Alfonso paid no attention to the distorted and noisy 'puppets' outside the gate; his attention was first drawn to the dozens of corpses covered with white sheets on the ground.

Wilder crouched down, gently covering the white sheet that had been blown by the wind with his hand, and sighed: "There are thirty-five bodies here in total. They went to Watchtower for a meal or a party this afternoon, and when they came back, they started vomiting and had diarrhea, then their hearts stopped beating and they stopped breathing."

Looking up at the soldiers in the square, Alfonso's brow furrowed even deeper: "There are less than 150 soldiers here in total. Where are the rest? The other knights? Commander Adams?"

Wilder gestured towards the two corpses furthest away: "The one on the left is Sir Adeanor, and the one on the right is Sir Adams. As for the others, they went into town and never returned. I, standing before you, am the only knight here..."

The Iron-Faced Knight fell silent.

He had thought things might be bad, but he hadn't expected them to be this bad.

Just as he was about to speak, a series of heavy thuds came from afar, drawing people's attention. The fifty-odd 'puppets' outside the gate, like puppets without strings, all collapsed to the ground.

Wilder turned his head and, noticing this unusual sight, exclaimed incredulously, "The enemy has retreated?"

wrong!

Something's definitely not right!

Suddenly, some words floated into Todd's mind. They were things he had heard before, but he couldn't quite recall them clearly.

In desperation, he tried asking Leslie, "I remember you mentioned something about how the 'Hive' controls the 'Puppet'..."

“Hmm? When the ‘Hive’ doesn’t need the ‘puppets’, it can cut off contact with them at any time.”

"No, no. Not this sentence, the one before it."

“Let me think… whenever needed, the ‘Hive’ can control them at will…”

Upon hearing this, Todd felt a jolt of fear, and the hairs on his body stood on end!

Slowly turning back, I saw one corpse after another rising from beneath the white sheets in the square…