"Today, we stand in the sunlight! No one wants to return to those unnoticed underground caverns! Behind us is our home! Our friends, our family, the people we cannot let down!"
Joyce's words, amplified by an unknown number of strategically placed loudspeakers, spread throughout the entire Great Homu Kingdom. Even Sirin, still in the royal palace, could hear Joyce's impassioned declaration.
"Disasters did not break us, injuries did not eliminate us! We could have persevered in the darkness, becoming the [Roots] for this great kingdom to take hold here!"
"But we fed them, providing nutrients to make them greater! We succeeded in becoming an inexhaustible well, but we cannot bear it when those who drink from it kick stones down upon us!" [Idiom: To harm one's benefactor]
"The kingdom stripped us of everything! It tried to leave us with nothing!"
"My tin plating is all rusted!" the Tin Man brothers cried out from among the toy crowd, raising their pickaxes in grief and indignation.
"My fourth child has been missing for a long time!!" the largest Matryoshka doll said, looking sadly at the smaller dolls beside it, its voice choked with tears.
"Our wind-up keys haven't turned in ages!" the tin frogs mournfully displayed their rusted wind-up keys.
"Three months... I've been gnawing on hard bread for three months..." Picasso stared blankly at the distant bakeries and cake shops. Beside him, Cézanne and Van Gogh nodded earnestly.
They had never suffered such grievances in their entire lives!
Joyce paused. Schrodinger, mixed in with the toy army, sighed and pressed a button in her hand.
Several clusters of fireworks whistled into the sky, merging in the azure expanse to unfold a vivid, lifelike tapestry.
It was Shu's back. In the tapestry, he walked resolutely towards the horizon. All anyone could see was that long windbreaker, seemingly woven from flames, burning brightly.
He came from a blazing inferno, and now he resolutely stepped back into a world of fire.
Joyce fiercely waved the long flag in her hand, aiming the long flagpole towards Shu's back in the sky.
"Everything the kingdom failed to bring us, the Demon Lord brought! Resisting for the sake of injustice, fighting for us! Facing an enemy he fundamentally cannot defeat, for us!"
A violent explosion happened to erupt in the royal palace at that exact moment. Joyce changed the direction of her flagpole, pointing all the toys towards that single direction.
"Now, he needs us! Just as we have longed for his appearance day and night in the past!"
Finally, under the solemn gaze of all the toys, in this rare moment of silence, Joyce stood the flagpole upright, slamming the butt of the pole heavily onto the ground.
"For—Our Future!"
"ROAR—!!" Mr. Dinosaur, several stories tall, let out a deafening roar towards the sky. Then, with its massive mouth agape and eyes bloodshot, Mr. Dinosaur charged towards the royal palace.
"For soft bread—Charge!!!"
"For sunlight!!"
"To be able to start work at seven o'clock!!"
"Charge!!"
A tidal wave of roars surged towards the palace with the toy army. The defensive lines formed by the guard Homus on the road collapsed instantly, failing to offer even the slightest resistance to this toy legion.
And arriving even before the toy army was the [Hope] from these very toys. They could actually provide Shu with [Hope]! Although the amount each toy could provide was small, multiplied by the enormous number, it was still quite substantial.
Shu, who had been somewhat hesitant, immediately perked up the moment the [Hope] arrived. After tanking an explosion from Homu-la head-on, Shu grabbed Homu-la's ear with one hand and, with the other, threw the bomb Homu-la was holding.
"Homu! (Let go of me!)" Homu-la's small cloth hands flailed rapidly, its entire body swinging in the air.
However, Homu-la's hands were simply too short. It could neither reach the hand Shu used to grab its ear nor touch Shu's body, left dangling in the air by its ear.
If it had been that yellow Homu in his grasp, Shu would probably have been punched in the face the next second. But Homu-la was merely [The Hero's Companion] and possessed no special attack against the [Demon Lord].
After extinguishing a small flame that ignited at the tip of Homu-la's ear, preventing it from self-destructing, Shu ignored the Homu in his hand and quickly began searching for Sirin.
Sirin had already fled. Shu slowly descended from the air, tied Homu-la up with a rope, and placed him aside.
"Homu!! (You'll never catch His Majesty the King!)" Seeing Shu about to leave, Homu-la, who absolutely couldn't escape due to the [Setting: Being bound by rope means unable to escape on one's own], could only shout.
"Is that so?" Shu replied, then casually activated his [Wish] navigation. It didn't take long to find Sirin's trail.
He was well aware that villains often died due to excessive talking. However, Shu didn't know if a non-talkative villain would violate their character setting, so he could only offer a perfunctory reply.
No need to waste time; a brief response was enough.
After confirming the route, Shu recalled the two pseudo-Xuanyuan Swords, now somewhat dirty from the explosion, and prepared to take the fastest path to Sirin's location.
Before leaving, Shu didn't forget to grab a length of rope for tying someone up.
He had clearly heard Joyce's shouts from outside earlier. Honestly, he felt a bit ashamed. Heaven knew how many titular honors Schrodinger and the others had attributed to him in front of those toys to get them this fired up.
The Great Homu Kingdom was about to fall. The urgent matter now was to find Sirin, have the [Demon Lord] defeat the [King], and incidentally, have Shu defeat Sirin.
Once Sirin was defeated, this space would naturally collapse.
Back in reality, without these ridiculous [Settings], even if Sirin was a Herrscher, it would be difficult for her to withstand both Shu and Joyce.
Thinking of this, Shu paused for a moment, then shook his head and quickened his pace.
Now was not the time for indecision. When something needed to be done, it had to be done, without overthinking.
---||---
Meanwhile, Sirin, having reached the palace basement, was pale. Every word Joyce had spoken felt like a sharp blade cutting into her heart.
She didn't know... She truly didn't know!
She didn't even know those toys existed, let alone that they were living such difficult lives... so difficult that they would rise up and resist her...
Perhaps... she really wasn't suited to be King? Not suited to be the master of this dreamscape?
The pain in her knee made it impossible for Sirin to run further. She found a corner, leaned against the wall, squatted down, and clutched the Key of Remembrance in her arms.
"What should I do..."