Alice in the Land of Steam

Chapter 1201 Can I Cry?
It was clearly her game console, but it was repaired by someone else. This made Alice feel a little uncomfortable, but she didn't dwell on it for too long, because the most important thing now was not this, but -

"Cassette!"

Alice suddenly shouted, then opened the drawer and rummaged around inside. She soon found her cassette storage box and opened it. Eight cassettes were lying quietly inside, and the metal surface was faintly cold. Alice found that her fingers were trembling, and she could hardly control her excitement. But when she reached out to take a cassette from the storage box, she was surprisingly calm, as if she was afraid that if she was not careful, the game console and cassette would fall from her fingers and break into pieces.

Normally, Alice would make full preparations before playing games, such as locking the door in advance to ensure that no one could disturb her; using sheets and pillows to build a nest on the bed so that she could lean on it comfortably to play games; or sneaking into the kitchen to bring back some nuts as snacks, etc. But now she was not in that mood, and she didn't even care that Lingge was still watching. She simply sat down cross-legged and gently pressed the start button of the game console.

A faint blue light slowly flowed out, drowning out the original light of the kerosene lamp. A translucent virtual light screen was stretched out along the void, and the game command company's LOGO composed of various geometric shapes such as cylinders, spheres, prisms and cubes appeared on the screen. The genius player took a deep breath.

It's really fixed.

No, I'm not sure yet. I have to verify it. Game, yes, whether or not the game can be started is the most important thing! After Alice realized this, she hurriedly inserted the cartridge she had just taken out into the slot on the side of the game console, and then waited anxiously. She was fidgeting, looking at the progress bar below every few seconds, and sometimes deliberately looking away, as if the progress bar would move faster when she couldn't see it.

Although this feeling was strange, it carried a long-lost sense of familiarity, as if she had experienced it somewhere before.

In fact, when the genius player was still living on Earth, he saw some old players reminiscing about the past and expressing their feelings on the forum. In the past, playing games was not considered a normal hobby, but a manifestation of losing one's ambition, so children could only play secretly when their parents were not around. At that time, when they stared at the loading interface of the game console and paid attention to the movement outside the door, the anxious and urgent mood might be the same as that of themselves at this moment? Alice could not understand that feeling before, but now she has experienced it in a wonderful way.

Only Lingge knew the truth, but he had no intention of speaking it out loud. He just watched the scene silently.

Finally, the progress bar of the game console reached the bottom. The picture on the virtual light screen darkened, then brightened again. The brightly colored game screen reflected a bright light in the eyes of both people at the same time. In the opening animation depicting fog, cities, monsters and travelers, the eye-catching game name slowly emerged - "Original Fantasy: Four Warriors".

Should it be said that it was an inevitable coincidence? The cassette that Alice took out from the storage box happened to be the first game she made by herself, and it was also the beginning of this journey. The four characters in the opening animation are her, Lingge, Medien and Saint Shallia. As the big boss, the vampire Fialli, Lingge has forgotten her name. She looked so powerful at the time. If Alice hadn't released the ultimate move in time, I'm afraid she would really lose to her.

But in fact, she is just a sequence 7 vampire. The gap between her and the witch is as huge as heaven and earth, not to mention Tiantis, the most mysterious and perhaps the most powerful among the witches.

Alice stared at the game screen in a daze.

It was successfully started, but she did not feel happy at all. Perhaps it was because the girl did not feel any response from the royal power, which meant that the game was just a game and she had no way to use these imaginary elements to change reality.

But if that wasn't the case, why would she fix the game console?
If it's just for playing games, it won't help at all in the current situation!
The screen kept flashing with the prompt to start the game, but Alice was not in the mood. Her emotions reached a peak and then plummeted to the bottom, as if she could not accept such a drop. She was a little dazed for a moment. At this time, a light laugh came from the side, pulling her back to reality.

The girl looked up at the young man blankly, not understanding why he could still laugh. However, Linger said to her in a reminiscent tone: "This reminds me of something in the past. Do you know what it is, Alice?"

The genius player shook his head woodenly, but did that mean he didn't know, or did it mean he didn't want to think about it?

"You stayed in Tianxin Church. The night we held the Seven Days Ceremony together, you stayed up late, right? You didn't sleep all night, and you laughed weirdly in the middle of the night, which scared Metien a little, worried that something happened to you. But when I came to find you in the morning, you said to me with two big dark circles under your eyes that you finally finished the game, and now you can kill as much as you want." The young man couldn't help laughing when he said this: "I was scared at that time, and the current situation may be very similar, right?"

After he said that, Alice also recalled what happened when she first came to this world, but so much time had passed in the blink of an eye.

"Alice." Linger looked at the girl and asked word by word, "Did you ever think of using the game to change something at that time?"

Alice didn't know why he suddenly asked such a question. Her mind hadn't even recovered from that memory yet. She just shook her head as if instinctively reacting.

Linger then asked, “So, what were you thinking about?”

What is the purest and most essential thought in your mind?
Alice's body trembled violently. She slowly lowered her head and stared at the game console in her hand. After a long silence, she gently pursed her dry lips and said in a bitter voice: "I want to... play games..."

It's that simple.

Even though she came to a strange world, faced with an unknown situation and didn't know where to go in the future, she still had no confusion or hesitation, because she knew how to live, and she knew deeply that she only needed to live like that. A person's lifestyle may be temporarily compromised due to changes in the external environment, but her original intention should not change at all.

But at some point, Alice lost the ability to feel happiness from the game. This is the saddest thing.

"You can play the game right now," Linger said, "just like the old days. If you've forgotten, I can teach you how to do it."

