The Gold-Nibbling Mouse only lacked one final thing, the Puppet-Source, but having already created one, he didn't need to make another.
The Puppet-Source was like a battery, so as long as it was the right size and still had energy, it could constantly be reused.
This didn't actually save much time since creating the Puppet-Source for Minos was quite easy, but given how excited he was at the moment, he didn't want to waste even a single second.
Cutting open the Gold-Nibbling Mouse, Minos delicately placed the Puppet-Source inside, before resealing the puppet.
Once again, Minos bit into his thumb, smearing his blood onto the puppets head. Watching with full focus, Minos watched as the Gold-Nibbling Mouse's eyes began shining.
This time the shine didn't plan to go anywhere, glowing with determination and confirming Minos's success once and for all.
Controlling his urge to dance around the room, Minos slowly lowered a string down into the small hole he had left behind in the Gold-Nibbling Mouse's head.
The string soon came into contact with the Puppet-Source, the two linking together under a special power.
The Puppet-Source wasn't only an energy source, but also a control center, allowing the Puppet-Master to control his work.
Before Minos had to wrap a string around each one of the Gold-Nibbling Mouse's limbs if he wanted to control it, but now he only needed a single string controlling its Puppet-Source.
Each twist of his string would send a signal into the Puppet-Source, which would then cause the Puppet-Source to send energy through the vessels as the string dictated.
Pulling the string left, the Gold-Nibbling Mouse came to life, immediately running in the same direction as the string.
Pulling it right, the Gold-Nibbling Mouse immediately shifted positions, heading in the opposite direction.
Strumming the string caused the Gold-Nibbling Mouse's mouth to open, and once the strum stopped, its mouth would clamp shut with tremendous force.
With the Puppet-Source, controlling the puppet became way easier, but it was still by no means a simple task, not to mention if one wanted to control multiple puppets.
Minos could imagine that such a thing would be completely impossible without the help of the Puppet-Source, not to mention the tremendous power difference that came between having it and not.
When Minos controlled the Gold-Nibbling Mouse with just strings, it was like he was hauling around a skeleton, but with the Puppet-Source, this skeleton came to life, its bones were once more draped with muscles.
It moved faster, bit harder, jumped higher, it completely evolved from a doll to a true puppet, finally showcasing the true power that Puppet-Masters wielded.
And this was only one puppet, and the lowest level one at that, yet Minos knew that if he had such a thing when he was in the early stages of Mortal Renewal, he would be able to easily fight multiple opponents at once.
Of course fighting with a puppet was still a skill that required mastery of its own, but with his split souls, he could completely jump over that hurdle.
If Minos had the right puppets at the moment, he would already be akin to a one man army, and if he was once again faced with an ambush like the one a few months ago, he wouldn't even need to rely on trickery, instead just slaughtering them all face on.
The Gold-Nibbling Mouse was too weak to be very useful at his current stage, but it was the success that proved Minos could make something stronger.
Of course the contribution points required to buy the materials needed for a Two-Moon Puppet would be much higher, much less a Three-Moon Puppet.
The material required to make a Diving Eagle Puppet would cost around 2000 or so contribution points, nearly ten times more expensive than a Gold-Nibbling Mouse.
And if the Diving Eagle Puppet sounded scary, then the 20,000 contribution points required for a Howling Bear Puppet was enough to horrify even the toughest person.
Not to mention that was just the price for the materials, and it didn't at all guarantee success, meaning if someone had a success rate of around 10%, it would take 200,000 contribution points.
Minos hadn't even begun making Inner Heaven level puppets yet, but the price had already reached such a staggering point, further highlighting why Puppet-Masters were so uncommon.
Minos's contribution points had long since been swept clean when he purchased those Lock Breaking Pills, so he'd have to start from zero if he wanted to save up for the right materials.
Fortunately while the Howling Bear was a bit far away, the Diving Eagle wasn't unreachable, and would only require two-weeks or so of saving up.
