Ashes Of Deep Sea
Chapter 492 - Chapter 492 Chapter 493 The Stolen Room

Chapter 492: Chapter 493: The Stolen Room Chapter 492: Chapter 493: The Stolen Room With countless questions and conjectures in his heart, Duncan carefully secured the brass key close to his person, and Alice waited obediently by his side, her eyes shifting eagerly, like a child anticipating a secret.

“Do you feel any different now?” Duncan asked, gazing into Alice’s eyes.

“Any different?” Alice tilted her head, touching her back with her hand, and after a moment shook her head, “Just now, I felt a tickle where the keyhole is, but it’s gone now.”

Duncan frowned upon hearing this: “…That’s it? Just that?”

“That’s it,” Alice replied earnestly, then with a curious look, she added, “Should there be something else? You look so serious… Have you figured out the thing with the key?”

With his eyebrows deeply knitted, Duncan sat down on the bed opposite the doll after a moment’s hesitation, and, with utmost seriousness, began to speak, “You may have felt like only a moment passed, but I spent a long time in a peculiar place–an ancient and vast mansion, its name… ‘Alice’s Mansion’.”

The Gothic doll’s eyes widened incrementally, listening to the captain’s narrative with a mix of astonishment and confusion.

Duncan didn’t hide his experiences in Alice’s Mansion; he told the doll miss everything he saw and heard there, then mentioned what he witnessed in the Endless Sea, including the meeting with the Frost Queen, Lei Nora.

Of course, he knew that Alice might only understand a part, and even that part only vaguely, and that her memory of the conversation would be limited, but he still chose to tell it all.

Because it was something she deserved to know–not to conceal things from her on the premise that “she wouldn’t understand anyway.” That would be the bare minimum of respect.

Alice looked bewildered as she listened, and it was several seconds after Duncan finished speaking that the Gothic doll came back to her senses: “…Wow.”

Then she scratched at her hair, her face a mixture of confusion and a touch of apology: “I… don’t quite understand, my head feels all fuzzy… I’m sorry, Captain, you’ve gone to such great lengths to help me understand these things, but I seem a bit slow…”

“No, you’re not slow, it’s just that these things are too complicated,” knowing she would react this way, Duncan smiled and shook his head, “Even I feel these matters are filled with enigmas–the clues are too numerous and too scattered, and we are clearly still far from lifting the ultimate fog.”

Alice nodded haltingly, as if she understood, then after some serious thought, she asked curiously, “Were there many people in that ‘mansion’? And they were all headless?”

“I only met one who claimed to be the butler, but according to what the butler said, indeed many people were in the mansion, just that they were all hiding,” Duncan narrated, recalling his memory, “Additionally, from what I observed, those were probably headless servants.”

Alice furrowed her brow, muttering as she tried to think, “Could it have something to do with my ‘beheading’ ability…”

“It’s possible, some of the servants might be spirits of those whom your beheading ability once took,” as someone who knew of the “Alice Guillotine,” Duncan naturally considered this possibility, but then he changed the subject, “However, based on some information revealed by the butler, the mansion also gathered a large number of ‘drifting’ spirits. They seem like refugees, sheltering in the mansion, those servants don’t quite seem… beheaded…”

He paused, then after a moment of thought, continued, “Perhaps, it’s the ability of your guillotine that makes the spirits gathered in the mansion appear headless, regardless of their actual ‘origins’.”

“Oh…” Alice seemed to grasp the concept, then quickly, as if something struck her, she asked, “And what about that ‘Frost Queen’? Just disappeared like that?”

“The room has indeed vanished,” Duncan nodded, “It seems just as she said, after the ‘connection point,’ the tentacle of the ancient god was destroyed, the ‘drifting place’ would lose its anchor, like a ship freed from its moorings…”

Suddenly, he stopped, his expression deep in thought.

“Captain?” Alice asked, puzzled by Duncan’s sudden silence, “Why did you stop talking?”

She asked twice before Duncan raised his head from his contemplation, his tone laden with gravity, “I’m contemplating whether the ‘drifting place’ Lei Nora spoke of refers to her room or the entire Alice’s Mansion.”

“Huh?” Alice was momentarily lost, “What’s the difference?”

“If the ‘drifting place’ refers to the entire Alice’s Mansion, then when the ‘connection point’ was destroyed by me, what should have disappeared would be the entire mansion, not just a single room on the second floor; if it refers only to the room where she rested, what is the relationship between that room and the entire mansion? Or to say… does the ‘connection’ between her room and the entire mansion not count as a ‘connection point’?”

