Silver to Sebastian

Auriel was practicing how to move this living puppet of his for a couple of hours, making Celeste who was watching this bored after her momentary fascination with the human puppet. 

Now, Auriel could easily move this puppet like a real human making it impossible to differentiate this being from a living doll. Though he didn't put any of his strings to this puppet's tongue and mouth. So, Auriel couldn't make the puppet speak. 

And there was something that lowered his morale considerably, which was that whatever he tried, he couldn't use the ability of this Awakened puppet. 

He knew that the original Auriel used other people with their abilities, so all he needed to was learn and practice more in the future. 

But there was something that came to his mind while playing with the human puppet, and this was that 8 of his fingers were occupied with this puppet. This made it impossible for him to create more puppets and connect them to himself. 

There were so many things Auriel needed to do while he had too little time. His eventual meeting with Silas was near, around 3 years later. 

These 3 years were pretty short for the ones who were on the path of power because advancing through the ranks sometimes takes decades even for talented individuals. 

But they don't usually die because of old age because their advanced bodies usually have longer lifespans because they begin to shed their mortal shells. 

That was the reason why Auriel was in a hurry to advance quickly, at least to Master if not Grandmaster. 

He needed to learn how to connect many puppets to himself, learn to use their abilities, learn to make the ethereal black thread that connects him and puppets invisible, improve his string capacity, and make people puppets without needing to do surgery like this for an hour or 2.

And there was his weight problem, bad reputation, and his bad relationship with Celeste and her mysterious ability. 

Thinking all of this, Auriel couldn't help but sigh, and turned to Celeste, whose eyes were closed and heaving deep breaths while leaning against the walls. She was sleeping. 

Auriel also wanted to sleep as he thought that he deserved after working almost non-stop in the Divine realm, but he knew that he needed to grit his teeth and work a little bit harder to rest peacefully in the future. 

Therefore, Auriel decided to push the limits of his power. He wanted to know if he could move this living puppet of his if the puppet woke up from his unconscious state. 

Though he wasn't an idiot to reduce his control immediately, he put the puppet on the metal chair and cuffed his limbs except one of his hands. 

Then he controlled that hand and made the puppet slap himself on the face, effectively waking him up. 

"Move your hand." Auriel commanded coldly but the criminal's hand didn't move in the slightest. 

"Do you still want to live even if you become my personal puppet?"

This puppet criminal hesitated a moment but eventually nodded his head. 

"That is good. You won't be a complete puppet, I will just hold your strings in case you decide to become an idiot. Do you understand?" 

After receiving a slight nod from the criminal, Auriel took back the ethereal strings that he injected into the criminal's left arm and hand, then the right leg and foot. Freeing them from his control. 

After that, he injected half of the strings he took back to the other 4 connection to make his control absolute on that limbs. Which was criminal's right arm and hand, and left leg and foot.

And with the remaining strings in his hand, Auriel did something vicious: he injected the malicious black strings into the criminal's neck and wrapped them around like a noose. 

With this, if this puppet of his decided to betray him, he could just tear the puppet's neck from his body. 

After his work was done, he turned to Celeste. 

"Celeste wake up!" 

Celeste's eyes twitched after hearing Auriel's shout and she frowned without opening her eyes. 

"What?" She asked with a harsh tone. 

"I am going to try something. So, can you protect the son of your adopted father?" 

After saying this, Auriel threw the keys to the criminal without waiting for a response. The criminal caught the keys and unlocked the cuffs. 

Then Auriel pulled the criminal from the string around his neck, dragging the criminal onto the ground while the criminal tried to breathe desperately. 

"Well, how is it? I decided to leave him semi-free to reduce the burden on me." Auriel asked Celeste. 

"He will kill you in your sleep." Celeste bluntly said. 

"He will." Auriel nodded, then added. 

"If he wants to lose his life with me. Because my strings are inside him, which killed an Awakened from Afterlife Church. It is impossible for a low class criminal to get rid of them or be alive after killing me." 

"That is true." Celeste nodded. 

"So, what will you do with him?" 

Auriel thought for a while and an idea came to his mind. 

"Well, he can be my guard dressed like a butler outfit." He said and turned to the living puppet. 

"You can take the cloth that is covering your eyes and mouth."

The human puppet removed these cloth pieces and looked at Auriel with shaking eyes. 

"He's a bit of a coward, but I hope he knows how to use his ability properly." Auriel murmured to himself, then looked into the criminal's eyes coldly. 

"So, what is your name? I can't call you just a living puppet, right?"

The living puppet lowered his gaze and whispered in a barely audible voice.

"Silver… That's my name."

After hearing Silver's name, Auriel couldn't help but remember Silas's name, which made him angry for no real reason. 

"That is a disgusting name. Your new name is Sebastian. It is a stereotypical butler name but it is better than Silver. Okay?" Auriel asked coldly and tapped Silver's forehead. 

"Yes…"

This was how Auriel got himself a butler named Sebastian.