After returning to the Tower, the very first thing I did was decide which magical discipline and spell system I would delve into with complete focus.
What I desired was my mother’s resurrection….or a miracle akin to it.
However, to “fully” bring back the dead is a forbidden taboo. Naturally, I could not hope for anyone else’s help.
I would have to bear everything alone.
Entirely on my own.
But unfortunately, the talent I had been given was meager. Even if I devoted myself until the end of my allotted lifespan, it was doubtful whether I could ever reach the pinnacle of even a single discipline.
Thus, two conditions were established.
First, I had to extend my naturally given lifespan in order to increase the total amount of time available for research. If I lacked talent, then I would compensate with time. That was my solution.
Second, while fulfilling the first condition, the discipline must also be related to the resurrection of the dead.
Therefore, I had no choice but to select—
A spell system capable of forcibly extending the human lifespan, and at the same time connected to resurrection.
Puppetry.
Was it a mere coincidence?
The reason my only hobby was carving wooden dolls was because my family’s secret art had been puppetry.
I began my research.
At first, it was closer to learning than true research.
Naturally so. I was a newcomer to the field.
Even if it was my family’s secret art, in my early days at the Tower I had been too busy building foundations, and before that, I had never properly learned it.
I canceled every class I had been taking. I moved constantly between the library and the laboratory.
Three years passed.
I mastered all the fundamentals of puppetry. I was granted rank within the Tower and earned the qualification to be properly called a Puppeteer.
With that, I no longer had to worry about being expelled from the Tower due to donation issues.
Still, the road ahead was long.
Five years.
People whispered around me. Psycho, lunatic, a bastard who’d die clinging to his dolls….every insult imaginable reached my ears. But I paid them no mind.
The gossip of others was nothing more than a measure of my concentration. Recently, my realm had advanced to the point where I could fully understand puppets.
And there were results to show for it. I had successfully replaced one of an animal’s limbs with a puppet!
It was still far from sufficient, but I could see a small glimmer of hope.
Ten years.
I had passed thirty. The period considered a mage’s golden age. My puppetry deepened further, reaching the level of full maturity.
If I wished, I could have secured a professorship within the Tower.
Naturally, the spells I handled had grown more advanced, and accordingly, my research budget soared.
In the end, lacking sufficient funding, I took the succession exam I had postponed. The result was my promotion to Rank 3.
For a time, the related discipline was turned upside down, with talk that a divine prodigy of puppetry had appeared.
Twelve years.
After the succession exam, prestigious families offered exclusive contracts one after another, but I refused them all. It was obvious that meeting their conditions would delay my research.
All of my actions and logic place the vow I made before my mother above everything else.
Fifteen years.
There was a small accident during an experiment. I lost my right leg. However, fortunately, I had already reached a level where I could replace parts of the human body with puppets. Thus, it posed no problem.
Experiments and research must continue.
Twenty years.
For some reason, my improvement had slowed. It felt as though I had hit a wall.
With some time to spare, I began the task I had long postponed. By “task” I meant the replacement of my “aging body”.
That year, I succeeded in replacing all my flesh and bones with puppet parts…excluding only my internal organs.
Twenty-five years.
I broke through the wall.
While I was at it, I replaced my dimming eyes with puppet parts as well. Since I was changing my eyes, I began the process of replacing all my sensory organs.
Thirty years.
As a puppeteer, I attained the rank of Master at the youngest age in history.
I began replacing my internal organs.
Thirty-six years.
The replacement of my internal organs was complete.
Now, my body was no different from a puppet. However, no matter what I tried, I could not replace my brain and heart. That troubled me.
Those two organs were fundamentally different.
Different in some way.
Thirty-seven years.
There was no one in the Tower who did not know my name.
Where once they had merely whispered that I was insane, now they looked up at me with awe.
Even those who once boasted of their own talent yielded a step before me.
But the only thing that mattered to me was my mother’s resurrection. Hollow ceremonies and attention were nothing but distractions. So I moved my laboratory to the uppermost floor.
Only now was it finally quiet.
Forty-five years.
I devoured every book on puppetry within the Tower, excluding only the forbidden texts.
With no further materials to study, I resolved to research my family’s secret art. For the first time in decades, I returned to my ancestral home.
The house had vanished without a trace.
Fortunately, the basement door remained intact. Letting out a sigh of relief, I decided to move my mother’s body to my laboratory.
For the first time in a long while, I felt an emotion.
It was anger.
I immediately made my way to the commercial district and gathered information.
That day, my hometown was burned to the ground.
Unlike when my house had disappeared, this time I felt nothing at all.
Fifty-five years.
I mastered my family’s secret art. There was not a single book related to puppetry that I had not read, and no puppeteer in the world could surpass me.
And then, the forbidden texts of the Tower caught my eye.
Fifty-six years.
The Tower issued a warrant for my arrest.
Petty fools. Since we’re all growing old together, I suggested we share the good things.
I looked at my steel hand filled with clockwork mechanisms.
…Come to think of it, they’re the only ones growing old.
Sixty years.
The pursuers were endless. No matter how many I killed, new ones kept appearing. Each time, they screamed, “You’re my father’s enemy! My mother’s enemy!” and all sorts of damn nonsense.
