It had been much less painful than one might have expected, perhaps because the nerve-endings had quickly been seared away due to the incredible heat emanating from the lightning that Cades had brashly shot inwards in a desperate but fruitful attempt at solving his problem.
And indeed it did hurt his pride ever so slightly, but what did pride matter when one was dead ?
Though he had been confused about the fact that the sickness hadn't taken root within the rectum instead of the nether regions, well, perhaps that was the case with female parts, he would probably find out once the two finally defeated that diagram mage for good.
Once he had been unsealed he began to once more change his perception, a change that he hadn't registered the first time because he had been send to another dimension and parallel to that had been mostly alone, panicking and full of pure terror.
However, now that he had a bit of calm time and was actually able to think, with the change not being overshadowed by the new unknown realm he began to feel the powers of his new rank.
He felt the intent of every single one of the wooden puppets, however fain, or however clear.
The only exceptions being the masters of the puppets, with the hunter being the littlest challenge to try and look through, the mage the second most difficult and the hunchback the most difficult out of all of them.
Perhaps that was because the hunchback had mantled himself within pure magic, his entire body reeking of it, or at least Cades thought as such as he leisurely began evading every attack that the now two masters together with their dozen puppets, the second dozen already having been destroyed by him, tried to destroy Cades with.
In case of the mage she was just surrounded by countless magic apparitions, it was almost as if she was a entire city filled with countless magicians that all work hard on the day of a special festival, all of them for a single purpose, a single goal, in this case the act of defeating Manug, who was still keeping up with her, the two of them still fighting in the very same way that they had fought in before, as if they were two children that constantly refused to admit defeat for their fantasy-heroes and instead just kept on adding new and more powerful abilities that perfectly countered each others in their minds.
And lastly, in the case of the hunter it was pretty simple as well, the archer only covered his weapons in magical enhancement spells, not his body, so while it was indeed pretty difficult and blurry to see through his intentions and find out his next attack, which was pretty easy to counter either way seeing that Cades was now quite a bit faster than before, his current rank really having increased from before, as if he just had to realize his new power.
It was interesting, perhaps this was the power to truly read intentions, maybe this was also why he could understand the archer and felt so entranced by the paintings on the walls by the paintings, though the second part was much less likely than the first.
What would be a good name for this rank now that he knew it ?
The rank of understanding, the rank of changing.. no no... perhaps the rank of transcribing would fit as a good description seeing that he didn't really write anything as a scribe would, it was not like he imposed his own intention onto others, but instead understood others intentions and was even able to translate others sentences that he could've never understood in any other way using his new powers.
Yes, that was a good name, this was how it should be called.
Cades had finally, truly, fully arrived at the rank of what he would like to call a transcribe.
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One of the puppets descended its huge sword, Cades could already tell everything that would happen and decided on the point what to do, the benefit of knowing what they will do, or rather what they were intending to do, though that could of course be faked instead of actually doing something, as such he had deflected the sword onto another sword that tried to swoop down beneath them and rip his feet off his legs, causing that very blade to be pressed into the ground and stop moving for a bit.
After that he used the sword that was now laying on the ground, using his legs and kicking it away to push the wielder of the sword away, but rather than that the handle of the sword caused the face of the wielder, a piglike creature, to cave in as if it was a normal tree and fall down.
Right after the monster had fallen down Cades had already arrived at the face, evading another one of the descending swords, a tactic that the bigger monsters seemed to love, perhaps because they could leverage their height better that way, and quickly burned the lower region as badly as he could, right after which he decided to turn onto the others.
That was how it went, no matte how the normal puppets tried to fight they failed, the only real challenges were the masters, but he had long since decided to first take care of the puppets so that he wouldn't have to worry about it and could rather focus all of his newfound power and abilities onto the only two being that posed a real challenge to him right now, perhaps also resulting in Cades being able to get to Manug who was still in a standstill even faster than before and annihilating that accursed mage, just like he would do with the two other master-type puppets right now.
And soon after, the puppets were defeated and the two masters had retreated themselves, looking at Cades and perhaps trying to figure out what happened with the weak being that had previously struggled against each of them, well, only situationally weak.
Nevertheless, there they were, two wooden monsters staring at the real monster, and ready to fight, or rather try to fight, at any moment.