While Trell and Shadow were getting to work realizing their schemes, Minos was once again back on the mission grind.
After so many missions, Minos's combat skills had been pushed to a point of perfection. What was a conscious maneuver in the past has become subconscious now.
When faced with an attack, Minos's body would respond before even he could, his skills having been inscribed deep into his flesh.
Coupled with his recent breakthrough and perfected Moon Tempest Sword, killing became easier than ever, not even requiring Minos to use his Heaven-Sundering Sword anymore.
The missions that once took three days to complete, now dropped to two. Half a day to get there, a day to kill, and another half to get back.
In the past he would scout out his prey for quite a while before attacking, just to make sure, but now he didn't need to bother.
As long as they weren't in the Inner Heaven Realm, they had no chance, only watching in fear as Minos inevitably reaped their lives.
After so much killing, Minos's heart had become completely numb, only watching on with cold eyes after each kill.
It wasn't that he enjoyed killing, but life was inherently cruel, and if Minos didn't find the determination to kill others, he would only be the one being killed.
He could only make sure that every creature he killed would have their corpses used to the fullest, so at the very least their deaths weren't meaningless.
…
Back at the sect, Minos once again handed in another mission before walking out. By this time, all the eyes that once looked at him with doubt and envy were now filled with reverence and admiration.
"Merth, would you like to hang out sometime? I know a place with the best drinks." A beautiful woman asked as she jumped in front of Minos.
"I'm busy." Minos responded with an annoyed voice as Merth would, before forcefully pushing the woman out of his way.
"Is she stupid? Doesn't she know Merth's character?" One girl couldn't help but gloat.
"She probably thought she was special since she looks kind of good. What a joke!" Another said with a laugh.
Hearing all the mocking, the woman's face couldn't help but go red in shame, quickly running out to escape the voices.
Naturally Minos didn't care about any of that, instead quickly making his way to the Resource Hall to buy the things needed to make a Diving Eagle.
Unlike the Gold-Nibbling Mouse, the Diving Eagle would actually be quite useful to him, so his excitement was even higher than the first time he came here.
After purchasing everything he needed, Minos quickly made his way back home. Heading up to his room, Minos decided not to waste any time, getting right to work.
The Diving Eagle was much more complicated to make compared to the Gold-Nibbling Mouse, which could be seen as the easiest puppet one could create.
Its much larger size meant that it required many more Puppet-Vessels to adequately send power throughout its body.
Not to mention the wings, which required incredible delicacy and skill to properly craft, being a challenge on their own.
Given the special nature of the Diving Eagle, in terms of manufacturing, its difficulty wasn't actually much lower than the Howling Bear.
However the Howling Bear's large size exponentially raised the strain, making its creation a challenge even for the most experienced Puppet-Masters.
This didn't mean that bigger puppets were always harder to build, but they were definitely much more time intensive and exhausting.
With the experience of making the Gold-Nibbling Mouse, Minos quickly created the Diving Eagle's Puppet-Husk.
One nice thing about the Diving Eagle was that its wings could be made separately from its body then attached later, so even if one failed at making the wings, they didn't need to scrap the whole puppet.
With the Puppet-Husk completely, Minos moved on to the wings. Each feather had to be carved out perfectly before being fused onto the wings, and it was exactly this challenge of crafting each feather that was such a challenge.
However Minos had previously spent a lot of time learning from Tinka, so his sculpting skills had already reached an experienced level.
He was certainly no sculpting expert, but compared to most Puppet-Masters who had no training in this regard, he had quite the advantage.
With this skill already on hand, the feathers weren't actually too difficult, Minos getting through a feather every 15 minutes or so.
However, considering he needed at least twenty wings to give this bird flight, that was five hours of work on making feathers alone.
Minos was already very fast at 15 minutes a piece, so you could imagine how frustrating this task would be for the average Puppet-Master.
Fortunately with Minos's naturally disciplined personality, these five hours passed quickly, finally laying down the last feather as he let out a sigh of relief.
It would be a lie to say that five hours of repetitive work wasn't exhausting mentally, but with a goal in mind, Minos got through it.
With all the feathers made, he just needed to put them on their proper spots on the wings, which wasn't too difficult.
With that task done, the only challenge left was to make the vessels. Compared to the Gold-Nibbling Mouse that had a solid core, the Diving Eagle was mostly hollow since it needed to be light enough to fly.
This hollow center made creating vessels much harder given the smaller and more narrow space one had to work with.
However with his incredible hearing and special vibration technique, Minos made quick work of this otherwise incredibly difficult task.
Even though the challenge wasn't too hard for Minos's current skill level, the time required was by no means small.
Given the special nature of the Diving Eagle, Minos was incredibly patient with his work, not wanting to mess up and start over.
His patience soon paid off, because after another 10 hours of work, he was finally finished, albeit he was also completely drained at this point.
Not even bothering to finish his work, Minos just placed the puppet down on his desk before collapsing on his bed, planning to catch a few hours of sleep to refresh himself before finishing the job.
While Minos was catching up on lost sleep, Trell and Shadow were getting ready to initiate their trap.
…
"Master Trell, Merth has been cooped up in his house for the past day, should we initiate the plan?" Shadow asked.
"Took him long enough, I thought he would never stop taking missions. What is he doing right now?" Trell asked.
"He should be sleeping." Shadow responded.
"Let's give him one more good rest, the least we could do before we send him on his way. Once he wakes up, let's begin." Trell said, a smile forming on his face as the satisfaction of everything going according to his plans sweeping his body.
"Yes Master!" Shadow answered, once again vanishing as he normally did.
…
With Minos's cultivation, he only needed a few hours of sleep at a time to feel fully refreshed, so only after three hours or so, he was back up at full energy.
Not even cleaning himself up, he jumped right back into his chair, putting the finishing touches on his Diving Eagle before putting the whole thing together.
With all the hard parts out of the way, this final process was simple, and after only 10 minutes or so of fiddling, the puppet was complete.
Activating it as usual, Minos watched with anticipation as the Diving Eagles eyes began glowing, the puppet coming to life.
Despite seeing this, Minos's heart was in his throat, still feeling somewhat anxious. Even though the Diving Eagle's eyes had lit up, they could go off any second, which would indicate a failure.
Fortunately even after a few minutes, the puppet's eyes still shined with Vigor, and Minos's heart finally dropped back into his chest.
Gently placing a string into the Puppet-Core, Minos tugged the string, watching as the Diving Eagle took off into the sky.
He had never experienced controlling something like this before, so the Diving Eagle only leaped up before collapsing onto the room floor, dousing his excitement like a wet rag on a cinder.
Controlling the Diving Eagle again, Minos once more got it to leap into the sky, but again his poor control caused it to collapse back to earth.
After a few attempts like this, Minos finally got a handle on things, learning how to properly manipulate the Diving Eagles wings to give it proper flight.
His control was still far from perfect, and given the tight space of the room, he could really go all out, but fortunately he at least knew how to get it to fly by now.
He planned on leaving the sect and finding a good place to properly train, but before he could, he heard some steps heading directly towards his front door.
He had long since known that Trell had been spying on him, but he wasn't quite sure what his plan was, but instinct told him that the truth was about to unravel.
Soon enough, a heavy knock came at the front door. Minos tucked his Diving Eagle into his spatial ring before heading downstairs, curious about what Trell was going to do.