Amon—no, rather, the smile on the face of this time worm, or perhaps this clump of it, faded. After a dozen seconds, Alice saw it looking at her with a complex expression and saying:
"The main body wants to see you.
"He plans to treat you to a Whole Worm Feast."
After an awkward stare-down lasting more than ten seconds, Alice asked the potential entrée in front of her with an extremely serious tone:
"Is it too late to run now?"
"Great question," it clapped its hands twice in admiration, "Why didn't you just run?"
Alice cautiously stepped back and asked sincerely:
"Why are you so happy?
"You're not the main body… in other words, aren't you possibly part of that Whole Worm Feast too?"
After another dozen seconds of silence, the "potential entrée" vanished, and she heard Amon's voice, still laced with amusement:
"Alice, are you really not considering a visit to the Forsaken Land?"
Alice blinked twice, feigned ignorance, and ignored Amon while confirming nothing had mysteriously appeared—or vanished—in her room… wait a minute.
Where was the diary she had just finished copying?
Alice hesitated for a moment before asking:
"Why did you steal the diary I copied?! You can't even read Chinese!"
Amon wasn't mad. In fact, he sounded delighted:
"You're right! That's why you should come to the Forsaken Land and take them back."
Alice shut her mouth, gritted her teeth, and had no choice but to copy "The Ironblood Knight tastes pretty good" five more times, planning to talk to Ian later.
Once again, she firmly rejected Amon's invitation—and decided to go buy some ice cream.
As lunchtime approached, Alice licked her ice cream while beginning to ponder what she should eat for lunch.
—Isn't it perfectly normal to start thinking about lunch more than an hour in advance?
Making decisions was always too hard for Alice. Even after finishing the entire ice cream, she still hadn't figured out what to eat.
After some thought, the ice cream reverted to its original form, and Alice decided to eat it again.
But the second time just couldn't compare to the first. Alice quickly frowned, realizing the ice cream had lost its element of surprise for her—after all, she'd just eaten an identical one.
Still, abiding by the principle of not wasting food, she finished it and began thinking hard.
Suddenly, inspiration struck. She wrote down the different options on slips of paper, crumpled them up, and mixed them together.
Theoretically, she had created a simple draw-lots system. She only needed to randomly pick one, and no decision-making would be required… right?
In reality, it didn't work that way at all.
As long as she wanted to choose, her hand reaching toward any slip of paper was still subject to the control of fate.
In other words, from the moment she took the Dice of Probability, the disguise of coincidence and accident had been ripped away, exposing the perfectly interlocking gears of fate without mercy.
Every seemingly random event—was destiny's arrangement.
Now holding part of the authority of fate, she had gained autonomy over some matters—at least on the surface. But in a way, these ordinary daily occurrences had completely lost their randomness.
Lost in thought, Alice suddenly remembered Song Shu's favorite gacha game.
To Alice, the nature of such games was undoubtedly similar to gambling, playing on players' psychology.
But as far as she could recall, Song Shu wasn't the kind of player who got caught in that gambler's trap. She liked gacha games—but never played them herself.
She preferred watching others play.
She was… how did she put it?
A certain afternoon scene began to take shape in Alice's memory. She remembered being indoors, lying in bed, holding her phone.
She remembered she had one last pull left—but still hadn't drawn the character she wanted. So she put the phone down and looked at Song Shu, who was watching the excitement nearby, and asked:
"It's the last try anyway. There's no way I'll get it… Xiao Song, want to try?"
"Not necessarily," Song Shu blinked, "Try one more time, Huanhuan. I'm sure the last one will work—trust me!"
Alice shook her head, tossed the phone aside, and said:
"I don't feel like trying anymore… Hey, by the way, Xiao Song, why do I get the feeling you love watching people do gacha pulls, but never do them yourself?
"It's like you have some kind of trauma or something…"
Song Shu laughed, picked up the phone, and shoved it back into Alice's hands:
"The fun part of gacha is that unexpected surprise you get after repeated failures.
"Actually, it's not just gacha—any game with high randomness works the same. They use the unpredictability of outcomes to attract players. The process might be the same, but the results vary wildly. Gacha just happens to tie in more with gambling.
"But no matter what, the core of it lies in the unknown, the uncontrollable ending. If you take that away, there's nothing attractive left.
"Might as well just watch others play… Huanhuan, give it one more try. It's the last one—it won't take much effort."
Alice took the phone again, reopened the app, and laughed:
"You totally dodged the question… Don't tell me you know the results ahead of time?"
"Maybe I do," Song Shu smiled back at her, "Maybe I really do know."
"Nonsense," Alice rolled her eyes. "If you're that good, why not just go buy lottery tickets?"
Watching Alice's finger hover over the confirmation button, Song Shu smiled and said:
"See? I knew you wouldn't believe me… Ha, look! I told you it'd work!"
Bathed in golden light, the limited-edition character appeared on the screen. Alice remembered ignoring Song Shu's words completely and turning to her excitedly:
"Thank you to our kind Xiao Song for lending me your luck!"
"You'll have to repay it, you know." Song Shu also looked happy, her eyes crinkled in a smile.
"Huh?" Alice widened her eyes and looked at her accusingly. "So that's what this was about! You were just trying to trick me into drawing for you with one line? Dream on!"
That was where things ended. Song Shu blinked twice and quickly changed the subject.
It was just a casual moment between close friends—nothing more… at least until Alice remembered Song Shu's final smile.
Alice unconsciously clenched her fist. She couldn't help but keep thinking in that direction, but her hand instinctively moved across the table, gathering up the paper slips.
"Still haven't decided what to eat for lunch… Guess I'll think about it after I eat," Alice muttered to herself, like she was trying to convince someone.