Chapter 567 Foreign Matter and Cleaners

Chapter 567 Foreign Matter and the Cleaner

It was a small bag of garbage – a black garbage bag with a dead knot in the mouth, and a very small, scuffed opening in the side of the bag, in which a flattened paper cup could be seen.

Duncan stared blankly at the small bag of familiar garbage, for a while only confusion and endless questions remained in his mind – he did speculate that this “big hole” inside Alice’s mansion may one day change, after hearing the headless housekeeper mention the “foreign object invasion”. Butler mentioned “foreign object invasion” when also guessed what kind of weird and unnamable things into the public hall, but this situation …… he really did not think about.

That bag of garbage was thrown by him – not long ago, when he vaguely realized that the barrier between himself and his hometown may have been a heavenly rift, after he carefully and conscientiously cleaned his bachelor apartment, he sorted out the bag of garbage, and threw it into the black fog outside the door.

It now appeared in the inner “Big Hollow” of Alice’s mansion, in the form of an “invasive foreign object”.

Duncan stepped forward towards the “invading object” with mixed and subtle feelings.

At the end of the corridor due to the disappearance of the room left behind a huge hole as if a bizarre and horrible abyss, the ground and walls at the edge of the hole is broken, like twisted teeth, the black bag is at the end of the broken ground, frankly …… Duncan even think this scene is a bit funny.

However, the servants in the public house were tense beyond measure, and that ghastly headless butler even let out an alarming cry somewhat out of character after seeing Duncan walk forward: ”Guest! Never go near that way! It’s dangerous!”

“Dangerous?” Duncan didn’t even know what expression to make, he looked back at the butler, the corners of his mouth twitching, “It’s just a bunch of peaceful …… waste.”

Yet the steward and the servants still stood as if they were at least ten meters away, those buzzing, rumbling whispers overflowing with panic and fear, and even though none of them were headless, it was as if Duncan could feel their bewildered, confused, wanting-to-peer-but-continuously-avoiding-it-out-of-fear sights.

It was as if …… what they were looking at was not a harmless black bag, but something far more terrifying, far more unnameable.

“Guest …… guest ……” the headless butler suddenly spoke, his voice low and trembling, “don’t be fooled by appearances; you now slowly and it Keep your distance and move towards me, be careful not to awaken the growing shadow ……”

A growing shadow?
Duncan instantly frowned slightly, seemingly confirming the “guess” that had just flashed through his mind for a moment – what these servants were seeing, was it something else?
He turned back to the black bag at the edge of the broken ground.

At a certain moment, he saw the black plastic bag suddenly …… “flicker”.

Like a poorly contacted monitor screen, or as if a veil of light suddenly covered the surface of the thing, Duncan saw the thing flicker momentarily, and in a very short change of light and shadow, it seemed to …… become something else.

Duncan watched it silently, as if expecting it to change more – and then a second flicker appeared.

This time, he captured the flash.

He saw a rising and shrinking mass of shadows covering the floor not far away, the edges of the shadows quivering and trembling as if they were spreading out with countless sharp thorns, and there was a black substance that was churning and filling the center of the shadows, where uncountable eyes were still hidden, as well as uncountable throats and tongues.

However, as long as he gazed closely, the thing would immediately turn back into a pile of plain and ordinary “waste”, and the bizarre images he saw in his trance seemed to be just illusions that remained in the shallow layers of his brain.

Duncan watched this scene in silence, many speculations gradually converge in his heart, after an unknown period of time, he suddenly turned his head to the “butler” and said: “Has there ever been a ‘foreign object invasion’ here before? ”

His voice was inexplicably a bit hoarse.

“Occasionally,” the butler hurriedly replied, “The public house is closed, but for some reason, there are always ‘outside’ things that connect to it, and they… . tend to cause a great deal of trouble.”

“Bring great trouble?” Duncan frowned.

“Yes …… foreign objects do not belong in the Commons, they are as a disease to the place, the invading material causes parts of the Commons to rot or warp, often taking a long time to recover …… “

Duncan listened quietly and after a moment’s thought asked, “And what would you do with the foreign matter?”

“The public house will ‘digest’ them on its own,” the steward replied, “You can just wait patiently by the side, the cleaners should show up in a moment and should be able to properly dispose of the intruding foreign objects. ”

“Cleaners?” Duncan sounded puzzled.

“It is a part of the Commons, the oldest part, and it is responsible for removing destructive ‘entities’ from the Commons, after which the Commons slowly returns to the state it was in prior to the invasion of the foreign object …… Ah, it has appeared, Guest! , you see–“

The butler suddenly raised his arm and pointed at the ground not far away.

