Alice in the Land of Steam

Chapter 9: Can Alice become a qualified maid?
In this way, Alice became a temporary resident of Tianxin Church as a domestic maid. Of course, she had no salary. After all, she didn't know anything about housework. She was just motivated and could sweep the floor and wipe the table. As for expecting her to take care of Medien's daily life, it was completely wishful thinking.

Because there were no extra rooms in the church, Metien wanted Alice to live with him so that she could learn more about the other world and plot how to resist the dictatorship of a certain priest and preserve the heritage of Tianxin Church from the ruthless "Religious Decree".

Unfortunately, Lingge saw through his sister's little thoughts at a glance, and forcibly rejected the proposal on the grounds that it would disturb her studies.

After dinner, he tidied up the storage room on the second floor, found an old quilt, made a simple bed on the floor, and then told Alice that this would be her room from now on.

Alice gladly accepted it, without expressing any disappointment about the living environment. She just asked Lingge for a small round table, placed it in the corner of the room, and placed the SLP game console and cassette box she brought with her on it with a serious face. Then, as if completing some important ritual, she breathed a sigh of relief, wiped the non-existent sweat from her forehead, and said with satisfaction: "Sure enough, it's better to have a save point in the early stage, just like returning home!"

Metien, who had watched the whole scene, felt that the messenger sent by the goddess seemed to have some problems with his brain, and was not confident about his previous ideas, but he did not say anything and quietly left. Lingge had not left yet, because he had a few things to say to Alice.

"The reason I allowed you to stay in the church is because I will be working at St. Lowood National School in the future, and Metien is alone at home and really needs someone to take care of her. But you haven't shown that ability yet, and I hope you won't let me down."

Linger paused for a moment and lowered his voice, as if he didn't want his sister who hadn't walked far to hear what he was going to say next: "Responding to expectations is not for others, but for yourself. So, if you can't meet my requirements, then I can only regretfully dismiss you, Miss Alice."

"Don't worry!" The girl from another world patted her chest and assured him: "Isn't it just housework? In the dictionary of genius players, the word failure will never be found!"

Where does she get her confidence from?

Alice was of course happy to have someone to back her up, and she nodded in agreement. At the same time, she apologized to Medien in her heart: Although you trust me very much, the person who holds the power of life and death in this family is your brother after all.

After receiving a positive answer, Lingge did not linger any longer and turned to leave. However, when he reached the door, he suddenly remembered something, stopped, and said without looking back: "One last thing: you should change your clothes."

"What can I do?" She grabbed her rabbit headphones depressedly, put them on her head, pretended not to hear what was just said, and whined to herself: "I was playing games at home, how could I have known that I would travel through time? If I had known earlier, I would have brought two more sets of clothes!"

In this regard, Alice could only sigh, what a good brother who cares about his sister.

After Lingge left, Alice was the only one left in the narrow room. The old-fashioned kerosene lamp hanging on the wall flickered with dim light, which shone through the external fence grid, reflecting the tiny dust particles floating in the air, like plankton on the seabed, drifting endlessly.

But Lingge didn't hear this sophistry because he had already left and closed the door behind him.

Ling Ge didn't know, nor did he want to know, so he nodded and said, "This is the best. Also, regarding Metien, she is not mature enough, in other words, she is too naive, so sometimes she makes some impulsive decisions. At that time, I hope you remember what you should do. If I remember correctly, you just said that you are eighteen years old and an adult who can legally drink. Adults should understand the meaning of "responsibility" instead of playing around with children."

Alice knew what he was referring to without even thinking about it. The argument between the brother and sister in the chapel suddenly came to her mind. She hesitated for a moment and asked, "What do you think I should do? I mean, are you sure Metien will listen to me?"

As he said this, his eyes were fixed on Alice's pupils. He didn't seem to care about her answer. He just wanted to capture the girl's true attitude from the subtle changes in her eyes.

Alice was stunned for a moment, and then she realized belatedly that her daily home clothes from the 28th century Earth were obviously too advanced for the British citizens of the 19th century.

"Then come find me." Linger's tone was calm but unquestionable: "In short, don't let her make her own decisions."

This is a place used to store sundries, so it is naturally impossible to spend a lot of money to connect to the gas pipeline, so this is the only way to use lighting.

What's more, even if the gas pipeline was connected, Lingge probably would not agree to Alice's abuse of it. This was out of consideration for thriftiness, but there were exceptions - the only person in the entire Tianxin Church who was qualified to freely use gas lamps, tap water and even various precious seasonings in the kitchen was Metien.

She didn't know any goddess, let alone being the goddess's messenger. Was she going to use this name to cheat and deceive the little girl?

