[Hao: Lately, I’ve been seeing strange faces in my mirror bug. What could it be?
I even asked a necromancer, thinking it might be some kind of spirit, but they said there’s nothing wrong.
Last night, as I was trying to sleep, I could feel someone watching me. Something’s definitely off about this.]
[Omon: Are you sure you’re not just looking at your own reflection in the mirror?]
[Hao: No, I’m serious! This isn’t a joke.]
[Luca: You’ve seen it too? I thought it was just my imagination, but I guess it’s real.]
[Hao: Luca, you’ve seen it too? So, I wasn’t imagining things?]
[Evron: There was a minor issue during the reinforcement of the board. It’s a presence that cannot affect reality, so you don’t need to worry too much.]
[Hao: How am I supposed to ignore it when it feels like someone’s constantly watching me?]
[Hao: Is there really no way to get rid of it, Evron?]
[Hao: Evron?]
***
I could feel my entire body tense up, rigid with unease.
In the middle of the workshop, there stood a tree, just slightly taller than me.
It had a translucent appearance, its insides partially visible.
Within it, blurry faces passed by intermittently.
The flow of the tree was strange, and the bizarre figures contained within it seemed to circulate in a peculiar rhythm.
‘Could this finally be a success?’
Filled with hope, I widened my eyes and focused on the tree.
But the tree began to blur, its form gradually distorting until it suddenly collapsed.
The collapse happened so quickly that, had I blinked, I might’ve missed the entire process.
“This makes ten times now.”
I sighed as Zero, who had been operating the magic circle beside me, handed me a towel.
I used it to cool my flushed face, reflecting on the reasons behind the failure.
“Could there have been an error in the magic circle’s design? No.”
“It was flawlessly constructed without the slightest miscalculation. Perhaps there had been a mistake during the process? Again, no.”
“Every step had been executed with perfect precision, without even a single second of deviation from the plan.”
“So, why did this tree, which took a week to create, end up collapsing?”
The answer became clear, though it was a conclusion I didn’t want to accept.
***
I retrieved the brain of the Wraith Tree, which had been wandering at the center of the magic circle.
Worrying that something might have gone wrong, I infused it with magic to examine its interior.
Fortunately, it remained in perfect condition, untouched and unconsumed.
The countless spirits swirling inside it were still intact.
This was the tree’s greatest feature — its ability to perfectly preserve whatever was contained within it.
The Wraith Tree fed on souls, absorbing the memories and emotions of the dead drawn to its roots, digesting them, and making them its own to grow stronger.
The brain I held was exceptional, capable of storing immense quantities.
This was a space created over a millennium, accumulating countless souls.
Although the tree had lost its body and much of the spirits it had once contained, a significant number still resided within it.
Removing those spirits would weaken the brain’s power, so that wasn’t an option.
On the contrary, I aimed to use the spirits within the brain to reconstruct the tree.
‘If I could reassemble it and control it, it wouldn’t just be a storage space — it would grant access to immense spiritual power.’
But I failed.
At first, I thought it was due to a lack of understanding of its structure.
So, I invested resources into studying it.
After several experiments, I became confident in my knowledge of the tree and began this experiment with meticulous preparation.
And yet, here I stood, watching another failure.
The problem was singular: I lacked sufficient magical power.
It wasn’t just about the quantity of magic.
The density, the will imbued within it, and the strength of that magic were all insufficient.
In short, I wasn’t at a high enough level to succeed in this experiment.
Sure, with more time — say, a year — I might find a way.
But I no longer had the luxury of continuing these experiments.
My Shadow Tree was already overflowing with fragments of information.
It was only a matter of time before it reached its limit.
“I really didn’t want to do this.”
I let out another sigh.
With the failure of my original plan to revive the Wraith Tree, only one option remained for its use.
Turning it into a puppet.
It was something I desperately wanted to avoid.
The reason was simple: efficiency.
‘If the tree had been revived, it would’ve wielded its power and spirits with a strong, reborn body, merging its consciousness seamlessly into my Shadow Tree.’
‘But turning it into a puppet meant sacrificing such potential. The artificial consciousness I would create would be crude and incomplete. Such a being would be incapable of fully handling the contents within.’
‘It would only serve as a storage space. While that was my original goal, I couldn’t help but feel regretful.’
This material had cost a staggering 200,000 points.
Handling it had inspired countless ideas, yet here I was, forced to choose the one path I wanted to avoid the most.
It was unfortunate.
Still, now that I’d made up my mind, I needed to give my best effort to create the puppet.
****
“Bring out everything we’ve prepared.”
I looked at Zero and spoke.
