We made progress, at least in a small way. By the fourth day, Elyonari, Jack, and Griselda had actually found the first Demesne.
It took them hours of crawling through the twisting branches of the beanstalk. Elyonari had practically had to wrestle the thing free from the stalk and when she finally did, it looked like a gigantic bean pod. Also, it was so absurdly large that it would have been laughable if it weren't so obviously magical. She tucked it into her inventory and while it didn't resonate with her personally, we all knew it had to belong to her brother.
Meanwhile, the second Demesne—the one that was probably meant for Elyonari herself—remained elusive. I could feel the strain in Veneri's mind every time he went through the information Luciana's puppets brought back. It wasn't for lack of trying. The workshop bedroom had become this nerve center of observation. Luciana's maid puppets flitted through every place watching and recording.
Luciana would relay the visuals to Veneri, who would run Memory Extraction on her, pulling the memories and minute details from her consciousness, while simultaneously using Memory Implantation on me so I could understand what she had seen without actually being there. After I absorbed everything, Luciana would use Memory Implantation on Griselda to see what the goose had observed. It didn't yield a single hint of the second Demesne.
Every time Luciana's puppets returned with nothing but empty corridors and sleeping servants, the thought became unavoidable. The only place we hadn't checked was the giant's room. It's the one place where no one, not even Luciana in her millennia had ever dared to look.
Luciana was unusually serious that afternoon of the sixth day, pacing slowly as she explained the scale of the problem to us.
"The giant is no ordinary being. He's a Fifth Enlightenment Divine. His Overwrite activates at night. That means when the moon rises, any intrusion into his immediate space becomes fatal. He sleeps during the day but the moment he returns to his room, it becomes an impenetrable fortress. Even as his wife, I've have never seen him in the flesh. I've been in this castle for millennia and I have never glimpsed the giant himself. I've tried countless times to see him. I sent my puppets forward but even the smallest approach is catastrophic. They don't survive. So if we want that Demesne, we have to deal with him. We have to kill the giant."
Killing a Fifth Enlightenment Divine against a being whose Overwrite could annihilate everything close to it? In fact, the only reason Veneri and Elyonari have fought being stronger than them is because of their weak Overwrites. Elyonari's fight against Acidia was only won because Acidia's Overwrite was weak. But a World Overwrite?
We definitely need a plan.
The ninth day was when we began taking action.
Luciana finally decided it was time to activate her puppets. And when I say "activate," I mean she called forth all five thousand of them.
It was at that moment I realized I had a new responsibility. Luciana, having been integrated into my Omniscient System through, now had the Base Tether Inventory. Every single one of her puppets, every weapon and anything she had amassed over thousands of years, could now be stored.
And then, of course, I found out about her abilities.
Luciana is not just any Witch. She's a Ninth Star Witch. She doesn't abide by the traditional Divine Enlightenment Stages but if I had to guess, she would be a Fourth Enlightenment Divine. She has a Pinnacle Tether called Puppet Transmutation.
Literally any solid object, anything with a form or density, could be transmuted into one of her puppets. Rocks, wood, metal, broken glass, shards of crystal, even something as trivial as a teacup, everything could become a puppet. And it wouldn't just be some mindless, simple automaton. These things were imbued with thought, subtlety and with skills that Luciana painstakingly taught them over the centuries.
The three generations of puppets she had were staggering.
The First Generation were the Maid Puppets, the reconnaissance units. They were weak, yes but their strength was focused on subtlety, perfect for scouting the castle without drawing attention.
Then there were the Second Generation: the Assassin Maidens. These were Luciana's warriors, specifically designed to kill if necessary and to protect her at all costs. They were nimble, precise, and merciless.
Finally, the Third Generation: the Knight Maidens. These were the true apex of her creation, capable of wielding weapons with a level of skill that bordered on perfection. Every sword stroke, every spear thrust and every sequence of combat maneuvers she had learned over millennia was imprinted into their cores.
I remember watching Luciana explain to Veneri that it took thousands of years just to understand how to wield some of these weapons herself, and then to encode that understanding into a puppet's consciousness so it could fight independently. It was insane.
"When we get out of these trials, I'll help your puppets become even more powerful. We'll refine and enhance them beyond anything you could imagine. But for now, our focus is to kill the giant."
And of course, I knew how he was going to do that.
The tenth day dawned after a night of tense preparation. We spent hours going over every detail, walking through the plan again and again because at this point, all of us were going to battle with no information.
Luciana positioned her Knight Maidens across every corridor. Hundreds of them moved silently, ready to relay every tiny piece of information back to us. Veneri ran simulation after simulation in his head, anticipating the giant's movements, predicting where the Overwrite might extend. I observed, acting as the conduit between Luciana's puppets and Veneri's strategy.
And yet, even with all of our planning, all of our simulations, all of our strategies, there was an underlying horror in the air. We were confronting a being who existed on a scale most of us couldn't even comprehend.
By the time the sun was fully down on the tenth day, the castle seemed to hold its breath. Luciana's puppets were in position. Our plans were finalized.