With a series of strange noises, the clockwork man became completely stiff and still like a rusted machine, and almost at the same time, Lucrecia, who was in a nearby cabin, noticed the abnormality of her creation.

The door of the cabin was suddenly pushed open, and a stack of flying colored papers rolled into the room like a whirlwind, and condensed into a human figure as it swirled. The "Sea Witch" Lucrecia stepped out of the colored papers, and at first sight she saw Rune, who had slipped and sat next to the table with her head lowered.

"Lune?" Lucrecia walked over quickly and immediately found the clockwork key that had fallen on the floor beside her. She picked up the key and walked over to tap the mechanism box on the back of the clockwork doll. "What happened?"

There was a series of intermittent creaking sounds coming from Luni's body. After a while, some of her parts finally started to function again. A severely out-of-tune and distorted voice rang out from her chest: "Old Master... is looking for you..."

With a clang, the clockwork key in Lucrecia's hand fell to the ground.

Luni turned her head at the sound and instinctively reached out to feel for her clockwork key, trying to reinsert it into her back, but her action got stuck again halfway through, followed by a sound of idling gears.

Lucrecia's expression changed drastically. When she heard the words "old master", her pupils trembled. However, the malfunctioning sound in Luni's body still woke her up quickly. She shook her head suddenly, and while forcibly suppressing her chaotic thoughts, she hugged the clockwork doll's shoulders and said, "Luni, stand by."

The clockwork puppet slowly closed its eyes: "Instructions received, Luni, stand by."

A moment later, in a brightly lit cabin deep inside the Brilliant Star, Lucrecia was busy at a workbench.

This is a laboratory that can be described as "complete and advanced" even if it is placed in the headquarters of the Academy of Truth. The spacious room is equipped with sophisticated and complex mechanical devices and pressure pipes for supplying energy to various equipment. Among the countless machines, there are auxiliary equipment covered with magic runes, and many crystal containers or reactors that are emitting faint light. A dozen automatic mechanical puppets are taking care of these automatically running equipment, allowing Lucrecia to focus all her attention on the work at hand.

In front of this "Sea Witch", Luni was lying quietly on the large workbench.

The clockwork doll had been disassembled, and the shell that imitated a maid's costume was now placed aside. The skeleton made of refined gold and various mechanical components made of brass almost covered the entire platform. Now, only the part above Luni's chest remained intact. This part was placed on the edge of the platform. She stared blankly at her disassembled body, blinking occasionally.

"Okay... fix... it?" A somewhat out-of-tune voice came from Luni's chest.

"Don't worry, it's just that the transmission mechanism suddenly got stuck and caused the bearing to deform," Lucrecia worked without looking up. "The project is huge, but the repair process itself is not complicated - your 'heart' is not damaged."

Luni slowly turned her eyes and saw the "heart" placed in the center of the workbench.

It was an exquisite brass sphere, made up of countless complex and precise metal pieces. It floated quietly above a pile of parts. The metal pieces on its surface changed position from time to time, revealing the structure inside. When the angle of the metal pieces was right, one could clearly see that the inside of the sphere was engraved with shining runes, and an even more slender object was floating in the center of those runes.

It was a finger—a very thin, very fragile finger, smaller than that of a human toddler, carefully crafted by a puppeteer a hundred years ago.

That is the true core and essence of the mechanical doll "Luni" - the last proof that a doll that was born a hundred years ago remains in this world.

Lucrecia noticed Luni's gaze, she looked up, and suddenly stopped what she was doing.

After a moment, she continued to be busy, and at the same time, as if inadvertently said: "I transformed you into this, have you ever resented it?"

"Luni... why do you feel resentful?" The puppet head on the workbench made a dull voice, "The mistress... gave Luni life, and Luni is... happy for this..."

"But all of this was just a whim in the beginning - and for this whim, I destroyed your original body," Lucrecia said calmly, "For a long time at first, I didn't realize that you had developed the ability to think because of the influence of the border. At that time, I just thought you were a machine, and I performed many reckless 'experimental transformations' on you."

