One by one, illusory black threads extended from within Serniol’s body and shot into Klein’s palms, reacting differently with each leap of spirituality.
In fact, manipulating the Spirit Body Threads didn’t necessarily require both hands, but Klein was used to doing it that way; it gave him the feeling that he was truly controlling the puppet.
“From the looks of it, my peers can discover each other’s puppets. Anomalies in the Spirit Body Threads can’t escape their eyes, so I have to be careful in that regard.” Klein summarized the initial issues he found and soon turned his thoughts back to Serniol himself.
This “Blood Captain” was as good as dead. His spirit had become an appendage of the puppet, losing its own distinctiveness, so many divination methods were no longer effective on him.
Of course, methods for finding corpses were still useful. Klein planned to first let this “Wraith” undergo “disinfection” through the Gray Fog, then wrap the mirror‑like object it inhabited in a “Paper Angel,” and finally place it inside an iron cigarette case sealed by a wall of spirituality, together with Azik’s copper whistle, creating triple interference.
In this way, Klein believed that it would be almost impossible for an angel of the Rose School to locate him through divination, prophecy, or similar means using the Blood Captain.
As for whether the “Mother Tree of Desire” had left any “backdoors” inside Serniol, he wasn’t too worried. If the Mother Tree of Desire had indeed tampered with the Blood Captain, she could have made Serniol suddenly mutate and turn against him during the earlier demigod battle. Judging by the situation then, it would certainly have succeeded.
“The Mother Tree of Desire, or the Bound God, maintains strict control over members of its organization through oath contracts that reach deep into the soul and similar methods. This can be inferred from Miss Sharon’s descriptions and state, as well as from my own feelings after coming into contact with the corresponding characteristics…
“As long as I don’t try to use the Blood Captain to divine the secrets of the Rose School or the potion formulas of the Chimera pathway, no problems will be triggered. That ‘werewolf’ Beyonder characteristic from before was left above the Gray Fog for a long time without any issue…
“Moreover, there will be another ‘disinfection’ process by the Gray Fog later; any hidden problems will also be cleaned out…” After thinking for a while, Klein retrieved Azik’s copper whistle from his body.
He gently turned it with his right hand, exposing the less textured part of the whistle to the sunlight, and it shone like a mirror.
Immediately, Serniol’s figure appeared above the whistle and rapidly became clear.
The Blood Captain before Klein suddenly disappeared.
“Maybe the Mother Tree of Desire can still vaguely locate me through oath contracts, but it doesn’t matter. After all, she can already perceive the Gray Fog trait on me and sense me within a certain range… Besides, this puppet might eventually be used as a shield and destroyed anyway…” Klein felt like an unemployed man drowning in debt, thinking he had nothing left to fear.
Of course, he really did owe a lot of debts.
Once he advanced to demigod and could hide his traits, he could discard the puppet at will… Klein looked around, bent down, and picked up the silver necklace. He took four steps in reverse and softly chanted the incantation.
—This time he didn’t use the method of summoning a spirit to enter, so he couldn’t return directly.
The grayish fog rapidly spread, with hysterical whispers and roars echoing eternally. The copper whistle in Klein’s hand didn’t mutate, indicating that there were no major hidden problems inside the Blood Captain.
After sitting at the head of the bronze long table, Klein placed the copper whistle before him and made Serniol, clad in a dark‑red coat and an old tricorn hat, appear beside him like a butler awaiting his master’s orders.
“What else do you have on you?” Klein asked, as if the Blood Captain were still alive.
He was trying to act the Puppet Master!
Then he manipulated Serniol to search every pocket, and the puppet fished out 325 pounds, 16 soli, and 8 pence in cash, including thirteen gold coins.
Aside from these, perhaps because he frequently transformed into Wraith form, Serniol carried no other items.
“How poor… A pirate admiral with only one mystical item? Did he hand it over to the Rose School or distribute it to his underlings?” Klein seriously considered whether to sell the Blood Captain through black market channels.
In Loen alone, his bounty was 42,000 pounds!
“Hmm, claiming a reward in Loen is unrealistic. Whether it’s the Church of the Lord of Storms or the kingdom’s military, they’d be all too happy to follow this clue to catch Gehrman Sparrow, who caused a battle involving multiple demigods, and investigate the organization behind him. They wouldn’t pay anything, and if they did, it would be a trap…
“By the same logic, the churches and governments of other countries are bound to have similar thoughts, though their attitudes might be a bit more moderate. Claiming a bounty would involve considerable risk…
“Besides, there’s no hurry. When I want to change puppets, I’ll hand Serniol over. Being a puppet for a few days won’t affect his identity and value…” Klein pulled back his thoughts and shifted his gaze to the silver necklace with a pendant shaped like an ancient coin.
He then used divination to roughly grasp the origin and function of the necklace:
It originated from a Sequence 5 “Winner” of the School of Life. After this gentleman died at the hands of a Rose School demigod, his Beyonder characteristic, his own spirit, and an ordinary silver necklace he carried combined to form a mystical item.