Chapter 166 – Lucrecia’s Pressure
Chapter 166 – Lucrecia’s Pressure
Accompanied by a series of strange noises, the Clockwork Man puppet stiffened and stood still like a rusted machine, and almost at the same time, Lucrecia, who was in the nearby cabin, noticed the abnormality of her creation.
The door of the cabin was violently pushed open, and a pile of flying colored paper rolled into the room like a whirlwind, and coalesced into a humanoid form in the whirlwind, “Sea Witch” Lucrecia stepped out from the colored paper, and the first thing she saw was Luni, who had already slipped down and was sitting next to the table, with her head hanging low.
“Luni?” Lucrecia quickly stepped forward, and the first thing she noticed was the clockwork key that had fallen on the floor next to her, she picked up the key, and then stepped forward to tap the mechanism box on the back of the clockwork figure, “What happened?”
A series of intermittent creaks came from within Luni, and it was another moment before some of her parts finally resumed functioning, and a severely out-of-tune and distorted voice rang out from her chest, “The old master …… is looking for you …… “
“With a crash, the clockwork key in Lucrecia’s hand fell to the floor.
Turning her head at the sound, Luni instinctively reached for her own clockwork key, trying to reinsert it into her back, but she only got halfway there before she was stuck again, and the sound of idling gears followed.
Lucrecia’s face changed drastically, her pupils shook when she heard the words “Old Master”, but the malfunctioning sound inside Luni’s body quickly woke her up, and she shook her head violently, forcibly suppressing the chaotic thoughts as she clutched the clockwork doll’s shoulders, “Luni! , stand by.”
The clockwork mannequin slowly closed her eyes, “Command received, Luni on standby.”
A few moments later, deep inside the cabin of the Radiant Star, in a brightly lit cabin, Lucrecia was busy at her workbench.
This was a laboratory that could be described as “complete and advanced” even in the Truth Academy’s headquarters, with precise and complex mechanical devices and pressure pipes used to supply energy to various equipment set up in every part of the spacious room, and in between the countless machines, one could see auxiliary equipment strewn with magical symbols and many crystal containers or reactors emitting shimmering light. Between the countless machines, one could see auxiliary equipment strewn with magical runes, as well as many crystal containers or reactors that were emitting a shimmering light, and a dozen or so automated organ puppets were tending to these automatically running equipment, allowing Lucrecia to focus her attention on the work in front of her.
In front of the “Witch of the Sea”, Luni was lying quietly on a wide workbench.
The clockwork figure had already been disassembled, and the shell that had been modeled after a maid’s costume was now being put aside, the skeleton constructed of fine gold and the various mechanical components made of brass almost covered the platform, and only the part of Luni above her chest remained intact, and this part was placed on the edge of the platform, as she stared blankly at her own disassembled body, blinking once in a while.
“Is it good …… to fix …… it?” Came a somewhat off-key voice from Luni’s chest.
“Don’t worry, it’s just a sudden jamming of the various drive mechanisms that caused the bearings to deform,” Lucrecia busied herself without looking up, “It’s a lot of work, but the repair process itself isn’t complicated – your ‘heart’ was not damaged.”
Luni slowly rolled her eyes, and saw the ‘heart’ that was placed in the center of the workbench.
It was a delicate brass orb, made of countless intricate pieces of metal, floating silently above a pile of parts, the metal pieces on its surface shifted their position from time to time, revealing the structure inside; when the angle of the metal pieces was right, one could clearly see that the inside of the orb was engraved with shining runes, and a slimmer object was floating in the center of those runes.
It was a finger – a very thin, very fragile finger, smaller than a human toddler’s, crafted by a certain dollmaker a hundred years ago.
That was the real core, the real essence of the machine doll “Luni” – the last proof that a certain doll born a hundred years ago had left in this world.
Lucrecia noticed Luni’s line of sight, and as she looked up, the movement of her hand suddenly stopped.
It was only after a moment that she continued to start busying herself, while saying as if offhandedly, “Have you ever resented me for transforming you into this?”
“Luni …… why should I resent it?” The doll head on the workbench let out a dull voice, “Mistress …… gave Luni life, and Luni is happy for that …… …… “
“But all of this was initially done on my own whim – and for that whim I destroyed your original body,” Lucrecia said faintly, “and for a long time at first I didn’t realize that you had developed the ability to truly think due to the influence of the Border; at that time I only thought of you as a machine, and subjected you to many reckless ‘experimental modifications’.”
