Four Split Personalities

They were shaped to be almost indistinguishable from normal Humanoid Creatures: well-proportioned, each in a different color (depending on their Element), wearing crown-like helmets and ostentatiously gorgeous Armour made of Exotic Elements, holding equally Exotic Element Weapons, exuding ferocious Killing Intent and staring like tigers watching their prey.

As for these so‑called Exotic Elements, you can think of them as, say, a Fire Element whose whole body is crimson, with orange-yellow Flame Stream flowing over it, wearing a visually dazzling suit of Frost armor that continually exudes cold and yet bizarrely neither causes its body to lose HP nor gets evaporated by the body; in both hands it grips a pair of Wind element flying axe glowing bright emerald green, and on its back hangs a heavy Earth element giant sword radiating dark yellow light. In short, the mix-and-match is insane, and the whole point is pure grotesque novelty.

However, even though they were full of weird Attributes and chock-full of things to complain about, Scarlett absolutely did not believe those flashy Elemental Puppets were just for show. In fact, judging by Double Leaf’s previous performance, she had every reason to believe that in real combat those things’ power would not lose out in the slightest to their visual effects.

"I don’t really know what a ’normal’ Mage is supposed to be like."

Double Leaf sauntered out slowly from behind that row of Elemental Puppets, leading a rather battered-looking Frank, and said lazily, "But I’m someone who’s always lacked a sense of security, and since I’m bad at socializing I don’t have many people around me I can really trust, so... a few days before departing from the City of Miracles, with Uncle Kenneth’s help I tried upgrading my Elemental Puppets. Mm, looks like I might’ve gone a bit overboard, but since you all were bullying a little girl just now and having such a blast, you shouldn’t mind this little thing, right?"

The next instant, without the slightest intention of waiting for an answer, Double Leaf flicked her small hand, and the sixteen Elemental Puppets standing in front of her shot out like lightning.

𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

Aside from the two Wind Element Puppets, the other fourteen shouldn’t logically have been very fast, yet the moment they began their charge, a road paved with solid ice suddenly spread out from beneath their feet. At the same time, a ’gentle’ Hurricane appeared out of nowhere and gave a fierce shove to the backs of these ’Bodyguards’ who had already received prior orders and were keeping their center of gravity low.

Buzz—

The two Wind Element Puppets, whose speed could rival that of a High-level thief, appeared in front of Scarlett in the blink of an eye. With perfect precision, they thrust out the Fire Element long spear in their hands, whose pale blue Flames flowed along the shaft. Not only that—at the very instant those scorching spear tips lunged forward, countless sharp spikes suddenly and bizarrely ’grew’ out of their Armour, and their attack range perfectly covered Scarlett and the two people beside her.

[Damn it!]

Since she was already prepared to flee the moment the assassination failed and didn’t intend to expose her voice too much, Scarlett could only curse inwardly. She immediately raised her Shield horizontally in front of her, bracing against the first two Fire Element long spears. Her left arm then flicked and shook, using a method similar to Inch Power to split the entire Shield into three parts. She swung the two upper pieces sideways, barely managing to block the attacks aimed at her two ’companions’ who hadn’t had time to react.

This was the terrifying part of the Fernan Shield Art: as long as it was used properly, the defender could almost simultaneously create a massive three-dimensional defense. Put simply, it lets one person function as two or even three, and it was precisely this style of Shield Technique that allowed the Fernan Family to firmly block the threat from the North Territory in the early days of the Empire’s founding, repeatedly driving back enemies whose numbers far exceeded those of the standing army.

As for the current Fernan Grand Duke—Hg Core Fernan, the Duke who, before the early stages of the recent civil strife in the Empire, kept an utterly low profile and basically cosplayed as a quail—he had single-handedly held off nearly a hundred elites from the Slave Capturing Group in the Marshal Territory campaign, preventing the rebels who tried to assassinate the Emperor from advancing even an inch.

To be fair, whether in strength or technique, Scarlett was far inferior to the Fernan Grand Duke. But with her High-Order Pinnacle level and that Shield [Scenery], which fit the Fernan Shield Art perfectly, she could still play a massive role in small-scale engagements like this.

