Chapter 463: The Hybrid
This novel is translated and hosted on bcatranslation
Duncan strolled to the edge of the White Oak’s deck and gazed down at the sea below.
Both the White Oak and the Vanished had emerged from the spirit realm and were now floating on a calm, blue, ordinary sea. The water around the White Oak was as clear as a mirror, reflecting the shadowy Black Oak, which was shrouded in fog and darkness. From within the dim and obscure ship, faint lights flickered.
After a long moment, Duncan withdrew his gaze from the sea and spoke softly, with a hint of wonder, “An interesting phenomenon, Lawrence. You’ve had quite an adventure.”
“Indeed… it was incredible,” Lawrence replied respectfully, standing nearby. “I’ve spent decades making a living on this sea and have seen many supernatural things, but this experience with Frost surpasses them all. Nevertheless, I brought Martha back, so every bit of the adventure was worth it.”
“Your wife, Martha—what state is she in now? And how are the two ships you each command connected?”
“She and her Black Oak now function as the White Oak’s shadow,” Lawrence answered honestly. “As you saw, she’s on that reflected ship, but when needed, the Black Oak can manifest as a phantom in the real world, sailing alongside the White Oak. They can also swap positions, allowing us to sail deeply within the spirit realm, avoiding obstacles in the real world. We did this once when passing through the war zone around Frost, and it worked well.”
“Did Martha tell you all this? I mean, these… techniques.”
“Yes,” Lawrence nodded. “Martha wandered the mirrored space beneath Frost’s sea for over a decade and learned many things. During our recent mission, she served as our guide.”
Duncan didn’t speak for a while, silently watching the reflection below. After a long pause, he suddenly broke the silence, “Can I talk to her alone?”
Lawrence was momentarily stunned, a look of surprise flashing across his face, followed by nervousness and hesitation, “This… may I ask why…”
“Don’t worry, I just need to understand every member of my crew. The Black Oak is indeed strange, but no ship is stranger than the Vanished. My tolerance for such things is quite high—as long as the Black Oak has no secrets.”
Lawrence finally relaxed a bit. Though still hesitant, he nodded, “Alright, I’ll arrange it and inform Martha.”
Duncan nodded slightly and then glanced at a nearby scene.
Alice and the “sailor” were squatting on the deck, enthusiastically poking at a small bug they had somehow caught, debating whether it had a soul.
Alice insisted it didn’t because she couldn’t see any lines on it, while the sailor argued it did because he had heard that even Bartok’s garden had bugs. He even suggested there might be “little gatekeepers” resembling bugs, responsible for guiding the souls of dead mosquitoes to their resting place.
The two of them were completely absorbed in their debate, looking utterly foolish. Watching them for too long felt like mental pollution.
Duncan silently observed the undisturbed scene on the deck. Lawrence also stood silently beside him. After a long while, Duncan shook his head, “Let them play.”
“…I think so too. It’s better than them screaming and wailing while tied to the flagpole.”
Soon, Lawrence arranged a private room on the White Oak, setting up a large mirror inside.
Once everyone else had left, Duncan turned and quietly stared at the man-sized mirror. “I want to talk to you,” he said to the mirror.
The next second, the mirror’s surface turned pitch black, as if covered by a thick, inky fluid. From the depths of the darkness, a vaguely defined shadow gradually took shape.
A woman in a white shirt, brown vest, and trousers emerged from the expanding shadow.
“I heard from Lawrence that you wanted to talk to me alone,” the woman responded calmly, meeting Duncan’s gaze. “It seems… you’ve noticed.”
“There are too many impurities. Overlapping shadows obscure the details that don’t belong to the Black Oak, but they can’t hide from my flame,” Duncan said slowly, then grabbed a chair nearby and sat down, looking at the figure in the mirror—and the vast darkness behind her, entangled like a phantom curtain. “How much of it is ‘Martha’?”
“…Less than one-thousandth.”
“One-thousandth, a very small number,” Duncan observed, staring at her. The massive, chaotic “composite” also met his gaze frankly. “Even so, you still consider yourself Martha, and it seems… you genuinely identify with this identity.”
“Because ‘Martha’ is the only complete personality among them,” the “female adventurer” in the mirror answered. “Without a personality, memories are just pale books. Reading them isn’t enough to form a ‘self.’ The vast, muddled memories have been reorganized countless times in blind chaos. In the end, I believe ‘Martha’ is the only ‘representative’ that can manage all this—I need to be Martha, and Martha needs to exist.”
