“So this is ‘noble grace’?”
Vivian crouched behind a fractured gilded relief, poking out half her head as she watched the figure squirming in the pile of shattered glass, clicking her tongue in disbelief.
Not far away, on the floor, Count Saint-Germain was struggling toward the fallen core metal plate. His expensive purple velvet coat was already reduced to rags.
“This is his obsession.”
Cicero leaned against the pillar next to Vivian, trying to reshape his crushed top hat. The “divine art” that had just forcibly broken the rules of the illusion had clearly overdrawn much of his magic.
“For people who live in the past like him, admitting defeat is harder than death.” Cicero placed his barely restored hat back on his head and straightened his monocle as well.
“As long as he can shove the core back into the doll, even if the illusion shatters, he can still use the puppet’s functions to turn the tables on us.”
“Should I go hit him again?” Vivian weighed the weapon in her hand, itching for action.
“Save your energy, it’s too late.” Cicero shot her a glance.
At that moment, the count had already crawled to the side of the burning-hot core.
The metal plate was vibrating violently. The space around it flickered, as if unstable pixels were scattered in the air.
“My… this is my masterpiece…”
The count stretched out a trembling hand, grabbing the core tightly, heedless of its scorching heat. The smell of burning flesh filled the air instantly, but he seemed numb to the pain, a crazed smile twisting his face, already warped by anger and shame.
“This is the temperature of power!” The count howled, his voice raspy as if filled with sand.
“Even if the illusion breaks, as long as the royal authority remains, I can—”
He suddenly spun around to face the motionless headless doll.
The puppet stood rigidly in the collapsing hall of mirrors, the falling shards of glass striking its ornate skirt with no sound at all.
“Awaken! For your people! For that immortal era!”
The count mustered all his strength and slammed the core into the empty cavity of the doll’s chest.
“Click.”
A crisp mechanical snap rang out.
The collapsing world fell silent for a second, the constantly falling shards of glass now suspended in midair.
A chill crept up Vivian’s spine. It was like sleeping soundly on a weekend morning, dreaming of winning five million in the lottery and getting ready to collect your prize—when suddenly the upstairs neighbors start renovations, and the sound of the drill pierces straight into your brain.
“Vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv—”
A deep resonance set Vivian’s teeth on edge. A blinding red light flared in the doll’s chest.
“Hahaha! Do you see this?!” The count struggled to his feet, arms spread wide, as if to embrace this moment.
“This is the torrent of history! This is unstoppable…”
His hymn of praise hadn’t finished yet.
The doll’s arm, forged of steel and porcelain, suddenly shot up at a speed that defied physics.
Just a simple slap.
“Bang!!!”
The sound was even louder than when Vivian had smashed the onion with her frying pan earlier.
The count’s body flew sideways, like a purple fly struck by a swatter. Before he could even scream, he crashed through three layers of still-fading illusionary walls, finally slamming hard into a heap of rubble.
“Uh…” Vivian shrank her neck. “That’s… it?”
“If that were his real body, this slap would’ve been enough to turn him into mincemeat.” Cicero analyzed calmly, a hint of schadenfreude in his tone.
“But that’s Count Saint-Germain. He has many ‘anchor points’ in this era. What just flew out was only a ‘conceptual avatar’ he projected here. Still, that hit is enough to send his spirit back home to recuperate for half a year.”
“So basically… this was an employee beating up the boss to avoid overtime?” Vivian summed up.
“More or less. And by the looks of it, its anger isn’t spent yet.”
Cicero pointed ahead.
The headless doll was slowly turning around.
Its lavish lace skirts began to tear, revealing the metal skeleton beneath, crisscrossed with steam pipes. The decorative pearls and gemstones fell away, replaced by rows of gaping exhaust ports.
[Noisy…]
[Why… wake me…]
[Trianon’s goat milk… still isn’t finished milking…]
“Wow, so it was dreaming of pastoral idylls.” Vivian’s mouth twitched.
“If someone woke me from a dream of dating with Congyu to make me work overtime, I’d want to kill too.”
“Not the time to relate.” Cicero yanked Vivian’s arm. “Run!”
“Boom!”
The armor plate on the doll’s chest slid open, revealing a dense row of honeycomb launch tubes.
An instant later, countless fist-sized, high-temperature steam shells rained down like a storm.
“This is too much! No matter how bad your morning temper is, you can’t just start chucking bombs!”
Clutching her frying pan, Vivian performed a tap dance on the crumbling marble floor.
A marble pillar grazed by a shell went soft as steamed bread and then collapsed.
“If this keeps up, the spiritual realm won’t last much longer!” Cicero swung his cane, conjuring a pale gold barrier to block a stray projectile.
“So what do we do? This whole cursed place is falling apart, there’s no way out!”
Vivian glanced around. The ceiling was melting like cheese, the floor cracking open into abyssal chasms exposing the darkness below. The doll walked over the void, closing in step by step.
“We have to hit it hard.” Cicero gritted his teeth. “Either overload its core, or… give it a big enough shock to ‘bounce’ us out of this collapsing spiritual domain.”