Of course if Minos could sell his puppets and weapons, then he'd be able to earn contribution points much faster, unfortunately that wasn't possible at the moment.
To earn contribution points, one had to sell in the sect, and the only way to do that was with an identity, and Minos obviously couldn't use Merth's identity to sell those things.
Besides, the missions had the added bonus of refining his combat skills, which isn't something you could train by just sitting around and selling goods.
In the future once this was over, he could always sell his goods, but until then, it was a good chance to master the art of killing.
As Minos tucked away his Gold-Nibbling Mouse into his spatial ring, he suddenly heard a sound enter his field of hearing.
Walking over to his window, Minos peered out onto the small garden in his backyard. Watching for a moment, he soon noticed the small rustling in the bushes.
'About time.' Minos thought with a smile, as he walked back away from the window.
…
"Any news?" Trell asked, still sitting on the same seat as he read his book.
"Nothing much for now. He's spent the last few days holed up in his house, so he must be up to something, but what that is, I'm not sure." Shadow said from behind Trell.
"Hmm, how about the ambush, any word?" Trell kept questioning.
"We've found the site, it was littered with corpses, each one mutilated, making it impossible to tell the method of killing." Shadow replied.
"Tell me Shadow, what does that information tell you?" Trell asked, not yet giving his opinion.
"In my opinion, it could mean two things. One is that the means of killing was incredibly destructive, only leaving behind broken bodies, the second is that it was done on purpose to hide the true method of killing." Shadow answered.
"Let's suppose that the second option is the truth, why would he want to hide his true means of killing?" Trell asked.
"Could it be because his true treasure is what caused those deaths, so he doesn't want to make it obvious?" Shadow said, not fully confident.
"Precisely, so either his treasure is a weapon capable of causing destructive deaths, or a weapon he wants to keep hidden through camouflage. All our clues point toward the treasure being a weapon."
"Didn't we already know that Master?" Shadow asked, having long since thought that the treasure was a weapon.
"We thought that, but we didn't know it. Now that it's clear, it's obvious we can't fight him face on, or else we may die in a similar way." Trell said, as he got up from his chair and began pacing the room.
"We need to kill him before he can even react, otherwise if he has a chance of unleashing his weapon, it would be our end." Trell said as he paced, rubbing his chin, plans bouncing back and forth in his head.
"Why not use the maid?" Shadow suddenly said.
"Maid? He's already lost trust in her, how are we meant to use her?" Trell asked, curious about Shadow's plan.
"Considering how Merth was betrayed by her, and given the knowledge she has about his treasure, he must want nothing more than to kill her, so what if we used her as bait?" Shadow said.
"Bait? Yes, brilliant! But while that would work to get him where we wanted, we still need a method of killing." Trell said, still thinking.
Shadow didn't have a proper answer for that, so he simply stood in silence, giving Trell the quiet he needed to think.
"Abyss Cliff! As long as we can corner him there and use some heavy bow cannons, we'd be able to force him off the edge before he can even react!" Trell suddenly said.
Bow Cannons weren't any sort of cultivator treasure, and in fact even mortals could craft them, but that didn't take away from their power.
While it was near impossible to hit mid to late stage Mortal Renewal cultivators with one, that was only if their guard was raised.
If caught off guard, the massive arrows fired by a Bow Cannon could severely injure even a late stage Mortal Renewal cultivator.
Even if Merth could survive the arrow, the force would send him flying off the cliff, and the fall would guarantee his death.
After that, Trell just needed to go down the cliff and find his corpse, securing the treasure without ever having to face him.
"Go buy some bow cannons and get them ready by Abyss Cliff. I want at least a dozen of them, enough to cover every single angle." Trell said.
"Yes Master!" Shadow responded readily, once more disappearing as he quickly got to work on Trell's plan.
A smile couldn't help but form on Trell's face as he thought about his future. Once he had Merth's treasure, earning his position as Young Patriarch in the coming competition would be a cinch.