Chapter 396

Chapter 396: Alice of Unknown Material

Duncan had indeed already cast a Fire Seed into the Frostholm city-state inside that mirror world, but he felt it was still far from enough.

He could clearly feel that Frostholm was different from Pland this time. The Fire Seed he had thrown did not spread quickly on the “other side of the mirror”, and his sense of the Fire Seed was faint and disturbed. He guessed this might be because there was a natural barrier between the worlds on the two sides of the mirror, or because the mirror world and the Mortal Realm did not actually match up exactly. The parts that were out of alignment were interfering with his judgment.

Whatever the reason, he needed to find a way to strengthen his link with the Fire Seed, and to strengthen his connection with the White Oak and with Agatha.

While they were talking, Vanna suddenly showed a thoughtful look and said: “Speaking of the mirror world… you are sure you saw the Gatekeeper’s figure in the glass reflection, yes?”

“Of course I am sure.”

“Then that is rather strange…” Vanna frowned. “If she really is trapped in that mirror world world, how is it that the city-state has not shown the slightest sign of it? The High Protector has vanished under odd circumstances. Even if they sealed the news to keep people calm, at the very least the Cathedral and City Hall should be taking some other action…”

She paused, then summed up from her own experience: “Secret searches, a limited lockdown in certain areas, changes in the frequency and pattern of Guardian patrols at night. Even if the news is blocked, details like that can still be observed. But today Mr. Morris and I moved around the city-state for a long time, and we did not see any such changes.”

Nina, who had been reading with her head down, suddenly looked up: “Maybe it’s because the Gatekeeper has only just gone missing. The city-state might not have reacted yet.”

“If that really is the case, then Frostholm is rotten beyond saving,” Vanna said, shaking her head very seriously. “But from what I’ve observed these days, even though this city-state is in a certain state of decline, it’s not that bad in other respects. At least the Church and City Hall still operate in an orderly way.”

“Maybe by tomorrow, during the day, we’ll see a change in the city’s mood,” Duncan said casually. Just as he was about to go on, a heavy weight suddenly pressed down on his arm, cutting him off.

Shirley had slumped over and bumped her head into his arm, and was now snoring evenly.

But the next second, before Duncan could react, he saw the young lady jerk awake straight out of her sleep. Dog, who had been dozing at the foot of the sofa, was flung straight into the air with her movement: “S-s-sor… so… so—”

Shirley never even managed to stammer out the word “sorry” in full. Duncan heard a loud thump as Dog, who had been thrown into the air, landed on the floor. Dog rolled over in one motion and sprang back up, his head buzzing: “What’s going on, what’s going on, are we fighting?”

Then he noticed that the atmosphere around them felt strange. He looked up and saw several pairs of eyes resting on him and Shirley in a very odd way.

“We’re not fighting. Shirley just fell asleep,” Duncan said with a helpless laugh, looking at Shirley, whose whole body was still tense. “It’s fine. Go upstairs and sleep. Minors need enough rest. Nina, you stop reading too. It’s bedtime.”

“Oh.” Nina reluctantly closed the book she was halfway through, stood up, and took the still-nervous Shirley by the hand. The two girls walked hand in hand toward the second floor.

Duncan watched the two girls disappear up the stairs, then turned his gaze back and nodded to Vanna: “Tomorrow you and Morris go to the Upper City and see whether there’s any change in the mood around the Cathedral. If possible, feel out City Hall’s reaction as well. With things having developed to this point, Frostholm’s City Hall has stayed strangely low-key. I’m very curious what they’re actually doing.”

“Alright,” Vanna nodded, then asked with some curiosity: “What about you? What are you planning to do next?”

“I plan to visit the Second Waterway again, together with Alice,” Duncan said offhandedly. “We’ll go look at the corridor where Crow had that incident. Now that we suspect there is a ‘mirror world Frostholm’, and Crow very likely strayed into it back then, we might be able to find some new clues in that corridor.”

As he spoke, something suddenly occurred to him: “Speaking of which, is Alice still in the kitchen cleaning up?”

“Seems like it,” Morris said as he got up and turned to look. “She really has been held up in the kitchen for a long time… her head hasn’t fallen off and gotten stuck in some corner, has it?”

“She never lets people relax… I’ll go check,” Duncan sighed helplessly, then rose from the sofa and headed for the kitchen.

