FROST

Chapter 140: Cullen and the Puppeteer

Cullen flicked, dashed, leapt—twisting mid-air, dropping into a roll, popping back up like some half-broken acrobat—and repeated the routine in a loop that was less graceful fighter and more like a desperate man running from invisible bees.

Each attack ripped through the air with a sharp hiss, fast enough that Cullen started wondering if dodging was skill... or just dumb luck. Probably the latter.

Regret was the only steady rhythm in his chest. Why had he stayed behind? Levi could have done a better job with his gravity magic. He could find a way crushing this thing into a pulp.

Why did he even volunteer and look heroic?

And out of all the monsters and curses his opponent could’ve fought, it just had to be puppet magic.

He had heard of puppeteers before, yes. Whispers, tavern gossip, lectures from cranky sorcerers. But this? This was beyond anything his brain had filed under normal problems.

He hurled a blast of dark magic anyway, shadows clawing outward with his usual flair—only to watch them shred apart like paper strips in the wind.

"Oh, sure," he wheezed, ducking another swipe, "by all means, just disrespect my entire skill set!"

Then came the reveal. His opponent’s puppet wasn’t some doll or stitched-together golem. No—this thing was a gigantic moose. A gigantic moose with antlers like butchered swords, and hair so long it practically had its own personality.

It whipped through the air like it wanted a fight of its own, slicing everything in sight. And the worst part? The damn thing looked alive. Like it could casually wander into a forest herd and none of its cousins would bat an eye.

"Oh, come on!" Cullen barked, grimacing, as it reminded him of one of his most hated horror movie, The Ritual. "T-That’s... horrifyingly... weird."

He cringed in mixed emotions.

The beast roared, and a storm of wind blades exploded in front of him. One struck the ground under his boots and catapulted him into the air like a ragdoll fired from a slingshot.

He slammed through one tree—then another—then another. By the time the last trunk finally stopped him, his back felt like an accordion that had been played too aggressively.

He crumpled to the ground, coughing hard enough to see stars. "Y-Yup. Definitely broke all the backbones."

And then, through his ringing ears, came the ominous clop of hooves. He rolled his head just enough to see the moose-puppet approaching, mist curling around its antlers like a death crown.

"Ahh... we’re really doing this now?" Cullen groaned, shoving himself upright on trembling arms like a man who’d just lost a brawl with gravity.

The puppet hadn’t even bothered to move—it stood exactly where it had before, as if mocking him with its sheer lack of effort.

With a grunt, Cullen slapped at his clothes, dusting himself off in the most haggard, half-dead way possible.

His face was smeared with dirt, his cloak was torn, and blood trickled from a cut at his temple—yet as he flicked his hair back and straightened his collar, he thought to himself: Still handsome. Bruised, battered, possibly concussed... but damn, handsome.

Of course, that was only his opinion.

Cullen exhaled the kind of sigh that belonged to old men with bad knees, then gave his back a loud crack to confirm his spine still existed, followed by his neck—just in case. "Still in one piece... I see."

He rolled his shoulders, squared himself for the real fight, and recalled everything he’d studied about the creature’s attacks up until now and yet... he had absolutely no spells to counter the damned thing.

"Absolutely astonishing, Cullen..." he muttered through gritted teeth, dusting off his already ruined cloak. "Levi could’ve handled this smoothly, elegantly, like a proper mage. But no—you had to show off. You had to look good for the girls. Ohh, what a shameful ego you have..."

He slapped both cheeks with both hands, hard enough to make himself wince. The sting was immediate, but apparently pain was the only way to jumpstart his nonexistent confidence.

"Yep. That’ll do it," he lied to himself.

Turning to glare at the giant moose puppet still rooted lazily to the spot, he groaned, "What? Don’t wanna come after me? Playing hard to get, are we?" His voice cracked halfway through, but he tried to cover it with a snarl.

In one dramatic flourish, Cullen yanked his cloak off and tossed it aside. It landed on the dirt with a graceful plop. "Fine! If you won’t come to me... I’ll do it myself!"

His hands curled into fists, and for once, he actually looked impressive—dark mana began to surge violently, spiraling down his arms like ink dropped into water. Black streaks crackled across his veins, coiling tighter, wrapping him in a menacing aura.

"Now then—try this on for size!" he bellowed, launching forward with a sweep of his arm that hurled the dark energy straight at the moose.

Cullen knows it’s only taunting him to make him counter and study his attacks, so he only used a nudging tactic.

The blast thundered through the clearing, dust and debris exploding into the air. Cullen grinned through his bruises, chest heaving, already imagining the stunned applause from Mila or Adeline, better yet, Silvermist, when they saw him standing victorious—only for the moose to blink.

Just blink.

The moment Cullen lunged in with his dark mana blazing, he was certain he had the beast cornered. But then, right as victory seemed within reach, the moose’s entire form fractured. Its body split unnaturally into four separate figures, each peeling away with a shimmer before scattering into the fog-draped woods.

Cullen stopped dead in his tracks, dark mana still coiled violently around his arms. His chest rose and fell sharply. That wasn’t just some wild beast—it had technique.

He narrowed his eyes, scanning the treeline. For the briefest moment, he caught it—the fourth duplicate sliding behind one of the tall trees, its outline half-hidden in the mist. But something about it was wrong.

