Chapter 11 The No-Headed Butler

Duncan stood at the top of the tall spiral staircase, overlooking and scanning the ancient and magnificent mansion.

He confirmed his judgment once again: this mysterious mansion was almost identical in style to the room where the Frost Queen Lei Nuo'la (Lei Nora) had been sleeping!

A thought stirred in his mind, and he immediately turned his head to look in the other direction at the top of the spiral staircase. There was a deep corridor on the second floor, with bizarre oil paintings hanging on the walls, their details indistinguishable. Between the paintings were wrought-iron candelabras, as black as thorns, with pale flames burning on them.

The light and shadows in the corridor were dim, and in the depths of the corridor, between those hazy, dark shadows, there seemed to be a door. Was that the room of the mansion's owner?

Duncan immediately stepped forward and walked quickly towards the depths of the dark corridor. The old wooden floor creaked monotonously under his feet, and the pale candelabras on both sides of the corridor seemed to be disturbed by the breeze he stirred up, swaying erratically. This already eerie corridor suddenly became even more hazy and dim with the flickering light and shadows. Duncan stopped at the end of the corridor.

His brow furrowed tightly as he looked at the darkness in front of him. There was no door here. The door that had previously appeared in the shadows seemed to be just a fleeting illusion. All that was before him was the abruptly ending floor of the corridor, with the walls and roof broken and fractured here. Beyond the break was a void of terrifying darkness.

Duncan cautiously approached the edge of the broken floor, peered out, and then turned to look around the break. Outside was an endless void. The corridor beneath his feet was abruptly and solitarily suspended in the air, with no other parts of the mansion visible, let alone the room and door that should theoretically be at the end of the corridor.

Duncan retreated, quietly looking at this empty space. There should have been something here, a room, a door, but now it was gone.

As if it had been "torn" out of this mansion and disappeared into that void. Suddenly, a rustling sound came from nearby, interrupting Duncan's thoughts. He turned sharply towards the source of the sound. A headless figure wearing a black coat was standing not far away against the wall, bending over and carefully wiping a marble decorative table.

After a moment of contemplation, Duncan walked towards the headless figure. Unlike the fleeting figures he had seen before, the headless figure did not run away, but slowly straightened up. As Duncan approached, it even bowed slightly, displaying a proper posture like a well-trained butler, except that the bare structure above its shoulders made this polite and proper gesture seem even more eerie and terrifying.

"Guest, who are you looking for?" A hollow, muffled voice came from the headless body's chest cavity, sounding polite. A strange feeling arose in Duncan's heart, but he had dealt with many strange things in this world and quickly ignored the eeriness, and began to talk to the headless body with a calm expression.

"What happened to the room at the end of the corridor?"

"It left," the headless body replied. "It left a long, long time ago." Duncan frowned, then asked, "What about the person in the room? There should have been a living person in the room, right?"

"The mistress of the room also left, leaving with the room, a long, long time ago," the headless body replied.

"A long, long time ago?" Duncan couldn't help but feel a sense of dissonance. "Not just now?"

"Yes, the guest just leaving is a long, long time ago," the headless body replied politely. "Here, everything that has already happened happened a long, long time ago. The next thing will happen a long, long time from now." The words spoken by the headless body were strangely difficult to understand, yet Duncan couldn't help but be drawn by these bizarre and obscure words to many conjectures. Discontinuous time? A fault line? Was this mansion in some kind of time fault? Duncan suddenly thought of the brass key. He had come to this strange mansion after turning the key, and the brass key came from a sane end-of-days evangelist. A group with discontinuous time, a brass key... A thought struck Duncan, and he immediately looked down at his hand. The cold touch seemed to have been delayed for a long time, but suddenly entered his palm at this moment. A brass key was lying there quietly. And as he saw the brass key, the headless body standing opposite him also seemed to suddenly notice something. The body swayed, and a muffled voice came from its chest: "Ah, so you are a distinguished guest holding the key. Forgive my neglect. Are you here to see the mistress?" "Mistress?"

Duncan was puzzled. "Didn't you just say that the mistress had left with the room, and had left a long, long time ago?"

"There are two mistresses," the headless body said slowly, patiently answering the guest's questions like a butler.

"One is the mistress of the room. She never leaves the room, and now she has left with the room.

The other is the mistress of the mansion. She never enters the mansion." The headless body's words were becoming more and more bizarre. Duncan was confused by them, but he quickly guessed who the "mistress who never leaves the room" was, referring to the Frost Queen Lei Nuo'la (Lei Nora). And he had a vague idea about the other "mistress." "What's the other mistress's name?" he asked, staring at the headless body before him.

"This is Alice's Manor," the headless body replied quickly. "The mistress's name is, of course, Alice." Duncan lowered his eyelids imperceptibly, controlling the subtle changes in his eyes. It was all as expected. He had entered this mansion after turning the keyhole on Alice's back.

How could this strange mansion have nothing to do with Alice? The mansion was called Alice's Manor, and Alice was the mistress of this mansion. Lei Nuo'la (Lei Nora) was only the mistress of that room, and the latter never stepped out of her room. Therefore, rather than a "mistress," it sounded more like a special prisoner. And this was in line with the information revealed by Lei Nuo'la (Lei Nora): she was bound to the "Drifting Land" in order to control the "Ancient God Replica" in the deep sea. Now, with the help of a certain subspace shadow, this special prisoner had broken out of her cage, and the "warden" of this prison was wandering outside the prison? Duncan couldn't help but imagine Alice's innocent and happy face. He couldn't connect that silly doll with the "mistress of Alice's Manor" or the "warden of the Drifting Land." So he quickly suppressed the wild thoughts in his mind, straightened his expression, and raised his eyes to look at the headless body in front of him. "Why does the mistress of the mansion never enter the mansion?"

"She is resting in the garden," the headless body replied.

"She has been resting for a long time, but it is not yet time to return to the mansion." "Resting in the garden?" Thoughts swirled in Duncan's mind, but he maintained a calm expression. "Can I see that mistress?" "Of course," the headless body said immediately.

Although it had no head, Duncan felt as if a "gaze" was fixed on the brass key.

"You are a guest holding the key. You can open any door in this mansion, including the door to the garden. Please follow me, I will take you to the garden." Duncan nodded and "Mm"ed, then followed the headless body towards the spiral staircase that connected the first and second floors of the mansion.

On the way to the garden, he tried to gather as much information as possible and tried to strike up a conversation with the headless figure. "What is your identity here?" "I am the butler here, guest," the headless body, who called himself a butler, said. "The servants and maids in the hall dare not approach you, so I came."

"There are many servants and maids here?" Duncan recalled the whispers he had heard in the hall earlier, as well as the phantoms he had occasionally seen. "It sounds like it's quite lively here on weekdays?"

"The Drifting Land accepts drifters, as well as all the souls that have strayed here. Here, everyone has nowhere to go, so it is at least a good shelter."

"What's your name?" Duncan asked again. "I have no name, guest. You can call me Butler," the headless butler said. "Most of the servants and maids here have no names. Those who have names will gradually lose them. The homeless will eventually lose their names. This is our destiny. And I was the first to arrive here. My name was lost a long time ago." "Homeless people..." Duncan suddenly stopped, unconsciously repeating the word.

"Guest?" The headless butler also stopped and turned his head curiously to look at Duncan.

"It's nothing, just a little distracted," Duncan quickly reacted and shook his head. But just as he was about to step out again, an oil painting on the nearby wall suddenly caught his eye.