After hearing Agatha's report, Duncan's first reaction was to glance at the dormitory door not far away.

Then he retracted his gaze and looked at the former "gatekeeper" in the mirror with an extremely serious expression: "You mean, its reflection in the sea?"

"It's not just the reflection on the sea, but also its projection in the spirit world. Under normal circumstances, these two kinds of 'shadows' are deeply connected and will affect each other," Agatha said seriously. "Last night, I was shuttling through the mirrors on the ship as usual to check the condition of the entire ship, and then I suddenly discovered this incident. But at that time, I thought it was the 'specialness' of the Lost Homeland itself. After all, I knew very little about it..."

"The Lost Homeland doesn't have this feature - at least as far as I know, its 'shadow' won't suddenly disappear for no reason." Duncan shook his head. "When did this phenomenon occur? How long did it last?"

Agatha nodded immediately. "Judging from the time, it should have occurred during the period of influence of the 'Dream of the Nameless' that you mentioned, and lasted until the first rays of light appeared on the sea level."

Duncan didn't say anything, but just frowned tightly, with a thoughtful look on his face.

Agatha continued after a moment of silence, "When the shadow of the Lost Homeland disappeared, I happened to be traveling through the mirrors of the real world. In the past, I could directly 'jump' to the spirit world through those mirrors, or enter the reflection of the Lost Homeland on the sea surface. However, last night, this 'jump channel' disappeared along with the disappearance of the shadow of the Lost Homeland...

"But in my opinion... the area 'on the other side' of the mirror is not really non-existent, but there is a 'barrier' that I don't understand blocking it, which prevents me from observing the road in the mirror and sensing the situation on the other side..."

Listening to Agatha's story, Duncan seemed to think of something: "What you mean is... you think the 'shadow' of the Lost Homeland did not really disappear, but it turned into a state that you could not understand and observe at that time, or there was a 'perception' barrier that 'locked' you in the real world?"

"Very appropriate," Agatha seemed relieved. "I thought my description was too abstract and it would take a lot of effort to explain it to you..."

"I have dealt with various 'curtains' in Plande and Frost," Duncan said casually. He then thought for a moment and glanced thoughtfully at the door not far away. "So, you became suspicious after hearing my conversation with Goat Head just now - because my 'first mate' did not mention the abnormal situation last night at all."

"I don't know why, but in theory... it should be able to sense changes in the spirit world. Although its perception in this regard may not be as sharp as mine, it is not completely unaware of it," Agatha said hesitantly, "especially the things you just mentioned, the existence of another 'goat head', and the other party's strange and suspicious behavior..."

Duncan exhaled softly and said, "You think Goat Head is no longer reliable because it may be hiding something from me."

"...I know that as a 'new crew member', I shouldn't question the first mate on the ship. This is a great taboo, but as a former 'gatekeeper', I have an instinctive... 'alertness' about this kind of thing," Agatha said sincerely, choosing her words carefully. "Many irreversible situations all started with that little 'wrongness' at the beginning."

Duncan listened silently, neither agreeing nor blindly refuting.

After a long time, he finally spoke while thinking: "There may be two explanations. Either the goat head knew what happened, but it didn't tell me. It was a deliberate concealment. Or, even it didn't know what happened to the Lost Hometown last night."

Agatha was stunned for a moment, then quickly realized: "The second explanation means..."

"There is some kind of force affecting this ship—the Goat Head is also 'affected'," Duncan said seriously, "but you are not affected, so you can observe the changes that occurred to the Lost Homeland at night."

※※※

Alice was busy in the kitchen, humming a cheerful tune whose name she couldn't even remember.

For her, the busy days on the Lost Homeland were always her happiest moments.

Here was everything familiar to her, the familiar deck, the familiar kitchen, the familiar pots and pans, as well as the familiar wooden barrel, kitchen knife and shovel.

They were all her friends, everything on the ship was her friend - and in most cases, she found it much easier to deal with friends on the ship than to deal with people in the city-state.

Because going to the city to deal with people means there are too many things to learn, too much knowledge to remember, and a lot of boring "rules" to pay attention to - those guys called "human beings" are always too fragile. They have countless "lines" floating around defenselessly, and as long as you grab them casually, they will be inexplicably damaged to the point where they cannot be repaired. They are much more delicate and fragile than the ceramics and glassware on the ship.

