While there was one puppet that possessed all three cultivation veins that were intertwined with each other,, the other four puppets were not less impressive.
The first puppet's cultivation veins were strengthening each other, becoming overly powerful, which Jason could clearly feel according to the released energy.
Three of the remaining four puppets seemed to have the supremacy of one cultivation vein each, such as the Celestia puppet being the strongest in the path of Maest.
It was intriguing, and even more so because the three puppets seemed to have more than one cultivation vein, at least some of them.
For example, there was the puppet that had supremacy over the Pryr path.
Yet it also had a mana core and Maest cultivation vein in order to control the flame that was also responsible for its fiery aura..or so Jason assumed.
In the end, the four puppets he had just inspected were extremely interesting.
Three of them had the strongest cultivation vein in one of the main cultivation paths, with the Celestia being the strongest in the path of Maest.
Meanwhile, the fourth puppet had all three cultivation veins, which were extremely powerful, but weaker than that of the three other puppets.
As such, the fifth puppet ought to be something special too.
But, he was stumped to see that the fifth puppet had all three cultivation veins, but also none.
In fact, it had one cultivation vein that felt like all three veins had been combined into it.
Yet, the energy it radiated was something Jason had never felt before.
Because of that, he was oblivious to what kind of existence the fifth Primordial was, yet it felt as if he should know it.
This was weird, and even after he thought about it really hard, Jason was unable to find an answer to the mystery of the fifth puppet.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64ce79d606107d003c23ea27", id: "pf-5140-1"})Owing to that, he couldn't help but feel that he should challenge this puppet first, even if he had planned to challenge the Celestia puppet first earlier.
Driven by curiosity, he approached the mysterious puppet first before issuing a simple challenge.
"I want to fight you first!"
After he said this, the puppet seemed to transform as eyes manifested on its head, only to make its first move.
Smoothly approaching the combat arena that was not far away, the mysterious puppet stood on one side, while Jason was requested to stand opposite it.
Meanwhile, the remaining four puppets continued to reveal their energy fluctuation and aura, standing where they were like unmoving statues.
However, before Jason was able to avert his attention, he was distracted by the sudden interference of a robotic voice that initiated the countdown from three.
"3…2…1…Fight!"
The moment the robotic voice initiated the fight, Jason charged towards the mysterious puppet, allowing Petri to occupy his mana core and fuse with him.
At the same time, he circulated mana through his body and exerted the Floating Sky movement technique.
Additionally, he also fully unleashed the two stigmas that were above his right eye, and the Celestia aura that was transforming, owing to Petri's fusion.
Right now, he didn't use his Emperor Eyes' abyssal effect or Petri's curses because he wanted to wait for the perfect timing.
As such, he shot towards the mysterious puppet with excitement gleaming in his golden eyes.
As he neared it, he saw something dumbfounding just as Petri's scales began to grow out of his body.
While he had been moving with his fastest pace, the mysterious puppet didn't even move for the first second.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64cc9e79c7059f003e4ad4b0", id: "pf-5109-1"})Instead, it gathered energy inside its body, only to release everything at once.
However, this didn't mean that it lost control over the mana, which was everything but the truth.
As he watched with wide eyes, the ginormous shape of a dragon emerged out of the puppet's body, roaring towards Jason.
Except for Wisse, he had never seen a true dragon in his life.
Furthermore, Wisse was a halfling, yet the dragon shape that emerged in front of him shook the entire colosseum, followed by his entire being, forcefully halting his mana circulation that was momentarily sealed.
This seal broke a second later, but at that moment, the mysterious puppet had already emerged out of the dragon's cover.
Meanwhile, the dragon returned to the puppet's interior.
Because of that, the puppet was able to use the energy that should have been used to manifest the dragon and attack Jason mercilessly instead, which just happened.
Having been rendered incapable of using his mana, his speed decreased drastically. Even his fusion with Petri didn't allow him to evade the high-velocity punch of the puppet that suddenly emerged in front of him as if it had teleported itself.
As such, the moment the punch hit him, Jason felt some of his ribs crack at the impact.
A terrifying realization hit him which he had only been able to figure out owing to his Emperor Eyes' and the foresight blessing.
'The Dragon it manifested…is an independent individual, and not something the puppet created?!?'
Just as he realized this, his body was flung several dozen meters into the air, before he crashed into the ground.
The spot that took the impact was where Petri's scales were torn apart as if he was hit by a rocket launcher.
Yet, he had no time to mind this or the terrifying pain that coursed through his entire body like a shockwave. Jason's mind was somewhere completely else, thinking about what he had just seen.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "663633fa8ebf7442f0652b33", id: "pf-8817-1"})Thus, lying on the ground, while barely being able to breathe, he dissolved his fusion with Petri.
The moonlight affinity enveloped his entire body as he processed what his Emperor Eyes had just seen.
'That…was the soul of a deceased true dragon…wasn't it?'
Even if he gave the best effort to make sense of the situation, Jason was unable to do so. This was because he had clearly seen that the true dragon's energy fluctuations were different from that of the puppet.
Yet, at the same time, they seemed to have been altered, adjusted to each other in order to allow the puppet to make use of the dragon without wasting any mana.
However, in that case, it made no sense how the soul of a true dragon was stored within the puppet.
'Is…it is able to store souls of deceased beings, and use them?' Jason suddenly wondered.
He got busy trying to figure out the innate trait of the fifth puppet that was the replica of a race just like the Celestia puppet and the other three puppets.
Right now, Jason was a little bit annoyed because he had been defeated so easily, without being able to put up a defense let alone launch an attack.
But at the same time, it was not like he had used every single bit of his strength to fight against the puppet.
Nevertheless, the dragon's ability to momentarily block his mana circulation was fearsome, and Jason couldn't help but feel a little bit…refreshed!
Until now, he had overcome numerous challenges, but that didn't include having to fight against five puppets that replicated the model of five Primordial races.
Owing to that, the true dragon's roar should be the tip of the iceberg of the mysterious puppet's combat prowess. It had yet to unleash a single martial art technique, its aura, or some sort of stigma it might possess owing to it being a replica of an overly powerful race!
However, the same could also be said about the other puppets, whose combat prowess should at least be on par with the mysterious puppet's, otherwise, the trial as a whole wouldn't make any sense.
How could Jason know that the puppets in their entirety were just the tip of the iceberg of the true strength the beings he called Primordial gained once they reached the 2nd threshold of the Prismar stage?
