"Magic, my favorite."
The girl puppet with the hacksaw turned around and sang, but the background music had already stopped. Jenkins, who was off the stage, was clutching his waist and looking at the stage, watching the light change from warm to cool, watching the girl puppet with a hacksaw, walking towards two swaying wooden boxes while spinning and singing.
"Oh~"
he said, swallowing:
"Why do you always come up with such stories?"
Under his gaze, the girl puppet skillfully sawed the two wooden boxes into twelve sections with the hacksaw in just a few minutes, accompanied by the screams of the other two puppets and the girl singing.
Then, it used a combination method to exchange the positions of the twelve sections of wooden boxes.
With a deafening snap of the fingers, the two wooden boxes went up into the sky and disappeared. The puppet after being rearranged and reorganized is still standing there. There are no traces of being cut and pieced together on the puppet, but the appearance of the puppet has completely changed, as if it has been replaced with a new one, and even the clothes on them are different:
"Father, mother, I'm going out."
The girl puppet casually threw the hacksaw at the hole in the oil painting, which opened a bigger hole, and then said aloud.
"OK."
It was a very simple answer, except that there was no emotion in the tone of the two new puppets.
Keeping a standing posture, they ascend to the sky, while the maiden puppet walks towards the door of the oil painting. Then the background oil painting changed again, which represented the beginning of the third act.
The number of acts of different scripts is written on the ticket. "Magic Girl" has only four acts, and this puppet show is already halfway through.
Jenkins let out a long sigh, the wound on his waist had almost healed. According to the rule that he interacted with the girl puppet in the story once as "Mr. Mirror" in the two acts just now, he will probably also participate in the next third and fourth acts for inexplicable reasons.
In the first act he just answered a question, in the second act he was forced to do it with the puppet. He didn't know what he would experience in the third act, but while he was thinking, the third act had already started with complicated background sounds.
The background oil painting reappeared. It was a bustling and noisy street, shrouded in a layer of gray fog. Among them, the characters depicted in the oil painting were not puppets but real human beings. The background sound is not music, but various human voices and carriage sounds, as if there is really a noisy street behind the stage.
From the side of the stage, the girl puppet walked to the center of the stage with cheerful steps, singing music even without music. The content of the lyrics is not important, they mostly express happy mood, and of course, I don’t forget to praise myself as the most beautiful girl and the best magician.
Brand-new props dropped from the sky, including a carriage in proportion to the puppets and a coachman puppet sitting on the carriage waiting for guests. The girl puppet came to the side of the carriage and said in a chants:
"The stage is about to open, and the magic show is imminent. Please take me to that stage."
The coachman puppet jumped out of the carriage with exaggerated movements, and while circling with the maiden puppet, he replied:
"The stage is about to open, you are the scheduled performer, but please take pity on me, the coachman, and pay the salary first before going on the road."
"Of course the remuneration can be paid, but please state your needs."
The maiden puppet sang to it.
"Since you are a magician, please get their hearts."
Three beams of light fell onto the stage, and in the light, three brand new puppets landed. On the far left is a man puppet looking down at the newspaper, standing in front of the lamppost in the oil painting; in the middle is a middle-aged woman puppet holding a bag of bread, standing in front of the intersection in the oil painting; the one closest to the carriage is carrying a basket The flower girl puppet, the head of the puppet is shaking from side to side, as if observing whether there are guests.
Jenkins is completely at a loss for the connection between "The Magician" and "Getting the Heart," but the Maiden Puppet readily agrees.
Then, the lights on the stage suddenly went out, leaving only four beams of light, respectively shining on the body of the girl puppet and three passer-by puppets:
"Time is short for the magic show, look at me, the most beautiful magician, easily win their hearts."
The girl puppet first sang and turned around, and came to the three puppets respectively, then took out the knife from nowhere, and then performed the puppet disassembly process and carpentry work in front of Jenkins, and really got three wooden hearts.
She praised her superb magic skills, and wanted to return to the carriage with three wooden hearts. But it stopped suddenly, and with the flickering lights on the stage and the sudden sound of the violin, the three dismantled puppets were reassembled as if going back in time. It's just that the recovered puppet turned black, and the voice of the girl puppet's chanting sounded:
"It's really unlucky, it turned out to be the resurrection of the undead. Oh, mirror, mirror, please help me deal with these undead."
