Accompanied by a series of weird noises, the clockwork man became completely stiff and still like a rusty machine. At almost the same time, Lucretia, who was in a nearby cabin, noticed something unusual about her creation.
The door to the cabin was suddenly pushed open, and a stack of flying colored papers rolled into the room like a whirlwind, condensing into a human form in the swirl. "Sea Witch" Lucretia stepped out of the colored papers, and at first glance
He saw Luni, who had slipped and sat next to the table with her head lowered.
"Luni?" Lucretia quickly walked forward and immediately spotted the clockwork key that fell on the floor next to her. She picked up the key and stepped forward to pat the clockwork doll's back.
Organizer, "What happened?"
A series of intermittent creaking sounds came from Luni's body. After a while, some of her parts finally resumed operation. A severely out-of-key and deformed voice sounded from her chest: "Old master... is looking for you...
"
With a "clang", the clockwork key in Lucretia's hand fell to the ground.
Luni turned her head following the sound, and instinctively reached out to fumble for her clockwork key, trying to re-insert it on her back, but her movement was only halfway through when it got stuck again, and there was a sound of idling gears.
.
Lucretia's expression changed drastically. When she heard the words "Old Master", her pupils trembled. However, the sound of malfunction in Luni's body still woke her up quickly. She shook her head suddenly.
While forcibly suppressing the chaotic thoughts, she hugged the clockwork doll's shoulders and said, "Luni, stand by."
The clockwork doll slowly closed its eyes: "Instruction received, Luni is on standby."
A moment later, deep in the cabin of the Brilliant Star, in a brightly lit cabin, Lucretia was busy at the workbench.
This is a laboratory that can be evaluated as "complete and advanced" even if it is placed at the headquarters of the Academy of Truth. The spacious room is equipped with sophisticated mechanical devices and pressure pipes used to power various equipment.
Among the countless machines, you can see auxiliary equipment covered with magic runes, as well as many crystal containers or reactors that are emitting light. A dozen automatic machine dolls are taking care of these automatically operating equipment.
Let Lucretia focus on the work in front of her.
In front of this "Sea Witch", Luni was lying quietly on the large workbench.
The clockwork doll has been dismantled, and the outer shell imitating the maid's clothing is now being put aside. The fine gold frame and various mechanical components made of brass are almost all over the platform. Now Luni only has her chest.
The above part was still intact. This part was placed on the edge of the platform. She stared at her disassembled body blankly, blinking occasionally.
"Okay...fix...?" A somewhat off-key voice came from Luni's chest.
"Don't worry, it's just that the transmission mechanisms suddenly jammed, causing the bearings to deform." Lucretia was busy without raising her head. "The amount of work is huge, but the repair process itself is not complicated - your heart has not been damaged.
.
Luni slowly rolled her eyes, and she saw the "heart" placed in the center of the workbench...
It is a delicate brass ball, made up of countless complex and precise metal pieces. It floats quietly above a pile of parts. The metal pieces on its surface change positions from time to time, revealing the structure inside. When the angle of the metal piece is right,
When you look up, you can clearly see that the inside of the ball is filled with shining runes, and a more slender thing is floating in the center of those runes.
It was a finger - a very slender, very fragile finger, smaller than a human child's finger, carefully crafted by a puppeteer a hundred years ago.
That is the true core and true essence of the machine doll "Luni" - the last proof that a doll born a hundred years ago remains in this world.
Lucretia noticed Luni's gaze, she raised her head and the movements of her hands suddenly stopped.
After a while, she continued to be busy, and at the same time she said as if inadvertently: "I have transformed you into this, have you ever resented me?"
"Luni... why are you resentful?" The doll head on the workbench made a dull voice, "The mistress... gave Luni life, and Luni was... happy for this..."
