Chapter 473 – The Doubtfulness of the Key
Chapter 473 – The Doubt of the Key
Far away on the infinite sea, Duncan, sitting at the desk in the captain’s room, frowned slightly.
He reached down and opened the hidden compartment under the desk, felt the brass key that had previously been found by Agatha and handed over to him from a hidden place, and placed it in front of his eyes to scrutinize it.
The antique shaped clockwork key was glowing with cold metal, reflecting the sunlight from the window, and the tiny decorative pattern on the infinite symbol-like key handle was reflected in his eyes.
This was not the first time Duncan had scrutinized this key, but this time, his mind was very different from the past as he gazed at this “Queen’s relic”.
The possibility that this could be the vessel of Rae Nora’s soul complicated his gaze.
The Frost Queen was a great person, and her hidden secrets drew Duncan’s attention. If there was an opportunity to establish communication between Duncan and Rai Nora, that would be a good thing, of course – but not at Alice’s expense.
Inside the Frost City, Duncan, dressed in a black coat, narrowed his eyes slightly, and he seemed to collect his thoughts that had been scattered for a while, and his gaze once again fell on Agatha, as well as the shadowy “Agatha” next to him.
“Do you remember your experiences moving around the city-state during your time as a ‘fake’?” He asked suddenly.
“Yes, I remember it all,” the hazy shadow seemed to nod, “I also remember my experiences after I went deeper into the mine and merged into that eerie darkness ……”
“That part of the information is already known to me, Agatha …… I mean, Agatha, being the ‘genuine article’, has reported that aspect to me,” Duncan said, his face showing a thoughtful expression, “To be honest, your presence …… reminds me of someone.”
“A person?” The two Agatha’s almost spoke in unison.
“A …… Soul Shadow named ‘Martha’,” Duncan said slowly, “She is Lawrence’s wife and a member of my new fleet, and For the past decade or so, her identity has been that of a ‘fake’ roaming the Mirror Frost.”
The shadowy apparition of Agatha moved slightly.
“Over the past ten years or so, this ‘fake’ has been wandering in the Mirror Space, and has attracted and converged a huge number of thoughts and memory fragments, which has allowed her to grow into a huge ‘hybrid’, and the ‘Martha’ is the core personality of this hybrid,” Duncan continued, his gaze falling on the hazy figure, “From the current situation, you and ‘Martha’ are very similar, the difference is that you and ‘Martha’ are in a very similar situation. very similar, the difference being that you have not yet become the ‘hybrid’ that she is – you are still in an early, pure stage. Of course, considering that the Mirror Frost has been destroyed, you’ll probably maintain this stage steadily in the future as well.”
“There’s even such a thing as ……,” the one who spoke up was Agatha, who was the genuine article, and there was a note of incredulity in her tone, “I thought that what happened to me was an exception… …”
“It wasn’t exceptional, which is why it piqued my curiosity all the more,” Duncan said calmly, his gaze nonetheless remaining fixed on the hazy figure, “When the Mirror Frost faded, all the ‘fakes’ went up in smoke with it… But now there are two ‘personalities’ left behind, does this mean that the power that supports the fake ‘Martha’ and the fake ‘Agatha’ is not actually the mirror city, but something else? Something else? The personality and memories copied from that sea were able to exist stably in the real world, and Masha was even currently located outside the Frost Sea, does this mean at the same time that …… this power that sustained the fake ‘Agatha’ and the fake ‘ Martha’ power is something as large and solid as the real world?”
Silence fell for a moment in the hall where the submersible was parked.
After an unknown period of time, Agatha raised her head and stared at her shadow.
Duncan broke the silence, “Have you thought about the future?”
“The future?” Agatha was stunned for a moment, as if she had never considered that direction, “What do you mean ……”
“One cannot live forever as the shadow of another – literally a shadow,” Duncan gazed at the hazy phantom, “It is time for you to consider the future.”
The hazy phantom fell silent, and it was some time before she spoke with a hint of hesitation, “But I am indeed her shadow.”
“I emphasize again, a ‘human being’, cannot live forever as the shadow of another,” Duncan, however, remained calmly watching her, “You have your own personality, your own memories, and those memories may have more than twenty years belonged to someone else, but at least, the last few days of it belonged to yourself, so what next …… Agatha?”
When Duncan said the name “Agatha”, both figures subconsciously raised their heads at the same time.
Duncan’s eyes swept over both of them, and then gently exhaled, “Think about it, it’s okay, we still have a lot of time.”
……
Duncan’s thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door that sounded outside the captain’s cabin.
Temporarily withdrawing most of his attention from the “incarnation” of the Frost Citadel, he looked up at the door to his bedroom, “Come in.”
