Alice in the Land of Steam

After resolving Metien's issue and finishing dinner, it was time to deal with the most difficult task.

To be honest, until now, Ling Ge still didn't know what kind of mentality he should have when facing Alice. In the past half month, the genius player has been locking himself in the room, resisting communication with the outside world. And Ling Ge has always let other people, such as Saint Xia Liya or Aoweila, contact her. The young man showed hesitation at this time. To be honest, this is a word that is almost impossible to associate with Ling Ge. In the eyes of his companions, he is always so firm, so calm, and so sharp. He is a well-deserved leader in the team.

On this journey from leaving Mirror Star to returning to Mirror Star, no one is missing or added among them, but the things that can be changed are not visible to the naked eye, but are hidden deep in everyone's heart. Those who were once carefree will fall into troubles, those who have walked out of the cage will become prisoners again; those who once regarded everything as a game will be cruelly hit by reality; and those who think they have seen through everything and will not have any expectations or disappointments on this journey, will feel deeply uneasy and confused.

Mr. Yang Ke, am I in a fog now?

Things are unpredictable. Who can say that Metien, whom you are worried about, has not grown up? Who can say that Lingge, whom you trust, has not lost his way in the fog?

Standing at the stairs, the young man sighed silently and was about to go upstairs to have a good talk with Alice, at least to persuade her to leave the room and not be so resistant to communication. Since she disappeared, the atmosphere on Yunjingkong Island has become much more depressing, although the boss lady, Metien and Saint Xia Liya are trying their best to liven up the atmosphere, hoping that everyone can cheer up again. However, without Alice who likes to play tricks, there is indeed something missing.

In other words, everyone is indispensable on this empty island, and people will feel sad if anyone is missing.

So, for that girl, do Alice, Tiantis, the Young Queen, and even everyone on the Cloud Whale Sky Island have the same meaning? She couldn't make a choice, but people forced her to make a choice, so it wasn't so surprising that she made that decision in the end.

Lingge regretted that he had not figured this out earlier. His innate slowness and resistance always made him lose something.

——Put away your thorns, Lingge.

Someone told him mysteriously: Even hedgehogs will find a suitable distance to keep each other warm. No one can live independently of others.

Ling Ge felt that it seemed to be Mr. Yang Ke's voice, and sometimes it became like Saint Xia Liya's voice. Occasionally, he would have a disrespectful thought, as if it was the goddess of creation trying to convey revelation to him. Is it the so-called divine revelation or apocalypse? But when he came to his senses, he didn't hear anything in his ears. Instead, there was a person standing in front of him, looking at the young man with a complicated expression.

"Before you go find Alice," she said, "could we talk for a minute?"

……

Behind the Fairy Sleep Inn lies a lush forest, and in the forest stands an ancient sycamore tree, which stretches across the field of vision like a giant, stealing everyone's attention. The autumn chestnuts and stone pines are already tall enough, but this sycamore tree is much taller than them, so that the treetops are like an umbrella, blocking out the sun and completely covering the wooden and stone structure of the hotel under its shade. It is so high that even the lights on the ground cannot transmit their light to that height, but this does not affect the visibility in the forest at all. The emerald green, fiery red and withered yellow leaves seem to glow by themselves, dyeing the area under the tree into a blazing field.

This is in stark contrast to the eternal night of the black forest. If you stand on the heights of the Ansas Mountains and look into the distance, you may be able to see giant trees rising from the ground in the dark woodland, scattering glowing leaves all around, as if an ancient ocean is nurturing life, causing hundreds of millions of luminous jellyfish to be born from the sea, drifting in the light, and finally sinking into the darkness. It is spectacular and shocking.

Standing under the tree, the human figure becomes like dust, not much bigger than the fallen leaves in the sky.

Lingge looked at Xino who was stroking the tree trunk and didn't know what to say for a moment.

Just like he had been letting others get in touch with Alice for the past half month, while he had been avoiding this matter intentionally or unintentionally, Shino had also been avoiding him and avoiding contact with young people intentionally or unintentionally. Was this a kind of resistance, or was it based on other reasons? Linger was not sure, but he knew that the solution he proposed to Alice's problem must have made the knight from Grindelwald very dissatisfied, and in fact the final result proved that her dissatisfaction was justified. Escape could not solve any problem, and expecting a person to escape forever was even more a fantasy.

Many people must take responsibility for the death of Themis, from Alice to Linger, from Carabosse to Tiantis. Only Shino does not need to do so. She is the only one who has keenly seen through the key to the problem. She has also warned everyone more than once. In the end, she wanted to go into battle to save the defeat, but was stopped by Alice who was still optimistic. She did everything she could. If she still blames herself for this, it is probably not a proper mentality. But the fact is that in the past half month, the young knight has been honing her spearmanship and martial arts day and night, and has spent all her time except for eating and resting on training. Her diligence has reached the point where others are worried, and it can even be described as venting.

Is she feeling guilty? Or is she trying to calm herself down? Or is she seeing things further than others, and while everyone else is still wallowing in grief, she has already pulled herself together and is always ready for the next battle.

At some point, Linger lost his ability to keenly perceive other people's moods. He could no longer see through anyone's thoughts, including Shino. So he didn't know what the young knight wanted to talk to him about, and just waited silently for her to take the initiative to start a conversation.