He rummaged through the drawer and found the game controller, then sat cross-legged in front of Alice and gently pressed the option to start the game. The nostalgic pixel style was reflected in the girl's red eyes. Although the lack of the iconic voice-over made people feel a little regretful, everyone knew that the essence of the game was not how exquisite, how strange, or how fun it was, but the players themselves. When you learn to be self-satisfied and get pleasure from simple life, even the most boring games can still be played with relish.

Ringer wasn't that kind of person once, Alice was that kind of person once.

Lingge has become that kind of person now, but Alice doesn't know what kind of person she will become.

The former was playing the game with the controller, while the latter was watching him playing the game. The four pixel characters controlled by the young man were fighting against the vampire boss that descended from the blood moon against the backdrop of a dim and dilapidated city. The gorgeous skill effects and damage numbers that occupied half of the screen flashed everywhere. They were specially added by Alice. She remembered very clearly that when she was developing this game, she felt that the pixel style and turn-based system alone were not interesting enough, so she added a lot of messy things in a self-righteous way, which eventually made it a bit cheap. When playing games together, Olivia and the others often complained about her aesthetics. At that time, she argued that this was a mistake that every beginner in the field of game design would make, and she was just sticking to her original intention. But now she suddenly thought, is that original intention still preserved now?
The young man skillfully controlled the character to fight. He had hardly played this game before, but the battle at that time seemed to emerge from the memory of that night, vividly remembering it, allowing him to compare the scene at that time and perfectly reproduce the character's operations. In the end, just like that battle, he used the brave character symbolizing Alice to release the ultimate secret [Sword of Creation] that required 20 points of courage to use, and instantly killed the poor BOSS.

This familiar scene and the way of winning in the end made Alice suddenly recall that when she set her profession, she did not choose other professions that looked cooler and more powerful, but chose the most clichéd hero in traditional adventure stories. Wasn't it because of her gorgeous skills and her ability to turn the tables even in the most desperate adversity? She has always been a person who loves to show off. How many times have she imagined herself as a hero, creating miracles in desperate situations, saving her companions and receiving their praise and thanks, but when did the legendary hero not even have 20 points of courage?
"Hmm." Linger frowned. Through the battle replay just now, he suddenly realized something: "It seems that the fight was a bit rough. I think that battle could have been won more easily."

In order to verify his conjecture, he restarted several games in front of Alice, and each time he played better than the previous one, from relying on the hero's burst of big moves to pass the level in a thrilling way, to being able to defeat the BOSS without losing any players. Finally, through repeated attempts, he even figured out a way to play that Alice had not thought of when she was developing the game. Instead of letting Alice, who was responsible for output, be the core, he used the cooperation of two healing professions and the destiny BUFF of the girl's royal power to continuously restore health and control the field, so that the whole team could keep full health, and rely on the meager damage of the sister's kicks to kick the BOSS to death.

Alice was a little dazed by this scene. She vaguely remembered that she seemed to have said something similar to Metien at that time, but it was just a joke. She never thought that one day, Lingge would be able to achieve it with a special way of playing. At this moment, she suddenly remembered that players are all like this. They are bold, fearless, pioneering and adventurous. They will never stick to a fixed format, but are committed to creating their own unique path. They have their own understanding of each different way of playing, each way of thinking to pass the level, and even the use of each skill, and they will never repeat themselves. The only thing they will not do is to stick to the rules and admit that they are bound by the game.

For real gamers, there has never been a game that can constrain their thinking. But when did they lose the courage to keep studying, constantly challenging, and constantly moving forward, and to forge a new path in the mountains? Instead, they were frightened by the strength of the enemy and only wanted to use the safest way to pass the level? People who only follow the existing path and complain loudly when this path is blocked, or even feel irritated and anxious, are not considered gamers at all, right?

That's right.

Since when did I stop being a gamer?

It seemed that from the day the girl stopped calling herself a "genius player", facing the cruel reality, she suddenly realized that she had never been a genius with brilliant ideas, nor was she the kind of player who dared to delve into and explore.

She acknowledged her ordinariness and mediocrity.

Although some people have not admitted it yet - Lingge did not admit it, he still called Alice a genius player, and there was no longer any teasing meaning in it; Saint Xia Liya did not admit it, in her mind, although Alice was usually unreliable, she had never lost to anyone in terms of games; in addition, there were Olvira, Yieta, and even Shino who was once stopped from fighting by the girl... No one would admit it, so they would be disappointed in Alice, and that premise was that they had expectations.

Besides, she won't admit it.

At the last moment, Alice suddenly remembered that on the day when Themis disappeared from heaven, she tried to touch her cheek with her hand.

The feeling at that time seems to have been inherited to the present.

Lingge had put down the controller without knowing when, and was quietly staring at the girl in front of him, his expression focused and gentle. Alice seemed to have a premonition of something, she slowly raised her head, and when she looked at him, her beautiful ruby ​​eyes were full of loneliness and fragility. A belated sour feeling washed over the tip of her nose, making her feel very uncomfortable, so uncomfortable that she couldn't breathe, and so uncomfortable that she wanted to cry.

"Lingge..." She asked in a trembling voice: "Can I... cry..."

"Yes." The young man nodded gently and asked, "Do you need me to lend you my shoulder?"

The girl shook her head sadly, but reached out her hand, took his palm, and gently pressed it on her cheek. Then she slowly bent down, leaned over, and buried her whole body in his palm, just like burying herself in the warmest quilt, where she could cry as much as she wanted.

After a while, the young man felt a cool and wet feeling on his palm.

Give me some meow