Lucresia silently watched the automaton lying on the experintal table. Alice stood across the table, her face bearing a nervous and uneasy expression, while Duncan stood by her side, looking expressionless.
After the awkward atmosphere persisted for a long ti, Lucresia finally broke the silence first. "...So, Luny just took its own head off?"
"...The process was complex," Duncan said with a straight face, "I was also surprised."
Lucresia couldn’t help but glance at Duncan.
She wasn’t sure if it was an illusion, but she felt like her father, who always had a stern face and a somber temperant, had a hint of... embarrassnt in his expression just now.
"Sorry..." Alice finally spoke up, her head lowered as she carefully grasped the corner of Duncan’s clothes, clearly realizing she had caused trouble again. "I saw that Luny was also a doll and thought all dolls were the sa, so... I was also surprised. It turns out its head isn’t detachable, huh?"
"...You can tell that Luny also thought it was the sa as you," Lucresia looked at "Anomaly 099," which had once made countless people fearful and wary, with a subtle expression, "but I didn’t design that ’feature’ for her."
Just then, Luny, lying on the experintal table and acting independently, suddenly made a move. Its head blinked its eyes, and its voice sounded slightly out of tune. "Mistress, could you please connect my head first? I’m sorry for the trouble..."
Lucresia looked down at the clockwork doll without expression, sighed, and picked up tools from beside her. She began to disassemble the cover and decorative material near Luny’s neck, and couldn’t help but ask as she worked, "Why did you thoughtlessly follow what Alice did?"
"Alice... is a new friend," Luny’s head spoke from the side, its mouth opening and closing with a faint static noise, "a new friend brought by the old master."
Lucresia paused briefly in her work and then continued without another word.
Alice, a bit anxiously, watched Luny’s head. "So, are we still friends after this?"
"We can be," Luny blinked its eyes, "but I’ll have to wait for the mistress to fix up..."
Alice imdiately cheered up, then seed to discover sothing astonishing. "Ah, you don’t stutter when you talk with your head detached!"
"That’s right, because my head can operate on its own. The mistress has installed a complete vocal structure in my skull, and my thinking is not affected by the absence of body structure," Luny explained in a matter-of-fact manner, "The difference between you and is that my neck can’t self-repair after breaking."
Alice thought for a mont, didn’t quite understand, but nodded anyway. "Oh—how amazing."
Duncan watched this scene unfold, feeling that it had beco incredibly bizarre.
More bizarre than a cursed doll that lost its head was, of course, finding another doll to be friends with it—he hadn’t even introduced Alice to the other strange "servants" aboard the ship yet.
What kind of commotion would ensue if this innocent wandered around on the Brilliant Starship?
As Lucresia was bent down, busy disassembling and repairing Luny’s joints, she suddenly felt a jolt at the bottom of her heart. She looked around blankly, but couldn’t find the source of this "jolt."
However, her attention quickly shifted to sothing else.
"What do you think about that ’eyeball’ recorded by Master Taran El?" The "Sea Witch" turned her head, looking at Duncan beside her, "We certainly cannot disclose it to the public, but what about the Church of the Four Gods..."
"I am planning to tell them, but I haven’t yet figured out how, or whether it’s necessary to have so more direct contact with their higher-ups," Duncan quickly gathered his scattered thoughts, speaking quite seriously, "The key issue now isn’t so much that ’Entity 001’s true form is an eye encapsulated in an artificial sphere’ – after all, for mortals, Entity 001 has always been the unknown, and its true form could be any kind of strange and terrifying thing. What’s really important is the appearance of that eyeball."
"The appearance of that eyeball..." Lucresia’s movents slowed down, her eyebrows knitting slightly, "You’re saying it resembles... a structure of the Creeping Sunwheel?"
"The Creeping Sunwheel itself is an ancient god, surrounded and scorched by a corona, with a massive eyeball structure being a main feature amidst layers of writhing tentacles," Duncan nodded, speaking offhandedly, "I have a deep impression of that eyeball—it gazed at for a long ti."
Listening to her father’s narration, Lucresia suddenly looked around uneasily, and then glanced at Duncan with so hesitation, "Discussing ancient gods directly at sea..."
"No big deal, even if that guy’s ’gaze’ really was attracted over here, it would only fall on ," Duncan waved his hand, "and I have always been looking to find it anyway."
Lucresia opened her mouth but suddenly didn’t know how to continue the conversation.
In her century of wandering the Endless Sea, she had seen a great deal and interacted with even more madn. She had been involved in every kind of taboo and dangerous topic and event, but those taboos and dangers were not discussed in such a fierce atmosphere.
