Chapter 580 Spreading of Influence
Chapter 580 Influence Spreads
Upon hearing Agatha’s report, Duncan’s first reaction was to glance at the dormitory entrance not far away out of the corner of his eye.
Then he withdrew his gaze and looked at the former “gatekeeper” in the mirror with an unusually serious expression: “You mean, its reflection in the sea?”
“Not only its reflection in the sea, but also its projection in the Spirit World – under normal circumstances, these two ‘shadows’ are deeply connected and interact with each other,” Agatha said with a serious look on her face, “In the case of a ‘shadow’, it’s not just its reflection in the sea, it’s also its projection in the Spirit World,” she said with a serious look on her face. earnestly, “In the dead of night last night, I was traveling through the ship’s mirrors as usual, checking the condition of the entire ship, and then suddenly discovered this matter, but I thought at the time that it was a ‘special feature’ of the Lost Country itself, after all, I knew very little about it ……”
“The Lost Country has no such trait – its ‘shadow’ doesn’t suddenly disappear for no reason, at least as far as I know,” Duncan shook his head, and “When did this phenomenon occur? How long did it last, roughly?”
Agatha immediately nodded, “Judging by the time, it would have occurred during the ‘Dream of the Nameless One’ influence you mentioned, and lasted until the first rays of haze appeared at sea level.”
Duncan didn’t say a word, just frowned tightly, a ray of deep thought appearing on his face.
Agatha, on the other hand, spoke again after a moment’s silence and continued, “I happened to be traveling through the mirrors of the real world when the shadow of the Lost Country disappeared, and in the usual way, I could have ‘jumped’ directly through those mirrors to the spirit world, or into the Lost Country’s reflection in the sea surface, yet last night, such a ‘jump passage’ disappeared along with the Lost Country ship’s shadow ……
“But in my senses …… the realm ‘opposite’ the mirror is not really no longer there, but rather there is a ‘barrier’ that I don’t understand that is preventing that prevents me from observing the path in the mirror or sensing the situation on the opposite side ……”
Listening to Agatha’s narration, Duncan seemed to think of something: “You mean …… you think that the ‘shadow’ of the Lost Country ship didn’t really disappear, but rather shifted into a state that you couldn’t understand or observe at that time, or that there was a ‘perception’ barrier that ‘shut’ you off from the real world side?”
“Very apt,” Agatha looked as if she was relieved, “I thought my description was too abstract and that I would have to go to great lengths to explain it to you ……”
“I’ve dealt with all sorts of ‘draperies’ in both Prand and Frost,” Duncan said casually, followed by a thoughtful glance at the door to the room not far away, “so you just heard me suspicion after talking to Goathead – because my ‘first mate’ didn’t mention anything at all about last night’s anomaly.”
“I don’t know what this is due to, but theoretically …… it should be able to detect changes in the spirit world, and while its perception may not be as sharp as mine in this regard, it’s not as if it’s completely oblivious to it,” Agatha said with some hesitation in her tone. “Especially with the things you just mentioned, the presence of the other ‘goathead’ and the other’s bizarre and suspicious demeanor ……”
Duncan exhaled softly and spoke, “You think the ‘Goathead’ is no longer reliable because it may be hiding something from me.”
“…… I know that as a ‘new crewman’ I shouldn’t question the ship’s first mate, it’s a huge taboo, but as a former ‘Gatekeeper ‘, I have an instinctive …… ‘alertness’ to such things,” Agatha said sincerely, weighing her words, “Many irreparable irreversible developments begin with that little bit of ‘wrongness’ at the beginning.”
Duncan listened in silence, neither agreeing nor blindly refuting.
It was a long time before he spoke in thought, “There are two possible explanations for this; either, Goathead knew what was going on, but it didn’t tell me, which was a deliberate attempt at concealment, or, even it didn’t know about the changes that took place on the Lost Country last night.”
Agatha was stunned for a moment and quickly responded, “The second explanation means ……”
“There is some kind of force affecting the ship – and Goathead is within the ‘affected’ range,” Duncan said gravely, “and you are not affected , so you were able to observe the changes in the Lost Country ship during the night.”
……
Humming a lilting tune whose name she couldn’t remember, Alice busied herself through the kitchen.
For her, the days spent bustling about on the Lost Country were always her happiest moments.
There was everything familiar to her here, the familiar deck, the familiar kitchen, the familiar pots and pans, and the familiar barrels, choppers and spatulas.
They were all her friends, everything on this ship was her friend – and for the most part, she found it much easier to deal with her friends on the ship than to go to the city-state and deal with people.
