Alice in the Land of Steam

Chapter 1139 Is this all you can do?
If the SLP game console symbolizes Alice's recognition of her identity as a "player", then it is now broken into pieces, with only 216 silver cubes of the same size scattered on the ground, silently mocking her naivety and powerlessness. Alice ignored their mockery and silently picked up the cubes one by one, applied glue on the back, and then glued them together to piece together a complete cube.

Her brows were furrowed, her lips were slightly pursed, her expression was as serious as a professor or scholar who was conducting an important experiment in the Royal Academy of Sciences, and her movements were as cautious as if what she held in her palm was not some metal cubes, but a piece of fragile glass, a piece of flammable thin paper, or a heart that was easy to fall. If she relaxed a little, it would fall down suddenly, falling down in the invisible darkness until it touched the bottom, making all her fantasies and longings shattered with a bang - she had experienced that feeling before, so she was determined not to have it a second time.

But reality cannot be changed by human will.

When Alice finally put the 216 silver cubes together and the silver cube reappeared in her palm, she was stunned and stared at the beautiful figure. She saw the things she had always dreamed of and thought would be with her forever. But where did they go? Did they disappear with the girl's sudden departure to a place far away that Alice would never reach in her lifetime? She looked so carefully that she seemed to want to engrave every delicate texture, every ray of refracted light, and the game instruction company logo composed of a combination of multiple geometric shapes and interlocking circles in the depths of her eyes.

Finally, she took a deep breath and slowly moved her other hand away from the game console.

For an instant.

Clatter. Clatter.

Like the collapse of a skyscraper or the collapse of a building block fortress, the silver-white cube disintegrated in an instant, and the metal cubes rushed out of Alice's palm one after another, as if they couldn't wait to escape from a cage that made them feel sad and unhappy. The scene was quite spectacular, with a sense of shock like a dam releasing a flood. However, the metal cubes fell on the floor without splashing the echo of waves, just as this failure did not stir up any waves in Alice's heart. They are all hard things, tempered into iron in repeated torment.

“The ninety-eighth time.”

Alice muttered in a voice that only she could hear. This was the number of times she had tried, and also the number of times she had failed.

She reached out for the tools beside her, ready to make the ninety-ninth attempt. This spirit of never giving up might be valuable under normal circumstances, but in Ling's view now, it was meaningless and unconscious.

Trying itself is meaningless, and failure is meaningless, but Alice is also not aware of these meaningless things. She still firmly believes that all problems in the world can be solved by her own hands. Every GameOver is accumulating strength for the next clearance, but the actual actions she performs are just a kind of repetitive and numb labor like a puppet, a machine, and an assembly line.

"Alice."

Ling Ge, who had been silent, finally found a chance to speak and said, "That's enough. Take a break first. Have a meal or take a nap? Xiao Xia and the others are worried about you. You——"

The young man hesitated for a moment before lowering his voice and said, "You've made them worry for a long time, so don't make them worry any more, okay?"

Alice stared blankly at the silver cubes scattered on the floor. It took her a while to react. She turned her head slowly. The dark circles around her eyes were even more serious than those of Avra. She replied in a hoarse voice, "No... I don't need to. Tell them that I don't need to rest or eat. Wait until I fix the game console... It will be ready soon..."

After saying that, she turned her head back, as if she just wanted to focus on her own things and ignore the reactions from the outside world.

"It's not like they will be reassured just because I tell them about this."

Ling Ge said helplessly: "If you refuse to come downstairs, everyone will continue to worry. This depends on your attitude, not the attitude of anyone else, Alice."

Alice said nothing, but picked up a silver cube from the floor, placed it in front of her eyes and looked at it silently, as if she was thinking about where to start in order to increase the possibility of repairing the game console.

Ling Ge saw her reaction and suddenly felt a little frustrated. He knew that he should have said something more meaningful to stimulate or encourage Alice to get out of the haze, rather than some empty clichés. Even Xinuo knew it, so before he came to Alice, he confessed his thoughts to him and told the young man that he had to become stronger. Only when he became stronger, Alice... and everyone else, would regain confidence.

Everyone is watching his back, but he cannot relax at all. He must remain the same as always.

Just like before, whether it was Olvera who didn't want to face the darkness, or Ieta who didn't want to leave the windmill tower; whether it was Rorona who was caught between dreams and family affection, or Leticia who was born lonely and didn't trust anyone except her grandmother, he was able to keenly capture their subtle changes in emotions, and then directly point out their true thoughts hidden in the deepest part of their hearts. It is difficult to say whether it is the nature of young people, or whether they have gradually developed this character in the process of serving as a priest, but it does help a lot, allowing the young girl king who has lost her memory to unite based on trust and reliance on young people.

But at some point, the young man found that he had lost the ability to keenly perceive other people's emotions and calmly point out their inner thoughts. He became more and more dull, or, as Xinuo and Gloria said, weaker and weaker. He obviously knew his companions well enough, and knew their personalities, preferences and experiences, but suddenly he felt that he was still as ignorant as when he first embarked on the journey and first met them.

For the sake of the road ahead, he tried his best and still maintained a calm and composed image in front of his companions, but occasionally he would ask himself: What exactly changed me?