Although he seemed indifferent in some things, such as making the decision to close Tianxin Church despite Metien's opposition, it was not his fault, right?
Alice felt that as an outsider, it was not appropriate for her to comment too much, so she shook her head to get rid of these thoughts, walked to the small table in the corner of the room, sat down cross-legged without any ladylike manners, picked up the silver-white game console, fumbled on the back of it, found the switch, and pressed it lightly.

Then, on the surface of the cube, the dark golden lines that outlined and spread were gradually filled up, and a faint blue light slowly flowed out like star fragments, driving away the dim light of the kerosene lamp, and covering the walls, bedding and Alice's face with a layer of soft glow like flowing water. The whole room became dark and deep, full of mystery.

The technological creation from the 28th century Earth was restarted by the girl. The light gathered and constructed a virtual screen with the creator's logo printed on it: a complex three-dimensional figure composed of various geometric shapes, cylinders, spheres, prisms, cubes... overlapping, stacked and linked, changing all the time. However, no matter how they change, the plane figure projected in the eyes of the audience is always a combination of the two letters G and I. Such a strange design even makes people feel that its existence violates both science and human intuition. Alice didn't pay attention to the logo. She was concentrating and even a little nervously staring at the bottom of the screen, where the trajectory of the meteor dragged a straight progress bar, running from one end of the screen to the other, and the numbers displayed on the progress bar kept rising: 15%, 30%, 45%, 70%, 95%, 96%, 97%, 98%, 99%... Then, the meteor got stuck here and stopped moving forward.

"That's it again!"

Alice sighed in disappointment: "Why can't I enter the game interface?"

If there is no energy, even the most basic booting cannot be done; if there is no network reception, the progress bar will not move at all. What is the situation when it is stuck at 99% like now?
Could it be that something unexpected happened when I traveled through time and it was damaged?
The girl held the game console and studied it over and over for several minutes, but could not figure out anything. After all, she was a genius gamer, not a genius scientist, so she could only turn it off in frustration and open the cartridge storage box next to it to check if the cartridge inside was intact.

Fortunately, none of the eight cassettes showed any signs of damage, which made her feel relieved.

By the way, the reason why "Alice Game" has eight cartridges is because its content is too large, so the game instruction company divided it into eight parts for production, and in order to show its characteristics, the game type and combat mechanism in each cartridge are different. This is also the reason why it was claimed in its promotion that it "combines multiple game elements such as role-playing, exploration and decryption, action-adventure, racing shooting, card battles, traditional turn-based, real-time combat, etc.", which gave a big job to young people who just started playing games in the 28th century.

What, one game is sold in eight parts? Forum players were furious, while Trails fans said they were calm; what, it was not sold separately or as a DLC, and there was not even a price increase? Forum players were moved to tears, saying that there are only two suns in the sky, and from now on, there will only be one sun in their hearts, GI.

As for whether the furious players and the tearful players are the same group of people, you don't need to be too clear about this matter.

Putting away the SLP game console and the cassette storage box, Alice leaned back in a depressed mood and fell on the floor, muttering to herself, "GI did say during its promotion that it was a steampunk world view, with elements of fantasy and magic. I saw some steam, but where is the magic?"

"Are Metien and Lingge just background characters, or important NPCs in the game? If it's the latter, then the plot line they correspond to should be the so-called "Religious Decree". As a player, should I choose to help Lingge close the church, or help Metien keep the church? Well, Lingge doesn't seem to need help. It doesn't matter whether I'm there or not, so I must help Metien."

"But what method should I use? Do I really have to cheat in the name of the goddess? In a fantasy world, deceiving the gods usually results in terrible consequences, right?"

“Ahhh, damn it! Why don’t you let me complete the game before traveling through time? In other similar novels, the protagonists all know the plot!”

more importantly.

“I really want to play games!”

As a girl with severe internet addiction, she hasn't touched any games for the whole day.

It's more painful than being called a Blizzard hater.

"Forget it, I don't care!"

She suddenly buried her head in the quilt, not caring whether her headphones had fallen off, and muttered in a self-abandoned manner: "Let's go to bed first. We still have to work tomorrow."

Alice now is not a genius player in the Earth world.

Just an ordinary domestic maid.

A few minutes later, the sound of even and gentle breathing and occasional talking in sleep could be heard from the room. A few minutes later, the door was pushed open and someone walked in. Without even glancing at Alice, who was sleeping in a messy state, he walked over and turned off the kerosene lamp on the wall.

"I knew she would forget to turn off the lights." The visitor lowered his voice and whispered to himself, "It's neither economical nor safe."

She still has a long way to go if she wants to become a qualified maid.

The door was closed again, and the room fell into complete darkness and silence.

　Give me some meow
　　
　
(End of this chapter)