One-Eyed Monster

The Puppet Monster was still there pouring out his tragic tale, spilling his bitterness over and over without ever managing to calm himself, as if everything he had gone through was torture, a pain that could never be resolved.

Igor and the others just quietly listened to this Puppet Monster’s roaring and complaining again and again, and then drew from these accounts the information they needed.

This was very important. Igor knew he wasn’t listening to this story to kill his current exhaustion and boredom. He was listening now to find more clues. A lot had happened in these two years. Although he had always kept in touch with Perkins and the others in Luona, and hadn’t forgotten what was happening in the world during his special training, the information exchanged by Mail Bird was always limited, and the few people in Luona were busy all day long, so they couldn’t go into many details with him. So at the moment Igor only knew the bare surface of what was happening in the outside world. Only by experiencing something personally could one truly know more; it was always much deeper than hearing others talk.

For example, right now Igor caught some hints of short fury from this Puppet Monster.

First of all, he learned that this Puppet Monster was a member of the Circus.

This also counted as Igor and his group’s first contact with this new organization, the Circus. The reason Igor knew that the Puppet Master in front of him belonged to the Circus was because, throughout the telling of his tragic story, the Puppet Monster kept using the word ”we.” Using ”we” to describe his experiences clearly meant he wasn’t just speaking for himself.

Igor hadn’t been able to tell that this monster had once been a Puppet Master; the one who provided them with this information was Master Lao. Igor had always wanted to ask how Master Lao could tell the other party had previously been a Puppet Master, but he still hadn’t had the chance to ask that question…

But none of that affected Igor’s trust in the master. The master also said that this Puppet Master was a member of the Circus, and only then did Igor infer that this Puppet Master belonged to that Circus formed by Non-professionals. Though both were called Circus, the one the master spoke of was the original Circus, the kind that put on all sorts of performances for people, whereas what Igor had in mind was that Circus formed by Non-Adventurers who wanted to break through the barriers and become Adventurers with Class. The leader of that Circus was called the Clown, and so far this was about all Igor knew about this organization…

Most of the members of this Circus organization were originally members of the old Circus: Clown, Magician, Juggler, Animal Trainer… Most of these people, like the Puppet Monster before their eyes, possessed skills that defied belief. But what exactly they had gone through, Igor had no way of knowing. Anyway, from this Puppet Master’s account, what Igor heard was mostly helplessness and pain.

These performers in the Circus had it hard. They worked themselves to the bone to win the audience’s applause. Yet many times the audience simply didn’t buy it. They would be subjected to abuse. Members of the Circus who had star-level fame enjoyed slightly better treatment, but they had to live extremely cautiously. Everyone had to tread carefully in life: one wrong word could bring on a deluge, one wrong deed meant the sky collapsing and the earth cracking. The members of the Circus lived under the gaze of the masses. They had no privacy, no say, no right to choose. They had to win the audience’s laughter, had to gain the audience’s approval; even the slightest misstep could plunge them into misery…

Some performers in the Circus could endure all this in exchange for that glamorous façade, but not everyone had such strong endurance, and not everyone could always remain cautious and careful. People are bound to make mistakes, and among those extreme audience members there were always fanatics. The absurd things these fanatics did often caused great suffering to the Circus performers.

Igor couldn’t understand why these audience members were so extreme. The Circus performers posed no threat to their lives; they were just people who paid to watch Circus shows. How did that give them the right to point fingers at the Circus folk, to hurl baseless insults…

The Puppet Monster before him was a textbook case of someone who could no longer endure the pain inflicted by these extreme audience members. His own experiences were likely just as miserable.

His family was threatened by those extreme audience members. Those fanatics would stand under the stage and shout at him to get off, to piss off, yet he still performed his Puppets with all his might. His Puppets were always the same old thing, and those extreme audience members refused to accept it. On top of that, his singing voice developed problems, which deepened the extremists’ dissatisfaction with him.

He was not someone who could endure. Over time, his mentality changed. He could bear rotten eggs once, twice, but not every single time. He couldn’t, like other Circus performers, stand up covered in rotten eggs and still smile and bow. That time he just couldn’t do it. He used the Puppet in his hand, with that pitiful singing voice, to start mocking those audience members, which sparked a commotion. The audience rushed onto the stage and started a brawl with him. This disturbance caused heavy losses to the Circus he was in, and he could no longer be a Puppet Master in that Circus. Having lost his job, he became like a wild weed, left to wither or be reborn. However, he forgot about that bunch of extreme audience members. Their hatred for him had already reached its peak. Even though he had left the Circus, the Circus still suffered a severe fire—set by those audience members. His family was also attacked and almost torn apart by death.

Paralyzed family members, the contemptuous looks from his colleagues, the revenge of those extreme audience members, and all those mocking voices kept crashing down on him without end…

His heart began to change. He felt that it was because he was weak that he had ended up like this; because he wasn’t strong enough, he hadn’t been able to protect his family, hadn’t been able to defend his job, hadn’t been able to stand up to those extremist audience members.

From that moment on, he began to madly seek power. That was how he stepped onto this road of no return.

”So that’s when you joined the Alchemy Workshop…” Master Lao asked. He felt that, with the story told up to this point, they should be getting to the heart of it.

”Heh heh, ha ha ha, we didn’t ’join’ the Alchemy Workshop, we merely chose the Alchemy Workshop.” When the Puppet Monster mentioned the Alchemy Workshop, there was a clear hint of disdain in his tone.

”So you mean you’d already gained a different kind of power before you joined the Alchemy Workshop?” Igor asked.