The puppets were starting to spread. Students were now directly attacking teachers with expressionless faces. How they were spreading was beyond all the teachers. It seemed that the puppets could spread more of them through touch.
A puppeted student went towards another regular student. His pants were tattered, and his arms were bruised. His neck and face were greatly discolored, but his arms were coated in molten metal that was bending to his, or the puppet master's, will.
The other students tried to run, but she was far out of any energy and was quickly grabbed by the neck and slowly converted into another puppet. Teachers were spread thin across the Falem campus, and even people of Rank 4 were being called in.
Right now, handling students is easy. It was watching each other that was starting to make them less efficient. They already had a Rank 3 teacher, Rose, who became a puppet briefly. Thankfully, she was taken out quickly and was now well on her way to recovery.
When she would wake, she would start to create vessels for enchanters to make artifacts that could undo everything without harming anyone, or even simply detecting who was a puppet and who wasn't.
The battlefield was more controlled than chaotic. They needed to be careful with the students. If any blood got on their hands, then Falem would face great backlash.
Puppets were being created more and more as time went on. Being careful was causing them to be slow. They were having a search team go out and look for whoever the potential puppeteer was. They had too many teams for too many things.
One to keep track of the students, one to find the puppeteer, one to fight the students, one to point out the puppets, one to search for the rest of the students, and one to take the students to get medical attention.
The headmaster was also now in the fight. He used magic to easily put multiple students in subdued states, but even he had to be careful. Only with those who had high life energy, like Ritchard, were they allowed to be a little rougher.
Slowly, the number of students who were able to be puppeted was running low, but they finally got a Rank 4 teacher. This caused the battle to finally erupt into a chaotic state.
Mr. Till was fighting the teacher alongside Mrs. Burk. He was using water while she was using bending light around both of them to make them invisible to the puppet teacher. With both of them working together, it was easy to take him down, but they were not being focused on at all.
The puppet went towards the other teachers; he was primarily focused on his own speed for his path, and infected more and more. Their staff was dwindling. They were now fighting multiple teachers at once. They couldn't see, but Rank 4's had enough ways to deal with people by simply attacking in a direction.
They both made their attacks come from multiple different directions and rarely used their locations as the starting point of such attacks. Multiple bullets of water formed in the air as storms started to brew. The storms were forming from another Rank 4 that controlled the weather a bit, and it started to rain heavily to provide them with an advantage.
The bullets of water rained down at great speeds and targeted the joints and soft spots of all of the teachers who were puppets indiscriminately. Sadly, with their peers, they couldn't afford to be careful. They would have to hope and pray to the Flame of Creation that a Rank 4 healer would come with the reinforcements.
As they were fighting, many students started to get caught up in the mess. It took the remaining amount of focus of both Mrs. Burk and Mr. Till to keep them safe and alive, at the very least alive. The headmaster was now personally fighting. He didn't hold back anymore and started to use massive spells to get rid of the puppets.
Vince even came out of his shell and helped in these spells. The tides started to change again as they stopped holding back. It was obvious that using so many Rank 4 puppets was causing the puppeteer to lose control and coordination.
Mr. Till used his life energy to dodge a pillar of fire that descended onto the spot where he was. They were getting dangerously close to hitting him. He then had to dodge again when the very air seemed to implode onto itself. That would've put him right where they wanted him.
The puppeteer has someone with mind abilities. We are starting to move like chess pieces. Benajmin's voice echoed through all of their minds. Start moving abnormally and adjust how you are attacking! Become sporadic!
They started to use that strategy and started to gain footing again. They weren't able to get any additional breathing room, but that was fine.
They kept moving in unison with all of their thoughts connected. Being teachers who worked together for many years, they were able to easily fall into a rhythm with each other. They also knew the abilities of their colleagues.
As the battle went on, they were gaining more of an advantage. All of the unconscious teachers were starting to recover, and they had backup in the perimeter waiting on standby.
Then, during a small portion of a second. All of the puppets froze. It was an instant, and everyone became on guard again. Everyone was frozen for a couple of seconds, waiting. Then the battle erupted again with the puppets moving first, but much less controlled this time.
The fight was becoming rapidly easier as they went on to the point of it being trivial. Their numbers went down, and the coordination was sloppy. The fight became slower and slower until only a couple of the puppets were up.
Then they all collapsed at once. All of the puppets were released in the same exact instant