Duncan paused again, then lifted his hand and pointed at Alice.

“More importantly, I entered the ‘Alice’s Mansion’ after I turned the key in you, obviously, the connection between that mansion and you is the strongest, you might even have some kind of ‘symbiotic’ relationship. If the ‘drifting place’ needs a connection point to exist stably… then you are clearly the most stable connection point.”

Alice blinked attentively, listening, trying to understand–but she did not.

Her strong suit had always been sincerity, “What are you talking about?”

“The room where the Frost Queen slept was ‘torn’ from the main body of the mansion, with clear signs of damage along the edges. At first, I didn’t pay much attention to this, but just now, I suddenly realized… Lei Nora might have hidden something from me.

“The so-called ‘Drifting Ground’ theoretically refers to the entire Alice’s Mansion, and that residence, closely connected to you, doesn’t seem to ‘drift’ as far as I can tell. So, it’s very likely that Lei Nora took the opportunity when I was destroying the ancient god’s tentacles, when some kind of ‘link’ was weakened, and forcibly ‘separated’ her room from the main body of the mansion.”

Alice continued to try to understand.

But this time, she finally grasped most of it.

“Do you mean the Frost Queen took the chance when you set the fire to ‘run off’ with her room? Like someone escapes with the lifeboats in the fog?”

Duncan was startled by the words, looking at the doll with a hint of surprise, “Your analogy is subtly reasonable… How did you think of that?”

“Mr. Goat-Head has told me many stories like that; like mutinous sailors stealing lifeboats in the fog, or making off with barrels of wine, cheese, or salted fish, and then the wise and martial captain would cross the entire Endless Sea to retrieve the stolen salted fish… Are you going to catch that room-stealing Frost Queen?”

Duncan was baffled again, giving a strange twist of his mouth after Alice finished speaking, “Let’s not discuss why mutinous sailors would steal salted fish, or why I should cross the entire Endless Sea to retrieve a salted fish–where would I even find that Frost Queen? Besides, it should be you who catches her, not me. The room she stole belongs to you–you are the mistress of Alice’s Mansion.”

“Right,” Alice thought for a moment, simply accepting the logic, then shook her head, “Then I won’t catch her. After all, that room was originally hers. But… why did she do that? Didn’t you just say, once the Drifting Ground is unbound, it will fly all over the place and might even fall into the Subspace, like being exiled– isn’t that a terrifying thing?”

Duncan sank into thought, slowly beginning to speak as he pondered, “Yeah, why indeed…”

He remembered Lei Nora, who he had seen, the Frost Queen who seemed to have been born with shackles on, crowned in chains and dethroned in them, and even plunged into the deep sea, remained imprisoned in a nightmare.

She had said she had always slept in a cage, even after the bars had been removed.

Now, she had broken out–taking her prison with her.

“Perhaps for ‘freedom’,” Duncan said softly.

But was it just for “freedom”?

…

The pointer on the control console was trembling rapidly, and the swaying as it approached the surface became more and more noticeable. Through the thick glass porthole, one could vaguely see some light scattering from above into the dark and endless sea water outside.

Sunlight was appearing in the water–that meant the submarine was fast approaching the surface.

However, the filling brightness could not completely dispel the oppressive impression left by the deep sea–as if, in the boundless darkness below the submarine, something was still rising and dispersing. Invisible tentacles were reaching up, arms were opening, clinging to the accidental visitors who had ventured into the deep sea.

The stories Duncan had been recounting to himself during the ascent still swirled in his mind–horrific, bizarre, astonishing, a challenge to one’s very beliefs.

Whether it was the soul of the Frost Queen, who had coexisted with the ancient god in the deep sea for fifty years, or the terrifying potential hidden within all things on earth, either was enough to send a shiver down the spine of a person with steadfast will and devout faith, even under the sun.

All things in the world are the progeny of ancient gods, with the flesh and blood of gods residing within all living beings, gradually awakening.

Not even in the most sacrilegious and heretical of tomes would anyone dare record such discourse–those maddest adherents of obliteration only skimmed the surface of theories like “The Saint’s Creation.”

The sunlight from above the water’s surface grew brighter.

A dead body, however, could feel no warmth.

Agatha clasped her hands over her chest, silently calling out Bartok’s name, wishing to pray to her deity.

Yet, no matter what, she couldn’t calm her mind.