Chapter 795: Chapter 792: Alice’s ‘Liberation Chapter 795: Chapter 792: Alice’s ‘Liberation By the time 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 time, 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 some 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 me, 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 time, saying we need you to steer, but it’s just to complete a ‘symbolic’ process. Do you remember what I told you before?”

When the captain mentioned 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 remember, you told me to remember that sensation… When I grasp the wheel, to imagine it as my own ‘palette’, telling all the memories’ information to Homeloss, right?”

“This is a plan made according to the feedback from Homeloss when the ‘sailor’ was steering,” Duncan nodded slightly, “But we still can’t be sure that Homeloss will be able to ‘understand’ the instructions you give, after all, the navigation routes you and ‘sailor’ recorded are not the same.”

“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, came to the edge of the helm. He checked the status of Homeloss again, communicating in his mind with the slightly restless “consciousness” of the ship. After confirming that Homeloss 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 merely 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 moment, 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 Homeloss.

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 seemed as dark as the night and inherently felt tremendously heavy to behold.

At that moment, 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 become Homeloss; 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 seemed to realize something she had always overlooked:
Homeloss 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 some 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 came to a halt in this “ship-shaped network” woven with countless fine threads–she was stopped by something, or perhaps two things.

The puppet came to a perplexed stop deep within the dim space woven with countless fine threads, she saw a… goat head.

The goat head floated somewhere, 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 exclaimed with excitement, wanting to greet the other party by raising her hand as usual, but then suddenly remembered she was now just a pure consciousness wandering in a brand new shell, so she shouted loudly with a big voice, “The captain let me 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 Homeloss’s “Spirit” would suddenly appear a “something” 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 seemed 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 someone…”

Alice paused for a moment, her brain suddenly lit up with an idea: “Would you normally hit someone in the ‘soul’ of the ship?”

The goat head: “…”

“But I did hit someone, haha,” Alice immediately changed the subject, smiling awkwardly, “And somehow I feel like it wasn’t just you I hit… there seemed to be a fleeting shadow…”

She was halfway through muttering to herself when suddenly, a weak and resentful voice came out of the void, “It was me…”

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 Homeloss. A moment later, the largest fragment 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 me! Smashed me 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 became the second crew member 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 become a “part” of Homeloss, and with the professional poise of a former gatekeeper, she carefully observed Alice’s “Mental Phantasm,” “So, is this your ‘true’ appearance? Or say… closer to your true form?”

Alice thought about it: “What do you mean?”

“…It means that your usual body has always been suppressing and constraining you, and now Homeloss, a more powerful ‘vessel,’ has granted you a certain degree of ‘freedom’,” Agatha had grown accustomed 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… something’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 immediately froze, then spontaneously turned their gaze upward.

A huge, broken illusion far larger than the faint silhouette of Homeloss had, at some point, inverted itself above this chaos.

“…Damn!”