Chapter 36: The Dream Within a Dream

Alice jolted awake from her slumber, realizing she was lying in a bed.

Her gaze fixed blankly on the canopy above, and only then did she realize she must have been moved there while unconscious.

“Are you awake?” Queen Isola’s voice drifted from the bedside.

“Have I been asleep long?” Alice asked, attempting to push herself upright.

A lingering dizziness still clouded her mind.

“Perhaps an hour or two. I couldn’t rouse you, and I was truly worried, so I carried you back,” Queen Isola explained. “You’re not feeling unwell anywhere else, are you?”

“I… I’m fine,” Alice stammered, blinking rapidly, a touch overwhelmed by the unexpected solicitude.

Queen Isola rarely expressed such direct concern for her. In fact, ever since they met, Queen Isola had subtly and deliberately maintained a certain distance.

Alice’s mind immediately replayed the recent hallucination: the Mad Hatter’s tea party, the grinning cat, the Abyssal Gate, followed by monstrous birds, colossal beasts, and unspeakable abyssal horrors.

It had been utterly bizarre, yet profoundly intriguing.

Alice harbored a peculiar sensation, as if everything she had just experienced was far from an ordinary hallucination.

This dream held a considerable amount of information—which, in itself, wasn’t strange, as dreams could occasionally be exceptionally complex.

The crucial aspect was the sheer precision of this information. Most prominent was the ballad the Mad Hatter sang at the end, a poem that seemed to name the three monsters she had encountered.

The bothersome monstrous bird, the Jabberwock; the smoke-crazed beast, the Bandersnatch; and the Lord of the Abyssal Gate, the impossible-to-gaze-upon Jabberwock…

And then there was the peculiar riddle the Mad Hatter had posed twice: “Why is a raven like a writing desk?”

For some inexplicable reason, these details were deeply etched into her mind, making them impossible to forget.

‘My advancement… it should have succeeded,’ Alice thought, examining her hands, yet feeling no discernible change.

“You succeeded the moment you drank the potion. It’s normal not to feel anything different right now,” Queen Isola said. “The eighth-rank ‘Diviner’ primarily gains an active precognitive ability compared to a ninth-rank ‘Witch.’ Given your current state, you can’t use divination. Rest properly, now. Lie back down.”

As Queen Isola spoke, she gently placed a hand on Alice’s shoulder, guiding her back down to lie flat.

“…” Alice lay back, staring blankly at Queen Isola.

“What is it? Is there something on my face?” Queen Isola noticed her intense gaze.

“No, it’s just that…” Alice chose her words carefully. “You’ve personally looked after me for so long; I feel a little guilty.”

“Because I simply couldn’t stop worrying about you,” Queen Isola replied, gently caressing Alice’s forehead.

The gesture came naturally to Queen Isola, yet it stiffened Alice completely.

At that moment, Alice became certain: something was truly amiss with the Queen Isola before her.

Queen Isola seemed to discern Alice’s surprise from her expression, offering a faint smile. “Do you think I’m a little different from usual?”

“Just a little…” Alice offered a cautious reply.

“I deliberately acted distant and kept my space from you because I had a mission,” Queen Isola murmured, gazing deeply into Alice’s eyes. “But in truth, from that very day, I have always admired you. While you were unconscious, I kept wondering what I would do if you failed. That torment made it impossible for me to deceive my heart any longer.”

The sudden confession stunned Alice. She parted her lips, but her tongue felt tied.

“You don’t need to answer. It doesn’t matter to me if you can’t give an answer immediately, or if your heart belongs to someone else,” Queen Isola said, a smile gracing her lips as she slowly climbed onto the bed.

Alice watched Queen Isola stretch her slender waist, resting her hands beside Alice’s pillow, and leaning over to face her, immediately holding her breath.

“I have no intention of giving you the right to refuse,” Queen Isola’s smile was captivatingly seductive, yet held a hint of cunning. The bewitching charm unique to a witch swelled to its peak in that moment.

“Let’s relive it once more,” Queen Isola whispered, gently stroking Alice’s cheek. Suddenly, an electric thrill surged through Alice’s entire body, and she instinctively cried out.

Then, ‘she’ was astonished to discover that the sound she made was a man’s voice.

He stared in disbelief at Queen Isola’s eyes, seeing his own face reflected in her pupils—the face of Levi.

Levi’s mind went blank as Queen Isola’s face drew closer. He was like a moth caught in a net, a prey ensnared by Queen Isola’s extraordinary charm, utterly powerless to resist. Of course, he didn’t truly have any intention of resisting—after all, what was there to resist? For a normal person with desires and emotions, this was simply irresistible!

However, just an instant before Queen Isola’s lips met his, a sudden chill enveloped him. A tremendous shiver erupted in the depths of his heart, warning him that something was wrong, everything was wrong.

He had experienced this feeling before. These past few days, the Duchess had been training her, as Alice, to fully grasp a witch’s sixth sense for danger. This inexplicable chill was precisely the sensation of precognition activating!

Yet, Queen Isola’s charm continued to stir his instincts, pulling his consciousness deeper into the mire.

Just as he was spiraling into confusion, Queen Isola’s voice echoed in his mind without warning: “Don’t trust her!”

This voice completely jolted him awake, tipping the scales of his heart from desire to reason in an instant.

He shot up, abruptly pushing away the Queen Isola who had climbed onto the bed, sending her tumbling off.

“What are you doing?!” Queen Isola rolled onto the floor, then scrambled back up, glaring at him with a look of resentment and anger. “Why are you refusing me?”

Levi gasped for air, throwing back the covers and getting out of bed. In that moment, ‘he’ suddenly noticed his hands and feet had become fair and slender again.

She had transformed back into Alice. Or rather, she had never truly reverted to Levi; becoming Levi had merely been a hallucination induced by this ‘Queen Isola’ before her.

No, to be precise, all of this was merely an illusion. The Queen Isola present here was simply a figment of the hallucination.

“Well done.”

A stern voice echoed between Alice and the fake Queen Isola. Then, to Alice’s astonishment, a door inexplicably appeared between them.

The door opened, revealing the study beyond.

Another Queen Isola stepped through the door from the other side. With a wave of her hand towards the fake Queen Isola, the latter dissipated like smoke, vanishing without a trace.

Then, Queen Isola took Alice’s hand, pulling her through the door without a word. “It’s time to go back.”

For some reason, a wave of relief suddenly washed over Alice. Her intuition told her this was the true Queen Isola.

The moment she stepped through the doorway in the dream, Alice awoke in reality, her eyes snapping open.

She looked around, finding herself standing upright before the office desk. On the desk lay the potion ingredients, and the bowl she had used to drink the potion was still in its original place. Queen Isola and the Duchess were also in the study. Everything was exactly as it had been before she fell into the hallucination.

The only difference was that Queen Isola now stood before her, holding one of her hands.

“I…” Alice blinked, asking the Queen Isola before her blankly, “How long was I unconscious?”

“Only a dozen seconds,” Queen Isola stated calmly, releasing Alice’s hand. “Welcome back.”

A dozen seconds…

Alice couldn’t quite process it for a moment.

So, everything that had just happened was also a hallucination. The potion’s effect had given her a dream within a dream.

“Am I still in a hallucination right now?” She touched her head, unable to shake a deep sense of doubt.

“Don’t be so paranoid. Sit down and have some tea first,” the Duchess said with a smile. “Congratulations, you’ve advanced safely.”