“In plain language!”
“Hit it!” Cicero yelled.
“I’d love to! But all I have is a frying pan! What am I supposed to do, cook it a couple of dishes?!”
Vivian shouted while dodging a falling crystal chandelier fragment.
At that moment, the doll seemed to have grown tired of the cat-and-mouse game.
It stopped.
All the exhaust vents on its chest closed, leaving only the largest core nozzle in the center.
The core, glowing red-purple, began to spin wildly. Air rushed in, forming a miniature cyclone.
“What now?” Vivian felt a sense of foreboding.
Cicero’s face changed; discarding all gentlemanly grace, he yanked Vivian behind him.
“It’s going to ‘reformat’ the entire illusion with us inside! It’s going to blow everything back to the void!”
“Will we die?”
“If we die here, we’ll become vegetables in the real world.”
The light grew brighter, the shrieking pitch chilling the heart.
Vivian stared at the orb of light.
In that instant, something inside her awakened.
It was the rage she had accumulated in her past life as a corporate slave—facing countless unreasonable clients, suffering through endless pointless overtime.
Why?
Why must our lives be determined by such absurd things?
Why is it so hard just to live well?
“Damn you!”
Vivian shoved Cicero aside.
“You… what are you doing?!” Cicero looked at her in terror.
Vivian gave no answer. She gripped the heavy red copper frying pan with both hands.
She spread her feet, heels braced against an upturned floor tile.
Her waist sank, back muscles tensing.
She raised the pan above her right shoulder, its mouth tilted slightly back.
A textbook home-run stance.
“Vivian! That’s high-pressure steam!” Cicero tried to rush over but was pushed back by the blast.
“I know.”
Vivian stared fixedly at the orb. At this moment, her eyes blazed even brighter than the sphere itself.
“I don’t care if you’re a queen or a monster, don’t care if it’s morning rage or menopause…”
The doll’s core finally reached its limit.
“Boom!!!”
A gigantic steam orb over a meter in diameter, surging with annihilating force, screamed toward Vivian.
Where it passed, space shattered like glass.
Vivian didn’t back down; she counted the rhythm in her heart.
Closer.
Closer.
Now!
“Go… back to sleep!!!” Vivian let out a soul-rending roar.
Her waist snapped like a spring, propelling her spine, shoulders, arms, all the force channeling into the pan.
Time seemed to stretch in that instant.
The surface of the frying pan met the raging steam energy.
Vivian felt like she’d struck a speeding locomotive—the recoil almost split her palms.
But the pan did not shatter.
“CLAAAAAAANG——————————!!!”
A metallic crash loud enough to shatter souls echoed through the Hall of Mirrors.
The orb, which should have atomized Vivian, was actually… deformed by the hit. It compressed into an oval, then rebounded back at even greater speed!
“This…” Cicero was dumbfounded, his monocle falling and swinging from its chain.
The light orb arced through the air, landing precisely at the doll’s feet.
“BOOOOOMMMMM!!!”
A tremendous shockwave overturned everything nearby.
In the dazzling white light and swirling dust, Vivian squinted, trying to see what had become of the monster.
For an instant, through the swirling steam and shattered mechanical shell, she saw a scene that sent chills through her heart.
As the headless doll’s body was blown apart, a translucent phantom emerged from its broken neck.
A beautiful, profoundly sorrowful woman’s face.
There was no anger, no morning temper, no trace of royal dignity.
She only wept, her eyes empty, staring at the collapsing illusory palace, at the broken mirrors. Her lips moved slightly, as if silently telling some tale.
Was that… the real Marie Antoinette?
Before Vivian could read her lips, the blast’s shockwave completely swallowed the phantom.
“Hold on to me!”
Cicero appeared, grabbing Vivian, who was about to be swept away by the wave.
“The core of the illusion is broken! We’re getting thrown out!”
“My pan! I haven’t got my pan yet—”
The world around spun like a kaleidoscope. The golden Versailles Palace fractured into colored shards, darkness and blinding light flickering in turn.
A fierce sense of weightlessness swept over her, as if falling from ten thousand meters in freefall.
“Aaaaaaaaahhhh—!”
Their screams merged as one.
“Bang!”
The agony snapped Vivian instantly awake.
It wasn’t some soft grass, but a cold, hard stone-paved street.
“Where… is this?”
She looked around—the wide square, and that familiar Egyptian obelisk.
“Place de la Concorde.” Cicero’s voice came from nearby.
“We’re back?” Vivian let out a long breath, feeling like her whole skeleton was about to fall apart.
“Don’t celebrate yet.”
Cicero stood up, dusting off his clothes, his eyes fixed gravely on the center of the square.
Vivian followed his gaze.
Next to the fountain, previously empty, now stood a hulking monster.
A grotesque behemoth, assembled from scrap steam pipes, shattered carriage remains, and twisted metal parts.
It loomed silently in the night, as tall as a three-story building.
“Move! Everyone move!”
Suddenly, the clatter of hooves and shrill police whistles broke the night’s calm.
“Prefecture, Section Twelve, on a case! Civilians, clear the way!”