Jack O’Lantern continued to walk the black path. He groped his way forward, illuminating the path with his lantern.

He, heading in a completely different direction from the children, soon saw non-human beings stumbling at his feet.

They were surrounded by red roses.

In addition, they had already drawn their last breath, and from the wounds scattered here and there, it seemed that a large-scale battle had taken place.

Jack O’Lantern muttered, looking at the scattered monster with the appearance of a blue bird and a beaver.

“Hmm, things that start with B… Is it a Snark Hunt? But why are Lewis Carrolls’ sailors lying around like this?”

He mulled over his own question. And then answered it himself.

“Well, in this world of evil, there’s no way they’d be okay.”

It’s a place where anything can happen.

If he himself encountered a monster of the tale devil class, he would die without being able to do anything.

He proceeded, smiling at such a reality.

Well, if I die, I die!

It wasn’t that he didn’t value his life, but it was a habit of his.

As he walked, the number of corpses of the Snark Hunt sailors increased.

Jack O’Lantern was a little fed up with the nearly hundreds of corpses.

No matter how endlessly the Snark Hunt appears, to have been worn down this much, he couldn’t even guess how much they had fought, including the ones he couldn’t see.

If they fought this much… then the opponent is…

“Lewis Carroll… Did you really turn against them?”

He was anxious and nervous, but it seems like things have finally gotten done.

It seemed like they had fought a battle that was almost a war with Mephistopheles.

Then what was the result…

As Jack O’Lantern was thinking that, he suddenly hid the lantern’s fire and his own body.

Because he felt a powerful force.

Thump! Thump! Thump!

It was a huge monster, with a body as round as the moon, and roses stuck all over it.

It was wearing a scarf, and its head was pointy like a star, and from the wings visible on its back, it was thought to be a tale devil.

“Star, rose, scarf… Is it the Little Prince?”

After the Little Prince passed by, Jack O’Lantern let out a sigh.

“Dangerous. I can never win against that.”

Jack O’Lantern felt the Little Prince’s power.

That power was several times stronger than that of Rapunzel, who had pulled them down.

If they fought, escape would probably be impossible.

It was clear that the Snark Hunt sailors had also been defeated by that thing.

Can he handle other tale devils too? That guy named Mephistopheles…!

He was a fearsome opponent, but he couldn’t stop his steps.

“Come to think of it, he was holding sailors in his hand.”

Seeing the Little Prince carrying corpses, could he still be fighting? He wondered.

If he followed the Little Prince who quickly disappeared, he’ll find the main character of the snark hunt, Bellman, who is also Lewis Carroll.

Damn, I’m a genius!

Jack O’Lantern grinned and followed it.

Jack O’Lantern continued to advance.

Clang-!

Then, the sound of a bell was heard loudly.

This means Lewis Carroll is right in front.

As Jack O’Lantern pushed through the darkness and advanced, the sight that appeared was a desperate battle like a mudflat between the Snark Hunts and the Little Prince.

When the Little Prince manipulated roses, roses grew on the heads of the Snark Hunt, controlling them, and the lost members were summoned again to fight against her.

Infinitely appearing sailors and infinitely encroaching roses.

Although the fight between the two seemed endless, the Snark Hunt appeared to be at a disadvantage.

“Damn!”

While watching, the Little Prince’s rose familiar, drawn by the lantern’s light, rushed at him.

Jack O’Lantern burned it with the lantern’s fire.

Judging that it burned better than expected, Jack O’Lantern approached even closer.

Then, the Bellman, Lewis Carroll, who was losing, was almost completely encroached upon by the Little Prince.

This is dangerous!

Jack O’Lantern, judging so, intervened in the battlefield.

The Snark Hunts blocking him were also obstacles.

Although he knew the Snark Hunt sailors as Lewis Carroll of a parallel world, Jack O’Lantern was not interested in men, whether they looked human or not.

“The Lewis Carroll I know is not you. Get out of the way!”

The Lewis Carroll who was not a man and his friend, was only the female Lewis Carroll.

Jack O’Lantern, who mercilessly kicked away even Lewis Carroll of a parallel world, faced Lewis Carroll who was almost completely encroached upon and shaking its bell.

She was covered in wounds, but that didn’t seem to be the only reason she was weakened.

First, he decided to remove the rose stems wrapped around her.

“Burn!”

The stems burned and disappeared, and Lewis Carroll lost her balance and fell.

Jack O’Lantern held her in his arms and asked her, who was muttering someone’s name endlessly even as she weakened.

“Alice… Alice…”

“It seems you’ve been fighting without even sleeping…”

[I found thousands of roses, but my rose was only one. Aaaah…!!!]

It was urgent to evacuate Lewis Carroll, who looked like she was about to die.

However, the Little Prince scattered madness and continued to approach.

The summoned Snark Hunts are blocking him, but Lewis Carroll no longer has the strength to summon new sailors.

[My rose! My rose!!! So many… roses blooming doesn’t make me happy! I was too young! I need my one and only rose!]

Jack O’Lantern decided to take a bit of a risk with the Little Prince, who was saying incomprehensible things.

He threw the lantern’s fire with maximum power.

It wasn’t a method he usually used because it consumed a lot of energy.

It is a power that consumes even one’s own soul.

Thanks to that, he was able to create an opening for the Little Prince.

Jack O’Lantern slung Lewis Carroll over his shoulder and left the place.

“Cough! Ugh… No… I’m still…”

“Carroll… What a mess. You’re covered in strange things like a silver bell. Is it cosplay or something? Aren’t you ashamed as an adult?”

It was truly typical of him to make a joke to a patient first.

