Chapter 143: Broken Body and Shadows

The Workshop of the Sanjiaozhou

Two months later.

Deep in the Sanjiaozhou, there was a ruin surrounded by putrid water. This was the relic of an Elven outpost from the ancient era; the stone walls had long been gnawed away by acid rain and fungal erosion, leaving only a few stone rooms that could barely provide shelter from the wind and rain.

Karawa had chosen this place and remodeled the largest stone room into a workshop.

There were no windows in the workshop, and the only lighting was three magic lamps hanging above the stone platform, the wicks soaked in Abyssal fish oil, burning with a miserable green light, illuminating the entire room like a specimen soaked in formalin.

Piled in the corners were all kinds of materials: bundles of demon bones, Abyssal blood sealed in pottery jars, dragon scales preserved in oil, and a few Kuo-toa fish-men locked in iron cages, their eyeballs cloudy, their mouths constantly emitting unconscious muttering.

The air was filled with a strong mixture of preservatives, blood, and some kind of sweet, putrid stench.

Karawa stood before the stone platform. He wore a leather apron stained with dark smudges, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing pale, thin forearms covered in fine scars that looked like they had been burned by fire—not from battle, but from magical backlash while experimenting.

Lying on the stone platform was a Black Dragon Dragon-man puppet.

It was more than half finished. The black scales shimmered with an oily luster in the miserable green light, each one carefully polished, the edges sharp enough to cut through cloth.

The limbs were slender, the joints sewn with the silk of nest-laying demon spiders, the suture marks carefully polished away, almost invisible if not looked at closely.

The chest cavity was open, revealing complex rune circuits and energy conduits inside; those runes were carved with the blood of gray-patterned rats, each stroke as precise as if measured with a ruler.

Karawa held a slender bone knife in his hand, made from the rib of a Bone-Spike Toad Demon, its hardness and toughness far exceeding fine steel. He was trimming the finger bones of the puppet, one knife at a time, like carving an exquisite piece of art.

His movements were light and steady. Each cut scraped off a layer of bone shavings as thin as a cicada's wing.

But if you observed his fingertips closely, you would find they were trembling slightly—not from nervousness, but from muscle fatigue after excessive focus; he had been standing before the stone platform for over ten hours.

Heavy footsteps came from outside the door. Not the fine, pattering steps of Kobolds, but the heavy tread of an Ogre. And there was only one; Kobold laborers never acted alone; they always moved in groups, like a pack of gray rats.

Karawa didn't turn back. He changed the angle of the bone knife and continued to trim the joint socket of the finger bone.

The door was pushed open. The iron door hinge emitted a harsh creaking sound, as if screaming.

A tall figure squeezed in, bending over. The door of the workshop was built for the height of Kobolds; for an Ogre, it was too low, and he had to lower his head and turn sideways to pass through. When he finally stood straight, the distance from his head to the ceiling beam was less than a fist.

His left arm hung at his side, bent at an unnatural angle, like a branch that had been broken and tied back on.

There was an old scar on his face that slashed diagonally from his temple to his jaw, the flesh around the scar presenting a sickly gray-white color, like the skin of a rotting mushroom.

He wore a tattered iron-plated leather armor, covered in dried mud and black bloodstains, indistinguishable whether it was from demons or himself.

Karoge.

If Sakavi were here, he would recognize this Ogre. A few years ago, when training troops in the Abyss, Karoge was still a Battle-Banner Commander of the Fang Legion.

His wolf-tooth club had smashed the shoulders of Abyssal Lords in Purgatory drills, and he had killed his way from a High-Level warrior to the threshold of Master Rank. At that time, he was all muscle, his fangs were bright, and a single roar could make Lesser Demons wet their pants.

Then, in the battle of the Endless Nest, he was hit by the mental pollution of an Abyssal Whisperer—not a fatal wound, his armor blocked most of the damage, but his left forearm was torn open. It was something more vicious than death.

Abyssal fungus. The mycelium seeped in from his wound, spreading along his blood vessels, eroding his muscles and bones. By the time the military doctor discovered it, his entire forearm had turned gray-white, covered in a layer of fine mold spots, like moldy cheese.

