Chapter 138

Chapter 138: The Radiant Star

Wasn’t one ship like the Vanished in this world already bad enough…

In the Divination room, lit only by dim candlelight, Lucretia sat quietly in a high-backed chair padded with velvet cushions. She used her gaze on the scrying crystal resting on the table, yet for some reason her thoughts drifted away, back to something long ago, to an afternoon a century in the past…

That figure, already a little blurred in her memory, stood on the deck, facing the sunlight that was slowly sinking toward the horizon. His tall body seemed to turn into wavering, unreal flames in the sunset. In a low, heavy voice she had never heard before, he told her:

“Our world is nothing but a heap of dying embers…”

By now, she of course knew that even then, Father had already fallen into madness. Soon after, he completely abandoned his humanity and chose to embrace the “divine blessing” of Subspace. Yet she still sometimes wondered: if that day she had talked with Father a little longer, if she had seriously asked what he meant by those words, asked what exactly he had seen at the edge of the world, would things have unfolded differently afterward?

Perhaps Father would still not have escaped his insane end. Perhaps the birth of the Vanished was already a “fixed fact” carved into the long river of years, something no one could change. But at least, she would know how it had all happened. She would know where she should go to seek the truth—rather than, like now, steering a ship under the curse, wandering fruitlessly in this border region where even the Holy See’s inspectors were unwilling to go deep…

“Lucretia, are you still listening?”

Tyrian’s voice suddenly came from the scrying crystal, pulling the young lady who had been staring blankly at the table back to herself. Lucretia shook her head, pushing her tangled thoughts aside for now.

“Big Brother,” she looked solemnly at Tyrian inside the scrying crystal, her tone turning serious. “Do you still remember what Father said before his last voyage to the border? The time he did not let us go with him…”

“Of course I remember.” Tyrian nodded. “He said he had found a clue to Anomaly 000 and was going to find ‘a cure for this world.’ Back then he not only refused to take the two of us, he also refused the escort of several other warships. And after he and the Vanished returned, both he and that ship were no longer quite the same.”

“Yes. All the crew members on the Vanished stopped speaking, as if they were under a silence curse. Father was still clear-minded enough to talk with us. He said he hadn’t found Anomaly 000, and even if Anomaly 000 did exist, it was not the origin point of the world’s distortion. The so?called cure had never existed from the very beginning. After that, until the day he stood on the deck in the sunset and told us ‘the world is a heap of embers,’ he never again mentioned anything related to that border voyage…”

Tyrian in the scrying crystal stayed silent. After an unknown length of time, it was Lucretia who spoke again: “After that, I went and contacted the Holy See fleets that patrolled near the border. That included the Flamebearer, the Deep Sea priests, the scholars of the Truth Academy, and even those gloomy death cultists. I asked them about Anomaly 000, but they all said there was no such thing as an anomaly or Vision numbered zero…”

“I also asked around,” Tyrian said in a low voice. “I got the same answer as you. In this world, there is no anomaly or Vision numbered zero. It’s not that it doesn’t exist yet. There simply isn’t an empty slot for it.

“The very first list that leaked from the Nameless King’s tomb already set down all the numbers. Unfound or still?forming anomalies and Visions all have their own reserved slots waiting to be filled. Even things like the Mycelium Bottle and the Fungal Isle, which evolved over the course of history, were later matched to positions that had been planned ahead of time. But at the start of that entire list, there is no slot for number zero at all…

“That’s why I say Father must already have been unstable before he sailed for the border. He could not possibly have been ignorant of this information.”

Here, Tyrian suddenly stopped. Then he raised his head and fixed his gaze on Lucretia in the scrying crystal. His expression grew very serious: “Why bring this up all of a sudden? We haven’t talked about it for half a century. What are you planning to do?”

“…Relax. I won’t dive headfirst into that grand wall of fog like Father did.” Lucretia rarely showed much expression, but this time she still smiled. “I’m looking for clues Father left behind. I’m not trying to walk his old path.”

Tyrian stayed silent for a moment, then slowly nodded. “…Good.”

Lucretia did not speak for a while. The two siblings, separated by a vast distance and rarely meeting face to face over the past century, each had their own thoughts. Only when the faint sound of a distant foghorn from the Sea Mist came through the scrying crystal did Lucretia suddenly break the silence: “You really are going to Pland? Just because of that governor’s ‘invitation’?”