Such a joke became a catalyst for Lewis Carroll to come to her senses.

“Jack O’Lantern… How did you…”

“That’s not important. Would you explain what happened?”

She seems to have found some stability from Jack O’Lantern.

Lewis Carroll began to speak, catching her breath in Jack O’Lantern’s arms.

Her breathing was so shallow and trembling that it was almost pitiful.

There was sadness in her voice.

“I turned against Mephistopheles…”

Jack O’Lantern’s prediction was correct.

As expected, the Little Prince was a being sent by Mephistopheles.

“I wanted to stop Alice and Oz, who had become incredibly powerful by overlapping several times, from combining… as was the original plan.”

Oz. The reality-altering device made from the corpses of all the devils in one world.

It seems that as the world overlapped, it multiplied its power.

The phenomenon of overlapping worlds.

And as you descend through the Gates of Hell, the overlapping of parallel worlds intensifies, eventually converging into one…

It was Mephistopheles’ plan to unite Alice with Oz, whose powers could not be guessed by how much they overlapped.

It seems she tried to stop it and failed.

Lewis Carroll confessed with a distorted face.

“…But this is the result.”

“…”

“I know it’s pathetic… I wanted to prove myself… I failed miserably, and it was even planned for me to come to hell. Look at this.”

Lewis Carroll took off her sleeves and showed her arms.

It’s blurry.

Her existence is being absorbed.

Jack O’Lantern asked in surprise.

“Are you being absorbed? What on earth is happening!”

“…I was just a material too. Lewis Carroll is the author of the Alice series. That’s why he’d be good at handling Alice… He called me for that reason… Mephistopheles lied. In reality, he wanted to use the contradictory context that the author and the character in the fairy tale cannot be together to make Alice transcend the framework of the fairy tale and become another transcendent being.”

Alice was just a stepping stone. Is she saying that wasn’t the end?

But Lewis Carroll not disappearing yet meant that Mephistopheles’ plan had not been fully realized.

“Please. Take me to Alice. At least once… I want to see her.”

“If you don’t recover before that, you’ll die before you even meet her. Even if you’re on the verge of death, you have to live for now to make anything happen.”

“It doesn’t matter. Please, Alice.”

“What does it matter, Carroll…”

Jack O’Lantern looked sternly at Carroll’s words.

He had a different sensibility from ordinary people and often broke the mood by making jokes that didn’t fit the situation.

Carroll thought he would this time too.

Such a him is serious.

She asked in surprise.

“…Are you serious? You?”

“Yeah. Did you know that I can joke around so cheerfully all the time?”

At Jack O’Lantern’s serious attitude, Carol broke her obsession with Alice for a moment and focused on Jack O’Lantern.

He asks Carroll.

“What did you want to prove? Tell me.”

Carol avoided Jack O’Lantern’s eyes and thought about her own failed attempt.

He chews his lips as if the failure is more painful than the wounds on his body.

She said after a while.

“I… wanted to prove I was special. Do you see those Lewis Carrolls?”

She pointed at the Snark Hunt sailors who were still fighting.

They were Lewis Carrolls from parallel worlds.

“They are those who couldn’t become the real Lewis Carroll. So did I.”

“What do you mean?”

“This world is a fake. Because this world was derived from somewhere… It can be called a fake.”

“Fake, you say? Try to speak comprehensibly.”

To Jack O’Lantern, who couldn’t understand, Carroll began to explain.

“If you write a novel based on reality, a world will be created. Not just novels, but any creative work. It’s not exactly the same, but such a world is created.”

“…!”

Jack O’Lantern roughly understood what she was saying.

She was saying that they were in a creative work.

That’s why it’s a fake world…

Lewis Carroll continued her story.

“I am the author of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. It was a story made for a lovely child named Alice Liddell.”

She smiled faintly, as if the memory alone was blissful.

However, it didn’t last long and disappeared.

Instead, her face was one of despair.

“I remember it vividly. Her smile. Her whining, her innocence… But, I’m not the person who saw it…”

“You wrote the fairy tale!”

When he questioned the contradictory words, Lewis Carroll was engulfed in sadness.

“No. Substantially, the fairy tale was written by Lewis Carroll of the original world.”

Original world.

Not the fake world derived from a creative work, but the beginning of everything.

A place where pure humans are.

The original world is the place that exists at the very top of metafiction.

“Let’s call it a motif… Think of it as writing an article using a real person. A character identical to him will exist in the story. But the character in the story doesn’t become the real person. There’s a world of difference between letters and flesh and blood… It’s the same for us! Even if we project Charles Lutwidge Dodgson of the original world and take him as a motif, we can’t become Charles Lutwidge Dodgson!”

Lewis Carroll was Charles Dodgson’s pen name.

The reason their names are Lewis Carroll is because all Lewis Carrolls knew.

That they are not real.

“And… Is it the same for the child named Alice Liddell?”

The child named Alice Pleasance Liddell, whom Dodgson of the original world knew and loved, was ultimately a human of the original world.

It was an existence that beings like themselves, who were mere letters, could never meet.

That’s why the Lewis Carrolls despaired.

“Yes. The Alice Liddell we remember is just the memory of Charles Dodgson of the original world. There’s no way we can become real.”

They, who can never meet the person they love, had no choice but to despair endlessly.

Carol said this with tears in her eyes.

The grief and anger of the Lewis Carrolls finally reached Jack O’Lantern.

But her story wasn’t over.

What she wanted to prove, even becoming a Bellman.

Jack O’Lantern continued to listen to her story.

Sad…

As always, if you spot any mistakes, feel free to let me know—and I hope you enjoyed the read!

—Chi