Miss Watson of the Sherlock Holmes

Did he fall into some kind of hallucination.

The young Mr. Detective pinched himself impassively. He had just heard what seemed to be the slap of a fish jumping into the cat's bowl.

"I'll give you another chance to exchange." He spoke with difficulty, restraining his evil intentions that were about to move.

"Please consider the transaction carefully. Now it seems that the value of the two is obviously too different, but once the transaction is concluded..."

Ursula answered him with the most swift movement, and, evading the hand that little Holmes was trying to stop, she scooped up the bead bag full of bronze and red gold chess pieces, then raised her hand on the scales, and stretched out to each other.

"Exchange a set of chess." Miss Witch raised her chin. "Hold it quickly."

Eric stared at the girl's hand tightly holding the chess piece bag, narrowed his eyes, and suddenly smiled, his whole expression relaxed.

"I see, if that's your wish." He reached out to take Ursula's hand.

"Wait a moment."

Ursula withdrew her hand suddenly again.

"Regret?" Eric raised his eyebrows and joked, "But it's too late~ I won't cancel the transaction here."

"I have no regrets, I just need to say yes first, you can't take me away right away, I have to finish what I should do first." Ursula waved her hand.

"Okay. Any other requests?"

"No more, then...the contract is reached."

"Achieved."

A magic circle appeared on the ground. With a gust of wind, a golden chain began to climb from the fingertips, and finally wrapped around the girl's fair neck. The other end of the chain was tied to the half-elf's wrist, and then spread to his cuff. The collar of the other party's shirt, which was tightly trimmed with a bow tie, flashed, but it was not obvious. Under the cover of this extremely regular dress, the chain of the other party's contract could not be seen clearly.

"Can you cover me with something?" Ursula touched his neck and asked Eric, whose identity seemed very convenient.

The other party moved his hand away, took off the hat and conjured a ribbon from it, and motioned Ursula to lean over and tie it.

Ursula lowered her eyes and looked at Mr. Detective, who bent over to adjust the ribbon covering the golden magic pattern on his neck, and then his gaze drifted to the black rabbit with its peasy eyes in his pocket.

"Okay." Eric adjusted the position of the simple rose made of dark red ribbons for the last time, and then put away his hands.

The instant he let go, Ursula pounced on him, snatched the rabbit from his pocket, and ran.

"Hey!" Eric, who was completely defenseless, was dumbfounded by Miss Witch's action: "This is a breach of contract."

"No, it's called according to his own ability." Ursula made a face at him, and ran away.

"Each one is really cunning lady." Mr. Detective touched the neckline, and he knew that there should be the same golden magic pattern as the other party: "However, I can finally act with peace of mind, and now I am one step away. away from that future."

The other red bag that was originally in the coat pocket was lightly tossed and landed in Mr. Detective's hand. The tether was loosened, revealing a luxurious corner of the chessboard.

Beside a square lake, there is a square grass beach. A silver swan is lying at the junction of the two, staring at the direction of the grass beach, because one of its feathers is rising and falling in the air there.

Sophie Bruno was blowing wildly at a feather in the sky to keep it in the air, and she had been doing this for a while, just to please the black-winged one opposite her who was about to blow in relay. leprechaun.

The other party said that this is a game, and she can only go to the next grid if she wins. If she wants to become a queen, she must do this. Before the huge clock in the sky turns to zero, go to the grid she belongs to, sit The throne above.

She has experienced such games several times, from word solitaire to hat games. Fortunately, she has always been a child who loves to move. These games are all games she played when she was a child and she is good at playing.

This is called a game of feathers, and the checkered guy has physical features that suggest he's a siren, albeit in black.

Sophie was very vigilant, because the other party was the first suspected creature she met. She was playing with some "toys" in the first few grids, and this siren didn't look like a toy.

Of course, it doesn't rule out which family's decorations are perfect for the other party. After playing games with toy tin soldiers, plush bears and even a floating wooden whistle, Miss Sophie is very happy.