Whenever that happened, I personally selected the appropriate puppets and arranged a touching reunion between mother and daughter, father and son.
They were said to be the pillars of the future, so I tried to spare them whenever possible. But even if I let them go, they would just come back to die, so I had no choice.
At this point, it was practically natural death.
With a hint of regret, I added their corpses to my collection.
Sixty-one years.
Continuing my experiments and research in spare moments, I finally succeeded in replacing even my heart and brain with puppet parts.
However, the method to revive the dead was still far out of reach.
Thus, the experiments and research had to continue.
Sixty-six years.
The pursuer who came this time looked strangely familiar. I searched my memory. Having shed the human brain and become a kind of computational device, my core produced the answer.
Right!
She looked exactly like the girl who had shown me despair sixty-six years ago.
Given the passage of time, she must be that girl’s granddaughter.
“Designation Number 34… No, big brother Edward. Exactly sixty-six years, five months, and thirteen days.”
It was her.
I was genuinely shocked. She looked to be in her late twenties at most.
Had she become something beyond human? Or was it something beyond human wearing the guise of a human?
“Why have you come yourself? At your age, you shouldn’t be in a position to move so lightly.”
“Sending others would be meaningless. Congratulations, big brother. You have no idea who you’ve just made move.”
Was she invoking her status as the head of a prestigious family?
Such things no longer meant anything before me. Only one thing mattered to me now…research and experimentation.
“Sixty-six years ago, you got angry because I solved the problem. Just like now, you were stuck on a problem that wouldn’t be solved no matter how much time you spent.”
She muttered as she looked around my workshop. With every step the girl took, hundreds of pairs of eyes moved in unison.
I turned my head to look at her. My mouth moved, and the vocal device activated.
“So, do you know the answer now, just like you did back then?”
She nodded. Then she said,
“But unlike that day sixty-six years ago, I won’t tell you.”
A sigh escaped me without meaning to. This is why geniuses are such a nuisance. I rose from the table.
Behind me, the eyes of the puppets beginning to activate lit up. One, two, three, four… endlessly.
They flickered like clusters of stars in the night sky, filling the cavern.
“You don’t have to tell me. I can find out for myself now.”
The puppets in the workshop collapsed like a tidal wave and surged toward the girl! She casually stepped back. The raging wave of puppets chased her, spilling out of the cavern where my workshop stood!
The rain-soaked earth split apart and the terrain twisted. Shattered limbs scattered in every direction…yet even those were soon swallowed by the tide of puppets. Dark crimson lightning tore through the air and struck down.
The battle and the puppets’ desperate struggle for the answer were truly fierce.
For the first time in a long while, I could feel my own growth.
But only that much. The result was the same as sixty-six years ago.
I still could not reach even the tips of her toes. My limbs shattered, and my core was exposed to the open air.
I became aware that my body was collapsing.
I clutched the core that had been split in half.
To end like this…no. That cannot be.
The experiments…
The research…
Must continue…
“What was it that made you operate so desperately, big brother?”
Operate? Ah, right. My body is a puppet.
Then what, exactly, were those experiments and that research for?
I clearly—
I clearly remembered.
But it was too long ago, too arduous a path, too wretched a past to recall clearly.
Through my fading vision, the something wearing the face of a girl murmured,
“Big brother, you walked the path of □□□□ □□□.”
It seems my auditory device is broken.
The most important part in the middle. There was no sound.
And that wasn’t all.
“■■■■■■■.”
The sentence she spoke next was little more than incomprehensible noise.
But—
Just as sixty-six years ago, there was one thing I understood.
This girl, then and now, was giving me the answer.
That alone was certain.
I tried to speak. But my mouth wouldn’t move. With my only functioning left arm, I adjusted my mouth and barely managed to pry it open. I squeezed out every last bit of power remaining in my core.
“■…… ■……. ■.■.■…….”
A grotesque noise flowed from my mouth, like that of a broken doll. I tried to understand its meaning clearly, syllable by syllable.
“─■■.”
At the final burst of sound spat out by the burned-out calculating machine, the girl’s eyes widened.
“Well done, big brother. You really figured it out on your own this time!?”
You damn bitch.
Teasing me until the very end.
Regardless of our sentiments, the moment I barely completed the sentence, I was able to grasp at least a fragment of its meaning.
It was part of the “Word Magic” used by beings that existed in a dimension far beyond reach.
I had finally obtained a fragment of the miracle I had so desperately longed for!
I stretched out my arm. I tried to grasp something. I didn’t know what it was. I only wanted to seize the answer that slipped away like air flowing between my fingers.
The experiments…
The research…
For what purpose?
I must keep my vow.
Then for whom was that vow made?
I already knew the answer myself.
There would be only one chance.
And so, carrying my true wish, recalling you from the years long past, I repeated the Words—
***
“—Son, happy birthday.”
My fourteenth birthday.
I returned to that day.
The scene from that time I had loathed so bitterly back then, yet longed for in my dreams came into view.
I already knew what would happen next. Mother would embrace me first. She always did.
But—
This time, I turned around and hugged her first. The look of astonishment in her wide eyes lingered vividly before me.
“Now.”
From now on, I will protect your happiness.
The wound-up doll will never regret again.
Because from this moment on, I will change everything.
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