Chapter 160

Chapter 160: The Most Outstanding Dollmaster

On the Vanished, bright sunlight shone on the freshly scrubbed upper deck. A spiral of green flame was slowly fading in the air above the planks. Alice stood by the open space, staring wide-eyed at the huge pile of things that had appeared on the deck.

“Th-this… what is all this?!”

Miss Doll cried out in shock. Before her voice even faded, Duncan’s voice came from not far away: “You’re stuttering like your head just fell off – have you never seen pots, pans, fruit, and vegetables?”

Alice turned her head a little stiffly. She glanced at Duncan, then at the big pile of supplies that had suddenly appeared on the deck. She thought hard for a moment, then planted her hands on her hips with perfect confidence. “Never!”

Duncan: “…?”

“I haven’t,” Alice went on, still very sure of herself. “I’ve stayed in that box all these years. Where would I have seen these things?”

Duncan froze for a second, then slapped his forehead. “…I forgot. All right, you’re right. In some ways, you’re even more illiterate than Shirley.”

Alice had been about to step forward and study what all the things that AI had just teleported over were for. When she heard Duncan’s words, she turned back with suspicion. “Shirley? Who is that?”

“Someone I met in the city-state. Maybe one day in the future you’ll have a chance to meet her,” Duncan said after thinking for a moment. “I feel the two of you are quite fated.”

“Oh.” Alice made a sound and soon tossed the matter to the back of her mind. She walked over to the big pile of supplies on the deck and circled around it again and again.

“So this is flour… This is meat? It really isn’t the same as the dried meat on the ship… These are vegetable leaves? They feel so fragile, and cold… This round thing is – ah, it broke…”

“Stop messing with the eggs!” Duncan saw that this clueless Doll was about to cause more trouble again. He hurried over and slapped away her hands that were poking at everything. “I’m using all this to improve life on the ship.”

“Hehe…” Alice let out her trademark laugh and pulled back her hands, a little embarrassed. “I’m just curious – I’ve only ever heard of most of these things.”

Duncan gave the Doll a helpless look, but he also understood her somewhat.

Alice’s head (if she really had that organ in her skull) held a lot of “innate knowledge”. She knew how to talk with people and knew that many things existed in the world. She had even formed her first impression of the world by using the Listening rite to listen to the sounds outside the box. But she had always been sealed away. Strictly speaking, she had only truly come into contact with this world not long ago. And the first thing she encountered was the Vanished, a stage absolutely unfit to be a beginner’s village.

She knew far too little about the Mortal Realm.

For a while before this, the only things she could touch were the things on the Vanished. The ship’s limited space and objects were still easy enough for her to adapt to. But now, Duncan had dumped in front of this Doll a whole heap of new things from the Human city-state.

Even a leaf of greens or a bag of flour was an unbelievable object to Alice.

“Human city-states really are incredible places…” Miss Doll looked at the pile of things on the deck and at the colorful packages. She spoke with heartfelt wonder. “They must be much, much bigger than the ship, right?”

“…Very big, but still much smaller than the Boundless Sea.” Duncan answered casually. He let his gaze rest on Alice’s eyes, which were full of surprise and expectation, and once again remembered what he had promised her.

He had said that he would take Alice to see the city-state.

“I’ll deal with the trouble over there as soon as I can, and I’ll figure out the secret about you,” he said very seriously to the Doll in front of him. “For now, you just have to wait patiently.”

Alice’s face instantly bloomed into a bright smile. “All right.”

She still looked as carefree as ever.

Yet just looking at this carefree Doll slowly eased the anxiety Duncan had built up in Pland. He let out a small breath and pointed at the things on the deck. “Help me carry them all to the galley – and that pile of odds and ends next to them goes to the captain’s cabin.”

“Oh, okay!” Alice agreed at once. As she stepped forward to help, she asked, “Are we going to use these to make tonight’s dinner?”

Duncan looked back at her, doubtful. “We can… but do you know how?”

