Alice in the Land of Steam

Chapter 1106 Will We Win?

A ray of light pierced the darkness.

Alice held up the game console, and countless characters symbolizing fiction flowed out of the silver-white cube and rose to the sky, as if they were restrained by an invisible force, gathering into a sacred sharp blade, straight through the dark side of the end of the universe. The light that I just witnessed came from here, stirring the tide of darkness, awakening the silent stars, and making the night sky shine again. One, two... hundreds of thousands, until countless stars shined in front of my eyes at the same time, just like countless glimmering jellyfish floating up from the dark sea at the same time, touching the material world for the first time. Glowing may be just instinct, they are not aware of the impact of their own behavior on the outside world, but it is precisely this instinct flowing in the long-lasting memory that can make people feel a kind of baby-like peace and tranquility when looking up at the starry sky, as if wandering in the warm embrace of their mother.

For life and civilization, memory begins with the starry sky.

Thousands of stars shine, illuminating the ancient universe. The tangible starlight gradually gathers, outlines, and twists into a huge nebula. It looks like a brilliant vortex that spans half of the universe, dividing the sight equally with the dark ocean. It rotates slowly, and every rotation pulls the surrounding starlight, dust, and meteorite debris inward, even capturing those huge celestial bodies in motion into its gravitational field, becoming part of the nebula system.

The stars are fading, but the light is not fading, but getting brighter and brighter, even as if it has life, conveying a lively and joyful mood to the entire universe. What is it expecting? For the universe, the eternal truth is destruction and gestation, so the things swallowed up do not disappear, but are reshaped in another way, and one day they will come in a new posture. When you understand this, you can feel that inside the huge nebula, there is a terrifying and majestic energy moving. It breathes heavily, and the whole universe moves with this rhythm.

The nebula rotates slowly. Due to its huge size, even if each rotation seems extremely slow to the naked eye, it can still generate endless energy, sweeping through like a tide, causing the starlight, position and airflow to fall into disorder. Only the vortex core area is empty and unaffected by anything. It is the eye of the vortex, the center of the storm, and the calmest place in the entire breathing activity. But this calm is just a prelude to the coming storm. Everyone knows that it will wake up, but they don’t know how long it will take and what kind of opportunity it will need.

Time seemed to have frozen at this moment, and it no longer made sense to discuss the passage of a second or a century.

When the first breath was taken, the universe became completely quiet, and some people were almost driven crazy by this silence.

When she took the second breath, the dark witch Carabosse seemed to have sensed something and her pupils suddenly contracted.

During the third breath, Alice suddenly raised her head and clenched the silver-white cube in her palms. Her knuckles were almost white. She felt that her soul was connecting with a great will. It seemed that her body and mind no longer belonged to her, but were about to be transformed into another form and gain another power!
"Genesis Machine——"

She was being tested, and if she was not recognized, she would never be able to control the other party's power. But the genius player was undoubtedly the one who believed in herself the most from beginning to end, so she withstood the pressure and squeezed out the code name of the machine word by word, almost through her teeth: "Armed Goddess——"

"Themis!!!"

click!
Like the sound of gears meshing.

The nebula stopped rotating and the universe stopped its rhythm. Inside the huge machinery factory, gears were clicking and bearings and pistons were working together to spew out turbid and boiling steam like star particles. The cold steel machine arms released the limiters that restrained the power of the machine one by one, and driven by the power track, they were thrown towards the destined battlefield.

Then, in the shining and blurred star mist, under the endlessly extending sky, from the depths of the absolutely still void, a trembling roar was heard.

A sacred and majestic humanoid body slowly descended, just like the deus ex machina technique in classical drama, and bit by bit it broke free from the constraints of the nebula vortex, revealing its full appearance to everyone.

It seemed like a flawless work polished from steel and rock by the hands of a master sculptor of the ancient Metosh Empire. It possessed both the cold and solemn beauty of metal and the gorgeous and elegant human curves. Even though it was covered with silver-white steel armor, it did not damage its noble and holy aura at all, but instead gave it a heavier image. At this moment, the gods were no longer just the loving images in the long epics who created all things and gave them a paradise for life. They also assumed the responsibility of judgment, and would use their stern and cold eyes to patrol the myriad star realms, and were always ready to punish those who were unclean, impure, unkind, and unloving with steel and fire.

But at this moment, under the silver-white flower-covered helmet, the pair of eyes polished into a crescent shape have not yet lit up, as if to indicate that it is still asleep. Before it truly wakes up, everyone will have a chance to repent for the mistakes they have made and the evil thoughts they have had, so that when it opens its eyes, it can calmly and guiltlessly welcome the judgment that defines good and evil. Brilliant star threads flowed out from the joints between the head armor and the body armor, spreading backwards like a lion's mane, and fluttering again and again in the whistling cosmic air currents. The length of those light threads is even enough to rival the height of the machine, which reminds people inexplicably of the long, smooth and bright hair like a waterfall that every female god in mythology always has. They appear on a steel machine, not only without any sense of disobedience, but even awe.

A huge silver-white halo floats behind the machine, which is between fiction and reality, appearing and disappearing from time to time. The edge is a mechanical structure like a gear, which gives it a magnificent and majestic sense of divinity. In addition, similar halos float around the hands, feet and waist of the machine, but they are scaled down many times. Except for the halo behind it, which is huge enough to encompass the entire machine, the others are just the right size to fit the machine parts. These silver-white gear-like halos are not fixed, but rotate slowly in circles, releasing invisible energy tides as they rotate. They seem to resonate with each other, and even the frequency of the changes between reality and illusion is almost the same.

