Walking out into the deep snow not as a lumbering golem but as an actual puppet felt weird. But in a good way that made me almost want to merrily skip along. Gods, it just felt so...right to finally be in this cute body of mine!

  I felt stronger too, enough that I wouldn't feel like I could break at any moment. The dragon blood, that definitely felt like it made a difference. To experiment, I casually punched a tree while walking and it actually gave a bit already. Yep, I'm fairly sure that this body could've lifted up those fallen doors I had struggled with before.

  Right, I'm at the river now. Time to test what skills my new body could use. I drew the wooden greatsword and frowned, flexing and swinging experimentally. It felt way too light, like I was just waving around a stick instead of a heavy, thick blade. Come to think of it, even my clothes right now felt quite loose and shifting, like they just didn't have the weight I was accustomed to.

  Hm, was that perhaps because my oathbreaker build in FLOW wore heavy plate? Guess I knew what I was going to dress myself up as! Equipment aside, let's actually proceed with the experiment now.

  I grasped my sword with two hands and focused. This time, the energy in my core responded at the simple utterance. "[Shadow Rend]." A blast of dark-aspect energy left my blade and carved into a nearby trunk. That felt way easier than last time, or when I tried experimenting with Frie. It looked like my inheritance, so to speak, did want me to activate skills the way they were intended to do so.

  However, studying how deep the cut was, I suspected that it wasn't as deep as I recalled from my days in FLOW. Maybe another balancing decision, that these duplicate builds were understandably weaker than the original. But I couldn't say for certain yet, not without continued testing. "[Walk in Darkness]."

  My body abruptly sank into my shadow, as if vanishing completely. Then that began to move, darting across the ground before I just as quickly rose up from it. Looks like I've got access to my handy gap-closer, no more running from me! But I only managed to cross a small frozen creek in that time. That was again shorter than I recalled. One final basic skill I wanted to test out. "[Evil Twin]."

  This time, it was my shadow that rose up from the ground and detached from me to manifest as a faceless copy of me. It held out its hand, expecting, only to fade away when I couldn't provide. I suppose it matched up with how in the game, oathbreakers had sacrificed half their attack power to summon that clone for an immediate damage burst. Again, it lasted only a fraction of the normal time it did.

  Adding onto my suspicions was when I tried to move onto other basic and advanced skills. When I tried activating them, I could felt the faint tug on my crystal core but nothing else happened no matter how much I pushed. The breakthrough happened when I cast my mind back and distantly recalled a similar sensation occurring whenever Mikel had tried using skills he knew, but his character had been restricted access due to something like a temporary level reduction.

  Understanding blossomed across all versions of me. [Doll Maker] created summons with stats depending on the caster. [Doll Maestro] took it a step further.

  It created pets.

  Pets in FLOW were like secondary characters who could fight alongside their owner and even advance in ability with them. There had even been a few classes centered around them. So it made sense that the developers would perhaps base [Doll Maestro] off their mechanics, except with the idea that the crafter was calling upon other versions of themselves who could have been fighters instead.

  So while I probably was equal to a pretty early game character of FLOW right now, I had the potential to grow. To advance. To become better.

  Oh, this definitely was a skill that probably was still in balancing before the planned expansion got scrapped. No way would the developers probably have released this without way more nerfs. But as it was put to the side and likely forgotten when attention shifted to money-making schemes, now I got the full experience!

  A thick growl to my side interrupted my thoughts and I turned, seeing a bear snarling at me. Oh my, had my smashing about awoken it from hibernation? I think I remembered once reading somewhere that bears awoken so tended to become super aggressive as a result. Or maybe that was just a thing in the world of Shin.

  Instead of apologizing though, I grinned and hefted my greatsword. Time to see how much I remembered to play oathbreaker.

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  I finished my thorough examination of Mord's body and finally gave an assent nod. "Fine. You're healed up enough to start training."

  "Finally!" the dragon hissed, fingers twitching in anticipation. "I'm tired of just doing nothing between my naps. I want to get my blood pumping."

  "You're fortunate that my training arena is still in one piece. We can use that." I made a mental note to quickly throw together some wooden dummies in preparation later. For now, there was something else to prepare for. "I suppose we'll celebrate your recovery with a filling meal. How does that sound?"

  "Real food? Finally!" She licked her lips at the mention. "What are you planning to hunt?"

  "Hm? Oh, it's already done."

  "Huh?"

  The front doors swung open and in came Kuch with a happy hum and wide smile at odds with her bloodstained cheeks.

  They'd been a bit too close to where the greatsword had stabbed into the artery, so the animal blood unfortunately sprayed all over them as a result. I sighed and moved over to study the bear corpse, giving it a light kick to vent my frustration. "That's not going to get out the fur coat," I complained, shaking my head. "Guess I could use the bear pelt to make a new one."

  My first doll shrugged and began to drag the bear over to the kitchens. "Pity, I liked the wolf fur. But oh well. Hey, why not maybe just cut it off and reuse it in my armor whenever I make that?"

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  "Not the worse idea, could be aesthetically fitting." I glanced at Mord, who stared wide-eyed. "What do you think?"