And as her partners and a key component of this killing operation, the twenty [Bee Stings] under the command of the Violet Empire’s [Blood Lady] Artist Bartolli were anything but pushovers. The fact that they had just forced this BOSS called Double Leaf into a second phase already showed that this team—highly coordinated, excellently equipped, and with personal skills off the charts—was an extremely high-quality hard target.

Unfortunately, in front of a BOSS who had already entered her second phase, no matter how overtuned Scarlett and the [Bee Stings] were, they would still look inferior by comparison.

In less than half a minute, the little Hearts of the Assassins were already turning cold. The reason was simple: those Elemental Puppets were just too damned strong... no, to be precise, outrageously strong.

First of all, in basic Attack Power, defensive power, and speed, all sixteen Elemental Puppets had average stats at the High-level stage. Although they couldn’t match the Assassins, whose average Attributes were even higher than Common High-Order Pinnacle, they weren’t far behind either.

Secondly, each of these things had its own specialties, and under Double Leaf’s control they could pull off simple yet incredibly practical teamwork. For example, the Earth Elemental Puppet with the highest defensive power stood on the front line as a tank; the Wind Element Puppets, which excelled in speed and Explosive Power, constantly repeated the two steps of roaming and Assault; while the Fire Element and Water Element Puppets, with strong ranged capabilities, stayed at the rear from the very start, laying down firepower suppression. Even though they only used relatively simple skills like [Flame Slash] and [Water Cannon], each carried High-level power, troublesome to deal with; ignore them, and they would quickly cause chaos.

What was even more fatal was that these Elemental Puppets shared one extremely disgusting trait: they were not afraid of death and were very hard to kill. Wounds like "half the head chopped off" or "more than two-thirds cut at the waist"—which would spell instant doom for any normal person—meant nothing to them. As long as they weren’t completely shattered, even if they had only half an arm and one leg left, they could still pounce at you.

Thus, after this shameless slaughter dragged on for nearly two minutes, even though the Assassins, relying on their excellent individual skills, had taken down seven Elemental Puppets, the remaining nine were still full of fight and locked in a death struggle with them. Apart from Scarlett and the temporary leader of this [Bee Sting] squad, everyone else had suffered injuries of varying degrees. It wasn’t a big problem in the short term, but if things kept going like this...

"Eliminate the rest as fast as possible."

Though his face was hidden behind a comical mask, making it impossible to read his expression, the squad leader’s voice clearly sank. With a low shout, his previously unscathed body suddenly erupted in a mist of blood. His originally fine, continuous offense turned abruptly fierce and wild. In less than five seconds, relying on an attack frequency at least three times faster than before, he ’dismembered’ the Earth Elemental Puppet in front of him, then in the same instant unleashed two imposing crimson Slicing strikes, severing one leg each from the two Wind Element Puppets in front of Scarlett.

The others also stopped holding back, exterminating the remaining six Elemental Puppets as quickly as possible while consciously closing the distance between themselves and Double Leaf.

And then—

"Hm? You don’t want to play with them anymore?"

Sipping a Mana Potion mixed with fruit juice, Double Leaf glanced with a smile at the battlefield not far away, where the situation was slowly starting to tilt in the enemy’s favor, and snapped her fingers casually. "No need to be shy, just tell me directly. You’re all hoping to become ’friends through life and death’ with this young lady, so why act like strangers?"

At the same moment—

"No! Scatter, quickly..."

The leader, whose whole body was now swirling with crimson Blood Qi, let out a hurried shout, but still ended up a step too late.

In the next instant, including the Earth Elemental Puppet he had personally dismembered and the two Wind Element Puppets in front of Scarlett that were each missing a leg, all nine Elemental creations on the field, each at least High-level in strength, chose to Self-Destruct simultaneously!

"BOOM~"

Pointing a finger at the slowly rising Rainbow mushroom cloud and helpfully providing sound effects, the girl stuck out her tongue playfully.

Chapter 1354: The End