Almost all parts of the sleeping Genesis machine were covered with a thin but solid layer of armor, except for the chest, where a crystal-clear, soft triangular-shaped dark blue gemstone was placed. The surging energy was stirring inside, transmitting magic power to every part of the machine. However, the light of the gemstone was dim, just like the eyes of the Genesis machine, which had not yet fully lit up, waiting for someone to wake her up.

Sacred, great, incredible, these are everyone's first impressions of this machine; and when they try to deeply feel the spiritual core of the other party, many complex words emerge in their minds: power, majesty, pure and holy, noble and elegant, comer and witness, judge and punisher, indifferent humanity, divinity of steel... It seems to have all of these, but none of them seem to be enough to describe it.

"This is--"

Standing on the rooftop of the windmill tower, Linger heard Yieta's mumbling voice. Even though she had long been accustomed to the feeling of hiding behind the young man, she still couldn't ignore the movement at this moment. She raised her head and stared blankly at the junction of darkness and light, the huge humanoid body standing silently as if sleeping under the brilliance of the universe and nebula. She felt a kind of intimacy and longing from the heart: "The...constructed mecha created by Alice..."

Of course she would have such a feeling, because when Alice shaped the appearance of this machine, she largely referred to the appearance and aura of the goddess of creation. As the game's co-developers, Ling Ge and Lorena knew about this and raised questions one after another. Although Alice said at the time that "maybe those witches would not dare to take action when facing a machine that looks exactly like the goddess", now that she really saw her coming, Ling Ge had to doubt that it was just a perfunctory statement made by a genius player, because it would be impossible for a person with a playful mentality to perfectly replicate the goddess's charm and temperament on a cold steel mecha. It even reminded Ling Ge of the statue of the goddess in the Tianxin Church.

So perhaps, the archive records played by Celestial Themis still have some influence on the genius player? It is difficult for her to completely put her past into it, but at the same time, it is also difficult for her to completely stay out of it. She longs to be the offspring of the goddess, but she is afraid of this. This contradictory psychology is reflected in this machine called "Armed Goddess Themis".

but.

"But," Lingge said, "something is missing." "What is missing?" Yieta blinked in confusion, not quite reacting, "You mean..."

"Soul." The young man said concisely: "She has not yet obtained her own soul, so although she possesses extremely powerful power, she cannot use it."

It can only sleep quietly as seen by the naked eye.

And for such a brilliant, sacred and majestic creation mecha, what is the most important thing about her soul?

Definitely the driver.

……

Alice could feel that the mech was calling her, calling for someone who had passed the test, to awaken her dormant power with that extremely fiery soul and indestructible fighting spirit. This was also the plot that the genius player expected. Following the guidance of her heart, she turned around and aimed the game console in her hand at the Armed Goddess standing tall under the canopy of the universe. The beam of light that pierced the darkness also moved with it and fixed on the gem on the chest of the mech, and it was like water flowing into the ocean, injecting it with a slowly bright light.

The surface of the gem began to ripple, and a strange force surrounded Alice. The cool brilliant blue star particles surrounded her, but it was not cold, but gave people a warm feeling, as if being wrapped in warm water. The starlight wrapped Alice and took her to the sky, passing through the sky, like a swift comet, drawing a long straight track in the universe, and finally drilled into the gem and merged with it.

When she opened her eyes again, Alice found herself in a mysterious space, surrounded by countless dust-like star particles, bright or silent celestial bodies moving along specific orbits, and even meteors passing by the edge of space, shining with fleeting light. She seemed to have come to a microscopic universe, and the genius player himself was quietly floating in the center of this universe. As long as she closed her eyes, she could feel the endless and complex information it conveyed to her: life, time and space, civilization, world, destiny, future, and an ancient era...

After realizing this, Alice subconsciously looked at her body and then breathed a sigh of relief: Fortunately, I'm not floating naked.

Even though she was a super robot, she didn't want to set up such embarrassing moments for herself.

In the deepest part of the microcosmic universe, a mysterious and distant will is calling out to Alice's soul, telling her: Come and control my power, and then, change the future you want to change.

That was the call of Themis, the goddess of arms.

Alice knew that as long as she responded to this call, the next second, this dormant machine would be awakened by her and exert her true power. But before that, she suddenly wanted to do another thing.

"Themis of the Celestial Realm——"

On a whim, she called out, "Are you there?"

The sound reverberated in the empty universe, stirring up overlapping echoes. Countless stars and dust were swept up by the hurricane that swept across the universe. The tides rose and fell, and life and civilization were born and then perished. But for the genius player at this moment, she was not concerned about such philosophical images, she just wanted to get the answer to the question.

"I know you must be here, right?" She looked around, her eyes lingering on every ancient planet, and said, "You have always helped me, and this time is no exception. I know you will fight alongside me, and then we will definitely win, right?"

Still no answer, but a pop-up window suddenly appeared in front of Alice's eyes, showing -

Please Call Your Armour, Player

There was no emotion in the tone, but Alice seemed to be able to imagine the helpless look on the silver-haired girl's face.

She chuckled: "Of course."

The genius player's face became serious, and his eyes became extremely sharp and serious: "Thank you, Celestial Themis."

"I'm going to fuck!"

"Genesis Mecha, Armed Goddess - Themis, start!!!"

　Give me some meow
　　(End of this chapter)