The Regeneration Furnace could repair his flesh but couldn't clear those spores embedded in the gaps of his soul. The doctor said it was the curse of the Abyssal Whisperer, not entirely physical damage, with half of it acting on the soul level.

The Regeneration Furnace could heal wounds and recreate bones, but it couldn't cure the soul. Every once in a while, gray-white mold spots would grow on Karoge's skin, causing him to roll on the ground in pain, bang his head against the wall, and emit howls that sounded neither human nor Ogre.

Sakavi didn't know he was here. Su Lai De didn't know either. Karoge had found his way here himself. Through Giske, through those channels sent to Nuoraxien Harbor, through those unseen channels under the Grand Duke's territory.

"Lord Karawa." Karoge's voice was hoarse and low, like two stones rubbing against each other. He hammered his left chest with his still-intact right hand, the leather armor emitting a dull thud.

"The goods have been delivered. Marshal Giske asked me to tell you that the next batch of Kuo-toa souls will take a month. The fish-man nests in the Deep Nest Black Swamp have been hollowed out, and we have to go deeper to catch them."

Karawa didn't turn back. He put down the bone knife and picked up a fine-toothed file, beginning to polish the edges of the finger bones. The file scraped across the bone surface, emitting a fine, rustling sound, like insects gnawing on leaves.

"Where are the goods?" His voice wasn't loud, even carrying a lazy tone, but Karoge noticed his back had tightened.

Karoge turned sideways, letting out several wooden boxes covered with canvas. Those boxes were nailed with swamp ironwood, the surface coated with a layer of waterproof asphalt, the edges wrapped with iron plating.

They were piled on a flatbed cart dragged by a swamp giant lizard; the lizard lay on the ground, its long tongue hanging out, as if waiting to die.

Kobold laborers—those Karawa had pieced together with fragmented souls—surged out of the shadows silently. Their movements were stiff and mechanical, as if pulled by an invisible thread.

Two lifted one box, their steps consistent, even the sound of their feet overlapping. They moved the wooden boxes to the storage room deep in the workshop, stacking them neatly, then retreated to the corner, motionless, like a row of machines waiting to be charged.

Karawa finally put down the tools in his hand. He turned and walked toward the storage room, his footsteps unhurried, making no sound as they stepped on the stone floor.

Karoge followed behind, his boots stepping on the stone floor, each step emitting a heavy thud, forming an eerie contrast with Karawa's silence.

In the corner of the storage room, over a dozen such wooden boxes were piled up; some had already been opened, the crystal balls inside taken away, leaving only the hay at the bottom. Karawa crouched down and opened the lid of one of the newly delivered boxes.

Inside were neatly stacked crystal balls the size of a fist. Each one sealed a gray-white, slowly wriggling mist.

Kuo-toa souls, stripped while alive, complete, pure. The crystal balls shimmered in the dim light, the mist surging, struggling, and colliding inside, like fireflies trapped in a jar.

Karawa picked one up, held it to his eyes, and looked at it against the light. A twisted face could be vaguely seen in the mist, mouth open as if screaming, but no sound came out. He was satisfied, put it back, and closed the lid.

"Marshal Giske said the quality of this batch is good." Karoge stood at the door, his voice echoing in the small storage room.

"He led the men into the swamp himself. Three brothers died, their brains shattered by the mental shock of a fish-man priest. One of them was an old scout he had brought for three years, named Gray Ear; when his head exploded, his brains splattered all over his face."

Karawa didn't respond. He stood up, clapped the dust off his hands, walked past Karoge, returned to the stone platform, and picked up the bone knife again.

Karoge followed him out and stood beside the stone platform, looking down at the Dragon-man puppet. His vertical pupils reflected the puppet's hollow eye sockets and pitch-black scales.

He reached out and touched the puppet's breastplate with the index finger of his right hand; the metal was cold and hard, like a real scale.

"You should go back and nurse your wounds," Karawa said, his bone knife not stopping.

