Millennium Witch.

Chapter 49 - 49 - These tentacles are also unusable.
The air suddenly froze, as if even the invisible dust held its breath. Facing the gaze formed by pairs of broken cameras and bionic eyes, Yvette's face was devoid of joy or sorrow, as indifferent as a finely crafted, empty doll.

She thought, "As expected, this magical girl named Bingyu is just a little silly. Look at the other mechanical puppets, they noticed her human identity so quickly. That makes sense."

However, she didn't care. With her current strength, destroying a small village of a few dozen people made up of old, weak, sick, and disabled scrap metal robots would be a piece of cake. If a conflict were to break out, the one who should really be afraid was the other side.

But in the very next second—

"So alike...so very alike!"

"By the God of Machines, this...this is so beautiful! This lady looks exactly like a human!"

"How did she do it? Look at her natural elegance, I doubt I could ever achieve that in my entire life!"

"Could this be the legendary state of 'machine-human fusion'? Is she about to become human?"

"She must be a messenger of the gods, right?"

Exclamations of amazement came from all directions. The puppets, pieced together from discarded parts, had their camera lenses flashing intensely, looking exceptionally excited.

Yvette blinked, wondering if something was off about the script.

Her calm eyes glanced at Bingyu beside her, only to see Bingyu puff out her soft, artificial silicone face and say with a sour pout, "I think she's pretty much the same as me..."

"Gentlemen, my name is 'Elder,' and I am the executive officer of the Agasha Black Tide branch. May I ask the names of you two guests?" The old puppet, speaking through a tattered loudspeaker, walked up to Yvette, bent down with difficulty, and gave a slight bow in a somewhat unorthodox manner, appearing quite gentlemanly.

"Hello, my name is Bingyu, and I am a traveler from the Sky Kingdom!" Bingyu said politely.

“Yvette Loshivia, from a remote island, is also a traveler.” Yvette nodded slightly.

"Even her name has such an ancient feel to it!" The group of puppets who had been completely silent when Bingyu introduced herself started shouting again after hearing Yvette's introduction.

Yvette found it increasingly strange. It seemed that the mechanical puppets in this village were very fond of humans, even taking pride in imitating them... Was this a local characteristic? However, Ice Rain had previously praised her name. Did this mean that all the mechanical puppets in this world were like this?
What is the reason for this?
Spontaneous human worship?
Or is it related to that mysterious "God of Machines"?
As she pondered, the elder, who identified himself as the "executive officer" and was suspected to be the village chief of the area, warmly invited, "Since you two are passing by, please don't talk outside. Come to our reception room for some tea, how about it?"

"Drink tea..." Yvette glanced at the Elder's rusty body and the old-fashioned megaphone he used to speak, and said, "Okay."

She wanted to see what these mostly broken puppets, who lacked "mouths," really meant by "drinking tea."

Led by the elder, Yvette and Bingyu followed behind, passing countless admiring and envious gazes, and entered the interior of the Puppet Town.

Like the abandoned towns I've seen on Ish Island before, this puppet town, though dilapidated and old, has blended into the local vegetation over the years, exuding a new, vibrant green vitality.

Moreover, the puppets here seem to have a sense of cleanliness; although the ground in the middle of the path is cracked, the weeds are not growing vigorously, as if they have been trimmed. Between the gaps between the buildings overhead, dense tree canopies intertwine freely, and sunlight, like molten gold dust, forces its way through the layers of leaves, scattering fine spots of light on the ground.

The winding path led to a secluded spot, which looked quite like a paradise... Yvette walked and observed, and then saw a small patch of green grass in front of her. At the end of the grass was a building made of discarded shipping containers, which looked like a rusty pyramid with about four or five stories.

"Oh! This is your home?" Bingyu looked around curiously.

"Yes, we built them all ourselves," the elder said proudly.

“I thought you guys would just live in the human ruins,” Bingyu said.

“In the beginning, it was like that. Back then, my spiritual level wasn’t high enough. I thought that as long as I lived in a building left behind by humans, I could get close to them,” the elder said with emotion. “Later, after decades of cultivation, one day I suddenly had an epiphany… Do you know what I had an epiphany about?”

