Although Akatsuki had once been confused about his own way of living, the current him had long since gotten rid of such weak emotions and no longer felt confused about how extraordinary he was or why it was that ordinary people never understood him.

He didn't need ordinary people to understand him, nor did he wish to understand ordinary people. Since he was a special existence, all he needed to do was to seek what he desired.

Akatsuki's greatest desire was to possess eternal beauty within his grasp.

Beauty was far too temporary in this world, especially all the more so for human beauty. Even flowers only bloomed for certain periods of time, while human beauty was subject to many factors, being weak and difficult to maintain or imitate.

Simply speaking, human beauty was naturally imperfect to begin with. Human beauty required modifications in order to achieve the pinnacle and be preserved perfectly for eternity.

This wouldn't be easy. In fact, it would be incredibly difficult with many obstacles. Only a special existence like Akatsuki would be able to pull it off.

Akatsuki firmly believed himself to be the special person capable of such a thing.

Although there were still many imperfections, as long as he continued working hard and persisted in chasing after his dream, one day, he would finally be able to personally create what he wanted more than anything...

A masterpiece puppet that possessed "eternal beauty!"

There were many things Akatsuki needed to learn and research in order to achieve the level that he wanted. That was why he didn't only work on creating human puppets—he worked on creating other types of puppets as well in order to acc.u.mulate experience and ingenuity.

Up until now, Akatsuki believed that his greatest product so far was the "girl" before him.

She had long silvery hair that flowed like water, silver eyes that seemed like gems, crescent-shaped bangs, and an exquisitely soft and beautiful face. She wore a pink miniskirt and Sakura Island style clothing with white long socks. She quietly lay on a platform in front of him, and had an indescribable beauty.

Just her personal appearance alone made it clear that she was a mega beauty. However, she also had the lifeless qualities of a puppet. The beauty of a young pretty girl mixed together with a beauty that humans wouldn't possess formed an indescribable type of special charisma.

A top level human puppet... one year ago, Akatsuki had paid a huge sum of money to a mysterious "merchant" to obtain some information regarding puppets and a Soul Core. He then began working on this puppet and completed it only recently.

That information he obtained had given him much inspiration and helped his "products" to reach an even higher level.

When he tested the Soul Core he'd received, it seemed that it was a truly outstanding Soul Core. Akatsuki spent a long time investigating how this particular Soul Core's inner mechanisms worked, but still couldn't figure it out in the end. He finally gave up and decided to install the Soul Core in his puppet just like this.

His human puppet had already been successfully activated. However, Akatsuki had continually failed in the Soul-Imbuing Ritual for his human puppet, so his puppet still lacked intelligence and he hadn't given her a name yet.

The Soul-Imbuing Ritual was the critical step in giving a puppet intelligence. While the information Akatsuki received contained detailed steps on how to perform the Soul-Imbuing Ritual with this particular Soul Core, Akatsuki had been suspicious of it and didn't want to fully use the information as written. He modified the Soul-Imbuing Ritual contained within based on his own knowledge, but all his experiments failed.

So this time, he was finally determined to completely follow the steps in the information he received on how to perform the Soul-Imbuing Ritual.

He had installed a self-destruct mechanism within the human puppet. In the worst-case scenario, he could self-destruct her if something happened.

Although he would think it unfortunate if he had to personally destroy his greatest work of all so far, as long as he had the necessary "materials," creating another one of her wouldn't be a problem for him. It would only take him some time.

Akatsuki finished his preparations, placed his hands on the platform next to his puppet, and injected his Mana into the platform.

A complex spell formation instantly appeared above the platform. It started spinning slowly as it glowed with a silver light.

Then, silver runes appeared on the "girl's" body as well. Her long hair and eyes began to s.h.i.+ne brilliantly.

"My soul shall become your soul…"

"Lifeless body, deathless form…"

"Yin and Yang of heaven and earth, divine universe…"

As Akatsuki muttered his incantation, the silver runes on the puppet began turning golden, and her body gradually started floating in the air. Her glowing hair flowed all around her in a beautiful scene.

"…Soul which breaks the laws of the netherworld, awaken!" Akatsuki ended with a shout.

A mystical rune appeared on the "girl's" forehead, making it seem as if a third eye had suddenly opened on her forehead.

At the same time, Akatsuki felt like a mysterious force suddenly drew something out of his own body! He suddenly blacked out and fell unconscious, collapsing beside the platform.

The spell formation on the platform gradually faded and stopped glowing as Akatsuki was no longer providing it with Mana.

The "girl's" body fell back down on the platform, and the rune on her forehead disappeared. Her hair and eyes stopped glowing as well.

Everything remained silent for a while.

The silver-haired girl suddenly blinked, and her originally lifeless eyes came alive.

Then, she slowly sat up and looked around her.

"Urgh…" A sound came from below the platform.

The silver-haired girl looked to see the dark blue-haired boy who had reopened his eyes.

"Did I… succeed?"

Akatsuki was a bit confused about what just happened.

He stood up while rubbing his temple to help himself regain his senses.

'What just happened? Why did I collapse?'

He felt as if he had fallen into a trap of some sort… but nothing felt wrong with his body at all. Apart that he felt a bit woozy right after waking up, he didn't feel anything abnormal at all.

He decided to get a checkup on his body later. The most important thing right now was…

Akatsuki looked at the silver-haired girl.

She stared at him and blinked.

"Answer me. Who are you?" Akatsuki asked her.

She didn't respond, and only had a confused expression.

Akatsuki furrowed his eyebrows.

The Soul-Imbuing Ritual would imbue the puppet with intelligence that included some basic knowledge of the world. A normal puppet should have responded with "I am a puppet created by Master" to his question just now rather than not knowing how to answer.

As for her expression of confusion… while it was highly realistic, just like a real human's, it didn't have any meaning to him.

"Do you know what you are?" He tried asking a different question.

"…What am I… I don't know…" She tilted her head slightly and asked him a question in a soft voice. "Who are… you?"

Akatsuki came to the conclusion that the Soul-Imbuing Ritual had failed again.

This wasn't the behavior that an intelligent puppet was supposed to have. Something must have gone wrong somewhere.

Akatsuki uttered an incantation.

The silver-haired girl instantly froze completely in his movements and expression.

Akatsuki had changed over to manual control mode for his puppet. Then, he used a hand gesture to control the puppet to lie down and reactivated the platform's spell formation to do an inspection of her body.

Then, he noticed that the mechanism which contained her "soul," which was what provided the puppet's intelligence, also contained an incredibly strange and chaotic-looking spiritual object.

Akatsuki widened his eyes in surprise, not comprehending why the puppet had been able to move by itself, speak, and even have expressions with such an object! Theoretically speaking, such a strange-looking object shouldn't have had any effect at all.

He couldn't understand what was going on at all…

He manipulated his puppet's body and intended on extracting this mysterious spiritual object to move to a different container for research purposes.

However, this spiritual object self-collapsed and vanished.

It was all so mysterious… Akatsuki furrowed his eyebrows.

He had followed the steps completely as the information given to him suggested, but failed yet again. Just what was the problem?

After inspecting the puppet one more time, he decided to try one last time according to his own methods.

As a result…

"I am a puppet created by Master, and am your most loyal servant of all. I shall obey all of your commands," the silver-haired girl stated with a blank expression.

He succeeded!

He had finally completed this product of yours. Akatsuki smiled in delight.

"Remember, your name is…"