The long night passed.
Dawnlight spread across the land and all life upon it.
A new day began once more.
For Tris, yesterday—the day of fate—had changed his life forever.
He usually started each morning with physical training.
But today, he stood still, staring at the stone grave marker before him.
After a sleepless night and a day filled with upheaval, both his body and mind were exhausted.
Yet the pain tearing at him and the simmering anger within kept his thoughts unnaturally clear as he considered what lay ahead.
Tris had been told that his mother died the moment he was born, taken by a cruel, incurable illness.
His grandparents had already passed away before his birth.
He also knew that his father once had an older brother, killed by a magical beast at the age of twenty-one.
So aside from his father, Tris had no relatives left.
His strange differences also meant he had no friends his age.
With no home to return to and having lost his only family, Tris was completely alone.
In just a few months, he would turn nine.
But now, he had to survive in this world filled with malice on his own—or even that birthday would never come.
On the stone before him was his father's name, along with a few details Tris had carved with his own hands.
He had made this grave for his father in the middle of the previous night.
After extracting information from Kane and finishing the cleanup, Tris returned to that building to retrieve his father's body.
Then, on the same night, he built the grave and carried out the funeral.
With magic, creating a simple grave was easy.
Using Earth magic, he raised a block of stone as a tomb marker.
Then he took out his knife, infused it with spiritual energy, and added Space magic—carving into the stone became as easy as slicing tofu.
With Earth magic, he also dug a deep pit to scatter his father's ashes.
The body had been quickly cremated with the help of Fire magic.
In this world, people did not usually bury corpses directly—they practiced cremation.
The reason was that natural spiritual energy within the earth could affect corpses, giving them a chance to turn into undead.
Or worse, the dead could be collected and exploited by mages for creating undead or serving as materials for rituals.
Before the grave, instead of flowers or offerings, lay the heads of the two men who had directly killed his father.
For Tris, the most precious offering he could make was the price exacted from the perpetrators.
And he swore—he would not stop with just these two deaths.
He understood they were merely pieces on a board.
The true enemy of him and his father remained.
The night before, Kane had revealed that the one behind everything was the village chief, Zyron—confirming Tris's earlier suspicions.
Among the information he obtained, one detail stood out:
The chief had used the excuse that Tris and his father were colluding with an evil god to justify the killing.
Clearly, the lack of any public trial or evidence showed it was merely a convenient justification.
Tris was certain the real reason lay in some hidden benefit.
What troubled him was whether that excuse was entirely fabricated—or if there was a fragment of truth behind it, something the chief actually knew.
Because the abnormal nature of Tris's dreams was undeniably real.
He wouldn't even be surprised if it was truly connected to some evil god—or other higher power beyond comprehension.
"Haaah…"
He let out a long breath.
Whatever "evil god" might exist was a problem for the future.
The immediate threat now was the village chief and those under his command.
Tris didn't believe the man would simply give up while he was still alive.
Yet Zyron's next move would depend on how much information he could grasp.
The fact that both assassins had failed to return would already alert him that something had gone wrong.
Tris had carefully erased traces in the forest and the building to prevent investigation and hide as much information as possible.
But in a world where magic existed, there were limits to such precautions.
So, to be safe, Tris prepared for the worst-case scenario:
The chief already knew about his father's death, the assassins' deaths—and that Tris himself was still alive.
No—even worse—he might already know Tris's current location and have begun pursuit.
'In that case… I need to race against time and prepare as much as possible to face him.'
He needed to quickly increase his combat strength and expand his own tactics.
Fortunately, he now had the means to do so.
At the moment, Tris wore four spatial rings on his left hand.
Aside from his own, one belonged to Arven—his father—and the other two came from Silas and Kane.
These rings solved his urgent problem of carrying more puppets.
Currently, Tris could effectively control three puppets at once.
As for "Feathers", when controlled as a group performing the same action, they could be treated as a single entity.
That was why he could use them to attack Silas and Kane while still controlling "The Twin".
If he attempted to control a fourth puppet, he could only focus properly on three while issuing simple commands to the fourth.
Though he lacked the skill to control all puppets at once, simply having more at his disposal still offered significant advantages.
It expanded his tactical options.
And if one puppet was destroyed, he would still have replacements ready to keep fighting without delay.
Beyond the rings, his total funds had risen to 6,470 gold.
It was not to be underestimated—the accumulated wealth of mages over many years, especially when combined from three individuals.
And this was from relatively "poor" village mages, who spent heavily on crafting expensive puppets.
In addition to money, Tris had also obtained a large amount of materials.
Some could be used directly for his puppets, while the rest could be sold later.
As for the captured puppets, he planned to dismantle them and salvage usable parts.
There were many reasons he wouldn't use them directly.
It was like a master swordsman picking up a spear—
A puppet was an extension of one's own body. It needed to be tailored to its user.
Using something incompatible would only hinder performance and waste energy.
Worse, unfamiliarity could lead to fatal mistakes at critical moments.
So he still needed to create puppets suited specifically to himself.
The good news was that many components from the salvaged puppets could be reused or slightly modified, saving him a great deal of time in building new ones.
Casting one final glance at the grave, Tris turned and walked away.
His eyes were filled with unwavering determination.
He would grow stronger.
He would survive.
And he would take revenge.