Avatar Deployment, Starting in Arkham

Puppet Technique at LV2 also had branches: Puppet Creation Technique at LV2 and Puppet Manipulation Technique at LV2.

There was also that progress bar.

A small button had appeared beside the progress bar, along with two lines of notes.

Please collect more fortune. When the fortune gauge is full, a new world can be opened and an avatar deployed.

Current progress: 17.3%. Worlds opened: 1

Those two lines contained a lot of information.

There were three keywords.

Fortune, new worlds, and avatars.

Gather fortune to unlock new worlds, deploy avatars into those worlds, then obtain even more fortune there. This was probably the most important new function of the System Panel aside from displaying attributes.

Shimizu continued and clicked the button with his mind.

All the data on the System Panel began to twist before finally turning into a black vortex capable of swallowing a person whole.

Shimizu felt a sliver of his consciousness being peeled away and devoured by the vortex.

"My head feels a little dizzy."

Shimizu shook his head, closed his eyes, and experienced something novel.

His consciousness seemed to have split into two.

One part remained here, while the other was in a distant world. It was almost independently conscious, yet completely subject to the original body.

"Is it a little like the Shadow Clone Technique? But also somewhat different?"

Though Shimizu had yet to learn the B-rank Ninjutsu known as the Shadow Clone Technique, he knew what it did.

Clearly, this so-called avatar seemed far more sophisticated than a Shadow Clone, almost turning him into two separate living entities.

Ominous lightning split the heavens. Beneath the thick black clouds, rain poured down in torrents.

This was Gotham.

And when Shimizu's consciousness entered this world, he immediately felt terrible.

He was in a small room of roughly ten square meters. The floor and walls were made of some white material with a metallic sheen, and it looked extremely sturdy.

Cold blue light shone in through a bulletproof glass door. Angry curses occasionally came from the rooms on either side.

He had just finished receiving this body's background and some of its memories when he heard the commotion next door.

"Oh, hey! Black Mask, you're about to get it right! You're so close to the correct answer! Think harder! It has wings, but it isn't an angel. It drinks blood, but it isn't a devil. What could it be? The answer is so simple!"

A slick voice came from the room to his left, its exaggerated tone making it sound as though the speaker were delivering a speech.

"Fuck you! Can't you switch rooms, you brain-dead piece of shit? I want to chop off your mouth and feed it to Batman!"

The guy next door was on the verge of a breakdown.

That bastard came up with two hundred riddles a day. If you could not answer, he would keep pestering you endlessly. Only after you solved one would he quiet down for a while and think of another.

Shimizu covered his ears, sat down in the corner, and sorted through the information in his mind.

The place he was in now was...

Arkham!

Riddler and Black Mask were his neighbors in Arkham.

The former was notorious and universally despised, while the latter was merely a second- or third-tier Gotham villain.

As for himself, his name was Clear Wade, which could also be translated as Shimizu.

His underworld nickname in Gotham was Puppet Master, a nobody even among low-level villains.

He was an Asian mad doctor with mediocre medical skills but an obsession with bringing the dead back to life. While stitching corpses together, he had learned how to turn them into puppets and control their movements with steel wires.

It reminded Shimizu somewhat of Human Puppets, but both the craftsmanship and methods of control were actually quite crude. Any professionally trained police officer with a weapon could take down a whole group of those puppets.

It was pretty low-grade, which was why he was only an insignificant small-time villain, with less style than either of his neighbors.

Such minor crimes normally would not have landed him in Arkham.

But because the doctors believed he had mental issues, he had been locked up here in Arkham.

"Oh, hey, that was already the easiest riddle! Even kindergarten children could guess it, you stupid pig. If only Batman were here. That guy is the only genius who has solved every one of my difficult riddles!"

"Should I give you an easier riddle? Then I'll need to think carefully. Honestly, it's the first time I've found coming up with easy riddles this mentally exhausting..."

"Hey, you there, why don't you take a guess too? You've been quiet for quite a while!"

Shimizu helplessly lowered the hand pressed against his ear.

It was completely useless. That asshole talked too much.

"First, my name isn't 'hey.'"

"Second, the answer to your earlier riddle is a bat."

"Third, stop bothering me. If you keep bothering me, I'll turn you into a puppet!"

"Fourth!"

Shimizu could not help punching the wall.

"Riddler, get out of Gotham!"

In the next room, Riddler took off his green hat with a puzzled expression.

Why did this fellow villain called Puppet Master seem to hold such a deep grudge against him?

"You're the one who should get out of Gotham! Listen, I'll give you a riddle. If you can't answer it, then once I get out, I'll definitely—"

"Ding-dong!"

With an impatient expression, Shimizu frantically pounded on the bulletproof glass door in front of him.

The commotion was quickly noticed by the staff monitoring the cameras.

A heavy iron door was pushed open, and a fully armed guard entered.

"Clear Wade! You'd better have a good reason, or I'll show you the consequences of disturbing me!"

"Officer! Riddler just said he was in contact with Penguin outside. He's already made plans to escape and invited Black Mask and me to join him!"

Black Mask: ???

When had he ever been invited to break out of prison?

The guard did not dare delay and hurriedly pulled out his communicator.

"Room 408. Riddler is suspected of attempting an escape. Recommend transfer to an underground maximum-security cell."

Riddler: ???

"Oh, hey! I don't have any escape plans!"

Riddler pressed himself against the transparent glass and shouted.

"Do you dare say you don't want to escape?"

With a grin remarkably similar to Anya's, Shimizu asked in a smug tone.

"Of course I want to escape! Who here doesn't want to escape? Don't you?"

Riddler shot back.

"I don't. Everyone in Arkham is so talented, and they all speak so nicely. I love it here! Black Mask, you heard Riddler trying to incite us too, right?"

Black Mask finally caught on and nodded heavily in front of the guard.

A squad of armed prison guards soon arrived, shackled Riddler's hands and feet, and dragged him toward a higher-security prison block.

"Finally, it's quiet!"

Black Mask took a deep breath, stretched out his legs, and sat down in the corner of his room.

"Not necessarily. Every cell has audio recording and surveillance. They'll verify everything soon enough, so that guy might still come back."

Shimizu sat cross-legged in the middle of his cell and sighed helplessly.