Or, has he never changed?
……

"I don't mean to ask you to give up, Alice." Linger said softly, "I just hope you can calm down and think carefully about what you should do. Everyone on Yunjingkong Island is sad about that incident, but it is precisely because of sadness that we have to cheer up again. Now, everyone is doing what they can, whether it is for revenge against the Witch Society or for the next road, we must do something. Alice, this battle, it is far from time to give up..."

"What?" Alice asked suddenly, her tone so calm that it seemed as if she had no emotion at all.

Ling Ge was slightly stunned and did not react for a moment, nor did she notice that her shoulders were trembling slightly.

"What do you want me to do? What do you think I should do? Do you think I didn't do anything? But I have been thinking about this question all the time! I have been asking myself: What should I do to avenge Themis in the celestial world? What should I do to defeat the Witch Society? What should I do to satisfy you? But, I have thought about it for so long and so much, and no one has ever told me what the correct answer is. So in the end, until the end, I found out——"

She raised her head suddenly, her eyes were red, as if she was about to cry: "This is all I can do!"

The girl's slightly choked cry echoed in the empty room, as if it brought a whimpering sound from far away. The curtains were blown up by the wind, and suddenly a shrill crow cry came from the night outside the window. The ancient ocean was surging, and the light was gradually submerged.

Lingge stood there, looking at Alice's red and swollen eyes, at a loss as to what to do.

"Why, why do you always feel that I can't do anything, Ling? Am I not already doing it!?"

She stubbornly stretched out her hand to the young man and showed him the silver cube in her palm. The scattered pieces of the game console, like scattered moonlight, reflected every thin line on her palm, and she asked with grievance and unwillingness: "But besides repairing the game console, is there anything else I can do? I relied on the power of the game console to get here, so if I don’t have the game console, wouldn’t I be unable to do anything? I can’t avenge Themis in the sky, I can’t fight the Witch Society, and I can’t even help everyone! But that’s not okay, absolutely not? I want revenge, I want to fight, I want to help everyone, so I, so I…"

She slowly clenched her palms, letting the edges of the silver blocks rub against her palms, causing a stinging sensation. She put her hand on her chest, and covered it with her other hand, curling up like a child afraid of the dark, as if only in this way could she feel a trace of the heartbeat and warmth of life. Even her voice gradually lowered, and she murmured in a faint, soliloquy tone like a dream: "The only way is to fix it..."

That too must be fixed.

Because, without the game console, the genius gamer named Alice would be useless and could do nothing.

Ling finally understood what Alice was afraid of.

He couldn't help but purse his lips, as if swallowing a sour fruit into his throat, which turned into a bitter voice. The young man shook his head slightly, his movements were stiffer than a puppet in a puppet show: "It's useless."

He looked at the girl in front of him sadly: "You can't fix it."

Alice's body trembled suddenly, and she held the game console fragments in her palm even tighter. Then she raised her head and stared at Lingge. Her expression seemed a little superficial to say that she was stubborn, but it was too serious to say that she hated him. At this moment, Lingge suddenly remembered a person who had disappeared from his memory for a long time, Rochelle, the walker of the Fertile Soil Sect. Perhaps his complicated eyes before his death had a subtle resonance with Alice's expression at this moment, so that Lingge saw many different shadows in a trance, going upstream from the same river, traveling through the past time and returning to the present, looking at him with the same sad and resentful eyes. They were not only Alice, not only Rochelle, and even not only the people in the young man's memory, but he understood that their emotions were not directed at him. They were emotions that had nowhere to go, a contract secretly reached with fate, and hatred and jealousy for the unforeseeable future.

It is the tragedy of mortals.

He felt palpitations because of this and didn't even dare to look Alice in the eye.

"You always say that, Lingge." Alice took a deep breath, and the sour feeling at the tip of her nose made her want to cry. She tried to make her tone calm, but there was still a tremor that could not be concealed: "Xiao Xia is like this, and the boss lady is like this. Every time you come to me, you tell me to do what I should do, as if you have determined from the beginning that I can't fix this game console. However, Olvera planted the violet seeds left by Mrs. Tree in the small garden. Although it has not bloomed for two years, she has never given up. You encouraged her to persevere; Rolena conducted hundreds of experiments in her alchemy workshop, trying to completely purify the pollution in the ocean. Although there was no successful case, But you encouraged her to hold on; Yieta was trapped in the windmill tower for seven hundred years, and she still had visions and hopes for the outside world. Although she had never been able to get out completely, you encouraged her to hold on. But I don’t understand, Lingge, I really don’t understand why you always persuade me to give up when I want to hold on? Am I someone you don’t trust? Is it that other people’s persistence is meaningful, but mine is meaningless? Or did you never have high expectations of me, and even hated me at one point? Just like Xino said, I am too weak. If it weren’t for my weakness, Themis in the celestial world would not have to die. Do you all think so? "

"But obviously, I don't want that... I never wanted that kind of result... I didn't mean it... Really... It's not..."

The wind blew far away, bringing with it a sound of sadness. Under the canopy of trees, human emotions were surging uncontrollably, causing those memories that had nowhere to rest to gradually move toward an unknown future. The young man slowly squatted down, stretched out his hand, and gently wiped away the tears from the corners of the girl's eyes.

But he told himself.

This is all you can do.

Give me some meow