The puppet came running, pushing and pinning Damien down onto the ground, holding a knife to his throat with one of its arms, the knife was slightly cutting into his throat, but was barely stopped in the nick of time by an arm that turned black.

‘Pay attention!’ Shaitan reprimanded.

“Shit!” Damien cursed.

His left arm was looking less vile than it usually did when it turned black, appearing more of a gray hue than its normal pitch-blackness. Shaitan’s powers were probably weakened due to the light. The usually dominant black arm was struggling with the strength of a mere wooden doll. Damien knew Shaitan wouldn’t be able to help him out of this one.

He brought his knees up close to his chest, and kicked at the puppet with both of his feet like a spring, launching it away into the air.

Damien quickly staggered to his feet, fleeing in the opposite direction of where the puppet flew.

“What do we do, Shaitan?!” Damien asked while running and panicking.

‘First, calm down, fool! Secondly, we have two options: we can make an attempt at trying to escape the area, although I highly doubt we will succeed with all the puppets around, or we can go in the direction towards one of the five demonic presences that I sense around the area, and hope that one of them is the marionette. The limitation of the marionette is that it must be within the vicinity of the puppets it controls, with more puppets likely to stick close to the marionette itself. What will it be?’

“Do you even need to ask?” Damien replied with a smug look on his face.

‘So it shall be. I will guide you to the closest demonic presence.’

The dolls were everywhere, stalking people and hunting them down. There were swarms of them. Several wooden puppets were personally on his trail, but he was too focused on running to concern himself with looking back.

There were some puppets blocking his path, trying to cut him off and catch him. Damien spun like a football player, narrowly avoiding sharp weapons that brushed by him.

“How much further?!” Damien asked while panting.

‘The presence is just around the left corner.’

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Damien ran, clearing the distance, and turning left around the corner of a building.

‘Another bad matchup for me...” Shaitan said quietly.

What they saw was not the marionette. It was a 2 meter giant made of stone. A Golem. A demon made of rock, its special qualities being the outstanding strength and defense they boasted, but they were slow, and unfortunately, as Shaitan would have surely said if the situation were any less dire, golems are as dumb as rocks, before laughing.

The golem was in the midst of battle, surrounded by several puppets, and even a fool would be able to tell that it was losing.

There were five puppets around the golem, four of them binding each of its limbs with a wire, and the fifth was attacking it with a spiked mace. Pieces of rock flew from its large body, and it roared in agony while trying to free itself from the wires.

“We need to help it!” Damien said to Shaitan while closing the distance to the golem.

‘Have you gone mad?’ Shaitan asked perplexedly.

“Just trust me! Teaming up with other demons is the only way we’ll be able to defeat the marionette like this!”

‘...’ Shaitan remained quiet, before transforming Damien’s left arm into a black claw. ‘Run towards a wire binding one of its arms.’ he commanded. Damien did as told, and ran towards the wire closest to him. Shaitan moved the claw, and a wire was cut. With an arm loose, the golem rampaged unimpededly, freeing itself from the rest of the wires.

Just like that, the golem bashed and broke the five puppets surrounding him into pieces. Strangely, it spent extra time crushing the wooden doll holding the spiked mace.

Damien approached cautiously before saying “Hey! Let’s work together. We’ll all die if we don’t team up against the marionette.”

The golem gazed at him for a while, then it slowly nodded.

That was when the swarm of puppets chasing Damien made their way around the corner, and Shaitan said ‘I only sense 4 demonic presences around us now. One has perished.’

83 demons remain.