Luni, however, did not respond to her Mistress, but only spoke suddenly after a few moments of silence, “You are tense, you have something on your mind – a Mistress under normal circumstances would not suddenly say such inexplicable things.”
Lucrecia was silent for two or three seconds, “…… Do you remember what you just said? After I just arrived at the restaurant and woke you up.”
“…… Memory retrieval failed, Lunie doesn’t remember.”
“You told me that the ‘old master’ was looking for me.”
A strange string of noise came from the Clockwork Mannequin’s chest, but not due to malfunction, but due to confused thinking.
“You really don’t remember?” Lucrecia lifted her head and gazed silently into Luni’s eyes.
“Memory retrieval failed, Lunie doesn’t remember.”
“…… Then it would seem that my horrible father didn’t want me to have any chance of snooping around on him in reverse,” Lucrecia said with a complex smile on her face, her tone wavering a bit as she slowly dismantled a set of warped gears. “He just sent a one-sided signal telling me …… that he knows where the Radiant Star is, and he knows how to find me ……”
“You are afraid.” “Scared to death – but more of a …… sadness than a fear.”
“Sadness? Why?”
Lucrecia looked into Luni’s eyes for a long time before gently shaking her head, “It’s too complex an emotion for you to understand right now, I’m afraid.”
“Okay, Lunie will try to understand in the future,” the clockwork doll replied, followed by another question, “Do you think that the old master is giving you some sort of warning?”
“…… I don’t know, but it does seem very much like a warning,” Lucrecia said softly, “or even like some sort of pre-hunt proclamation …… He’s has returned from subspace and is even more elusive than when he last returned, perhaps I should warn my older brother ……”
“You should indeed warn Mr. Tirian that he has departed for Prand, and the Consul of Prand has said that the Lost Country is approaching that city-state.”
Lucrecia nodded gently and didn’t say anything more, just continued to keep her head down and busy.
……
Duncan carefully placed Nelu in the antique wooden chest and put the feathered hairpin back in the drawer.
Then he looked at the wooden box where Nelu was stored.
As a big man, he always felt that there was something wrong with putting a girly doll in his bedroom.
But he couldn’t think of any better place to put it than in his bedroom.
Although the first test did not yield any results, nor did he find any clues pointing to the supernatural from the “Niru” doll, but after all, it was something related to “Lucrecia”, and since he was not sure if it could be useful in the future, he did not dare to put the doll in his bedroom. Since he wasn’t sure if she could be of any use in the future, he didn’t dare to put the doll out of his sight.
After some agonizing, Duncan still sighed and put Niru’s box on his bedside for the time being.
“If you really have something special, just ‘show your hand’ as soon as possible,” he looked at the gorgeous classical wooden box and gently shook his head, “Don’t be like Alice, you have to throw it into the sea to perform some kind of wind and wave coffin charge… .”
The wooden crate didn’t react much, of course, but Duncan didn’t care about that either.
He went to the window and glanced at the sky outside.
Night had fallen, and the pale, obscure shimmer of the World’s Creation was shining on the infinite sea.
The powerful exorcisms brought by the sun were fading in the real world, and the distorting, ominous, erosive forces were rising gradually throughout the world, a time when humans would go into the dream world as a means of escaping the world’s interference with their sanity.
But for Duncan …… he had never felt any discomfort in the night, nor had he seen the shadows that made the common man cringe.
Night was the time when his mind was at its sharpest.
He returned to his desk and quietly spread out a sheet of white paper, taking another pen from the side.
It was all that had just been bought from the city-state of Prand.
After a little contemplation, he wrote a line of text on the paper:
In 1889, a fragment of the sun appeared and sparked the great fire of Plainland;
Under the curtain of the factory in the sixth neighborhood lies a “reality” destroyed by the fire;
The Sixth Ward Community Church, where two opposing realities overlap in a distorted space-time that appears to be a closed loop;
Dog’s “humanity” is of unknown origin, but is clearly not the result of the power of the sun’s debris;
The statue of the goddess in the church in the sixth neighborhood is suspected to have been affected by the subspace rift, and the nuns in the underground sanctuary are suspected to have been killed in action during the fight against the subspace invasion. ……
(End of chapter)