Now the rule of this game is to blow the swan feather into the air first, and the players blow it one after another so that the feather continues to fly in the air.If a player lets the feather fall to the ground, he must accept a small penalty. (Quoted from "Kate Greenaway's Book of Games" in the nineteenth century)

The feather was snatched by the siren from the swan in the previous grid, and the punishment was not mentioned, but according to Sophie's observation, it was probably provided by the swan.

The bad-tempered swan, who treasured its feathers very much, was eagerly blocking the boundary line of the grid, watching which player would drop its feathers on the muddy ground.

The loser has to get back to the grid, and will probably be pecked to death. Miss Sophie, who had the experience of being chased and pecked by swans in the park when she was a child, shivered.

"As long as you become the queen, you don't have to be afraid of that freshwater bird. Don't you British people have a very outrageous rule? All swans belong to the queen, so in London as a projection, the swans here will also be subordinates of the future queen." The siren noticed Sophie's gaze, and said in an extremely understated tone with her hands behind her back, as if being the queen of London was an easy task.

"Doesn't that sound tempting?"

Sophie rolled her eyes, puffed her cheeks, and blew the feather to a very high place. In fact, it should be another person's turn to blow, but the attitude of the girl who looked human was extremely negative, hugging her knees and bowing down. She didn't move her head, and she didn't have the slightest intention to blow on the feathers on top of her head.

"Hey!" Sophie patted the girl after blowing the feather to the siren's side.

"If you lose, you will be bitten by swans! Since you have come in, you are also here for the throne! Why are you so depressed." While talking, Feather rushed back and blew a breath. Not only were the wings of the siren black, but the face It's also quite dark, with an expression of being forced to open.

"You see, that siren also feels stupid, but it's not bragging. Our enemies have worked so hard, so you have to work hard!"

"But I'm also your enemy." The girl raised her head to look at Miss Sophie, who was bouncing around and chasing the feather.

"I know. But that happened after zero o'clock, and now our enemy is the guards of these grids." Miss Sophie replied.

"But if I lose now, you can win directly."

"..." Sophie took the time to glance at her, with a complicated expression: "Because of the passiveness of the competitors, the victory in the game is not happy at all."

"...Why?" The girl was a little confused: "Isn't it a good thing to win without fighting?"

"Maybe sometimes, but I won't be happy seeing you like this." Sophie replied wheezingly. Compared with the ease of the Siren, she was really tired after going through several energy-consuming games .

"You are Sarah Rose." Sophie called out the girl's name. "I know you, famous young scholar."

"I thought the scholar would be a crazy woman who used her family power to tarnish archaeology." Miss Rose gave a short laugh.

"I thought you were enjoying your academic career." Miss Sophie was taken aback for a moment. In the past few years when a university opened up to recruit female students, Miss Ross was very popular because she entered the college at the age of 16. And published a lot of research results.

"It used to be..." Miss Ross said hoarsely, "until I knew what they wanted me to go to school for."

Miss Sophie blew the feathers a little farther away. Seeing that she was reluctant to play the siren game with them and ran away to blow it, she felt that this game was actually a game of water, because it was stipulated that the siren could not fly: "The purpose is convenient. say?"

She remembered that the other party's father, Professor Ross, was also a well-known scholar, and had connections with goblins and alchemists.

"It will never be the same as my family's plan, to make you the queen of London! Hahaha, do you still need to take an exam to become a queen?"

"..." Miss Rose did not refute.

"Do you really want to take an exam?" Miss Sophie looked at him in horror.

"It's for resonance. I don't have natural magic, so my family can only go this way. Study those histories, then resonate with the thoughts, and finally..."

"Use the convenience of work to absorb the shadow of time left on those cultural relics. In order to let me concentrate on it, my family told me that they supported my study and provided me with many opportunities and conveniences."

"And then?" Sophie didn't quite understand what this had to do with the Queen in London.

"Then, I'm not me anymore." Miss Ross showed a self-deprecating smile, then looked at the bewildered Sophie: "So you don't know? The most suitable successor to the Queen of London may not be us. itself, but our shadow."

"You may still have a chance, but I, with 6 hours of goblin time, will be swallowed by myself in the mirror."

