a lot of physical and mental pain, and I’m not in the mood to think too much.
’It’s just imagine all the blood on the floor is ketchup... exactly, it’s just a little ketchup I spilled because I’m clumsy...’ Even if this "ketchup" has a metallic smell and came from my near-death.