When his gaze fell upon the location of the garden, the scene there was already naturally reflected in Klein's mind:
In dark corners concealed by clusters of fresh flowers, rat after rat with gray-white fur was scurrying wildly in circles around one spot as if bewitched by a devil, squealing frantically while trying to push past their kind to reach the center.
In the core area, a gray rat nearly the size of an adult Loen shorthair cat lay there, its eyes noticeably reddish, like congealed blood.
Its tail whipped back and forth at incredible speed, as if trying to fling away the manic agitation building inside it.
And whenever any of the normal-sized rats drew truly close, it would extend its claws to pin them down, biting them to death beside itself, until a heap of rodent corpses had accumulated around it — yet even this couldn't stop the rest from surging forward.
Seeing this scene, two thoughts simultaneously flashed through Klein's mind:
First, the "intuitive premonition" enhanced by the
Second, the "Thief" Pathway demigod parasitizing that rat was indeed already on the verge of losing control — not only was its body several times larger than what "Magic Mirror"
Good thing he'd arrived in time. If he'd waited another few weeks, a tragedy might have occurred… Klein's thoughts flickered, and rows of illusory black threads materialized before his eyes.
At this moment, the straight-line distance between him and the mutated rat was less than fifty meters — well within range to directly manipulate its "Soul Threads"!
And at that very moment, the enormous, smooth-furred rat seemed to sense something. It shot to its feet, turning its head toward the kitchen.
A flash of light passed through its dark crimson eyes, instantly freezing the young man in the silk top hat and black suit in place.
It had "stolen" his primary thoughts for the next two seconds, leaving his mind nearly blank — and it hadn't even needed to make the corresponding gestures like a Sequence 5 "Dream Stealer" would!
Next, the giant rat raised its right front paw, attempting to "steal" its enemy's Beyonder power.
At its level, it could "steal" up to three types of Beyonder power from a single target, maintaining them for up to two hours, though each "theft" was limited to one at a time.
It was precisely at this moment that the giant rat's thoughts inexplicably became sluggish, its ability-use movements as if tightly bound by countless invisible threads, appearing extremely sluggish.
Its "Soul Threads" had been preliminarily controlled!
The fact that it had successfully "stolen" the thoughts of "Gehrman Sparrow," leaving him frozen in place, had been nothing but an illusion — an illusion crafted by the Faceless!
Before formally manipulating its "Soul Threads," Klein had already swapped his own position with that of the "Winner" Enuni. A secret puppet possessed no self-awareness or independent thoughts whatsoever, and therefore could not be affected by the ability to "steal ideas."
If there was nothing there in the first place, how could anything be stolen?
In order to lull this "Thief" Pathway demigod into complacency, Klein had employed his qualitatively enhanced illusion ability, deliberately having the puppet Enuni — transformed into the appearance of "Gehrman Sparrow" — perform the corresponding reactions.
At this very moment, he was standing outside Machter's Elk Estate, and the straight-line distance between him and the giant rat exceeded five hundred meters. But this did not hinder his manipulation of its "Soul Threads" in the slightest, because a Faceless could bestow their own Beyonder powers upon a puppet — including the ability to control "Soul Threads," the core method for converting a target into a puppet!
In other words, barring other restrictions, a Faceless could completely leverage a puppet to extend the range of "Soul Thread" manipulation from the base of one hundred and fifty meters to theoretically unlimited distances. After all, so long as you placed a puppet roughly every one kilometer, you could rely on the bestowal of Beyonder powers to extend your influence.
Of course, no ability in this world was without limitations. On one hand, Klein's current limit was fifty puppets in total — he couldn't exceed that number. On the other hand, the only thing a Faceless could not bestow upon a puppet was cognitive ability and self-awareness. Therefore, using puppets to control other puppets could never exceed the limit of his own direct puppet control — one kilometer.
Once this range was exceeded, the marionettes converted from the original marionettes would be unable to perform any actions at all.
Furthermore, the substance of a Faceless bestowing Beyonder powers upon a marionette was essentially the division of a worm related to the mythological creature form, which then entered the marionette's body through the "Threads of Spirit." Unless one had deliberately pre-allocated several extra worms to the same marionette in advance, when that marionette converted new marionettes, it would be unable to separate out corresponding worms to allow the new marionettes to also be endowed with the original's Beyonder powers.
As for Klein, he could currently split off at most fifty worms. Exceeding this number would cause his spirit body to become overburdened, resulting in symptoms of mental fragmentation that could not be recovered without effective treatment — and even with excellent treatment, recovery was not guaranteed, as the tendency toward losing control would become even more severe.
Thus, according to Klein's experiments, his current limit for manipulating the "Threads of Spirit" was one thousand plus one hundred and fifty meters, while for a new marionette to be fully under his control, it had to be within one thousand meters. Additionally, if a marionette died, the worm's characteristic within its body would, within a certain period of time, return to the original according to the Law of Beyonder Characteristic Aggregation. If this process were interrupted by someone, the characteristic could potentially be lost.
Just as the demigod of the "Pilferer" Pathway slowed and grew sluggish in his movements, the "winner" Enuni — wearing the appearance of "Gehrman Sparrow" — saw the previously converted marionette rats rush out from the kitchen all around him. They opened their mouths toward the target area, preparing to cleanse it with compressed air projectiles.
Suddenly, within the eyes of that enormous rat, a dark crimson glow blazed to life.