  She sputtered for a moment, finger raising to point between the two of us. "What do I think? What do I think?" she repeated, voice getting a little high-pitched. "What the hell, why are there two of you?!"

  Kuch let out a gasp as if offended. "So rude, after I saved your life! And I even cut off that dragon's arm for you!"

  "What- huh?" I could see her eyes almost spinning from the attempted logic. "Wait, wasn't that- weren't you-"

  "Right, enough rage-baiting," I announced, clapping my hands and gesturing. "Meet the me who helped out in that fight. To differentiate, call that one Kuch. And I'm Noel. But when you speak to either of us, you speak to the same person."

  Mord stared before again, just giving up trying to understand. Good, that'll make drilling her the needed skills to learn that much easier if she went along with the insanity. "I'm just going to say I don't care enough to figure out your...thing. But you said there's meat?"

  "Aye, but I'm afraid my spice rack's gone missing." Kuch threw me an apron on the way to the kitchens. "Are you fine with plain roasted bear?'

  "I'll take anything that isn't jerky at this point please."

  With two sets hands, dismantling the bear should be easy and quick. However while cutting away the meat, I noticed an issue. "Kuch, those cuts are messy."

  "Oi, it's been a while hasn't it-"

  "No, not the ones from battle. Look." I pointed out the significant tears in the pelt from where they'd tried peeling it away from the body. "That's not up to quality now, is it?"

  "I see." Kuch frowned. "I want to try something. Put some meat to the side, I'll try cooking too."

  It was hardly even cooking really. Without spices, or anything to go along with the meal, all I ended up doing was lighting a fire and putting the meat on a stick above, turning regularly to ensure it cooked through. Kuch did the same, and eyes narrowed at the clear discrepancy. The final result confirmed our suspicions for sure.

  Simple Roast Bear Skewer (Final Grade: 103)

  Simple Roast Bear Skewer (Final Grade: 31)

  "I don't inherit the crafting specialization," Kuch concluded and I nodded in agreement. "[Palate]. Yeah, it didn't work for me."

  "[Palate]." Pretty basic, tough, and gamey. The main appeal was the fat in each bite. "It does for me. So it's a Kuch thing."

  "A me thing, I could say."

  "This...changes nothing. I was always going to be the crafter."

  "And I a fighter. But it limits exploitation. I can't just setup a new workshop across the world to match quality."

  "Hm. Probably can't use [Doll Maestro] either to create another crafter to the same standards, never had a dedicated crafter build."

  "I had plenty of others for variety, including a wizard and an engineer. I could just work off those instead-"

  "HEY!" Mord barked from the dining room. "Are you two just going to yap to each other forever, or am I going to get fed sometime this age?"

  The exchange between Kuch and I broke off with that little interruption. The two versions of me blinked, then grabbed both plates to serve. Mord would probably consume even the substandard serving with her ferocious hunger, so at least no food would at least go wasted.

  The dragon ended up eating the entire bear by herself, and asked about seconds.

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  Mord was visibly bouncing in place when time came for her first training session. I finished adjust the last of the training dummies and gave it a light punch to confirm it was in place before turning to her. "Alright then. First things first, how do you want to fight?"

  That question took her back and she hesitated. Before, I'm sure she would've immediately said a brawler with barehanded combat, but the experience of fracturing her hand had lingered. She could still likely be good with her fists, but Mord definitely was remembering now that most mortals fought with weapons for a reason. "I don't know," she confessed, almost mumbling the admission.

  "No worries. I've made some test weapons to see how you feel about them." I paused, then lightly coughed. "Ah, I should also make mention that learning magic is also always an option. You have a very strong dark affinity after all-"

  "No. No magic," Mord insisted, just a bit too quickly. "I don't want to sit back to win. I want to feel it, my hand ripping out the bastard's heart."

  Well, she was at least motivated. Her choice made, I offered her the barrel of sample war tools and stepped back to observe. I really wanted to figure out now what sort of weapon she preferred, because if I was going to send Mord out there, then I wanted her to have nothing but the very best I could make now.

  Which might involve breaking open my player vault for a certain little ore.

  She used swords more like clubs, wildly swinging them about like a mace. The same went with greatswords. Yet curiously a mace in her hands was more like a sword. Maybe it had something to do with the weight? The lighter the weapon, the more an annoyance and hindrance it felt in her hands. So something heavy.

  Then she picked up a spear and I saw it. Something that would have Isabella squealing in excitement.

  The dragon wielded the polearm already quite expertly. She used both sides of the weapon at times, almost like they were her lost wings, but knew that a strong thrust from the front was the best weapon to pierce many a defense. But again, it felt too fleeting, flimsy in her hands. The spearhead snapped after she tried swiping it as if it were her claws and found it wanting.

  So then, a lance.

  Oh, Isabella would've been gushing. But at least from her, I knew what training regimen to lay out and the shape of the weapon to forge now. Kuch could handle training her in the necessary basic skills while I the long process of crafting arms and armor for her. And probably also for myself, I was honest.

  Mord probably needed a companion to watch her back out there, and I could only trust myself for such a task after all.

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