Chapter 185: Chapter 189 Alice Test
After that, Duncan never heard any valuable intelligence from the mouths of those Doomsday Preachers again.
They simply sat silently on the deck, seeming to enjoy every second of breathing in the Endless Sea breeze as much as possible, meeting Duncan’s questions either with vacant, indifferent stares or with deranged, confused laughter.
But the last sentence they had spoken before was deeply imprinted in Duncan’s mind.
These madmen who followed Subspace, whose sanity was in chaos, whose san values might already be negative… seemed to have acquired theoretically impossible knowledge through their frenzied faith, knowledge of truths that theoretically should never have leaked.
They “saw” that there was an abnormal “humanity” inside “Captain Duncan,” and this humanity was “picked up” — what did this sentence imply? Could it be that they recognized the soul inside his shell had already been replaced?
And these Heretics had also mentioned, they had not been hiding within the City-State… but within cursed history? What did that mean? Could it mean that these crazed Doomsday Preachers didn’t actually exist in normal spacetime, which is why they could evade the City-State’s guardians’ surveillance with such strange behavior?
Duncan silently watched the Doomsday Preachers with their weird smiles, his thoughts undulating. He was also paying attention to the entire ship’s condition, sensing if there were any changes to the Homeloss.
The goat-headed helmsman was still honestly steering in the captain’s quarters, seemingly unaffected by the commotion on the deck.
All parts of the Homeloss were operating as normal, and the words of the Doomsday Preachers had no effect on the ship.
Alice was sitting on a large barrel not far away, idly organizing her hair with a bored expression — the Gothic doll’s mind could not keep up with the topic between the captain and the Heretics and had wandered off long ago.
After an indeterminate amount of time, Duncan finally let out a light sigh.
The time he had wasted on these Heretics seemed a bit long, and he even felt somewhat influenced by their mad words.
He had already received quite a bit of useful information from these people, and it seemed there would be no more to gain, so there was no need to continue wasting emotion on the lunatics.
Just as Duncan’s expression began to change, a Doomsday Preacher suddenly lifted his head, his chaotic eyes reflecting the Homeloss’s hollow, unreal sails, muttering as if in a daze, “Is it time to disembark?”
“There was never a place for you on this ship,” Duncan said expressionlessly, looking at him, “but before I throw you overboard, you might still be useful.”
All three Doomsday Preachers lifted their heads, slowly spreading their mouths into strange smiles.
Despite their elated behavior when they had just boarded, even going so far as to kiss the deck passionately, now, hearing Duncan’s words, they showed no sign of loss or fear.
Originally, Duncan thought they would at least resist, would try to stay on this ship by force, or even try to reach the Subspace, their dearly held “Promised Land,” but none of that happened—only a peculiar numbness filled their eyes.
It was as if in a moment unknown to others, most of their personalities and memories had suddenly left these bodies, or as if they had suddenly heard some “calling” in destiny and then calmly accepted their fate.
Duncan frowned but did not probe what these already deranged Heretics were thinking; instead, he turned to look at the Gothic doll who was daydreaming not far away: “Alice, come here.”
The doll immediately reacted, deftly placing her head back onto her neck, jumped down from the barrel, and trotted over to Duncan: “You called for me, Captain?”
“…Could you not always remove your own head? The joints are unstable as it is, and your intelligence seems to drop each time you take it off,” Duncan started with a frown of complaint, then shook his head, pointing at the three Heretics, “I’m getting ready to do some testing on you.”
“Testing?” Alice paused, “What kind of testing?”
“Let’s see if your uncontrollable ‘guillotine’ power is still there,” Duncan raised his eyebrows, “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about that.”
“I forgot!” Alice nodded vigorously, “You reminded me just now, and I’ve only just remembered!”
Then she ignored Duncan’s subtly changing expression and turned to greet the “Doomsday Preachers,” “Hello, I forgot to introduce myself just now, my name is Alice, and I’m the ship’s… chef?”
“You should tell them about your other identity,” Duncan said flatly. While speaking to Alice, his gaze rested on the Heretics, “Anomaly 099.”
