By the ti Duncan and Fenna reached the stern helm, Miss Doll was squatting next to the ship’s wheel, muttering to a pile of ropes and buckets—After getting closer, Duncan surreptitiously listened for a while and found that the doll was offering psychological counseling to the buckets.
The main content of the counseling was, "Although I don’t know how to steer the ship, don’t panic, after all, I also don’t know much about sailing because I said I can’t steer."
Duncan felt that leaving this doll alone at the helm was a mistake, and now he felt that the entire ship was getting tense.
At this ti, Alice finally noticed Duncan standing to the side. The doll hurriedly stood up from the pile of buckets and ropes and waved happily, "Captain! You’re finally here!"
"Hmm," Duncan nodded tersely, seriously ignoring the various odd and moving pieces of debris leaving the platform while looking at the doll, "So, are you still feeling nervous?"
"A little," Alice nodded with so restraint, but then a smile appeared in her eyes, "But I feel much better now! I just chatted with my friends, and when I found out they were nervous too, I didn’t feel so nervous anymore..."
Fenna looked at the doll with a strange expression, "...Do you know why they are nervous?"
"I don’t know," Alice said, looking up confidently, "They didn’t tell , but they said they’d stay optimistic."
Fenna was dumbfounded, while Duncan sighed with a now-familiar expression and waved his hand dismissively at the doll, "Don’t think too much, don’t worry, Goat Head and I will monitor the situation on the ship the whole ti, saying we need you to steer, but it’s just to complete a ’symbolic’ process. Do you rember what I told you before?"
When the captain ntioned serious matters, Alice’s face finally took on a serious expression. She quickly recalled her experiences with the captain in "Alice’s Mansion," her feelings at the bottom of her heart when she held the "palette" in that bizarre hall filled with black fog, and then nodded seriously to the captain, "I rember, you told to rember that sensation... When I grasp the wheel, to imagine it as my own ’palette’, telling all the mories’ information to Holoss, right?"
"This is a plan made according to the feedback from Holoss when the ’sailor’ was steering," Duncan nodded slightly, "But we still can’t be sure that Holoss will be able to ’understand’ the instructions you give, after all, the navigation routes you and ’sailor’ recorded are not the sa."
"Yeah yeah, I understand," Alice nodded repeatedly, "So we need to do a test first, right? Once I’m sure I can really connect with this ship, we’ll truly leave this place."
Duncan nodded silently, then, along with Fenna, ca to the edge of the helm. He checked the status of Holoss again, communicating in his mind with the slightly restless "consciousness" of the ship. After confirming that Holoss was ready, he nodded slightly to the doll beside the ship’s wheel, "You can start now, Alice."
Alice was tense, she stepped half forward and took a deep breath—however, as a doll, she did not need to breathe, so she was rely mimicking the action of taking a deep breath as others did to signal her need to calm down.
That dark and heavy ship’s wheel stood silently before her, confronting her wordlessly.
The doll thought for a mont, still finding the matter incredulous—although she was not particularly intelligent, she often contemplated many things, and not even in her wildest dreams had she imagined such a scenario: standing here, like a captain, reaching out to touch the wheel of Holoss.
But it was what the captain had asked her to do, and what the captain said was always right.
Alice felt nervous, felt trepidation, but never doubt—she reached out her hand without hesitation, grasping the wheel that seed as dark as the night and inherently felt trendously heavy to behold.
At that mont, the world in the doll’s eyes... turned upside down.
Alice widened her "eyes," clearly feeling that she had lost sensation of her body.
She’d lost her own body... no, she now had a different "body."
She felt herself floating on the sea, surrounded by chaotic mists, the cold, calm seawater soaking every inch of her hull, the murky Sky Light illuminating her deck, invisible sails curling in the Spirit Realm, waiting for the command to set sail.
She had beco Holoss; she was the ship itself, its rudder, its sails, its deck, and its rigging - endless threads wound around the ship, like the strings manipulating a puppet, like the nerves of humans, like countless thoughts flowing in the mind.
She perceived the changes "on her body" with wonder, sensing the close connection established with those "threads." Suddenly, she seed to realize sothing she had always overlooked:
Holoss had a soul.
Of course, then it had threads.
It just always hid its "threads"—until now, with the captain’s permission, she saw the "threads" aboard the ship.