Because going to the city to deal with people was just too much to learn, too much to memorize, and too much to pay attention to a whole bunch of drowsy “codes” – those “humans” as they were called were always too fragile, and they didn’t want to be a part of anything. The so-called “humans” are always too fragile, they float around unguarded with countless “strings”, and if you just grab them, they will somehow be damaged beyond repair, much more delicate and fragile than the ship’s ceramics and glassware.
But the captain of the ship is very important to those “people”, he does not want to casually move the “line” on the other people, and even more do not want to damage those who should not be broken to the damage.
For Alice, this was a little difficult.
It was as hard as putting a cat in a room full of balls of wool and not allowing it to touch any of the threads with its paws.
So after the novelty of going into town a few times had worn off, Alice realized she preferred living on a ship – because here, she could hardly beat anyone.
Just be careful not to “touch” her friends on the boat.
She liked that, she liked the solidity of the world around her.
Lifting the barrel that held the pickled fish, Alice carefully reached the edge of the barrel and took a whiff of the scent, a satisfied look on her face.
The captain had been puzzled by this, and the others on the ship actually didn’t understand it either – why would a mannequin have a sense of smell?
Alice herself didn’t know, but she never thought about it that much. Just feeling satisfied with her handiwork, she grabbed a wooden tub from the side and prepared to remove some of the pickled fish from the barrel – she reached out towards it, but before she could remove anything from it, a long-handled spoon on a nearby countertop suddenly jumped up and “snapped! ” on her arm.
Alice let out a gasp of surprise and hurriedly withdrew her hand while speaking, “I washed my hands, ah, just now!”
The long-handled spoon wobbled on the edge of the wooden barrel, still without the intention of getting out of the way.
Alice flattened her mouth, a bit unhappy, “It’s no good!”
The long-handled spoon slowly floated up, the head part of the spoon gesturing in front of the mannequin.
“…… Well,” Alice finally reluctantly expressed her acceptance, muttering as she reached out and grabbed the spoon handle, “It’s just that I dropped my head in it the last time I bent over to get something, so why bother? ……”
She fetched the fish from the bucket and made small talk with her friends in the kitchen, sometimes bringing up things she had seen and heard in the city-state, sometimes about something to do with the captain.
And then she started checking the other containers for storing food – since Aey was able to supply the Lost Country with fresh ingredients at any time, most of the food that needed to be stored here was stuff that had been processed to be able to be stored for years and years, and kippers were the most popular of them all.
There were a total of twelve large wooden barrels in which the kippers were stored.
Alice counted along the wall from the door – one, two, three, four …… twelve, thirteen.
She stopped abruptly.
Ms. Doll blinked in confusion and went back to the beginning to recount.
Still thirteen.
There was one more.
Alice stood in front of the row of barrels in a bit of a daze, her head running hard; at first, she was wondering if she had gotten the numbers wrong again, after all, she had never been very good at counting, not even as good as Shirley at times, but then she soon thought that she wasn’t supposed to be that stupid – after all, it was just counting twelve barrels! .
She could even count more than two-digit additions and subtractions already.
So Alice rubbed her eyes and patiently counted again.
Twelve.
The extra number that had just appeared, disappeared and everything was back to normal.
Alice counted between the barrels over and over again, finally confirming that she hadn’t counted wrongly anymore, yet feeling that the doubts in her heart hadn’t been alleviated in the slightest, she turned her head, glanced at the other things in the kitchen, and couldn’t help but curiously open her mouth, “Did you guys notice that? There seems to be an extra bucket just now!”
However, the friends in the kitchen had no way to really speak up to answer her – even if they could, these things, which were at most “restless things”, and had only manifested their characteristics as living creatures due to the special environment of the Lost Country, didn’t have the full intelligence to help solve the The dolls were confused.
When Alice didn’t get an answer, she turned her head again and patted the large wooden barrels along the wall, “Was there an extra one among you just now?”
The large wooden barrels didn’t answer her either.
……
Sara Mayer listened to what the “Witch of the Sea” told her, not even realizing that the food in her hand had fallen on the table.
He didn’t care that the free-spirited witch had broken into his house early in the morning and interrupted his breakfast.
“All these unbelievable things …… happened last night?”
The elf consul said incredulously, in fact, he initially wanted to say “are you teasing me”, but considering the temper of this witch lady, he didn’t do this kind of unnecessary provocation.
“Judging by your reaction, the situation is just as I expected,” Lucrecia sighed, she sat on the chair opposite to Sara Meier, as for the servants in the dining room who were shivering, they had already been thrown out before she could talk about the “business”, now there was only her and the consul. Now here only she and the consul two people, “that ‘dream’ the scope of influence …… is bigger than imagined.”
(End of chapter)