As soon as he reached the kitchen, he saw the gothic doll standing beside the sink. She had not lost her head like Morris had guessed, but she had tilted it back at a strange angle and was staring blankly at one corner of the ceiling.

Alice was so focused that she did not hear Duncan’s footsteps. She only stared dumbly at that empty spot, then reached out with the hand holding the kitchen knife and poked at the air. After that she changed direction and kept poking at the air—like she was trying to catch an invisible fly.

A gothic doll stood in the kitchen with a vacant look, raising a kitchen knife and slicing at the air. The scene was far too eerie, as if at any second a health bar filling the entire screen would pop up over the doll’s head, and an organ-style background music would start playing around them. Duncan finally could not help speaking: “What are you doing?”

“Wah!”

Alice jumped in fright. She instinctively reached up to steady her head—but she forgot she still had a sharp knife in her hand. The next second, there was a soft stab, and she drove the blade straight into her own forehead.

With a sharp crack, her entire head was knocked off by herself.

Even though Duncan had seen this doll’s creepy and unreliable antics many times, he was still stunned. He quickly stepped forward to steady Alice’s swaying body. Then he saw her arms flailing in a panic—the sharp kitchen knife was still in her hand, and its tip was skewering her own head. She waved it several times like that before finally realizing what was going on. Then she hurriedly hugged her head with her left arm and, with her right hand, yanked the knife out of her forehead.

The doll then groped around and tossed the knife aside. With practiced ease, she picked up her head, pressed it back onto her neck, and with a soft pop, everything returned to where it belonged.

“You gave me a fright!” Alice turned her head and looked at Duncan with a slightly wronged expression. But very soon her eyes were drawn to something on Duncan’s arm. “…Captain, this knife looks kind of familiar.”

Duncan’s face stayed expressionless behind his bandages as he grabbed the handle of the kitchen knife stuck in his arm, pulled it out, and casually tossed it aside: “Of course it does. You just stabbed it into me.”

“…I’m sorry!” the doll cried out at once. She rushed over in a fluster to check on him. “Are you alright? Do you need to be bandaged?”

“No need. It’s a corpse anyway.” Duncan’s mouth twitched, but his gaze was drawn to Alice’s forehead.

A moment ago, the doll’s forehead had been split open by her own stab, leaving a great wound there. But now that wound was healing at a speed visible to the naked eye. There was no blood in the cut, only a smooth, jade-like surface, and after just a few breaths it was completely restored.

Alice felt a little awkward under Duncan’s gaze and subconsciously touched her face: “Why are you staring at me…”

“What exactly are you made of?” Duncan frowned and touched the place where Alice had been wounded. What he felt was similar to skin, but cold and without any sense of life. “You just had a hole in your head, you know?”

Alice froze for a moment, then raised a hand to touch her forehead. She answered in a dazed tone: “It healed.”

“I know it healed!”

“…I don’t understand,” Alice shook her head. “I don’t know what material I’m made from either… but it doesn’t seem like wood or ceramic…”

Duncan held it in for two seconds, then tugged at the corner of his mouth. “I really shouldn’t expect any answers from you. Forget it, let’s not talk about that. What were you doing just now? Why were you staring at the ceiling?”

“Threads,” Alice answered honestly. “Some threads suddenly appeared just now. But now they suddenly disappeared again.”

Duncan’s expression changed at once: “Threads?!”

Alice could see special “threads”, and those threads represented people.

“Yes,” Alice nodded seriously. “I was curious why threads suddenly appeared, when there’s nobody else here… But I remembered what you taught me, that I mustn’t grab other people’s ‘threads’ at will. So just now I used the kitchen knife to poke them instead…”

Duncan did not care what the doll had said in the second half of that sentence. His attention was already all on those “threads” that had suddenly appeared and then vanished.

His eyes swept quickly across the kitchen. He looked for anything here that might be used to build a connection to the mirror world.

The glass in the window. The water pooled in the sink. The surface of the knife blade.

Any of these could be used to make a link to the mirror world space, yet none of them showed any abnormal sign.

But Duncan trusted Alice. She would not lie.

At some moment just now, the Frostholm inside the mirror world had overlapped with the Mortal Realm here. Perhaps the overlap had been very, very weak and brief, but it was still enough for the doll to catch the threads drifting over from that other side.