A sludge-like mass appeared there at an unknown time, slowly wriggling and spreading out.

The “sludge” was dark in color, but with a metallic texture, and its surface seemed to be mixed with countless crystal particles, along with the slow writhing, constantly refracted like starlight like fine points of light – it wriggled and spread, as if it had a sense of general slow As if it had a consciousness, it slowly approached the invading “foreign matter”.

A part of its edge was deformed, forming a tentacle-like extension structure, with which it took the initiative to touch forward, testing a little, and then slowly “covered” itself on the “growing shadow”.

Duncan did not interrupt this process, he just stared at the scene, not missing any details.

The “waste” itself was of no value to him, but why it was here, and the strange phenomenon he had just observed, as well as the secret hidden in the mansion, was the key. For him, when he saw that small bag of garbage appearing in the public house, the key information was already there.

Devouring silently, the “soft creature” called “cleaner” soon completely covered the small bag of garbage, and in Duncan’s perception, he could vaguely feel …… something! In Duncan’s perception, he could vaguely feel something disappeared into the “soft creature” with a metallic texture and fine points of light.

The servants around him seemed to be relieved at last.

However, the next second, Duncan saw that the mass of “soft creature” finished swallowing suddenly slowly turned “body”, its edges rise and fall, looks like a head of a protruding structure has been steadily pointing to this side.

The corridor instantly fell into a tense and dead silence, all the servants were tense and quiet.

“The Cleaner squirmed, approaching slowly but surely like a living sludge as Duncan watched.

There was neither kindness nor hostility.

Duncan gradually tensed his nerves, in the gap between his fingers there was already a vague green flame flow, he was vigilant about this thing called “cleaner”, and already thinking quickly about if the other party attacked, how to deal with this “Alice Mansion” on the premise of not destroying as much as possible. If the other party attacked, he was already thinking quickly about how to get rid of this “sludge” without destroying the “Alice’s Mansion” and leave this place.

However, the cleaner only stopped about two meters in front of him.

This mass of “sludge” stopped in front of Duncan, around the diffuse spread out of the soft structure a little bit closed, it seems to be cautiously observing something, I do not know whether it is an illusion ……

Duncan even felt that he saw a confused emotion on the slime-like “soft mud”.

It was rational, it was trying to observe and understand the uninvited guest in front of it – but it could not.

It was as if the presence of the uninvited guest was beyond the built-in “logic” of the mansion.

After a few moments, the cleaner seemed to have ended its “dead end” and abruptly turned its attention away from Duncan, turning as if nothing had happened, and slowly creeping towards a dark corner not far away.

Duncan blinked, confused at the scene for a long moment before turning his head to the steward, “What does this mean? This ‘cleaner’ doesn’t welcome me?”

“This …… is something I’ve never encountered before either,” the butler’s voice was surprisingly quite a bit confused as well, “It’s the first time I’ve seen a cleaner engage in these extra activities after performing a cleanup, normally it would never after completing its work make much of a stop ……”

Duncan frowned, but didn’t ask any more questions, instead he turned and walked towards the edge of the shattered corridor, to where the cleaner had been performing its “cleanup task”.

The small bag of “garbage” had completely disappeared, after undergoing a strange and mysterious change, it was broken down and swallowed by a strange and mysterious force, and there was not a single remnant left.

But how did it get here?
Duncan stood on a broken tile at the edge of the corridor and peered out into the endless darkness.

For a moment, he even thought he was about to see his “hut” in the darkness – it might be floating not far away, wrapped in a mist, like… …the countless other fragments of the old world.

He saw nothing, however; there was only infinite darkness at the end of the corridor, and the great hollow inside Alice’s Commons didn’t seem to lead anywhere.

Emotional impulses almost made him step outward, to go into that darkness to find the so-called answers, but at the last moment, the force of reason pulled him back.

Instinctively he sensed risk from that endless darkness, and intuition told him – now was not the time, he could not yet return from that darkness safely.

“Guest?”

The headless butler’s voice came from the rear, interrupting Duncan’s rambling thoughts.

Duncan exhaled softly and took a step backward, rejoining the relative peace and quiet of the hallway.

“It’s time for me to leave,” he said softly, “Take me back to the gardens.”

In the real world, Duncan blinked suddenly – his senses returned quickly and he was fully awake within two seconds.

Alice was still sitting honestly in front of him.

In the real world, still only a moment had passed.

(End of chapter)