Xino withdrew her hand from the trunk of the sycamore tree. The rough texture reminded her of her own weapon. The Holy Lance Whitethorn was made of tangled branches of whitethorn. The entire material was plant-based. It was neither as tough as steel nor as smooth as metal. Every time she held the spear, she felt like she was touching a tree, a vine, or a flower stem, but not a weapon.

But it must play the function of a weapon, because that is the mission of the Holy Spear and the meaning of the birth of the knights of the Godafu family.

She suddenly turned around and spoke, her voice as bright and clear as silver and moonlight: "Ling Ge, do you know why I haven't taken the initiative to look for you in the past half month?"

This question made Lingge think for a while. After a while, he replied: "Because I disappointed you?"

In fact, he originally wanted to say that it was because you were angry, but that was too direct, and in the minds of young people, Xinuo was definitely not the kind of person who liked to throw tantrums. If she was really angry, she should have told Lingge directly instead of sulking there alone, making everyone uncomfortable. Facts have proved that the impression of Xinuo by young people is still valid until now, and even the young knight herself thinks so.

"If I am disappointed, I may still feel that at the beginning, but I will calm down soon because I have already vowed not to dwell on the past, but to face the future bravely." Xinuo said calmly, "In fact, I have been reflecting on myself for the past half month." "Reflection?" Ling Ge couldn't help but be surprised: "Why?"

He didn't think that Xino had anything to reflect on in this matter.

But in her own eyes, it does exist.

"I'm reflecting on my own impulsiveness and over-criticism towards you, Lingge." Xino looked up at the umbrella-shaped treetops glowing like an ancient ocean in the dark night, and said softly, "When Alice needed someone to help her get out of her fantasy and face reality, you didn't help her, but pushed her deeper. I used to be puzzled, doubted and blamed you for this, but it wasn't until these few days that I realized that you didn't have no solution, but you didn't have a choice, right?"

She retracted her gaze and fixed it on the young man's face. His wine-red pupils were filled with an amber-like luster in the night. It was the wisdom that had finally begun to ferment after a long period of precipitation. The girl looked at others, but also looked at her own heart, gaining the power of thinking from the ancient ancestral precepts of the Gustave family.

The young man pursed his lips, unable to answer.

He didn't say anything, and Xino explained to himself: "You have already seen it, Alice's addiction to fantasy is not a simple love, but a drowning person who finally grabbed a life-saving straw. Even if there is only one straw, she will desperately comfort herself that she can finally survive, and selectively ignore the fact that the straw is sinking with her. It's not even a fantasy, but a delusion. Generally speaking, only the most extreme means can break the most paranoid delusion. But in terms of the situation at the time, the most extreme means I can think of is nothing more than... death."

Nothing can stimulate Alice's spirit more than death, and make her get out of that paranoid state. Moreover, it must be the death of someone close to her. Alice never took the death of others to heart. To her, it was just the disappearance of another piece of data in the game. The only thing she would not treat was Lingge, Metien, and the companions who had walked side by side with her all the way as data.

Complete death, saying goodbye to this world, and then leaving her life, never to appear again, and that deadline is forever - for players who dominate a game world and have no concept of time and life and death, perhaps "forever" is painful enough, like a needle piercing their hearts.

But the question is, can Lingge use this method to force Alice to face reality?

He had no right to do that.

Moreover, he really didn't want to see that happen, so he deliberately turned a blind eye to the key to the problem and told Alice that you are the best genius player in the universe, no conspiracy or calculation can stop you, all evil villains will be defeated by you, you have to keep winning until you win the happy ending for everyone, because, if you don't win...

will die.

No matter whose death it is, it seems to announce the end of the game. Alice finally walked out of the protective shell she had woven for herself, although it was not in a way that everyone was happy with. The price was that she closed herself up with another layer of protective shell. After losing her fantasy and refusing to face the reality, where did she put her heart?

It took Shino half a month to figure out the intricacies of the situation. When she understood it completely, it was too late. She wanted to blame herself instead. She blamed herself for being too slow and not calm enough. Although she didn't know Alice's true character very well at that time, she knew about death.

No one knew better than her how it felt to have friends and relatives die in front of her, especially when they died because of her. It was as if her heart was being grabbed and she was suffocating. Even a knight from the Godave family needed an entire college era to let go of it. Finally, with the help of a group of strangers who came from afar and those classmates who never left her, she was able to reconcile with herself.

So, who do Alice and Ringer need to help them reconcile?

"I should apologize to you, Lingge." The girl's tone was as complicated as her eyes: "I seem to have never thought about this issue from your perspective. If it were me at that time, I'm afraid I couldn't make a better decision than you."

The young man was surprised by this sudden apology, but after being surprised, he shook his head slightly: "This is never the best choice. After all, Alice lost in the end - no, it should be said that we, we all lost."

Even if Shino goes into battle, they will lose, because that means sacrifice, and sacrifice means the problem is back to square one. Alice will still isolate herself and resist reality because of the death of her companions.

This is a dead end, destined from the moment Alice saw the world as a game. Lingge once tried to find a way out of the dead end with his own method, but the reason for his failure was planted from the very beginning: Alice saw the world as a game and her enemies as data. She could not kill her enemies for her ideals like Carabosse did, but only "killed" a piece of data as a player.

If one holds on to such a mentality, then for the young girl Wang Quan, whose source of power is idealism, victory or defeat is naturally predetermined.

Ultimately, Alice just doesn't want to face the fact.

"Victory means sacrifice."

Shino's voice lowered: "Even the greatest victory is bound to be accompanied by the smallest sacrifice." (End of this chapter)