A strange tension blanketed the air, rendering the players silent as their eyes shifted collectively between Eric and the village chief.
Just as Eric began to accept the crushing weight of failure, the old village chief's stiff lips curled into an equally stiff smile.
"Ah! Yes! This puppet is truly perfect—haha—you've done it! Truly worthy of someone from the big city—so clever and skillful! Very well, go and rest. In a few days, our village has a performance in the mountains—we'll bring you along then, haha."
As the chief's words fell, a system prompt echoed in Eric's mind.
> \[The old village chief of Wooden Man Village greatly approves of your work. The footage you've captured is enough for a brilliant and enthralling report on the village's marionette play…]
With the fading echo of the system message, a dark humanoid shadow crept from the corner and slipped into the wooden puppet tree Eric had submitted.
Success! A surge of joy flooded Eric's heart.
Some of the observing players immediately grasped the core of the matter, while others still couldn't quite make the connection.
Jimena was the first to react. She rushed forward, wrapped her arms around her tree, and eagerly proclaimed to the village chief, "This is my puppet! I've completed mine as well!"
Brialle followed close behind, trying to claim her tree, but the players held her back. "Wait! You have to explain your method first! What's going on here? Why did the marionette spirit enter the puppet tree?"
As Jimena engaged the village chief, Brialle, caught in growing anxiety, bit back her frustration. "I really don't know. Eric taught us. She didn't explain anything." In truth, Brialle hadn't fully pieced it together either—but she had eyes. She saw Eric's puppet tree accepted by the chief. Wasn't that the obvious path to clearance?
She thought her words were sufficient—she hadn't anticipated the players' true goal was to restrain her and seize her tree!
Upon realizing that a complete puppet tree could be submitted to clear the stage, the players who had chopped theirs up understood their grave mistake. But now, a perfect solution lay before them—if they could seize someone else's puppet tree, they could rectify their error.
"You can't do this! That's my puppet tree!" Brialle cried out as her tree was snatched away, and more players joined the fray. Frantic, she scanned her surroundings and spotted an axe on the ground. Gritting her teeth, she picked it up.
Gavin and Bo were also attacked. The chief's courtyard quickly devolved into chaos—a battlefield where survival was the prize.
Eric slipped away just in time, heart still pounding. Her limbs felt weak, and she had to sit down to collect herself.
From inside the courtyard, the sounds of shouting and clashing rang out, accompanied by intermittent cries of pain. She felt a wave of relief wash over her—thank goodness she had already submitted her tree. Otherwise, she'd be in the thick of it.
Jimena soon appeared in her field of vision. Spotting Eric, she walked over and sat beside her.
She spoke first. "When I submitted my puppet tree, I didn't see any spirit enter it. Why did yours attract the marionette spirit?"
"It did."
"What?"
"Yours had a spirit too—just very faint, almost invisible to the naked eye." Eric had glanced back as she left the courtyard and saw the marionette spirit seated quietly among the branches of Jimena's tree, fully merged into it.
Jimena froze, then slowly came to a realization. "So every puppet tree had a marionette spirit? They weren't randomly assigned?"
"That seems to be the case. Whole trees have humanoid spirits within them. But when the wood is cut, the spirits are fragmented—unable to take form."
"How do you—" She caught herself mid-sentence and softened her tone. "Do you know what's going on with the half-body puppet in the well?" She then shared the intelligence she had gathered from eavesdropping and using a special item to escape her pursuer.
Only then did Eric understand why Jimena had kept this knowledge to herself. She had risked much and paid a price to obtain it—how could she give it away freely?
"This is my item. I used it to escape the puppet that was hunting me." Jimena handed Eric a saw.
> \[Item: Peyun's Bone-Slicing Blade]
"I didn't use an item," Eric replied, pushing it back. She pointed to her eyes. "I have ghost eyes—a leftover from another dungeon. They're not always reliable, but back in the puppet forest, I saw them—trees shaped like people. And then I saw the marionette spirits…"
She spoke cautiously, alert to danger, but sensed none of the previous murderous intent lingering nearby.
