F-Rank Puppeteer!! But I'll be Queen, and I'm not a narcissist!!!!! Chapter 298: Deep Thoughts

After a few minutes, I manage to calm my mind a little. Since the whole place is made of reinforced threads, the room is indestructible, so I don’t need to worry too much about Arial and Nerina barging in to bother .

I also sense that Arial has "vanished" through magic—she’s no longer on the island. Nerina, on the other hand, is still here, but she’s quiet, staying at the far end of the house.

That at least shows she respected my request for space, which lets think about the future in peace.

"..." I look at the little doll in my hand, its tiny belly straining against its little dress. This puppet is a "Chira"—an attempt I made to fuse different types of marionettes.

I’d made a chira before, but that was a chira in terms of appearance, mixing various traits from different races. This little doll here, though, is a chira of the marionette types I know how to use.

And that’s why this little doll is sothing that can get pregnant—because it’s a blend of a standard model marionette and a living marionette.

"Do you want to have this child?" I ask the little doll, who looks at confused. She’s not very bright, because she isn’t a true living marionette; she only inherited the physical and magical traits of one.

"Do you want to?" she asks, now able to speak, leaving everything up to because she can’t really choose.

’Considering the chirism and the type, it’s probably not a 100% biological child in the pregnancy sense. It must be more like cloning,’ I analyze the little doll’s body with magic.

The baby inside is likely a clone—like putting a small doll inside a slightly larger doll and leaving it there.

"It doesn’t matter now..." I still feel sothing deeply wrong, like the end of sothing is approaching.

’That "Evelyn Idol" ntioned killing Nerina... what does my fear have to do with killing Nerina? Am I supposed to choose to kill her? Esther... is she what I’m supposed to choose?’ That na feels very important.

"Urgh... what do I do? What should I do now...?" I wonder if I should try to rember the past, but my head hurts so much when I try, and a kind of panic attack starts just from thinking about it and feeling the awful emotions tied to the past.

"..." Feeding the little doll magic, I decide to at least finish the test. I accelerate the growth of whatever is in the doll’s womb and, using threads, perform a quick delivery.

"As expected..." What ca out of the little doll is another, literally identical little doll, except for one difference: blue eyes instead of the pearly white of my own.

"Hello!" The newborn doll, no more than 8 centiters tall, waves at .

"Who am I?" I ask the miniature of a miniature.

"Evelyn-sama," the newborn doll answers, just as expected. I’m still her master, even if she ca from such an irregular and strange creation.

’It’s sowhat interesting. The birth and the speed at which it normally grows would an two days at most until she’s 100% developed...’ It’s different from a living marionette.

A living marionette would have a normal gestation with a long waiting period, and a standard model marionette couldn’t have children at all. This little chira doll, however, had a pregnancy, but a highly accelerated one.

’The little doll seems to have lost 10% of her original strength, and her daughter has 5% of the mother’s original strength...’ It seems power doesn’t co from nowhere; it’s shared and divided between them, sothing that wouldn’t happen in a normal pregnancy.

’Arial didn’t impregnate this doll. She just activated paraters the marionette already had...’ The doll used its own magic to "get pregnant" and wasn’t exactly "impregnated" by Arial. The only trait from Arial is the blue eyes, and that’s just a sign of the magic.

"I’m going to destroy you both, okay?" I ask them to test sothing. I want to see if they’ll resist, refuse, or if their relationship with one another will beco defensive. If it does, letting them continue to exist is dangerous for .

"Understood, Evelyn-sama!" Both little dolls repeat with the sa loyal gaze. I look at them for a while before unraveling their bodies—an important test to determine if they’re still mine.

Even the new marionette dissolves into magical particles, which implies that, yes, she is still generated by my power. This only proves she isn’t a real "baby" like in the case of a living marionette. She’s just a clone generated by excess magic within the body.

’The little doll must have used my vitality to get pregnant, which is why she still depends on my power...’ Now I’m alone in the room. Everything I’ve learned on this island has been important.

But the feeling never fades—the feeling that I’m in for sothing very bad. So I think about what I could do.

The reality, however, is that there’s nothing I can do. So I slowly go to my bed, lie down, and stare at the ceiling.

"H-Ha... hahaha... how strange... I’m feeling a bit hopeless about the future... but I feel like this has happened before?" The panic is there, the fear is intense, but the reactions cool down shortly after I calm myself.

Why do I seem so accustod to this feeling of being cornered? My mind decides to simply wait. After all, I don’t know what the worst outco could be, but panicking won’t help .

"I wonder... if I just wait... will sothing happen?..." I’m not sure what to do, so I keep replaying the interaction I had with that strange "screen," thinking about the words I heard.

’Kill Nerina... I can do that... but that wasn’t what I wanted when I learned more about her body through the symbiosis...’ Since we had shared magic and emotions, I had learned sothing I didn’t tell Nerina.

’I should choose... but how can I choose without rembering anything...’ I stare at the ceiling as if it will give an answer. Should I try to rember everything? Ignore what Nerina said?

...

...

...

"What the hell was that!" I shout, furious at Arial, kicking the sand on the beach. All the monsters around the shore have fled back into the sea.

"[I-I don’t know! I didn’t do anything! I just fiddled with that doll. That’s no reason for Evelyn to kick off the island or get extrely pissed off!]" Arial tries to defend herself, but now Evelyn is there, alone in that hut.

"If I find out you did sothing, it’ll be your end!! Her reaction was not normal, and if she recovers her mories, it’ll be hard for to erase them again," I tell her as she slips back into the spiritual plane.

"[I didn’t do anything! Besides, Evelyn kicked you out too. So it probably wasn’t about us. It was sothing else. You should go talk to her. She was clearly panicking.]"

"...Tsk... fine, you’re right. She didn’t look well. Her hands were shaking, her gaze seed panicked, and she seed more focused on the doll and what happened than on you."

"Besides, she sealed the room with those indestructible threads, so no one can enter until she opens a gap."

"And you didn’t even talk to her. She was sleeping in the room and woke up like that... maybe it was a mory lapse, or you accidentally reminded her of sothing, and her mind started fighting the hidden mories."

"I’ll handle this..." I try to think rationally and more appropriately about the situation.

"I’ll have a calm conversation with her. As long as she hasn’t rembered anything, I can soothe her. If necessary, I’ll even give her so magic to calm her mind."

"[Do what you want. Just don’t bla again. I hadn’t even been here a full day, and my interactions with her were the most basic kind. If sothing went wrong, it’s entirely your fault.]" After saying that, Arial stops talking.

"Damn it... I worked so hard to make her peaceful and less paranoid. Now everything seems back to square one. Why is Evelyn so complicated?" I’m starting to get obsessed with this complex challenge.

It’s never been so hard to capture a prey’s mind before, and worse, NOTHING has ever slipped through my fingers. anwhile, Evelyn, who had already improved her relationship with , suddenly turned chaotic and slipped right through my tricks.

"...My Cores... I’m spending way too much..." Maintaining this simplified domain around the island to prevent Evelyn from escaping was easy at first, but now I’ve burned through 14 cores just to keep it up.

After all, it’s active 24 hours a day, every day, for over two months. That’s way too long to maintain an abstract domain, even if it’s a simplified one. It’s monts like this I regret that my domain isn’t a physical one.

"Evelyn is costing far too much. 14 cores is over five thousand years of waiting." I wonder if this is still worth it, or if I should just give up and kill her. But thinking about that only makes angrier.

I’ve already spent too much to give up now. Either I make her body mine and addict her to , or I’ll suffer the biggest loss of my life.

’I’ll wait three or four days and then try to talk to her...’