Wonderful Insane World-Chapter 39: Puppets Army

Dylan watched as Élisa picked up the machette beside him. His fingers, smeared with spores and dried blood, closed around it with an almost ritualistic precision.

When she looked up, her golden irises seemed to crackle with a quiet light. A glacial determination. He had never seen her so... at peace. Not calm. Not soothed. Serene. As if she had just accepted something she could no longer push away.

"I’ll buy you some time," she said simply.

Then she began running toward Maggie, who was surrounded by those creatures controlled by the fungal filaments.

He couldn’t look away. Élisa’s slender, wiry figure receded like a fading heartbeat.

Machette in hand, she cut through the tall grass and the twisted figures that screamed without voices. Her body seemed almost to dissolve in the green mist, thick with spores.

But Dylan could no longer move.

He tried to lift his arm. Just the left one. Nothing. It felt like his bones were made of glass, and if he pushed any harder, everything inside him would shatter. So he closed his eyes.

And felt his mind descend.

Not physically. He no longer had the strength. But mentally, viscerally, he plunged inward. He visualized his body as contaminated terrain. Explore. Map it out. He imagined himself standing in an organic cave, the damp walls of his veins pulsing around him.

"Where are you, you bastards..." he thought.

He sensed a presence. Several, in fact. They didn’t move like a virus or a parasite. No. They watched. They waited.

He couldn’t truly see, but he could feel them. Shadowy filaments coiled around his spine. A shiver ran through him—or rather, through the idea of his body.

Because the sensation itself was distorted, muffled, as if it only half belonged to him anymore.

"They’re adapting to me. Or I’m adapting to them..."

A wave of panic rose. But it was useless. He pushed it aside. The survival instinct wanted to run, scream, beg. But that part of him was no longer in control. Not as long as these things were inside him.

He felt another pulse.

Something in his ribcage throbbed. Not his heart. Lower. Harder. He stretched his mind toward that glowing point. An anomaly in the system, something that should never have been there.

Outside, he could hear muffled screams. Maggie. Élisa. The hurried footsteps. The wet sound of the machette slicing through rotten flesh.

But inside him, it was silent.

"If I can understand them, I can burn them out."

He opened his eyes. Not in the outside world. But within. A shape. A knot. A point of friction.

And he spoke to them. Not with words. Just a raw thought:

"I’m gonna burn you all to ash, you fucking parasites."

---

Élisa cut through air and flesh in one motion. Her blade carved clean, methodical arcs. A severed arm, a leg sliced off, a throat opened. She wasn’t aiming for beauty. Just efficiency. Just time. Dylan needed time.

Maggie reached her side, panting, her arms streaked with black, her eyes searching for something—or someone. When she saw Élisa, her gaze sharpened.

"You should’ve run with him! Why are you still here?!"

Élisa didn’t even glance away. Her machette split the skull of a grotesque puppet, and it collapsed with a wet gurgle.

"He needs a few minutes. I’m giving him half an hour."

No unnecessary explanations. Just the naked truth. Then she moved again, her back aligned with Maggie’s as if their coordination had never been in question.

She might not have been as strong as Maggie. But she, too, had crossed that strange threshold—the state of heightened perception. That moment when everything seems to slow, when every movement of the enemy becomes predictable, tangible. Her physical strength was no longer that of a mere survivor. She knew it.

Maggie handled two puppets at once, fierce and precise. Élisa, on the other hand, focused on one at a time—but she didn’t need more. One strike, one impact. She aimed for the head. Every time. Decapitate. Blind these damn puppets. Once cut off from their primary senses, they grew sluggish, clumsy. Easy to finish off.

Her breathing was steady. She slipped between attacks, slashing with efficiency. Together, they formed a moving barrier, a border between Dylan and the rest of the world. Anyone who tried to approach was dismembered, hacked apart, reduced to dead flesh.

Spores floated around them, green, greasy, almost alive. But they didn’t stop.

They couldn’t.

---

For a moment, the number of puppets had dwindled. A sliver of hope, accompanied by a gasp of air.

But a second later, it was as if the earth itself had spat out twice as many.

They came in waves, staggering, dragging themselves, some even crawling with missing limbs. A relentless tide, blind but determined. And it was starting to wear them down. Really wear them down.

Breaths came short. Ragged. Arms heavy as lead. Maggie grimaced with every strike—sometimes her axe got stuck in a ribcage too solid, or slipped against a mix of wood and bone that refused to give. She had to yank, force it, losing precious seconds.

Élisa, meanwhile, was beginning to falter.

She hadn’t been trained for this.

Not for chaos.

Not for an endless brawl.

She came from a simpler world. A village of hunters, of silence and patience. She had been taught to track, to wait for the right moment, to cut clean and precise.

Not to fight an army. Not alone. Not with just a machette, worn and sticky with dried blood.

Her arms shook. Her legs screamed. Every breath burned in her chest. But she didn’t stop—or at least, she refused to.

She struck. Again. And again.

She hit a puppet at the knee, sent it crashing down, and drove the machette into its neck before it could rise. She straightened—barely—just in time to block another coming from her right. Her shoulder exploded with pain. She staggered back.

Maggie shoved an attacker away and shot her a worried glance.

"Hold on. Dylan’s gotta be almost ready."

Élisa didn’t answer. She just nodded.

But in her eyes... there was no fear. Just that glint. The look of a girl who had chosen her role, even if it wasn’t the one that shines in legends.

She was here to hold the line.

Not to win.