It seemed she and Jimena had both reached a "half-clear" state. The malicious will no longer barred her from revealing the dungeon's secrets.
After all, the remaining four players who had brought down whole trees had witnessed her method. Her secret was no longer a secret.
Jimena's eyes widened in realization. "So the ghost eyes really *do* work here! But it's not just that—you were clever. If not for you, I'd have started carving my puppet this afternoon."
"The dungeon and its NPCs have been misleading us from the very beginning," Eric said, glancing toward the chief's house, unease gnawing at her. "What do you think would've happened if we'd actually made a puppet?"
From the moment they reached the village—no, even earlier, from the dungeon's opening prompt—it had been a string of deceptions.
Villagers carving and shaving wood behind open courtyard gates.
Children gleefully playing with polished wooden rods before being scolded.
The life-like doll named Niuniu whose head turned on its own.
Everything the village chief and the couple Dashan had said.
All of it served to mislead—to push players into focusing on making puppets. To make them think the real danger lay in the crafting process. So when they trekked two hours up the mountain, no one was particularly wary.
Most players, under Dashan's guidance, chopped down trees to gather puppet materials.
But the puppet forest held the dungeon's deadliest trap.
The puppet tree itself *was* the puppet. No further crafting was needed. Delivering a whole tree was the real path to clearance.
Jimena's face paled. "Come on, let's check on Bo. I remember he brought down more than one tree. He chopped another one earlier."
They exchanged a look, and Eric understood. If Bo submitted another full tree and also half-cleared, it meant the dungeon was forgiving—other players could still climb the mountain and correct their mistake. But if not…
The dungeon's true purpose became painfully clear—making a puppet would lead to disaster.
Would a player-crafted puppet attract the fragmented spirits? If not, where would they go? And who were the finished puppets for? Eric remembered the chief's words: the marionette spirits desired human bodies.
He had told so many lies—perhaps this was the only truth.
They returned to the courtyard just as the chaos subsided.
Brialle, bruised and breathless, had failed to protect her tree. She stared at Adaline, who now seemed like a stranger. In the end, she gave up.
She never imagined that Adaline—gentle and refined—could be so ruthless. Adaline had killed a player to assert dominance.
Bo had fought like a madman to defend his tree. Rowan had bested Gavin and taken his tree—but when he saw Gavin's pitiful, almost sorrowful look, he faltered.
Why pity him?
Rowan couldn't understand. He was furious.
Then the biggest shock came—the chief rejected him.
"What?! Why?!"
"My puppet is right here too!" Adaline shouted, her face and clothes smeared with blood, madness gleaming in her eyes.
Bo shoved her aside. "I go first! My puppet is here!"
"You're all disqualified," the chief said, his former malice gone. He wore that same plastic smile as before. "I told you—don't abandon your puppet trees mid-journey."
"I didn't! This *is* my tree!" Bo insisted.
The chief chuckled, shaking his head. "You brought down more than one. You know that."
Bo's mind imploded. He remembered—the tree he felled yesterday on the mountain. He had discarded it after seeing Gavin excavate a full one, thinking Gavin had the better approach.
He swallowed hard. "Then what should I do?"
"Finish what you started," the chief said. "Go find the wood you abandoned and craft it into a puppet."
Adaline and Rowan felt their hearts sink.
Gavin stepped forward. "In that case, return my tree."
Rowan couldn't stand to watch Gavin pass the trial so easily. The earlier success of the two women already stung—*why them?*
"Stay back!" he barked. He insisted on submitting his puppet first. The chief accepted it. Adaline glanced back at Brialle, who looked at her hopefully—but Adaline turned away.
She averted her eyes—not only from Brialle, but also from the corpse on the ground.
She had killed someone for that tree. A girl who had slept beside her, traveled with her—like a sister. But there was only one tree.
She had made a mistake that could not be undone. If she gave it back to Brialle now, her actions would seem not only cruel, but laughably stupid.
She submitted her puppet too.