"What?" Bingyu asked cooperatively. "I've discovered that the key to what makes humans human is their ability to be self-reliant. That's how they built such a magnificent pre-civilization from a primitive world with nothing. Our lazy behavior will only push us further away from humanity. So we abandoned our original dwellings and started building our own houses. This is our result; we call them 'container apartments.' Aren't they beautiful?"

Listening to the elder's speech, Yvette looked at the simple container pyramid and couldn't see what was so appealing about it.

Bingyu was quite shocked by this. Her bionic pupils dilated slightly, her mental core operated at high speed, and she fell into a kind of enlightened silence.

"Don't crash..." Yvette couldn't help but worry as she heard the buzzing sound of her brain's core operating at full capacity.

……

The meeting room of the Puppet Town is on the first floor of the container apartment. Before entering, Yvette saw small robots jumping and playing on the upper floors of the apartment, making a lot of noise with their footsteps and roller skates.

Upon entering the somewhat cramped room, Yvette saw a wooden table and cabinets. Since it wasn't convenient for two people to move around, the Elder entered from the opposite entrance, rummaged through a nearby shelf, and took out a bag of dark brown material that appeared to be tea.

"Where did this tea come from?" Yvette asked in surprise. Although the tea leaves were definitely no longer suitable for brewing, they didn't seem to be from hundreds of years ago. They looked like they had recently become damp and moldy.

"A few years ago, when I was traveling far away, a kingdom that knew how to grow tea sold it to me," the elder said with a smile, adding with some admiration. "In order to get closer to our creators, they actually established tea gardens and learned how to grow tea. I admire their efforts greatly. It's just that it was a bit expensive. I traded many human artifacts I found in ruins for two bags of tea, and I've been reluctant to drink them."

"The Creator?" Yvette asked warily. "Humans are the Creator? Then what is the God of Machines to you?"

"God gave us souls, and humanity gave us bodies. Therefore, humanity is our creator, and the great god of machines is the god we worship." The elder was a little puzzled. "This doesn't seem to contradict anything. Does our honored guest have any concerns about this?"

“I was presumptuous. The place I came to before was quite remote, without even a sanctuary,” Yvette said.

"Hey, kind lady, how come you're acting like an illiterate person?" Bingyu whined from the side. "Why don't you ask me first next time? Otherwise, I'll be too embarrassed to say that you're with me."

When did we become a couple?
Yvette glanced at her but didn't deny it, silently watching the elder continue brewing tea.

Take out a rough metal cup, put in moldy tea leaves and some not-so-clean cold water from the bucket, and the tea is ready.

Looking at the cup pushed in front of her, Yvette didn't touch it, but instead glanced to the side.

As a relatively new mechanical puppet, Bingyu appeared to have the ability to drink water, and she directly downed the cold tea brewed from the moldy tea leaves in one gulp.

"I can't keep this mouth anymore..." Yvette thought, then looked at the Grand Elder opposite her.

Unlike Bingyu, the Grand Elder's head only had a camera; the rest was just an empty metal plate, with even the speakers on his shoulders.

Under Yvette's watchful gaze, the Grand Elder, like a tea master, solemnly picked up the cup with both hands and poured the tea over a spot on his head where there was nothing—and unsurprisingly, it all spilled onto his chest.

But the elder seemed completely unaffected, putting down his cup and saying with a satisfied tone, "Ah, it's been so long since I've had this tea. It's still so sweet and delicious. No wonder it's one of the most popular drinks in human civilization."

What did you drink? It's so sweet and delicious, doesn't your conscience hurt to tell me...?

Yvette thought expressionlessly, if she were a psychiatrist, she could probably diagnose the Elder with cyberpsychosis on the spot right now. This is just too outrageous.

But since they had already tried so hard, in order to maintain etiquette, Yvette still sighed, picked up the teacup, and pretended to drink tea. In fact, the moment she drank, a tiny white tentacle extended from her fingertip and swallowed most of the strange liquid in the cup.

She thought, "I can't keep these tentacles either."

(End of this chapter)