The light covering the girl puppet suddenly disappeared, and the three black puppets in the cold white light all looked at Jenkins in the audience.
He looked anxiously at the metal puppet who sat back beside him at some point:
"I dismantled them this time, so it shouldn't affect the development of the story, right?"
"Of course, if you can actually tear them down."
The metal puppet has already begun to flee awkwardly to the row of chairs in the back.
Probably in order to express the undead attributes represented by the puppets, the three black puppets flew directly from the stage to the audience in the increasingly gloomy background music.
On their wooden torsos, some black wood whisker-like tentacles grew, and the wood on their bodies took root and sprouted again in just a few seconds, making the already terrifying faces even more curious and intrusive.
Although Jenkins has never seen the so-called "tree man", he can be sure that the tree man will not look like this. It is more like a monster in a horror story that the old witch did not breed to eat children.
"Now it's clear."
He took out the holy bone sword:
"The third treacherous realm is extremely rare, a treacherous realm that tests force."
Relatively speaking, the strange world is more inclined to test wisdom and luck. Mr. Barnard mentioned when he first entered the strange land, generally speaking, the strange land that tested the force is more dangerous. Not only because of the limitation that the ability can only be used once in the strange world, but also because most of the enemies in the strange world cannot be dealt with by humans.
Jenkins has experienced double-digit treacherous situations this year, but he has never encountered one that can be dealt with purely by force. He thought his story had come to an end, but he didn't expect to encounter such a situation at the end.
Now that his ability can't be used much, he still has to worry about the next six tests, so he has no choice but to use other methods. Instead, he uses the Holy Bone Sword to control the power of the undead and his own control over the plants, trying to directly gain control of the three black puppets.
But it was completely useless. When the spirits touched them in the air, they immediately discovered that although they looked like wood corroded by the power of the undead, they were definitely not puppets. Jenkins couldn't describe what he felt. He only knew that these three flying things were more like a collection of concepts than actual puppets. They didn't have entities, but they were more real than entities.
Even for a moment, he actually regarded the flying puppet as a flying page. He didn't know for the time being that this was a flash of his own inspiration, but a pure hallucination.
"So, the truth of this strange situation will not be..."
He guessed a very scary possibility, but it has not been verified yet. Holding the sword with one hand and flicking forward, there was a crisp clang sound, and the puppet flying in front was knocked into the air. But then the second puppet grabbed Jenkins' sword, and the third, like a crawling spider, quickly touched Jenkins' hand along the blade.
"Oops~"
The black wood whiskers pierced Jenkins' skin, and the toxin immediately penetrated the whole body along the blood vessels. Although the slight numbness lasted for less than a second and then disappeared, it also meant that this kind of toxin, which was not a toxin, was really useful to him.
"It's not poison, it's information."
In a brief paralysis, the puppet holding the Holy Bone Sword slammed into Jenkins' face, and more branches grew from the wooden body, allowing the puppet to hug Jenkins' face.
As more and more spikes penetrated Jenkins' skin, the other two puppets followed suit, one hugging Jenkins' right leg and continuing to hug his left hand.
But after a brief silence, the three puppets screamed at the same time, even suppressing the music that sounded from behind the stage.
Fire, a raging fire burst from Jenkins' pores, igniting the three puppets attached to him. They tried to let go of Jenkins, but instead got caught by him:
"Do you want to leave now?"
He pulled off the one holding his face, and slammed it into the one on his right hand. The strange blue flames envelop the three puppets, no matter how they struggle, they cannot escape the fate of being burned into ashes.
But Jenkins could feel that the fire was burning the soul more than the fire burning the wood. This puppet show is full of weirdness, the puppets on the stage are not puppets, and he feels this more deeply at this moment.
His guesses were verified bit by bit, and he probably guessed why the difference machine obviously couldn't affect this place too much, but still regarded this strange place as a part of the tower.
"Perhaps this place is more terrifying than the sum of the first two strange places..."
He thought to himself, looking behind him. But instead of looking at the metal puppet, it was the darkness farther away. In the darkness that represents nothingness, there is a small area of black that is obviously different, and in the eyes of reality, that area is even more conspicuous, because it is the passage that Jenkins opened temporarily outside the tower.
"It seems that fate still favors me, and the gap that temporarily allows the soul to leave happens to be here!"
In this thought of his, all three puppets burned out, and the last scene finally began.