"Can't raise it well." Kaloge looked down at his ruined left arm, the corners of his mouth twitching—not a smile, but something more complex. His voice suddenly became very low, low enough that it sounded like he was talking to himself.

"The Regeneration Furnace has been used three times. The doctor said if I use it one more time, my body won't be able to take it. Organs will fail, bone marrow will rot, and by then, even if the fungus doesn't kill me, the Regeneration Furnace will burn me into a pile of ash."

He paused.

"But that thing, that fungus, is still growing. It doesn't care if you can take it or not. It only knows it wants to grow."

He lifted the sleeve of his left arm with his right hand.

From the elbow to the wrist, the skin of his entire forearm had turned gray-white, covered in fine, moss-like mold spots. The flesh was black, emitting a sweet, putrid stench.

Some places had already ulcerated, revealing the gray-white muscle tissue underneath, the muscle fibers loose like noodles that had been boiled. What was even more terrifying was that those mold spots weren't stationary; they were slowly wriggling, like countless tiny insects crawling under his skin.

Karawa's gray-white eyes stared at those mold spots, without any expression. No disgust, no sympathy, not even curiosity. Like looking at a piece of moldy wood.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked.

Karoge took a deep breath. When the air entered his lungs, it emitted a slight, wet friction sound—his lungs were also infected.

"I heard you're making a kind of puppet. A Dragon-man one, that can hold the soul of a living person."

Karawa's hand stopped.

Not the kind of obvious pause, but the bone knife scraped across the finger bone at a speed one-tenth slower than before. If Karoge hadn't been staring at his hand the whole time, he wouldn't have noticed at all.

"Who told you that?" Karawa's voice didn't change.

"That doesn't matter." Karoge pulled his sleeve down, covering that rotting arm. His vertical pupils stared straight at the back of Karawa's head.

"I'll just ask one thing: can you put my soul into it? I don't want to die. And I don't want to turn into a pile of moldy rotten meat."

Karawa put down the bone knife and turned around. His movements were very slow, as if making a decision after careful consideration. His gray-white eyes met Karoge's vertical pupils; two different colored pupils looked particularly cold in the miserable green light.

"The Grand Duke won't agree."

"The Grand Duke doesn't know," Karoge said, his voice without a hint of hesitation. "And he doesn't need to know."

Karawa stared at him for a few breaths. Then he laughed.

It wasn't a friendly laugh. To be precise, it was more like a confirmation—confirming something he had always wanted to know.

The corners of his mouth curled for only a moment before returning to their original state, but in that moment, Karoge saw something flashing in his eyes. Not greed, not excitement, but hunger.

Karawa turned around, walked back to the stone platform, and stood with his back to Karoge. He picked up the bone knife and continued to trim the puppet's finger bones, his movements slower than before, as if thinking about something.

"Do you know what this means?" he finally spoke, his voice low, as if squeezed from the depths of his throat.

"Once your soul is stripped from your body, it can never go back. No container can hold a soul that has left its shell for too long; the puppet's body is the only option. But if the puppet has a problem—if it's shattered, decomposed by magic, or the rune circuits collapse—"

He paused, the bone knife turning an angle in the joint socket of the finger bone.

"Your soul will dissipate within a few breaths. Not death, not going to the temple of Feron, but total disappearance. Not even the eternal turbulence of the Styx will leave a trace of you."

Karoge was silent for a long time.

There was only the fine scraping sound of the bone knife across the scales in the workshop, and the faint vibration coming from the depths of the swamp, like a heartbeat. That vibration came from deeper in the swamp; Karawa knew what it was, and Karoge knew too, but neither said it out loud.

"I know," Karoge finally spoke, his voice as hoarse as sandpaper.

"But I said, I'm already half-dead. Rather than waiting for that thing to turn my whole person into a pile of gray-white mushrooms, crawling on the ground and rubbing against the wall, I'd rather take a gamble."

He paused, his vertical pupils staring at Karawa's back.

"What you're doing in the Sanjiaozhou, the Grand Duke doesn't know either. Right?"

Karawa's hand stopped.