“The ‘invitation’ isn’t important. I don’t care about that city?state’s so?called safety problem. But the governor said in his letter that the Vanished had appeared again in the Mortal Realm, and he sounded very certain. I have to go see for myself.” Tyrian’s face was solemn. “That ship hasn’t shown itself in almost half a century. For it to appear again now is very suspicious.”

Lucretia thought for a moment, then asked: “You ran into the Vanished once fifty years ago. I remember you were still in Frostholm then… was what you saw back then really the Vanished?”

“…Absolutely. Hard as it is to believe, it was truly the Vanished.” Tyrian’s voice grew low. “I wouldn’t mistake the position of even a single mast, or the layout of a single set of rigging.”

“Then… the one standing on that ship back then, was that really ‘Father’?”

Tyrian lowered his head slightly, hiding his face in shadow. “…It was him. Though I’d much rather that thing wasn’t him.”

Lucretia looked at her Big Brother in the scrying crystal. After hesitating for a moment, she spoke softly: “Be very careful. If that really is him, you’ll be in great danger.”

“I know.” Tyrian let out a quiet sigh. “He’s already a frenzied ghost completely twisted by Subspace. I would never let my guard dow—”

Lucretia shook her head, expressionless. “No, I mean if that really is Father, once he sees you turned the Sea Mist into a big lump of iron, he’ll hit you even harder than he did fifty years ago.”

Tyrian froze, then glared at once. “What is that supposed to mean? This is an efficient modern refit! What’s wrong with steam boilers and rapid?fire guns? And you have some nerve to talk. At least I kept part of the original. Does your ship still have even a single plank from the Radiant Star of those days…”

The scrying crystal went dark.

Lucretia let out a quiet breath and rose from her chair.

Her Big Brother was still in good shape. A little provocation and he was full of energy, and he still had a strong curiosity about modern things. That was good.

In a long, endless life, what one feared most was the decline of the mind and the decay of the soul.

Light footsteps came from the dimness, mixed with the rubbing of mechanical parts and clockwork. Lucretia turned toward the sound and saw a clockwork automaton with the shape of a woman walking toward her. The automaton looked about sixty percent like her, yet its whole body was made of obvious rivets and mechanical joints. Its steel?and?ceramic shell had been shaped into a maid’s dress. In the dim light, it looked rather eerie.

As the automaton walked, the spring mechanism on her back kept clicking softly. She came to Lucretia, offered the black tea in her hands, and her jointed mouth clacked as she spoke in a slightly stiff female voice: “Mistress, please have some tea.”

“Thank you.” Lucretia took the cup and asked casually: “Lunie, where are we now?”

The clockwork automaton named Lunie answered: “The Radiant Star has just passed ‘Fog Horn Isle’. We are now sailing along the edge of the Eternal Veil. Do you wish to enjoy the view outside the window?”

“…Open the dome.” Lucretia took a sip of black tea and set the cup back on Lunie’s tray. “It’s already morning. I should bask in the Sun.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

Lunie bowed slightly and backed away.

At the same time as the automaton’s voice faded, the entire Divination room gave a slight tremor.

The squeaking of moving machinery rose in a continuous chain. The humming and grinding of giant springs and magic units working together sounded like a piece of music. Driven by countless gears and rails, the walls of the room began to pull back and unfold. The room that had been dim and candlelit was suddenly flooded with sunlight. In the sunlight, the entire room opened slowly like a mechanical flower, and in the end bloomed into something like a high stage.

This was the upper deck of the Radiant Star. The room where the “Sea Witch” Lucretia resided had blossomed into a towering stage at the very front of the deck. Around this blooming mechanical flower, one could see the full shape of the Radiant Star—

The ship had been split in half.

The front half of the vessel had been completely rebuilt. Countless runes and magical devices covered the hull. It looked less like a ship and more like a giant magical mechanism. Strange materials taken from the border region or from the sea had reshaped the deck. Everything in sight shimmered with a faint, bizarre, dreamlike color, as if a never?ending magic ritual was running between the dense arrays and clusters of crystals.

The rear half of the ship was completely different. There, half of the hull had become almost ghost?like and half transparent. A thin veil of shifting light wrapped the stern of the Radiant Star. In the floating glow, one could faintly see that part of the structure still kept the vessel’s original form—

A sailing warship built a century ago, with a style faintly similar to the Vanished.