But the captain attaches great importance to those "people". He does not want to touch the "lines" of other people casually, and he does not want to damage those people who should not be damaged.

This was a little difficult for Alice.

It's like putting a cat in a room full of balls of yarn and not allowing it to touch any of the yarn with its paws.

So after the novelty of going to the city a few times wore off, Alice found that she still preferred living on the boat - because here, she could hardly beat anyone.

Just be careful not to "bump" into your friends on the same boat.

She liked it this way, she liked the way the world around her felt solid and stable.

Alice opened the wooden barrel containing the pickled fish, carefully approached the barrel, sniffed the smell inside, and a look of satisfaction appeared on her face.

The captain didn't understand this, and neither did anyone else on the ship - why would a puppet have a sense of smell?

Alice herself didn't know, but she never thought too much about it.

She was just satisfied with her craftsmanship, so she took a wooden basin from the side and prepared to take some of the pickled fish out of the barrel - she reached into the barrel, but before she could take anything out of it, a long-handled spoon on the table next to her suddenly jumped up and hit her arm with a "bang".

Alice exclaimed, and quickly took her hand back while saying, "I washed my hands, just now!"

The long-handled spoon dangled on the edge of the barrel, still showing no sign of moving away.

Alice pursed her lips, a little unhappy: "It doesn't work!"

The long-handled spoon slowly floated up, and the head of the spoon gestured in front of the puppet.

"...Okay," Alice finally accepted it helplessly. She reached out to grab the handle of the spoon and muttered, "Isn't it just that my head fell in when I bent down to get something last time? Is it necessary to go to such trouble..."

She took the fish from the bucket and chatted with her friends in the kitchen, sometimes talking about what she saw and heard in the city-state, and sometimes talking about things related to the captain.

Then she began to check other food storage containers. Since Ai could supply fresh ingredients to the Lost Homeland at any time, most of the food that needed to be stored here was processed and could be stored for years, and pickled fish was the most popular among them.

There are twelve large wooden barrels for storing pickled fish.

Alice began to count along the wall from the door - one, two, three, four ... twelve, thirteen.

She stopped suddenly.

Miss Doll blinked in confusion, then went back to the beginning and counted again.

Still thirteen.

One extra one.

Alice stood in front of the row of wooden barrels in a daze, her mind working hard. At first, she suspected that she had made a mistake in the numbers again. After all, her math performance had never been very good, sometimes even worse than Shirley. But soon she felt that she should not be so stupid - after all, it was just counting twelve wooden barrels.

She can already do addition and subtraction with numbers above two digits.

So Alice rubbed her eyes and patiently counted again.

Twelve.

The extra numbers that appeared just now disappeared, and everything returned to normal.

Alice counted between the barrels again and again, and finally confirmed that she had not counted wrong again. However, she felt that the doubts in her heart had not been relieved at all. She turned her head and took a look at the other things in the kitchen. She couldn't help but asked curiously: "Did you notice? It seems that there is an extra barrel just now!"

However, the friends in the kitchen had no way to really answer her - even if they could, these things, which were at most "restless things" and only showed the characteristics of living things due to the special environment of the Lost Homeland, did not have complete intelligence to help solve the puppet's confusion.

Alice didn't get an answer, so she turned around and patted the large wooden barrels placed along the wall: "Was there an extra person among you just now?"

The big wooden barrel didn't answer her either.

※※※

Sarah Meier listened in amazement to what the "Sea Witch" told her, and didn't even notice that the food in her hand fell on the table.

He no longer cared about the fact that this free-coming witch broke into his house early in the morning and interrupted his breakfast time.

"These unbelievable things... all happened last night?"

The Elf Archon spoke in disbelief. Actually, what he wanted to say at first was "Are you kidding me?", but considering the witch's temper, he did not make such a pointless provocation.

"Judging from your reaction, the situation is exactly as I expected," Lucrecia sighed. She sat on the chair opposite Sarah Meier. As for the trembling servants in the restaurant, they had been driven out before she started talking about "business". Now there were only her and the Archon. "The impact of that 'dream'... is greater than I imagined."