This time, it was a true, complete stop. The bone knife hung in mid-air, a small piece of bone shavings still hanging from the blade. He turned around slowly, his gray-white eyes like two stones without temperature, staring at Karoge's Ogre face.

The temperature in the workshop seemed to drop a few degrees. The Kobold laborers in the corner seemed to perceive something, simultaneously raising their heads, their cloudy eyeballs turning toward Karawa, then lowering them in unison.

The Kuo-toa fish-men in the iron cages stopped muttering, curling up in the corners, trembling all over.

"Your soul," Karawa said word by word, "I'll take it."

Karoge's vertical pupils shrank violently.

"But there's a condition."

"What condition?"

Karawa put the bone knife on the stone platform and took a small badge from his waist.

That badge was only the size of a fingernail, cast from black metal, with a spider carved on it—not the spider of Lolth, but another kind, with the outline of a human face on its abdomen. He turned the badge between his fingers and then handed it to Karoge.

"Take a trip to the Silent Wasteland. Give this to the contact person of the Truth-Speaking Society. She knows where to find you, or rather, she can find anyone. You just need to carry this badge and wait a few days where she will be."

"Tell her what?"

"Tell her—the 'root' of the Sanjiaozhou has begun to rot." Karawa moved his lips, as if savoring the sentence. "She understands what it means."

Karoge took the badge, his thumb rubbing the faint human face on the spider's abdomen. He tucked it into his chest, pressing it against his heart.

"That's all?"

"That's all. After you finish this, come back and find me. The puppet's body will be ready."

Karoge nodded and turned toward the door. After walking a few steps, he stopped and looked back at Karawa.

"Lord Karawa—can you really break through to Legendary?"

Karawa didn't answer. He had already picked up the bone knife again, back to the door, continuing to trim the puppet's finger bones. But his back stiffened for a moment—not from nervousness, but from some deeper reaction to being hit in the vital spot.

The rustling sound of the bone knife scraping the scales started up again.

Karoge didn't ask again. He squeezed out the door, disappearing into the darkness outside. The sound of the swamp giant lizard pulling the flatbed cart gradually faded, mixed with the fine footsteps of the Kobold laborers, and finally was completely swallowed by the faint vibration like a heartbeat from the depths of the swamp.

The workshop fell back into silence.

Karawa stood before the stone platform, his gray-white eyes reflecting the puppet's hollow eye sockets. His hand was still moving, the bone knife scraping the finger bones one by one, but he wasn't looking at the finger bones; his gaze pierced through the puppet's skull and landed somewhere deeper.

After a long time, he put down the bone knife.

He walked to the storage room, opened the wooden box Karoge had just delivered, and took out a crystal ball containing a Kuo-toa soul.

He held the crystal ball up to the light, looking at the twisted, silently screaming face in the mist. Then he sighed lightly—not a sigh, but more like some kind of release.

He put the crystal ball back in the box, closed the lid, and walked to the iron cages in the corner.

The Kuo-toa fish-men sensed his approach and emitted more urgent muttering, like a group of rats whose tails had been stepped on. Karawa crouched down, reached into the iron cage with that pale hand, and grabbed one by the neck.

The Kuo-toa fish-man struggled violently, limbs kicking, nails scraping against the iron bars, emitting a harsh sound. Karawa's fingers tightened, the fish-man's face gradually turning purple, eyeballs bulging, foam mixed with blood spitting from its mouth.

The muttering of the other fish-men turned into screams, but those screams bounced off the stone walls of the workshop, finally becoming a noisy, meaningless background noise.

Karawa let go.

The Kuo-toa fish-man fell to the ground, gasping for air, its throat emitting a wet gurgling sound. Karawa stood up, shook the mucus off his hand, and turned to walk back to the stone platform.

He picked up the bone knife again.

Karoge's soul, the complete, fresh, and full soul of a Master Rank warrior, was worth more than a hundred Kuo-toa souls combined.

But he didn't say it. Some words, once spoken, weren't as useful.

The bone knife scraped across the finger bone, emitting a long, sigh-like sound. ===== CHAPTER 144 =====