The Naga Warlord’s eyes widened, his hood trembling, his massive body shuddering as though struck by a thunderclap.
His voice broke from fury into disbelief, words tumbling like fragments of stone, "I... i–is it true!? My tribe... truly gone!?"
His voice, usually a chilling tide of authority, now sounded hollow, raw with disbelief and dread. His gaze burned with blinding hatred as if he wanted to swallow the Lamia Queen whole.
But Autarch’s reply came with indifferent cruelty, sharp as ice, "Why would I need to lie... to someone like you?"
The words cut deeper than a thousand blades, and before the venom of silence could settle, Autarch tilted his chin ever so slightly toward the Viper Matriarch, his gaze empty and merciless.
"Oh... and my people are already moving toward your tribe. With you gone, your bloodline’s legacy will be buried... just like all the others here today."
A shiver ran through the Viper Matriarch’s slender body, her scales glistening cold with sudden dread. The air itself grew tight, suffocating.
Not just her, but all of them felt it as a chill crept into the marrow of every Legendary King present.
For the first time, the truth pressed upon them as this was no mere tyrant queen. This was something else. Something that had already spread its strings further than they ever imagined.
The Giant Serpent Chief roared, unable to endure the provocation any longer, his voice tearing through the skies like an avalanche, "ENOUGH! Today you die, witch!"
The Naga Warlord, maddened by grief and fury, surged forward with lethal intent, his tidal aura crashing down like oceans falling from the heavens.
The Viper Matriarch, too, unable to resist her tribe’s looming doom, struck with venomous elegance, her fangs dripping law-infused poison.
All at once, the Legendary Kings charged, their laws igniting in a storm of elemental force—thunder, venom, earth, water, lava. The air of the Serpent Abyss Forest quaked under their wrath.
But Autarch remained motionless.
Hovering above the palace, his eyes shone with eerie tranquility. His voice was quiet, almost bored, yet it spread across heaven and earth like the toll of an execution bell.
"Domain: Marionettist."
Right at that moment, behind the Lamia Queen’s form, the phantom of a Soul Totem erupted into being.
But it was no serpent. No emblem of Lamia sovereignty. It was a centipede!
A monstrous, spiral-coiled centipede, its segmented body writhing with countless legs. Each leg shimmered with ghastly soul-light, and as it unfurled, those legs stretched outward, becoming strings.
Strings that writhed like living tendrils, expanding in every direction until the very sky seemed woven with their presence.
The Giant Serpent Chief’s eyes went wide in horror, "Her... her Soul Totem...! This... this isn’t the Lamia Queen’s! What are you—?!"
But before he could finish, the centipede’s strings writhed and slithered, descending upon them with an alien will. The aura that poured forth was not Lamia-born, nor serpent-born. It was foreign, ancient, and incomprehensible.
The Domain of the Marionettist spread over the battlefield!
The air warped. The ground twisted. The laws that the Legendary Kings had wielded for unknown years... bent and broke. Their power faltered, suppressed by the impossible weight of a unique law.
The Viper Matriarch’s face went pale, her tongue trembling, "This... this is suppression! A Unique Law!!"
But it was already too late.
The strings shot forth, unhindered by defenses, piercing through every treasure and shattering barriers as if they were paper.
They sank into flesh, burrowed into souls, and the kings roared as a corrosive, invasive soul-force infiltrated the very core of their beings.
They thrashed, they struck, they burned with power that could shake continents—but nothing tore the strings away.
Their laws, their mana, their weapons—all useless!
However, Autarch wasn’t done as Lamia Queen’s voice, detached and frigid, resonated through the collapsing battlefield.
"Marionettist — Epulae Cerebri!"(AN: Brain Feast)
At once, the strings pulsed. A mystic suction force erupted, pulling from the very essence of the kings. Their memories, their consciousness, their soul essence—all drawn into the writhing web of Autarch’s domain.
The Legendary Kings screamed, fury and despair mixing in their dying howls. Their struggles weakened, their bodies convulsing as their souls unraveled.
The Giant Serpent Chief’s last coherent thought was the bitter realization that their siege and defiance were laughable. They had not come to kill a tyrant queen. They had come to offer themselves to a monster beyond comprehension.
Their eyes dimmed one by one, their roars fading into silence.
Above it all, the centipede Soul Totem began to shift. Its segments thickened, its phantom form swelling with stolen might. With each devoured king, its coils grew longer, its strings more numerous, until its body exuded the majesty of ascension.
Autarch stood calm in its center, his aura climbing higher and higher, and at that moment, the skies thundered, and the earth quaked.
The Marionettist was breaking through from a Legendary Lord...into a Legendary King!
The forest howled in silence as the Legendary Kings’ last cries had already faded, their towering forms crumpling like husks with the strings still lodged within them, twitching faintly as if mocking their final resistance.
Right at that moment...
BOOM!
The sky split with thunder not born of weather but of law, and there was a trace of profound rage as if the universe was unwilling to see it happen yet helpless.
The air convulsed as the centipede Soul Totem behind the Lamia Queen warped violently, shedding its translucent phantom veil.
Its body, once spectral, now gleamed with obsidian-black chitin. Every segment was carved with ancient sigils that pulsed in eerie rhythm.
The countless legs, now strings of shimmering soul-light, danced and slithered, stitching themselves into the heavens like an abomination sewing the world shut.
The Marionettist Totem was evolving!
Autarch, still cloaked in the Lamia Queen’s breathtaking form, floated with absolute stillness at its heart. His eyes reflected nothing but cold calculation, yet his aura surged higher with each heartbeat.
The souls of the fallen kings screamed as they were torn apart, drawn into the centipede’s endless coils. Their essences, their laws, their millennia of cultivation, were devoured and woven into new strings.
The ground beneath the Lamia Queen’s palace shattered, split apart as if the world itself could not withstand the ascension.
At that moment, an invisible threshold seemed to have been finally broken.
Autarch’s aura erupted like a tidal wave, drowning the Serpent Abyss Forest in sheer suppression.
Right now, he stepped into the realm of the Legendary King!
The centipede totem bellowed a soundless shriek as it shed its skin, unfurling into a spiral of strings so vast it blotted out the twilight sky.
Each string vibrated with the resonance of soul-laws, and wherever they touched, space warped, trees withered, and even the lingering mist of poison bowed.
This was no ordinary breakthrough. This was the birth of a Fantastic Insect King.
At that moment, Autarch slowly raised a hand.
Below, the Lamia army—thousands of them—turned in eerie unison. Their eyes glowed with puppet-like obedience, and their bodies bent forward in mechanical reverence, as if recognizing their true sovereign’s rise.
The forest itself seemed to kneel. Beasts hidden in the shadows fell silent. The poisonous rivers stilled. Even the wind refused to stir.
Furthermore, the lifeless corpses of the Legendary Kings jerked. Strings still pierced their flesh, but now the strings pulsed with light, and their bodies stiffly rose again, eyes hollow, their grandeur stripped, leaving only shells bound to the will of the Marionettist.
Autarch had not only devoured their souls—he had claimed their husks as new King Puppets!
His voice, cold as the grave, echoed across the forest like a decree, "From this day forth... the Serpent Abyss Forest will be known as the Marionettist Kingdom!"
The centipede Soul Totem behind him coiled tighter, the last fragments of the kings’ essence merging into its body. With each pulse, the air thickened, as though the forest itself was now caught in strings.
Autarch tilted his chin upward, his eyes glinting with a hint of eerie longing as if waiting for someone!