"Wait a minute, it doesn't make sense." Sophie didn't care about the feather when she heard the news, "Shouldn't your shadow be on the same side as you?"

"If she is still my shadow." Miss Rose said calmly, "I am not the only one in my body now."

"The feathers are falling."

"Ah, whew!" Sophie made a save, "But I think you're quite normal."

"Temporarily, because it seems to absorb other umbral creatures, so they can't come out temporarily. Because of this, I decided to slow down." Miss Rose said: "Actually, if you are tired, you can let the feathers fall on my side , I can backtrack until I exit."

"...Is it the same for you in the first few rounds?" Sophie pondered for a while, feeling wrong.

"Yes."

"But I won the first few rounds!"

"..." The two looked at each other and found that there was something wrong with the mechanism of the chessboard.

"That is to say, whether we win or lose, we will eventually reach the other side of the chessboard." Miss Sophie made a hypothesis.

"It looks like this." Miss Rose was a little desperate. When she was expressing London, she could only use some small hints to prompt the shadows that replaced her to complete the call for help.

The time I went to Miss Watson before was when she forged diaries and letters when she was sober, and picked a shadow with a more romantic brain attribute to possess her, so that she could imagine that she was being torn apart by her family. According to her Hinting to find someone for help, she also specially dragged the paladin Fang, who was also messing with the queen candidate, into the water for the sake of authenticity.

He picked Ronald Thompson, who is famously single among the paladins, who is absolutely impossible to have a relationship with him, so that Ms. Watson and the others can perceive the difference between the paladins and themselves.

"No, maybe it's a good thing." Sophie suddenly patted Miss Rose on the shoulder and said loudly, "It means we can form an alliance."

"Sarah, please allow me to call you that." Miss Sophie crossed her arms and calculated, "If this is a chessboard, it must be! There is never more than one king on that side!"

"Huh?" Miss Rose's eyes widened because of the other party's new thoughts.

"To tell you the truth, although my family wants me to be the queen, and I agree, my purpose is definitely different from theirs."

"So, I'm happy to do anything that can cause trouble for them, Sarah, then our positions should be the same." Sophie stretched out her hand and pulled Miss Rose up.

"If you don't want to be a queen, how about being a knight. This is my original dream, to be a knight who protects the city. If London really becomes a complete world in the future, then it should not only have a queen, right? There are other positions to operate, just like the chess pieces on this chessboard."

"It's impossible to be just a naked queen!"

Sophie stared at the direction where the feather fell and smiled: "If you don't know what to do and lose your direction, can I send you my dream?"

"what?"

"You don't have any friends, do you?"

"No." Miss Rose choked on the blunt words. Because of her own research and study, she had no common language with girls of this era, not to mention that her father seemed to be happy with it. She and the real world The fewer entanglements, the easier it is to integrate into other worlds.

"Then you have it now. I have experienced great changes in my world, but someone held my hand at that time, so that I would not give up on myself because of depression. Now it's time for me to hold other hands that need it." Su Miss Fee spoke briskly.

"...Don't talk to yourself, I have never relied on others." Miss Rose was silent for a while, then snorted.

"Besides, being my friend is not easy." She smiled lightly, patted her muddy skirt, and caught the feather.

"..." There are no friends, and the siren who is ignored feels a little toothache.

"One advances, one retreats."

Lattice scene transitions.

"I think it's a bit of a joke." Sophie looked at the scene in front of her and expressed her opinion. They stood at the door of a room. "It's so easy."

"It's really too easy. I thought I would give up the game and lose on purpose. There would be terrible punishments, but those punishments are like children's games." Miss Rose tried to focus her attention from the mantelpiece closest to the door. On the table, a decorated human skull was transferred, and her occupational disease made her habitually want to explore the age of this bone.

"It's not the same as the London painting style I imagined."

"Then what kind of painting style do you want?" A thin gentleman with iron-gray bright eyes asked with a smile while turning an armchair with his back to them.

"Welcome to my grid, ladies. From now on, our games will never let you down again."