The door was pushed open, and Alice stuck her head out to look inside before slipping in like a thief, holding a plate of still-warm treats in her hand, “I learned to bake cookies!” With a smug tone, she placed the treats on the table in front of Duncan before looking around for a moment, as if searching for Aye.
“Aye’s in Frost.” Duncan said casually, his eyes on the gothic figure in front of him.
This was the captain’s cabin, the “inner room”, his bedroom – the only person on this entire ship who could step into this room like this without a care in the world was Alice, besides Nina.
He came to this world after the first person he knew …… humanoids.
He trusted her, and although she wasn’t all that dependable, Duncan knew that the doll lady was honest and trusting of him more than anything else – and although this almost extreme trust stemmed more from her solid brain than anything else, this initial and deepest trust still seemed invaluable in this cold and unfamiliar world.
Alice finally noticed Duncan’s gaze, and she turned her head quizzically, first checking her clothes and then rubbing her neck, “Why do you keep looking at me?”
“Nothing,” Duncan withdrew his gaze and casually took a cookie from the plate and stuffed it into his mouth, “…… It tastes alright.”
Alice smiled happily.
She then noticed the brass key that was sitting on the table.
“Ah, you’re working on this key,” Alice casually picked it up and fiddled with it curiously, followed by fiddling with her back, “Are you going to wind me up?”
“Don’t you touch it,” Duncan reached out and then snatched the key back, his tone becoming extraordinarily serious, “In the future, do not touch this key without my permission.”
Probably it’s been a long time since I’ve seen Duncan have this kind of serious reaction, Alice was even a little bit shocked, she hurriedly shrunk her hand, and a nervous to a little bit scared look emerged on her face right away, “Yes …… sorry …… “
“I’m sorry for scaring you,” Duncan responded, immediately easing his tone, “You didn’t do anything wrong, and I’m not judging you – it’s just that this key . . might be a little dangerous to you.”
“Dangerous?” Alice blinked, seemingly unable to comprehend as she reached up and touched her back quizzically, feeling the keyhole that separated her from her clothes, “But I’ve heard Shirley and Nina say …… that this key is supposed to be for me to use to wind up… …ah, Nina even bought a wind-up toy soldier in town, and I played with it for a long while, and the toy soldier’s wind-up key looks like this ……”
Duncan rubbed the corner of his forehead, despite knowing that it might be hard for Alice to understand, he patiently explained, “This key is not something so simple, it’s a transcendental item, do you understand? Queen Rae Nora left this behind, and I now suspect …… that this is some sort of resurrection device for her.”
Alice looked fixedly into Duncan’s eyes for a long time before she stretched her voice, “Ah …… huh?”
“Rae Nora’s memories and soul may be preserved in this key,” Duncan wasn’t surprised by Alice’s reaction, he just sighed softly and pressed the key down on the table, looking at the mannequin in front of him, “And you, with Rae Nora, have the exact same look. ”
After freezing for a while, Alice finally gradually understood, she looked down at her own body, and then looked at the key pressed on the table by the captain, and only after a long time did she speak, “So, by winding me up, that Queen of Frost might be able to control my body?”
“I do worry about that,” Duncan nodded, not hiding his thoughts from the simple-minded mannequin, “Of course, the concern is not so …… reasonable, and there are many more doubts. ”
“Doubts?”
“The most important one, is that there are so many uncontrollable aspects of the process,” Duncan said, “You should know how you were found – the mannequin casket was adrift in the waters near Frost, salvaged by a ship that happened to be passing by up, and the key? The key is in the hands of the successive consuls of the city-state, who have passed it down for half a century, yet no one knows the connection between the key and you, the mannequin, and if this is the means of resurrection left behind by the Queen of Frost, it’s a means that relies far too heavily on luck.
“The mannequin will not necessarily be with the key, the person who gets the key will not necessarily know the connection between the key and the mannequin, and even if they know, they will not necessarily go to turn the key – even Tirian does not know about this, who else will wind you up? What’s more …… with the fearsome name of Anomaly 099, how many people would dare to just go near a mannequin casket?”
Alice listened to the captain’s words half-understood, and after she managed to understand most of them, she asked curiously, “What about …… other suspicions?”
“Other suspicions ……”
Duncan thought for a moment, but in his mind, he suddenly recalled the Frost Queen he saw in the “vision” when he was exploring Alice’s “coffin”, as well as the words left by the Frost Queen– -“Please don’t pollute history.
Please don’t pollute history.
Will the Frost Queen ……, who is ready to die in front of her destiny, really arrange for herself to be resurrected decades later?
(End of chapter)