Chapter 165
Chapter 165
“Aaaah!” Little Bear’s piercing scream came from beside the window.
“What happened?!” Wei Sen leaped out of bed and hurried over.
“Don’t come any closer!” Little Bear hastily pulled the curtains shut. Still badly shaken, he took a moment to compose himself before saying, “It was huge! An enormous head! There are two eyes in the sky sweeping across the ground. She… She saw me!”
“Was it the Red Queen?”
Little Bear nodded repeatedly. “It was her! Her head was bigger than the castle!”
Wei Sen watched Little Bear closely, but there was still nothing unusual about him.
“How could you tell it was the Red Queen?”
“The light. Light from the distance fell across the top of her head, so I saw her clearly.”
Wei Sen couldn’t pull back the curtains to verify it herself. As an Order Keeper who had entered the Instance, she would undoubtedly be punished if she broke the rules.
Little Bear, on the other hand, was a character native to the Instance World. Perhaps the rules didn’t bind him.
Wait.
There was no character like Little Bear in Alice in Wonderland!
Wei Sen stared fixedly at Little Bear. He was only a stuffed toy, yet he could talk and was alive. That made him fundamentally different from everyone else in this Instance. Characters like the Dodo were at least animals, living creatures to begin with.
She had subconsciously overlooked that detail because this was a fantasy world!
If Little Bear hadn’t been able to break the rules so freely, Wei Sen might never have noticed how different he was from all the other creatures here.
“Alice, what do we do now? The Red Queen can turn herself into a giant. Our chances of winning are even worse!” Little Bear said worriedly.
Wei Sen set the thought aside and decided to trust Little Bear for now. After all, if such a small bear truly harbored ill intentions, he had already had plenty of opportunities to make a move. There was no reason for him to wait until now.
“Our only chance to kill her will be when we put the hat on her,” Wei Sen said.
At that moment, she and the Mad Hatter would be able to approach her from behind, close enough to strike, without the Red Queen suspecting a thing.
Besides, the day the hat was completed would also be the day of the great battle. Once she and the Mad Hatter killed the Red Queen, they would only need to hold out until the Twins and the others returned with reinforcements.
But…
Red Queen’s Head wasn’t merely large. It was large enough to blot out the sky!
Even if Wei Sen could easily cut off her head, carrying it away would be another matter entirely, let alone stuffing it into the Mad Hatter’s Hat.
No, wait!
Wei Sen suddenly realized that to fit Red Queen’s Head inside the Mad Hatter’s Hat, either the hat had to be large enough or the head had to be small enough.
Which meant… perhaps Red Queen’s Head mentioned by the Oracle wasn’t the one they could see with their own eyes!
“Alice, did you figure something out?” Little Bear asked, resting his chin in his paws.
Wei Sen shook her head and handed it the rules she was holding. “Read this first.”
After reading the rules, Little Bear exclaimed, “Could the Mad Hatter no longer be the Mad Hatter?! Has he lost himself?”
“Yes. He’s suffering from Cognitive Contamination. He probably stared at the Human-Head Ball for too long during the polo match and violated the Castle Rules.”
“Then what do we do now? According to the rules, if we want to save him, we have to go between three and four in the castle. But what does that even mean?”
Wei Sen sank into thought.
She had two options. The first was to abandon the Mad Hatter, find an opportunity to kill the Red Queen before he completely lost himself, and then take her head away. Whether the Mad Hatter lived or died would have nothing to do with her.
The second was to follow the clue in the rules and find a way to save the Mad Hatter, then proceed with the plan: kill the Red Queen on the day of the great battle and escape together.
Heh. But going through all that trouble to save someone? Not even a dog would-
///Ding! Friendly reminder: For every person rescued, the Host will receive 700 Merit Points!///
Save him! Of course she would save the Mad Hatter!
Wei Sen nodded solemnly. “We leave at dawn! We’re saving the Mad Hatter!”
Neither of them knew how long they had slept. They only woke when a rooster crowed in the garden.
Wei Sen opened her eyes to bright light shining beyond the curtains. Morning had already come.
Little Bear sat up as well, looking thoroughly refreshed. “That was a great rest.”
“Let’s go. We’ll get ready and search for the place Between Three and Four,” Wei Sen said.
“Okay!”
Wei Sen and Little Bear left the room without stopping next door to see the Mad Hatter.
They made their way down a long corridor lined with oil paintings on both sides.
Wei Sen studied them carefully. The paintings were dominated by exaggerated, vivid colors, and each one depicted humanlike figures. Some were running, some were screaming, and every face wore a different expression.
Yet despite the abstract style, every figure seemed unnervingly lifelike.
“Alice, don’t you think they’re Eerie Entities?” Little Bear asked, tugging at the hem of Wei Sen’s dress.
“They’re all watching us,” Wei Sen replied calmly.
“Right! You noticed too!”
“Don’t be afraid. Remember what the rules said. As long as they don’t disappear, we can ignore them.”
Little Bear nodded slightly. “Aren’t you scared at all?”
Wei Sen said nothing.
After surviving so many Instances, she had seen horrors far worse than this. A few paintings were nowhere near enough to frighten her.
They made a circuit of the castle but still found no clue leading to Between Three and Four.
They checked both the third and fourth floors, but there was nothing between them except an ordinary staircase. Even after going back and forth countless times, they failed to discover anything.
When they stepped outside into the garden, they found the red roses in full bloom. Tucked away in an inconspicuous corner, a few white roses stood out sharply among them.
Wei Sen recalled the first half of the Castle Rules. The Red Queen must not be allowed to see any white roses. Since the Red Queen was not here at the moment, however, the roses posed no immediate problem.
Wei Sen stopped and looked toward the Frog, who was busy pulling weeds.
The clue about a place Between Three and Four reminded her of the train station leading to Hogwarts in Harry Potter. Could a similar hidden space exist somewhere inside Red Queen’s Castle?
Perhaps she could ask one of the castle’s residents.
“Excuse me,” Wei Sen said as she approached.
The Frog lowered the pruning shears it had been using to trim the plants and looked up with all the enthusiasm of a corpse. “What is it?”
“Sorry to bother you, but do you know where I can find the place Between Three and Four in the castle?”
The Frog lazily scratched its head. “The place Between Three and Four? What place is that?”
Seeing that the Frog knew nothing, Wei Sen decided not to waste any more time. But just as she turned to leave, the Frog grabbed her dress.
“You’re suspicious. Who are you? I’ve never seen you before.”
Wei Sen frowned. “I’m the hatmaker making a hat for Her Majesty. Now kindly take your claws off me.”
The Frog refused to let go. Instead, it grabbed her hem with its other hand as well. “No! You’re suspicious, and I’m taking you to see Her Majesty! Once I earn credit for catching you, I won’t have to work as a gardener anymore!”
“Let go! Let go of her!” Little Bear rushed forward and delivered a flying kick straight to the Frog’s face.
Even so, the Frog clung stubbornly to its chance to earn merit. “Guards! Guards! There’s a suspicious person here!”
Several Playing Card Soldiers stood guard nearby, but they turned a deaf ear to the Frog’s cries.
“I’ll say this one more time. Let go,” Wei Sen said coldly.
When the Frog saw that the Playing Card Soldiers were not reacting, it simply raised its voice and shouted even louder. “Guards! There’s a suspicious person here! Guards!”
Wei Sen clenched her fists. If they were not in the Red Queen’s territory, she would have beaten the screeching Frog senseless.
“Who’s over there?” called a familiar voice.
Wei Sen looked toward the main path. Not far away, the Red Queen, the One-Eyed Knight, and their entourage were making their way into the garden.