Duncan had always been curious what made this self-proclaimed "Alice" the gothic doll so special and dangerous that the sailors escorting her were so tense, and why she could hold the abnormal number 099 in this world brimming with perilous anomalies.
Indeed, a doll capable of moving and thinking on its own was certainly eerie, and the sight of her occasionally clutching her head and running around randomly or acting separately was genuinely horrifying. Yet to Duncan, those peculiar traits were still far from meeting the criteria for "obtaining a high-ranking number". The simplest comparison was the information he learned from Nina:
