Chapter 127

Chapter 127: Sharing Dinner

Some things were never meant to be discussed in front of Nina.

Hearing the scene that Dog described, Duncan’s heart gave a sudden jolt.

Ashes floating around her… a great many ashes. What did that mean?

In that factory covered by The Veil, hidden ashes lay everywhere. Ashes were the marks left by flame, the proof that a great fire had once existed, and the symbol of things already destroyed. So the ashes around Nina…

He raised his head and looked at the stairs leading to the second floor.

Nina was busy in the kitchen upstairs. From here, he could faintly hear the sounds of her cooking. The clatter of pots and pans sounded light and cheerful. That optimistic girl had been through a lot today, yet she was still in a good mood at this moment.

He drew back his gaze and looked at Shirley, who was sitting across from him.

“So after Dog told you he had found a very suspicious target, you found a way to slip into the school and tried to look for clues around Nina. At the same time, you started approaching the Suntists moving around the city and tried to look for clues from them too, to uncover the secret behind the fire eleven years ago…”

Shirley nodded lightly: “Yes.”

“I am guessing you are actually not looking for a fragment of the Sun, are you?”

“…What would be the point of looking for a fragment of the Sun?” Shirley asked in return. “Find a ball of flame and ask it why it burns? What I want to find… is the person who set the fire back then.”

“This is not an ordinary flame,” Duncan looked calmly into Shirley’s eyes with his gaze. “If that really is a fragment of the Sun, its power is far more than enough to burn down one factory. Shirley, you are doing something very, very dangerous.”

“If I am honest, please do not be mad,” Shirley thought for a moment and lowered her head obediently. “Just sitting in front of you already feels dangerous enough to me…”

“…Ha. Maybe,” Duncan paused for a second, then could not help but laugh. After that, he rose from behind the counter and slowly walked toward the stairs to the second floor. “I was only giving a friendly reminder. How you judge it is up to you.”

“Wait,” Shirley suddenly stood up. She hesitated for two seconds before speaking again. “From how you reacted… you really did not know about Nina’s special side before?”

Duncan stopped and thought for a moment. Then he raised his hand and pointed at his own eyes: “It seems the ‘eyesight’ of this body I am using now is not very good. There are some things I really did not notice.”

This body…

Shirley sharply caught those words, but she did not dare to ask anything. She only watched him as he continued to walk up the stairs, and she could not help asking with some curiosity: “What are you going to do now?”

“Do? I am going upstairs to eat dinner, of course,” Duncan looked down at her as if it were only natural. “You two come up as well. It is dinnertime.”

It was dinnertime.

What did it feel like to eat at the home of a big boss from Subspace?

Shirley had no idea how she should describe all the strange thoughts flashing through her head as she followed that big boss upstairs. She was nervous yet expectant, curious yet afraid. Even though she knew it was very likely just an ordinary everyday meal, she still could not stop guessing what kind of terrifying and bizarre things might appear on the table later.

In this seemingly ordinary antique shop lived a Shadow from Subspace. This was the nest of a Subspace Shadow, the collapsed gap between the Mortal Realm world and the world of the deep layers. In such a nest, even if a spawn of an Eldritch God appeared on the dining table, she would not find it strange at all.

With a mind full of wild guesses and a tense heart, Shirley went upstairs and entered the slightly narrow kitchen. Then she saw what was on the table.

It was only a plate of hard bread that had just been reheated, a pot of vegetable soup that was the most common in the Lower City, and some tomato sauce and mushroom sauce.

The most eye-catching thing on the whole table was just a pot of fish soup. In the pale broth floated a few chunks of fish meat that had already been cut and prepared so that their original shape could no longer be told. A fresh, fragrant smell drifted over and made Shirley’s stomach twist with hunger.

“I used the remaining half of the salted fish in the kitchen to make soup,” Nina said to Duncan with a smile, then looked at Shirley. “Uncle bought this fish. You should try it. It tastes really good.”

Shirley sat down at the table in a bit of a daze. Her eyes swept over the simple dishes. Duncan saw this and could not help but smile: “What is it? Are the dishes too ordinary, so it surprised you instead? Or do they not suit your taste?”

“No, no… This is already much better than what I usually eat…” Shirley replied at once, then added, “But I really did not expect it to be this ordinary.”

“This fish looks a little strange,” Dog also stretched his head over to look at the food on the table and spoke in his dull, muffled voice. “I feel… a bit of a familiar aura.”

“What do you know about good food?” Shirley glanced at him. “You usually gnaw on stones like they are biscuits…”

“Mr. Dog does not eat food?” Nina looked amazed.

“Abyssal demons do not eat human food. In fact, they do not need to eat at all,” Shirley nodded. “Sometimes they just gnaw on stones or steel plates to grind their teeth.”

Dog’s head shook as he hummed in protest: “That hurts my feelings. Have you forgotten how I tried everything to steal food outside to feed you back then? Sometimes I also eat…”

As he spoke, he lay his front paws on the edge of the table and leaned closer to the pot of fish soup. But after staring at the soup for two seconds, the second half of his sentence cut off sharply.

In the next instant, the Abyssal Hound suddenly yanked his gaze away, slipped back to where he had been lying before, and then slumped down, not moving at all.

Shirley was stunned by his reaction: “Dog, what is wrong with you?”

The first thing Dog did was look at Duncan. What he saw was Duncan’s gentle smile.

“What is it? You do not like fish?” that indescribable vortex of light and shadow asked with a smile.

Dog’s head swayed left and right. All of a sudden, he felt that all the friendly talk, the kind and easy smile, and the sense of working together were nothing but illusions. In the twisted light and shadow deep inside that unspeakable vortex, there was only terror.

A Deep Sea spawn with a rank higher than his had been chopped up and boiled into soup, and even its very nature had truly been turned into “food”… This horrifying thing was happening right there on the table.

“I… do not like fish.”

The Abyssal Hound spoke in a muffled voice.

In the corner of his eye, that freshly cooked fish soup still sent up steaming heat and a smell that was delicious to human noses.

He knew that what was in that pot really was fish now. No matter what it had been before, now it was fish.

The essence of the spawn had long since been twisted and rewritten. Without the eyes granted to him by the Abyssal Lord, even he could never have recognized what those chopped pieces of meat used to be.

Now, it truly was harmless food. Even if Shirley ate it, nothing would happen.

But Dog himself was not going anywhere near that table today, no matter what.

Duncan did not know why Dog suddenly had such a strong reaction to the fish soup. He guessed it had something to do with the special diet of Abyssal demons, so he did not pay it much attention.

His attention was on Nina.

Nina did not look much different from usual. She might have more on her mind now, but this sensible child had chosen a way of handling her feelings that would not put anyone in an awkward spot.

On the other hand, Duncan already knew that something was “hidden” around Nina.

Or to put it another way, that vast and invisible Veil from the factory had silently spread over and settled on Nina too.

He did not dare make a direct judgment yet, and there was no way to be sure what the ashes drifting around Nina really meant. But there was no doubt that during the fire eleven years ago, Nina must have been in an extremely special position.

Just as special as that factory.

Yet Nina knew nothing. She had lived eleven years in complete ignorance.

“Uncle?” Nina finally noticed Duncan’s gaze and looked at him in confusion. “What is wrong?”

Duncan did not answer. He only reached out his hand and gently patted the top of Nina’s head.

Nina froze for a moment, then shook her head from side to side: “I am not a little child anymore.”

“I know, you are not a little child,” Duncan smiled. Between the strands of Nina’s hair that swayed, tiny ghostly green lights flashed for a second and vanished. “But you are still a child.”

Nina puffed out her cheeks a little.

“Uncle, are you going to keep going out with Shirley to… ‘investigate’?”

She finally could not hold back her question.

“Within a safe range,” Duncan answered very seriously.

“…Can you not go?”

Duncan shook his head: “I cannot.”

Nina went quiet for a moment, then asked: “Then what can I do?”

“Eat your dinner properly,” Duncan smiled and pointed at the table. “Then sleep well, study well, protect yourself in the end, and trust your Uncle Duncan.”

Nina stuffed a piece of bread into her mouth until her cheeks were puffed out.

“All right. I got it.”