Zero began retrieving numerous jars from the drawers along the workshop walls.
Inside each jar, a branch rested quietly in magic-infused liquid.
Seeing them made my chest ache.
My own tree was trembling, and understandably so — these countless branches had been cut from its body.
I let out a bitter laugh.
Anyone else would probably call me insane.
This was an act of self-destruction, shaving away at my abilities and my very being.
In reality, I wouldn’t stand a chance against anyone at my level.
I might even struggle against those who had only nurtured saplings.
But that didn’t matter.
I knew my limitations.
‘If I had been alone, I wouldn’t have surpassed the sapling stage. Yet, by sacrificing parts of myself, I had been able to break through barriers.’
It would be the same moving forward.
The countless puppets I created this way would lead me to greater heights. For that, my personal strength was insignificant.
I gathered the jars.
I’d already planned how to make these into a puppet.
I’d simply delayed and postponed it until now, but I could execute it anytime.
Zero began preparing a new magic circle.
I opened the jars and carefully took out the branches inside.
As the branches left the magic-infused liquid, they began to stir, gradually awakening and releasing the magic stored within them.
Left unchecked, the energy would simply dissipate.
To prevent that, I intertwined the released magic, artificially creating a flow.
The branches moved along the flow I crafted, connecting with each other.
They soon formed a massive sphere, perfectly sealing the magic that had been spilling out.
No further loss would occur.
However, the structure was unstable, as if it might collapse at any moment.
It lacked a crucial core to anchor it.
I retrieved the brain of the Wraith Tree once more.
It would serve as the core, stabilizing the structure.
Carefully, I brought it to the sphere.
The brain merged seamlessly into the sphere, without resistance, and began absorbing the magic flowing within it.
It was exactly as I’d envisioned.
Truthfully, I’d spent a long time pondering how to turn this into a puppet.
The Wraith Tree’s brain had almost no physical form, and its shadow was faint.
That made it impossible to extract its shadow or implant my branches into it.
So, I decided to approach it in reverse.
‘If I couldn’t place branches into its shadow, I would embed its shadow into the branches.’
For this, I’d prepared all the branches I’d cut over time.
In sheer quantity, they were twice the size of my current tree.
Zero carefully activated the magic circle.
The air grew murky as an artificial shadow realm began to form.
This magic, which I had improved over time, was now capable of creating a fairly convincing otherworldly space.
I quickly stepped outside the magic circle.
From this point on, everything depended on it.
I tensed my body, ready to protect the brain at all costs in case of failure.
Within the strange magic of the shadow realm, the sphere of branches extended roots into the brain at its center.
Simultaneously, the brain, which had been absorbing the sphere’s magic, extended its spinal roots to connect with it.
Through that connection, my branches instinctively unleashed magic — my unique magic.
This magic sought to create a consciousness around the brain.
The magic worked flawlessly.
For any other puppet, this would have awakened a new consciousness.
However, the result differed from my expectations.
It failed to form a star — the consciousness remained incomplete.
But this wasn’t a failure.
The Wraith Tree’s brain merged with the branches, extending its spinal roots into my Shadow Tree.
This was an instinctive action, possible only because the brain lacked a physical form.
As it burrowed into the Shadow Tree, it began connecting with the stars within.
The only sensation coming from it was a strong instinct to link itself to the Shadow Tree.
I let it do as it pleased, enabling this new puppet to fulfill its purpose.
It connected with countless stars, gradually drawing them together.
The stars converged, forming a clear flow within my Shadow Tree.
It resembled a great river, a radiant galaxy made of stars.
At the center of that galaxy was the sphere I’d created with my branches.
The sphere began absorbing all the information fragments that had been overflowing in my Shadow Tree.
The fragments flowed through the galaxy and into the sphere.
I let out a sigh of relief.
It wasn’t the result I had expected, but it was still a success.
I signaled Zero with a glance, and Zero deactivated the magic circle.
The dark realm vanished, revealing a sphere about the size of my head.
Carefully, I approached and held it in my hands.
This sphere existed in both my Shadow Tree and reality.
The Wraith Tree’s unique properties had been fully transferred.
Infusing it with magic, I cautiously examined its interior.
The brain within had perfectly fused with the sphere, serving as its core.
Thanks to this, even without a fully formed consciousness, the sphere had stabilized.
The brain itself had hardly changed.
Only a small fraction of its vast capacity had been used.
At this rate, it could absorb information hundreds of times over without issue.
The process hadn’t been perfect, but the outcome was flawless.
During the connection process, a few wraiths from the brain had flowed into other stars, but it was a minor issue.
They would lose power and fade away on their own within a few days.