She felt she might indeed need quite so ti to relearn how to interact with her father as he was now.
Duncan didn’t pay attention to Lucresia’s subtly changing expression for a mont. After a brief reflection, he thought of sothing else, "Do you rember the ’intruder’ that appeared in Taran El’s dreamscape? The projection of a Scion of the Sun."
"I rember, you said it looked like a smaller version of the ’Wriggling Sun Wheel’," Lucresia nodded, "And you also ntioned that the ’Scion of the Sun’ had a brief interaction with you, that it and its minions were searching for sothing in that dreamscape."
Duncan nodded slightly, then began to speak in a calm voice, "The core of Vision 001 is an ’eyeball’ that bears a striking resemblance to the core of ’Wriggling Sun Wheel’. Twelve hours after Vision 001 extinguished, the Scion of the Sun invaded ’The Dream of the Naless’ through Taran El’s dreamscape, along with its minions searching for sothing. Clearly, there is a connection between these two events;
"On the other hand, for centuries, the believers of the Black Sun have been claiming that the deity they worship was the ’True Sun God’ and that the sun in the sky is called the ’False Sun’. The world has always thought that this was just their delirious delusion, a misperception of the world caused by the ntal contamination of the Black Sun. But Taran El, during the sun’s extinction, found an eyeball within Vision 001 that truly encapsulated a core structure very similar to the ’Wriggling Sun Wheel’;
"Lastly, there’s the Obliteration Sect follower who invaded The Dream of the Naless—according to the intelligence I’ve gathered, the goals of the Obliteration Sect are unlike those of the Sun Cultists. They are searching for the Primal Blueprint from before The Saint’s creation within that dreamscape. However, according to the records in the ’Book of Desecration’, the ’Profound Saint’ during the era of Creation guided the Cretan clan and might have personally helped them build Vision 001. So, strictly speaking... today’s Vision 001, which is the ’False Sun’ in the mouth of the Sun Cultists, can also be regarded as the ’Masterpiece’ of the Profound Saint, a part of the Primordial Blueprint.
"This last point might also explain the ’cooperative state’ I observed between the Obliteration Sect and the Sun Sect—they are indeed cooperating, but clearly, the relationship is not harmonious."
Duncan slowly spoke of the things he had been contemplating lately, before lifting his eyelids and looking into Lucresia’s eyes.
"From this information, what do you think?"
Lucresia unconsciously stopped the movent of her hands. Her expression shifted several tis, heavy with a certain unease. After a long ti, she spoke in a low voice to break the silence, "...Even if a heretic who worships the Black Sun were standing here, they might say this is a bit extre..."
"...I heard sothing similar not too long ago," Duncan shook his head and said, "Now I just hope that the deepest truth of our world is not crazier than this—otherwise, in the face of the real history, even the most extre heretics would seem conservative."
Lucresia didn’t speak, just silently lowered her gaze, deep in thought.
Luny’s head still lay on the laboratory bench, its gaze intersecting with that of its pensive mistress.
After a while, Luny couldn’t help but speak up, "Mistress...are we still pretending? Why don’t you go rest in the next room? I could get Rabi to help..."
Lucresia exhaled, shelving the whirlwind of thoughts for the mont and picked up her tools to continue her busy work, "Rabi would only stuff your head into its own belly to satiate its endless craving for ’cotton’—don’t move, I’m putting your head back now."
"Oh."
...
At the sa ti, in the Governor’s office of Light Breeze Harbor, Governor Sala l unfurled a docunt that had just been delivered to her desk. As she read the content, the elven Governess, who had lived through long years, slowly furrowed her brow.
The docunt was from the Tetradic Church—not issued by a single church, but signed by the seals of four pontiffs, witnessed by the quadriga, and sent to every City-State atop the Endless Sea.
It proposed establishing a warning system jointly constructed by the City-State, Church, and Explorers’ Association to monitor any movents in the City-State, on the sea surface, or beneath the sea that could potentially indicate a crisis, alert for a repeat of the Frost peril, watchful for the awakening of ancient gods;
The Tetradic Church would redeploy a portion of its patrol fleets from the borders to the interior of the civilized world to respond to ergencies anywhere in the world.
Although these two items were worriso, they were still considered "work-related" tasks, at least to the rulers of the City-State.
What really caused Governess Sala l to furrow her brow was the last, almost casually ntioned yet particularly eye-catching item in the docunt—
"All City-States must pay heed to any warning signals from the Holoss or the Exiled Fleet. Should the Holoss itself be active in the waters surrounding the City-State...any hostile actions must be avoided at all costs, and if necessary...assist according to the situation."
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