After the second city was subdued, it was another break ti.
The Hephaestus team hurriedly sent the new video and the newly acquired information back to the elder station to get a read on their current situation. Particularly, the way the wolves fought and the way they regenerated made their hearts drop to their pants.
The elder looked at the video and was equally shook.
His response was not any less exaggerated than the students’ reaction.
He didn’t even speak. He just stared at the video, letting it play repeatedly and every ti he hoped the last bit that showed the regeneration process wasn’t there. It didn’t make any sense.
"How the fuck can the puppet generate the tal alloy it had used? And how the regeneration directly possible? More importantly, what was up with those tal fibers?"
He didn’t ask those questions to anyone. He was just asking himself.
There were a million speculations in his mind and those caused him more horror than whatever the students of Hephaestus had imagined. He collapsed into his chair and said.
"The abilities of the wolf puppet are weird. All those fire elental attacks look like the actual attacks used by a regular Crimson Ember Wolf. Even the combined attacks were that race’s bloodline attacks.
The attack thod, the power, everything… they were similar to Crimson Ember Wolves. The only problem was that these attacks were even more dangerous.
They were enhanced with curses that shouldn’t have been possible to cast with puppets. We did try to reach out to so curse experts and they vehently denied that there could be any possibility to put such curses through puppets."
He muttered out loud, trying to wrap his head around this situation.
If all of these were not enough mysteries for him to worry about, there was another mystery that ate at his heart. And he wasn’t sure its impact. In fact, that’s what made him more anxious.
As far as he knew, the bloodline of Crimson Ember Wolves was a bit odd compared to other beast bloodlines.
One could consider that the Crimson Ember wolf was pretty high up in the pyramid of wolf bloodlines and within the sa pack there could be wolves with higher concentration and lower concentration bloodlines.
This causes the wolves in the sa pack, or even the sa litter to have different level of abilities. The one with higher level bloodline can unlock more ridians in its body and use more abilities and the ones with lower level, cannot do so.
Because of this, for generations these wolves have been studied and even so cultivation techniques were derived from those. They were also good models for creation of puppets. And obviously, the puppets were made to replicate the attacks.
Right now, the elder wondered how Sam was replicating these attacks.
It was fine if it was just an imitation, but everything about those wolves was too realistic, so that made him think what the inner structure could be. And he was wondering if Sam really replicated the ridian network of the wolves and created an internal system that could create those attacks as if they were made by the real wolves…
The implications are disastrous.
If those were true, Sam didn’t just create puppets, he created artificial life forms….
The elder shook his head and tried to think of a way to deal with those puppets. After so ti, he said.
"Sam’s rules don’t state anything about the traps or ambushes.
In the next city, set up traps. Use a formation to lock down all of those puppets. Even though those puppets seed like they were acting independently, there was no way such complicated attacks and coordination could be the work of spirits.
Sam must be using so weird thod to control and instruct those spirits.
Let’s cut the communication using that trap formation. No ntal communication should be possible from outside. The puppets will not have directions and they will operate on the spirits.
There is no way, an enchanted spirit could efficiently use the body of wolf puppet to the maximum. Particularly when the puppet was so close to the real thing. That was one of the drawbacks people couldn’t overco way back when they first started experinting on realistic puppets and implenting the replicated ridian networks in the bodies of the puppets.
Once they were weakened, you guys trap them out. Only the five people should be able to tap into it and use ranged attacks to kill them.
And ensure, that the news doesn’t leak outside."
That was all the elder could give.
No matter how much he studied, he couldn’t create any strategies or counterasures more than these generalized help statents.
He even felt ashad.
But more than sha he felt the urge to run into that portal and studying the puppets himself. He just couldn’t fathom how a kid whose age was lesser than his experience in puppet making managed to create such a thing.
His mind quickly wandered to Sam’s possible connection to the Hub…
He shook his head and didn’t think further. Whether it was Sam who created it or it was the Hub who sponsored, it was indeed the truth that Sam’s the one controlling them and they had to deal with it.
He just hoped that his latest strategy would work.
.
.
.
Soon, it was ti for the third city. The wolf puppets ca at the exact ti ntioned in the challenge.
And the battle began.
The students followed the words of the elder to the tee and prepared a formation. They activated it and trapped the wolves inside. While all five of them stood outside the formation circling them.
The opponents tapped into the formation and charged their attacks. They didn’t dare hold back. Blue, red, orange… flas raged as different fire attacks were made from the five of them.
That was the drawback of the Hephaestus academy, most of them were smiths and most of their abilities particularly the ones who could properly do in combat were related to fire. Even if they had secondary elents, if the had to decisive and take down opponents with their ranged attacks, they had to use their fire elent.
The five wolves stood in a circle.
Each of them facing one opponent. Flas burst out of their bodies and enveloped them. For a mont they looked like they activated fire elental fusion.
*HOWL*
They all howled in unison. The flas from their bodies spread out and they conjured into an image of a large wolf head. Each wolf head was almost ten tis the size of the wolf and all five of those heads covered the formation completely.
These heads charged at the barrier, trying to break it open and clashed with the incoming ranged attacks.
The wolves pumped more and more energy into their attacks, while the opponents did the sa. The heat intensified as they clashed and it burned everything in the surroundings. Just the residual heat was strong enough to lt everything around them.
The spectating Hephaestus academy students imdiately stepped back as even the ground beneath them started lting. But the clash between them and the wolves didn’t stop.
The five candidates were not ready to hold back. At this point it was a matter of pride. They really couldn’t tolerate being outdone by just puppets. It was a sha that they couldn’t swallow. That too when those puppets are competing with them in fire.
The clash continued and soon, the barrier couldn’t hold on.
Within five minutes, it collapsed like glass and scattered. The five wolf heads, finally felt free. They charged at the opponents directly and the clash that was like a stalemate until now suddenly tilted towards the puppets.
*BOOM*
Soon, a massive explosion ensued and when the dust settled, at the center of it all, the five wolf puppets stood. They didn’t look as majestic as before. That tallic fur wasn’t there and their bodies beca smooth and they were red hot.
As if they just ca out of the furnaces. Stay connected through .Côm
However, their bodies were still intact. They didn’t look like they were broken down at least. On the other hand, the five people who attacked the puppets, were not in a good state.
Their bodies were covered in burns. Their armor, weapons, and even the skin over their flesh was completely burned. And everyone around, can sense the strong energy of the fire elental poison that penetrated their flesh.
They were about to co forth and attack help them. However, the wolf puppets made their move.
Unlike the first two tis, this ti they didn’t let those opponents go. Like five red flashes they jumped at their respective opponents and bit into their necks.
Their eyes glowed with a black light that made them look more eerie than they already were.
This action too surprised everyone. This was out of their behavior. It would have made more sense for normal wolves to bit down on the opponents. But these wolves can’t really eat their opponents, so it didn’t make any sense at all.
But after two minutes, the wolves left the corpses behind, turned back into orbs and entered the bird puppet before disappearing from there.
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