“Of course not!” Alice said as if this was perfectly natural. “But I can ask Mr. Goathead for advice. He said his cooking is amazing and he has mastered more than ninety percent of the cooking secrets in the world…”

“He dares say that and you actually believe him!” Duncan’s eyes widened at once. “Don’t you dare ruin the ingredients I worked so hard to get. I’ll make dinner. If you really want to seriously learn how to cook food people can eat, just watch how I do it. Don’t learn from that Goathead – he doesn’t even have a digestive tract.”

“Oh…” Alice nodded, then glanced at AI, who was pacing on the deck nearby. Her eyes turned. “Is AI going ‘over there’ again later?”

“Of course. There are more things for it to deliver later.”

“You’re still buying things?” Alice asked curiously. “What else are you going to buy?”

Duncan turned his head and let his gaze rest on Miss Doll’s eyes. After a moment, a faint smile appeared on his face.

“I’m buying things for you.”

Alice: “…?”

…

In the city-state of Pland, inside the Rose Doll House.

Duncan felt that this kindly old Elf madam had probably misunderstood him, but he had no intention of explaining.

Most of all, he had no way to explain. How was he supposed to tell her that there really was a Doll in his home who had a soul and her own joys and sorrows, and that this Doll had lately been worried about her hair getting thinner and thinner? If he said that, the old madam would probably go report him to the Cathedral even in the best case…

But in the eyes of the Rose Doll House’s shopkeeper, Duncan had already become a true kindred spirit who genuinely loved Dolls and was willing to pour a lot of effort into them. In Pland’s upper society, many people bought Dolls, and quite a few were truly keen collectors. But very few people showed such heartfelt concern for a Doll as this Mr. did today. It gave her the feeling that when he spoke of his “Doll”, he was not talking about an “object” at all, but about a living person, even a “friend” this Mr. cared very much about.

Even many Dollmasters did not have such an attitude.

The two of them talked very happily. Duncan finally heard many things about Dolls from the mouth of a professional, though he did not know how much of this knowledge could actually be used on Alice. The gallery’s shopkeeper clearly had not met such a like-minded customer in a long time. After a good talk, the old madam could not help but smile and sigh.

“I’ve lived in this city for three or four hundred years. I’ve outlasted seventeen governors, and the Humans I’ve met are beyond counting – yet almost none of them truly understand ‘Dolls’… Ah, you may not like hearing this, but in my eyes, Humans really are a species much colder than Elves.”

“I don’t know much about Elven society,” Duncan said at once when he heard this, seizing the chance to guide her into talking more about Elves. “But I’ve heard that in the Elven city-state of Lightwind Harbor, the finest craftsmen in the world gather there. The Elves’ unique crafts are famous all over the world…”

“Elves are indeed good at delicate crafts. We are a race naturally sensitive to both mathematics and art – so most of the famous Dollmasters in this world are Elves as well,” the old woman said frankly, her tone filled with a natural pride. But she quickly changed the topic. “But when it comes to the Dollmaster trade, many colleagues from other races hold a prejudice against Elves… People often say that Elves don’t really have such a great talent for craft. The reason we can produce so many Dollmasters is only because our lives are long enough, and we grind the skill out bit by bit…”

Duncan suddenly did not know how to pick up this topic. “Well… all right, colleagues are enemies. Seems it’s the same everywhere. What do you think of those comments?”

The old woman laughed. “Me? I think they’re right!”

Duncan: “…?”

“I think they’re right,” the old woman repeated, her face full of a cheerful smile. “Every Undead Festival, I go to the graves of a few old colleagues to say hello and tell them, ‘You were right’ – if they have the ability, they can get up and hit me!”

Duncan: “…”

Were all the Elves in this world like this? Why did he feel that something about this style was off?!

“Ah… just joking,” the old woman finally shook her head, probably having noticed the look on Duncan’s face. “There aren’t really so many enemies. We all just act as each other’s companions for a short stretch of time. And if we really talk about this Dollmaster trade… I’ve always felt that the most outstanding Dollmaster in this world is not any ‘Master’ among the Elves, but a Human.”

“A Human?” Duncan asked casually.

“Yes. ordinary persons nowadays probably don’t know this name anymore…” The old woman spoke slowly, with a hint of feeling. “Her name is Lucretia Abnomar. She is the daughter of that famous ‘Captain Duncan’. She was the most outstanding Dollmaster I have ever seen…”

Duncan: “?!”