Lu Ni did not respond to her mistress, but after a moment of silence, she suddenly spoke: "You are nervous and you have something on your mind - a mistress under normal circumstances would not suddenly say such inexplicable words."

Lucrecia was silent for two or three seconds: "...Do you remember what you said just now? After I rushed to the restaurant and woke you up."

"...Memory retrieval failed. Luni doesn't remember."

"You told me that the 'old master' was looking for me."

A series of strange noises came from the clockwork doll's chest, but they were not caused by a malfunction, but by confused thinking.

"You really don't remember?" Lucrecia raised her head and looked quietly into Luni's eyes.

"Memory retrieval failed. Luni doesn't remember."

"...It seems that my terrible father doesn't want me to have any chance to spy on him." Lucrecia showed a complicated smile on her face. She slowly dismantled a set of deformed gears, and her tone was a little erratic. "He just sent a one-sided signal to tell me... He knows where the Brilliant Star is, and he knows how to find me..."

"You are afraid."

"I'm scared to death - but rather than fear, I feel more like...sadness."

"Sad? Why?"

Lucrecia looked into Luni's eyes and shook her head after a long moment. "This is too complicated for you. I'm afraid you can't understand it now."

"Okay, Luni will try to understand it in the future," the clockwork puppet replied, and then asked another question, "Do you think the old master is giving you some kind of warning?"

"...I don't know, but this does sound like a warning," Lucrecia said softly, "even like some kind of declaration before a hunt... He has returned from the warp, and is even more unpredictable than the last time he returned. Perhaps I should remind my brother..."

"You should indeed remind Mr. Tirian that he has departed for Prender, and the Archon of Prender has said that the Lost Homeland is approaching that city-state."

Lucrecia nodded slightly and said nothing more, just continued to work with her head down.

※※※

Duncan carefully placed "Nelu" into the antique wooden box and put the feather-shaped hairpin back into the drawer.

Then he looked at the wooden box where "Nilu" was stored and became worried.

As a grown man, he always felt that there was something wrong with putting a girl-style doll in his bedroom.

But he couldn't seem to think of a better place to put it than in his own bedroom.

Although the first test yielded no results, and no clues pointing to the supernatural were found in the "Nilu" doll, this was after all something related to "Lucretia". Since he was not sure whether she would be of any use in the future, he did not dare to put the doll out of his sight.

After struggling for a while, Duncan sighed and temporarily placed "Nilu"'s box on his bedside.

"If you really have something special, show off your skills as soon as possible," he looked at the gorgeous classical wooden box and shook his head slightly, "Don't be like Alice, who had to throw it into the sea before performing a coffin charge against the wind and waves."

Of course the wooden box didn't react, but Duncan didn't care.

He went to the window and took a look at the sky outside.

Night has fallen, and the pale and dim light of the World's Creation is shining on the boundless sea.

The powerful exorcist force brought by the sun has faded in the real world, and those twisted, ominous, and corrosive forces are gradually rising throughout the world. At this time, humans will enter dreams to avoid the world's interference with their reason.

But for Duncan... he had never felt any discomfort in the night, nor had he seen the shadows that frightened ordinary people.

Nighttime is when his mind is sharpest.

He returned to his desk, quietly spread out a piece of white paper, and picked up a pen from the side.

These are all things I just bought from the city-state of Plande.

After a brief pause, he wrote down the following lines on the paper:

In 1889, fragments of the sun appeared, causing the Pland Fire.

Behind the curtain of the Sixth Block factory lies a “reality” that was destroyed by fire;

There is a distorted space-time that seems to be a closed loop in the Sixth Block Community Church, and two completely opposite realities are superimposed in the church;

The source of Agou's "humanity" is unknown, but it is clearly not influenced by the power of the sun fragment;

The goddess statue in the church of the sixth block is suspected to be affected by the subspace rift, and the nun in the underground temple is suspected to have died in the process of fighting against the subspace invasion...〗