It wasn’t a moose anymore. Not exactly. The frame was slimmer, the size... smaller, divided.

Cullen hissed, teeth flashing in the mist. "Haven’t even found the puppeteer and now I’ve got three more," he muttered, mentally smacking his own forehead.

He exhaled sharply, then squared his stance. "Then I guess I have no choice but to use some effort."

Slowly, he turned to face the only visible fragment ahead, every muscle tight as he kept his back angled just enough to feel the forest pressing in on him. If the others struck, they’d meet him prepared.

Cullen clasped his hands together in a sharp motion, fingers weaving into a sign that looked more shinobi cosplay than high sorcery. But the sigils he traced in the air burned with legitimacy. In the next instant, the atmosphere shifted violently.

His hair lifted, tossed by a current that rose unnaturally from beneath his feet. The fog itself seemed to recoil. Dark mana swirled around him like a storm gathering force, until it pulsed outward in a shockwave.

The spell: Mana Pool.

A technique whispered about among mage circles, reserved for the Arcanes. To seize and bend the surrounding mana into a net, forcing it to reveal every hidden presence in range. A ruthless, efficient countermeasure.

For Cullen, though, it was a gamble. Each heartbeat drained his reserves at a brutal rate. Keep it up for too long, and he risked tearing the mana channels inside him apart—maybe permanently.

The pulse expanded, invisible yet merciless, slicing through fog and tree alike. The forest groaned in response, branches bowing as if weighed down by the mana’s reach.

And then, like stains surfacing on water, they appeared.

The first was crouched on a boulder to his right, lean and wiry, skin pale as chalk. His eyes glowed faintly green, like lanterns left too long in the dark. He wore a tattered officer’s coat, medals still clinking faintly on the breeze, though he looked decades dead.

The second clung upside down to a tree trunk ahead, hair matted in long ropes that dripped as though perpetually wet. When her face tilted down toward Cullen, her mouth split in a grin far too wide, teeth sharpened and filed like a shark’s.

The third revealed himself just behind, though Cullen didn’t flinch. His mana pool had already mapped the man’s jagged aura—stout, hunched, with arms wrapped in bandages from wrist to shoulder. But the bandages writhed faintly, alive with something beneath.

And finally, the fourth stood still as stone to Cullen’s left. A tall figure in an immaculate suit, hands folded politely, but his eyes were sewn shut with silver thread. Yet Cullen felt the gaze pressing against him, totally unblinking.

"Human forms, huh?" Cullen muttered under his breath, exhaling as if unimpressed.

His hair whipped around his face as he released another surge of mana. "Guess that saves me the trouble of guessing which antlers belonged to who."

And yet, he had not found even a thread of the puppeteer. "Such cowardice," he mumbled. "Well, if I can’t find you, then I guess I have to go through them..." His gaze shifted, narrowing.

"And let me start with you."

The woman behind him didn’t even get the chance to blink. One heartbeat he stood yards away, the next the air cracked with displacement—and Cullen was there, hovering, directly before her, so close their noses nearly brushed.

Her shark-like grin twitched, faltering for the first time. She drew a hiss through those filed teeth, but it snagged in her throat when his gaze caught hers.

Cullen’s burning burgundy eyes locked with such force it felt like a blade pressed to her skull. Her body stiffened against the bark, blood roaring in her ears.

In that instant, she was no longer clinging to the tree, no longer drenched in the night air. Instead, she stood alone in a cavernous dark, a void stripped of sound or breath, facing nothing but those eyes.

Demon eyes.

Burning, unblinking, suffocating with wrath.

Her grin shattered. Her sharpened teeth clacked together as she tried to pull away, but her limbs betrayed her—rigid, trembling as if every nerve was bound by invisible chains. She could not look away. She could not move. The forest dissolved.

From Cullen’s perspective, the shift unsettled him. He hadn’t cast anything—at least, not consciously—yet the woman hung there, frozen, staring into him with hollow, lifeless eyes.

Her chest barely rose.

Was she caught in his gaze? Or had something else taken hold of her? He didn’t know. He wanted to. But he didn’t have to.

Cullen raised his mana-draped hand, ready to cleave through her and be done with it—when the air shrieked.

A blade of wind howled toward him, sharp enough to peel bark off trees in its wake.

Cullen barely twisted in time, skidding backward as the gust carved a smoking line through the dirt where his leg had been. His coat flared, a shred of fabric hissing away.

By the time the gale dispersed, the scene had shifted again. The woman no longer clung to the tree. She was sprawled on the ground, protected.

A pale figure stood before her. The officer. His uniform was ragged, but unmistakable; his posture sharp, like a man who had never let go of authority. And yet, what caught Cullen off guard wasn’t the man’s blade or his sudden entrance.

It was the ears. The hooves. The faint twitch of something beastly pressed still into their human form. Cullen almost laughed, but the sound caught in his throat as a realization bled through.

They were human, not bound by visible strings, not dangling like meat puppets awaiting command. Flesh and blood. Living. Breathing. And yet... dead.

Their eyes were glassy, drained of light. Their faces slack in a way that had nothing to do with exhaustion. No twitch of emotion stirred beneath their skin. It was as if something had scooped out the essence of who they were and left only the vessel behind.

Cullen’s lips thinned. "Dead people for puppets," he swallowed. "Such a wicked thing to do."