Alice was excited, her consciousness flowing through this vast new body, running around curiously everywhere. She discovered that there were still many areas on the ship that were insensible and opaque to her, including the captain’s bedroom and so of the ship’s bottom structure. Even without those parts, she found many unseen secrets within the ship—a number of unexplored rooms, locked cabins, corridors, and interstices only known to the captain...
But suddenly, Alice’s cheerfully flowing consciousness felt a resistance head-on, and amidst an illusory roar, she ca to a halt in this "ship-shaped network" woven with countless fine threads—she was stopped by sothing, or perhaps two things.
The puppet ca to a perplexed stop deep within the dim space woven with countless fine threads, she saw a... goat head.
The goat head floated sowhere, looking at her with a bewildered face.
She looked back at the goat head with a similarly bewildered face.
"What the heck?!" After a few seconds of standoff, that floating, phantom-like translucent goat head finally let out a strange cry.
"Mr. Goat Head!" Alice exclaid with excitent, wanting to greet the other party by raising her hand as usual, but then suddenly rembered she was now just a pure consciousness wandering in a brand new shell, so she shouted loudly with a big voice, "The captain let take the helm!"
"I know you’re at the helm," the goat head watched the puppet with a bewildered look, he was monitoring the whole ship’s situation as usual, but he had never imagined that inside Holoss’s "Spirit" would suddenly appear a "sothing" frolicking around, and when he curiously sank down for a look, he crashed into this reckless puppet, "But why are you here?"
"I don’t know," Alice said righteously, "Isn’t this what helming is? And why are you here anyway?"
"...I’ve ’grown’ with this ship for a century, why do you think I’m here?" The goat head’s eyes widened in anger, staring at the puppet in front of it that seed to him like a bundle of phantom light, "And who told you that this is how you steer? People who helm don’t usually stick their souls into the soul of the ship! And you’re just crashing around, aren’t you afraid of hitting soone..."
Alice paused for a mont, her brain suddenly lit up with an idea: "Would you normally hit soone in the ’soul’ of the ship?"
The goat head: "..."
"But I did hit soone, haha," Alice imdiately changed the subject, smiling awkwardly, "And sohow I feel like it wasn’t just you I hit... there seed to be a fleeting shadow..."
She was halfway through muttering to herself when suddenly, a weak and resentful voice ca out of the void, "It was ..."
Alice was startled, then indeed saw in the dark chaos by her side dissolving shadows, one after another, inappropriately eerie, floating like shattered pieces amidst countless threads and the fuzzy silhouette of Holoss. A mont later, the largest fragnt suddenly wriggled, and then many shadows of varying sizes began to rapidly gather and reshape.
A human form stood up from those shadows—Agatha straightened her adventurer’s coat, rubbed her face to make herself presentable, and then glared at the puppet.
"You just rolled right over ! Smashed to smithereens!" The usually good-tempered gatekeeper lady rarely held such a grudge, "What’s with your reckless charging?"
Alice watched Agatha bewilderedly, then turned her head to look at the goat head next to her, and finally, after the captain, she beca the second crew mber on board to know about the "first mate’s" and "lookout’s" peculiar daily states of being.
With the situation as it was, she decided to just laugh it off, "...Hehe."
The goat head and Agatha instantly lost their tempers.
Then their attention turned to Alice.
"Your current state... is quite incredible," Agatha scrutinized the puppet who had absurdly beco a "part" of Holoss, and with the professional poise of a forr gatekeeper, she carefully observed Alice’s "ntal Phantasm," "So, is this your ’true’ appearance? Or say... closer to your true form?"
Alice thought about it: "What do you an?"
"...It ans that your usual body has always been suppressing and constraining you, and now Holoss, a more powerful ’vessel,’ has granted you a certain degree of ’freedom’," Agatha had grown accustod to Alice’s look and explained patiently, "Don’t you feel it?"
Alice finally understood, the hazy glow that looked like her floated in the void, emitting a happy sound, "Yes, I feel light and comfy, but I do feel that..."
"That you feel what?" the goat head and Agatha inquired in unison.
"I just feel... sothing’s not right," Alice hesitated and stopped, muttering as she slowly raised her "head," "This isn’t my body, that... is."
The goat head and Agatha imdiately froze, then spontaneously turned their gaze upward.
A huge, broken illusion far larger than the faint silhouette of Holoss had, at so point, inverted itself above this chaos.
"...Damn!"
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