"Hey, you there. Do you want to leave this place? Because I can help you with that!"
Just as the four of them trudged back through the gladiator's entrance, the guard's relaxed, almost teasing voice reached their ears.
The group whipped their heads around to look at the guard puppet, their eyes suddenly like those of hungry jackals that had just spotted their prey.
"What did you just say?"
Mikhail held back his visibly excited companions and asked, his voice low and steady.
The guard puppet broke into a brilliant, knowing smile and said, "I can take you out of this world!"
"Really?"
This time, even the usually composed Mikhail couldn't contain the hope surging through him. He truly, desperately longed to leave this world of toys.
"Of course!"
The guard puppet's voice suddenly took on a magnetic quality. Its body began to squirm and deform, reshaping itself into the Amon avatar, complete with the pointed soft hat, classical long robe, and the crystal-ground monocle over his right eye. He now had the appearance of a normal human, no longer a stitched-together puppet.
He had swapped places with the puppet he had turned into a secret double. Now, it was his puppet-double who was watching the gladiatorial combat from the spectator stands. This was an ability of a Sequence 4 Bizarro Sorcerer of the Fool Pathway, allowing him to swap positions with a double within a certain range, effectively making the double the main body.
"Those who wish to leave, come closer," the Amon avatar said to the four astonished men.
Seeing the avatar's normal human appearance, tears almost welled up in their eyes. Since arriving in this world and being forcibly transformed into these toy-like bodies, they had not seen a single normal person.
The group eagerly moved closer to the Amon avatar's body. A soft starlight flickered around them, followed by a disorienting, dizzying sensation. By the time they could react again, they had appeared in a desolate, barren area, with no other puppets in sight.
The four cosmonauts quickly recovered from their dizziness. Mikhail, their captain, immediately addressed the Amon avatar, who was nonchalantly polishing his monocle.
"Are you a mutant? As far as I know, only mutants might possess this kind of extraordinary ability."
"Guess," the Amon avatar replied in a profoundly annoying, sing-song tone.
"Uh," Mikhail was rendered completely speechless.
Suddenly, he saw the mysterious being who had saved them from the arena quickly forming a series of intricate hand seals that he couldn't possibly comprehend. Then, a doorway made of countless swirling points of starlight materialized before them.
"Quickly, jump into the Star Door! It will take you back to the real universe! We'll talk about other things later!" the Amon avatar said, his tone now noticeably urgent. Simultaneously, he pushed his right hand forward, and the surrounding area fell eerily silent, as if it had been completely isolated from the rest of the world.
The original arena had been completely transformed into crystal. The architecture and all the puppets still inside were now solid, gleaming crystal. The crowned puppet, the sovereign of this realm, walked through the crystalized arena, searching for any trace of the intruder's aura.
"It's that intruder from another dimension," he growled. "He took those four individuals from the real dimension and ran away."
Suddenly, the crowned puppet sensed something and looked toward the distant desert. "There!"
After muttering the single word, the crowned puppet instantly vanished from its original spot.
Back in the desert, the four cosmonauts, all rigorously trained, could sense the urgency in the Amon avatar's actions and tone.
Mikhail didn't waste time with words, simply telling his teammates, "Go!"
The remaining three cosmonauts were equally decisive, quickly scrambling through the Star Door. Seeing that his teammates had all made it through, Mikhail glanced one last time at the Amon avatar and also stepped into the shimmering portal.
The very next moment, an endless rain of crystals cascaded down from the sky, transforming the entire desert into a forest of glittering, crystalline spires.
The surrounding space was reinforced and locked down, making teleportation significantly more difficult. The Amon avatar, caught in the rapid assault, didn't have time to dodge and was hit directly.
Bang!
The flattened Amon avatar turned into a simple paper figure. The real Amon avatar appeared atop a tall crystal spire, looking calmly at the crowned puppet hovering in the sky.
"King, why so much anger?" he called out cheerfully. "How about we sit down and have a chat about how to build your Toy Kingdom even better?"
As he spoke, the Amon avatar even reached into the void, somehow stealing a table, which he placed directly in the air between them. He then beckoned for the crowned puppet to come and take a seat.
The crowned puppet ignored the Amon avatar's bizarre invitation and said with an enraged voice, "Intruder from another dimension, why did you take my toys?"
The Amon avatar waved his hand dismissively and said with a smile, "Those people didn't belong to your dimension in the first place. What's wrong with me sending them back to where they came from?"
"Those are the King's toys! It's not up to you to decide to let them go!" an angry voice thundered from the sky, and an endless barrage of crystal meteorites rained down. Hundreds of the blocky giant dragons the Amon avatar had seen before also emerged from the ground, all attacking him in a coordinated assault.
"Hey, you're looking for helpers in a fight, so don't blame me for calling in some backup of my own!" the Amon avatar said with exaggerated flair. He then stretched his hand into the void, seemingly dragging something out.
Soon, a small boy with a white shirt, denim overalls, and slightly curly hair was unceremoniously dragged out of the void by the Amon avatar.
When he was first pulled out, the boy's expression was still somewhat dazed, but in an instant, his eyes cleared and he became full of spirit. He first looked back speechlessly at his avatar, who simply shrugged, indicating that he should handle the current matter.
The one dragged out by the Amon avatar was indeed the historical projection of Amon's main body, a power of a Sequence 3 Scholar of Yore from the Fool Pathway. He could summon images from the cracks of history, which could be people or objects. The more detailed his understanding of the corresponding subject, the more real the projection would be, the greater the success rate, and the longer it would last.
For an avatar to summon the historical projection of its main body was, of course, a 100% success. Under normal circumstances, the historical projection of a summoned character has no consciousness. However, if the historical projection of a Scholar of Yore is summoned, the Scholar of Yore would be aware of it and could then let their main consciousness enter the projection. The current situation was that Amon's main body's consciousness had entered his historical projection to help his avatar fight.
The Amon shadow first raised his right hand and waved it toward the horde of blocky giant dragons. All the dragons became dazed, and a crystal-ground monocle appeared over each of their right eyes. They had all become Amon's new puppet doubles.
Then, the Amon shadow looked at the endless meteorites falling from the sky. He snapped his left finger, and while the meteorite shower crashed down, not a single one hit either the Amon shadow or the Amon avatar. He had simply lowered the probability of the meteorites hitting them, thus successfully dodging the attack.
"Who are you?" the crowned puppet in the high sky asked, his tone now solemn as he halted his attack.
"I'm just a kid who was pulled out to do some work," the Amon shadow replied casually. "If you really must call me something, you can call me Bizarro."
Ignoring the crowned puppet's reaction, the Amon shadow waved his hand forward, and a Star Door appeared in front of the Amon avatar.
"Goodbye!"
The Amon avatar gave a theatrical bow to the crowned puppet in the high sky and then stepped through the Star Door. The portal then closed, and the Amon shadow slowly dissipated.
The crowned puppet wanted to prevent the intruder from leaving by controlling the pocket dimension, but his mind somehow blurred for a brief moment. When he regained consciousness, he found himself unknowingly trapped in a strange, labyrinthine space where his control over the dimension was reduced to an extreme degree.
Finally, after being lost in the strange space for two or three minutes, the crowned puppet found a way to escape and left the disorienting prison. By then, it was impossible for him to track Amon's whereabouts.
"Bizarro!"