The three Doomsday Preachers finally showed a change in their expression. One of them couldn’t help but take a look at Alice, his face suddenly taking on an air of gravity.
“I thought you were truly numb to the extent that you didn’t fear death,” Duncan noted the change but still remained calm, “So, I hope you fear-nothing madmen who aren’t afraid of Subspace will like the following arrangements—you just need to stay near Alice and then either survive or be beheaded and die.”
Alice, listening to the side, suddenly leaned in and muttered, “Captain, you sound like a villain when you say that…”
Duncan looked at the artificial being in surprise: “…Whose side are you on, exactly?”
“Death has no meaning for us…” While Duncan and Alice were whispering, one of the Doomsday Preachers finally spoke up. He glanced at Alice, actually took a step forward, his expression laced with mockery, “It’s just one more pause in this long journey—You who refused the grace of Subspace, dull and obsessed with the illusion of the real world, will never know the truth beyond life and death…”
Duncan quickly tugged at Alice’s arm, “Did you hear that? That’s what a villain sounds like…”
Alice nodded, “Oh.”
After that, Duncan ignored the Preachers’ reactions. He looked up at the night sky where the Creation of the World hung and suddenly asked, “How long have these people been on board?”
“Several hours now, I guess?” Alice thought about it, “I’m pretty accurate when it comes to the sense of time!”
“A few hours… which means the testing and activation period for the guillotine must have passed at least once,” Duncan pondered, his eyes on the puppet before him while recalling the descriptions related to Anomaly 099’s Traits, “But it’s still not safe… Let’s wait a bit longer, then conduct another round of tests.”
“Another round of tests?” Alice blinked in confusion, “How will we test?”
“Now, it’s fairly certain that your beheading ability hasn’t activated, but it’s not yet clear if it’s due to the influence of Homeloss or me,” Duncan glanced at the Doomsday Preachers as if to doubly ensure their heads were still in place while he spoke, “In a few more hours, after ensuring at least one cycle of your ability’s testing and activation period has passed, I want you and these ‘Preachers’ to temporarily leave Homeloss.”
Alice paused at this, “Temporarily leave Homeloss? Where would we go then?”
She looked up, gazing beyond the ship’s railing, taking in the Endless Sea that stretched to the horizon. The sea was calm at the moment, its entire surface bathed in the pale glow of the Creation of the World, giving the impression of an endless snowy plain. In this boundless sea… there was nowhere to land.
Duncan gave it some thought.
Now that he had found the “material” for testing Alice, he still needed a “test site” that would eliminate his own interference to ensure the rigor of the testing process. This site couldn’t be on densely populated land and had to be outside of Homeloss; it seemed he didn’t have many other options.
“There are a few lifeboats in good condition. I’ll let one down and then temporarily sever its connection with Homeloss,” Duncan looked into Alice’s eyes, “You’ll drift at sea for a while—I’ll have the ship wait nearby, I won’t abandon you.”
The artificial lady shrank her neck as she listened to the captain’s plan: “Drift at sea again? I have a psychological trauma over this! And the visibility at night is so bad, what if you lose me? What if a storm sweeps away the lifeboat, what if it capsizes…”
Duncan cut her off before she could finish her rant: “Stop, stop, stop, with all these ‘what ifs.’ Can’t I just have Ai Yi circle overhead and keep watch—And speaking of which, aren’t you scared of not being able to get back to the ship? When you were given a coffin board, you managed to sail back through the waves, eight cannonballs couldn’t keep you down. This time, you at least have a couple of proper oars!”
Alice’s complaints were stifled, but only for a moment. She then looked worriedly at the nearby sea and the Subspace Believers who were neither human nor ghostly, delirious and chaotic, tugging at Duncan’s sleeve with determination, “Captain, you promised, don’t you dare lose me later!”
Duncan: “…”
He couldn’t help feeling this artificial being grew more useless the longer it stayed on the ship—she wasn’t even as good as when she was braving the waves on the Endless Sea, back then, she at least had a foolish drive…