“So, you’re a composite, and you’ve integrated far more than you told Lawrence. A significant portion of the minds that fell into that sea over the past fifty years have flowed into your ‘body,’ or in other words… you’ve devoured those minds?”
“Devoured… that’s a very aggressive term, but I don’t see it that way. I’ve never devoured anything, and I’m not interested in souls. It’s the vast power deep in the mirrored space that’s devouring everything. The ‘memories’ that make up me are just the remnants left after that vast power crushed everything. Tiny streams converge, like dust particles clumping together. I didn’t exist before those fragments; it was those fragments that formed me. ‘Martha’ is just a ghost awakened from the fragments, taking on the role of a collector after the fact.”
“Remnants left after being crushed…” Duncan frowned. “Why wasn’t Martha crushed?”
“Because Lawrence came to this sea,” the female adventurer in the mirror smiled faintly. “He is favored by you, so Martha is also favored by you.”
Duncan didn’t speak. He fell into long contemplation. After a long while, he suddenly broke the silence: “The world in the mirror is discontinuous…”
“Yes, the world in the mirror is discontinuous, both in space and time. The end is born before the beginning. You created Martha, and now Martha is answering your questions.”
Duncan let out a soft breath.
“A vast composite of data… this explains why you know so much,” he brought the conversation back. “Not only because you wandered in that mirrored space for long enough, but also because you contain enough ‘memories’… Now, back to the initial question: is less than one-thousandth of ‘Martha’ really enough to sustain your stable personality and maintain your current self-awareness forever? Will there come a day when this ‘collector’ personality of yours gets overwhelmed by the vast sea of memories, and you forget your name, becoming a chaotic, massive, dangerous ghost?”
The female adventurer lifted her gaze, and in her calm expression, she seemed to muster great courage. “Like you once did?”
“No, I went further than you. The subspace is a deeper and darker place than the mirrored world—so I was also more dangerous than you back then,” Duncan maintained his usual calm tone, not minding her bold statement. “Therefore, I understand better the damage a lost ghost can cause—even if this ghost is a bit ‘safer’ than I was.”
The female adventurer in the mirror fell silent.
After a long while, she suddenly spoke, “Do you consider me to be ‘Martha’ now?”
Duncan pondered for a few seconds.
To this vast, miscellaneous composite, Martha was just one-thousandth, but to the personality that identified as ‘Martha,’ the composite was her entirety.
The true identity and future personality of this vast composite seemed to be in a ‘pending’ state—there was a chance of losing control, but her current personality and self-awareness were undoubtedly real.
Duncan hesitated briefly. In that moment of hesitation, a seemingly real yet illusory scene suddenly flashed in his mind—
The sea breeze was gentle, and the waves were calm.
He stood on the water, with ripples spreading beneath his feet.
Fish leaped out of the water, swimming through the air in the radiant sunlight, circling leisurely around him. He looked down at his feet.
The rippling water surface appeared clear and transparent, yet its depths seemed shrouded in mist, indistinguishable and hard to see through.
New things emerged from the water, swimming around him. They were fish.
Duncan suddenly snapped back to reality, looking at the mirror in front of him.
The shadow in the mirror was writhing and fluctuating, seemingly waiting for an answer.
“…Martha,” Duncan finally broke the silence after a long while, “Welcome to the Vanished fleet.”
The chaotic and shapeless darkness in the mirror instantly contracted, turning back into the female adventurer in a white shirt, brown vest, and trousers.
The vast shadow behind her had calmed down.
At the same time, on the deck of the White Oak, Lawrence, who was watching the doll Alice and the mummified Sailor poke at a bug like a temporary guardian, looked down at his body in confusion.
The uncontrolled green flames rising from his body were rapidly subsiding. His body, which had been passively maintained in a ghostly state for the past three days, was quickly returning to normal. He sensed that the “ghost fire” within him, which had been intermittently triggered for unknown reasons, seemed to have finally achieved true calm and become a controllable part of his being.
It was as if the “stimulus source” causing the frequent activation of the ghost fire had suddenly disappeared.
“Controlled…?” Lawrence blinked, murmuring in confusion.
Didint lawrence have a wife back at pland?
Nope, it was all a illusion on his part
His wife died long ago
It would be funny if he remarried once in the past and now became a bigamist.
so if mc recognizes her as martha, she will never lose control.