"But all of this was just a whim in the beginning - and for this whim, I destroyed your original body," Lucretia said lightly, "For a long time in the beginning
"
Luni did not respond to her mistress, but suddenly spoke after a moment of silence: "You are nervous, you have something on your mind - under normal circumstances, a mistress would not suddenly say such inexplicable words."
Lucretia was silent for two or three seconds: "...Do you remember what you just said? After I just rushed to the restaurant and woke you up."
"...Memory retrieval failed, Luni doesn't remember."
"You told me, 'Old Master, you are looking for me.'"
A series of strange noises came from the clockwork doll's chest, but it was not due to a malfunction, but due to chaotic thinking.
"You really don't remember?" Lucretia raised her head and looked into Luni's eyes quietly.
"Memory retrieval failed, Luni doesn't remember."
"...It seems that my terrible father doesn't want me to have any chance to spy on him," Lucretia showed a complicated smile on her face, and she slowly dismantled a set of transformations.
"He just sent a unilateral signal, telling me...he knows where the Brilliant Star is, and he knows how to find me..."
"You are afraid."
"I'm scared to death - but more than fear, it's more...sadness."
"Sad? Why?"
Lucretia looked into Luni's eyes, and after a long while she shook her head gently: "This is too complicated an emotion for you, and I'm afraid you still can't understand it."
"Okay, Luni will try to understand in the future," the clockwork doll replied, and then asked, "Do you think the old master is giving you some kind of warning?"...
"...I don't know, but this does sound like a warning," Lucretia said softly, "even like some kind of declaration before a hunt... He has returned from the subspace, and it is better than the last time he returned.
Even more elusive, maybe I should remind my brother..."
"You should really remind Mr. Tirian that he has already set off for Purande, and the consul of Purande has said that the Lost Home is approaching that city-state."
Lucretia nodded slightly, didn't say anything more, and just continued to work with her head down.
…
Duncan carefully put "Nelu" into the antique wooden box and put the feather-shaped hairpin back in the drawer.
Then he looked at the wooden box where "Nelu" was stored and felt worried.
As a grown man, he always felt that there was something wrong with putting a girl-style doll in his bedroom.
But besides putting it in his bedroom, he seemed to be unable to think of any better place.
Although the first test failed to achieve much, and no clues pointing to the supernatural were found from the "Nelu" doll, it is after all something related to "Lucrecia". Since it is not
To determine whether she could be put to any use in the future, he did not dare to put the doll out of his sight.
After struggling for a while, Duncan sighed and temporarily placed "Luni"'s box on his bedside.
"If you really have something special, show it off as soon as possible." He looked at the gorgeous classical wooden box and shook his head gently. "Don't be like Alice, who has to throw it into the sea before performing the coffin charge.
.
Of course the wooden box didn't react, but Duncan didn't care.
He came to the window and took a look at the sky outside.
Night has fallen, and the pale and dim light of the Creation of the World is shining on the boundless sea.
The powerful exorcism power brought by the sun has faded in the real world, and those twisted, ominous, and corrosive powers are gradually rising throughout the world. At this time, humans will enter dreams to avoid the world's interference with reason.
But for Duncan... he had never felt any discomfort in the night, nor had he seen those shadows that would scare ordinary people.
Night is when his mind is sharpest.
He returned to his desk, quietly spread out a piece of white paper, and took a pen from the side.
These are all things I just bought from the city-state of Puland.
After pondering for a while, he wrote lines of text on the paper:
In 1889, fragments of the sun appeared, causing the Planter Fire;
Behind the curtain of the Sixth Street factory lies a "reality" destroyed by fire;
There is a distorted time and space that is suspected to be a closed loop in the Sixth Block Community Church, and two completely opposite realities are superimposed in the church;
The source of Agou's "humanity" is unknown, but it is obviously not affected by the power of the sun fragments;
The goddess statue in the church in the sixth block is suspected to have been affected by the subspace rift, and the nuns in the underground church are suspected to have died in the process of fighting against the subspace invasion...