Chapter 190

Chapter 190: As If Yesterday Vanished

World’s Wound hung high in the night sky. A cold wind blew over the Boundless Sea. Fine waves rose and fell softly around them, and the little boat rocked like a dream that had not yet fully woken before dawn.

But Alice did not really know what it meant to “dream”. She had slept for a very, very long time, yet she had never truly dreamed the way humans did. She guessed that dreaming should be a state something like this.

She floated in a vast, vast place, and her thoughts drifted with it.

She lifted her head. In the distance there was only the sea. The far-off lights of the Vanished were like tiny candle flames floating on the surface of the water. It even gave her the feeling that the whole world had disappeared, leaving only herself, the little boat beneath her, and the endless Boundless Sea.

Oh, and the three Enders trussed up across from her.

Miss Doll drew back her gaze from the distance and looked curiously at the cultists tied up in front of her.

They were humans, the very bad kind. Alice did not know many humans, but she knew there were good ones and bad ones. Good people did very good things. Captain Duncan would praise them and sometimes even help them. Bad people did very bad things. Captain Duncan would despise them and sometimes report them. The three in front of her… were the kind the captain disliked the most.

They believed in Subspace and followed a vicious creed. For the sake of some great cause they had made up, they could kill anyone, even attack a pitiful young lady who only had a dog for company. If a city-state Guardian found them, the Guardian would shoot them to death in the street without hesitation. If sailors at sea found them, they would hang them from the mast. Even a vicious pirate, if he found them, would stuff these madmen into a wooden crate and throw them into the sea, using them as an offering to beg the Storm Goddess for protection.

But now they were tied up and sitting quietly. There was no sign of any mad urge to run wild. Alice could still remember how frightening they had looked when they first came aboard, all worked up as if they had taken the wrong medicine.

Now, as time passed, these Enders grew more and more obedient.

“Are you scared?”

After holding it in for a long time, Alice finally could not help speaking. She felt very uncomfortable out here. She knew this was a “safety test” she had to go through so she could move around in the human city-states, but drifting on the Boundless Sea still made her feel restless and uneasy.

One of the Enders answered the doll’s voice. His skull-like, skinny head slowly lifted, and he stared into Alice’s eyes: “Stupid filth, a clumsy shell… your soul is pale and hollow. Even Subspace would not take you…”

Alice froze for a moment. A few seconds later she reacted: “Hey, why are you insulting me?!”

The Enders opposite her only let out a string of hoarse, ugly laughter. Faced with Anomaly 099, which terrified the world, they did not seem afraid at all.

Or perhaps, just as they claimed, they had long since risen above the idea of life and death and no longer cared when death came in the Mortal Realm.

Alice could only sulk by herself, but after a while she shook her head and said: “I’m not angry anymore.”

Another Ender looked up at her once, but said nothing.

Alice kept talking to herself: “I shouldn’t be angry. You’re the ones who get to complain a bit. After all, you’re the ones tied up right now, not me, and you’re the ones doing this head-falling-off test, not me. The captain said that when the wind is fair you can’t get too pleased with yourself, because if the waves get big the ship will overturn, and if people act too wild they’ll die… And since you’ve already fallen this low, my lordly self can be generous and allow you to run your mouths a little.”

The Enders sat silently in the boat, listening to the doll ramble on, as if they had completely shut out her voice. But after a while, Alice still noticed they had some “little movements”—

They were secretly studying one another’s heads, moving their own necks from time to time, and now and then sneaking a careful glance her way, their eyes full of doubt.

Alice thought about it carefully and felt they were probably wondering why their heads were still on their necks.

These cultists clearly knew the information about Anomaly 099. They might truly not fear death, but they still felt curiosity. After staying so close to Anomaly 099 for so long, they found it hard to understand why they were still alive.

“Actually, I am a little scared,” Alice suddenly said. “I’m afraid your heads will suddenly fall off. The captain said I have the ability to decapitate people. When I first heard that, it scared me a lot. Humans aren’t like me. When a human’s head falls off, it can’t be put back on…”

A sudden flapping of wings came from above. Alice looked curiously toward the sound and saw the dove AI suddenly fly off into the distance. After a short while, it flew back from the direction of the Vanished, emerald flame rising from its body.

AI circled twice over the sea near the little boat. Ghostly green flame surged up, and in the great whirlpool of fire an ornate wooden chest appeared out of nowhere, then fell with a splash into the sea beside them.

“My box!” Alice’s eyes widened at once and she cried out in surprise. At once the words “swept out the door” popped into her mind, and her head almost fell off her neck. But then she noticed there seemed to be a note stuck to the chest. She quickly paddled twice with the oar at hand, drew close, and took the note off. On it was a single line of words:

“The Guillotine ability might also be connected to your wooden chest, so I’m sending it for testing along with you. Also: you are definitely overthinking that I’m kicking you off the ship again—stop it. Come back as soon as you finish the test.”

Alice held up the note and turned it over, reading it several times, but did not understand it.

She could not read…

But soon she saw something else on the back of the note. It was a rough little sketch, showing her rowing the boat back to the Vanished, with a smiling face drawn at the end.

Miss Doll understood at once. No matter what was written on the front, the captain clearly did not mean to drive her away.

Relieved, she carefully put the note away, then casually fished the chest out of the sea and, with a bang, tossed the rather heavy box onto the little boat with one hand. Only then did she look up at the cultists across from her: “Are you hungry?”

The preachers did not answer. She did not mind and just muttered to herself: “The captain said you all deserve to die, but he also said that if you really get through the test without dying, he won’t kill you. He’ll send you back to the city-state to be used for… what was it again…”

Miss Doll stalled, trying hard to remember. At last she recalled what the captain had told her before: “Oh, to show how much a warm-hearted citizen cares about the safety of the city-state… He said you were worth at least seven bicycles. What is a bicycle?”

“Subspace will grant us food and warmth… Subspace will grant us peace… Subspace will bestow its divine blessing on all the dead, after all the Ends arrive as promised…”

One Ender began to mutter in a muffled voice. It sounded a little like an answer to Alice’s rambling and a little like some blasphemous prayer. “We walk within the End, cast off this cursed flesh, and our minds will pass over that wall and open their eyes again in the New World…”

“Huh?” Alice listened in total confusion. “What are you mumbling about?”

The Enders no longer answered her and did not respond again after that.

From then until dawn, they only sat there with their heads lowered, muttering to themselves. They mumbled about Subspace, about the End of some long river of time, about a Doomsday that was destined to come and ought to come. On the waves that rose and fell with the wind, aside from the soft slap of water against the hull, there was only the ceaseless muttering of these madmen.

It was the kind of atmosphere that would make an ordinary person’s skin crawl. The content of their prayer could make anyone with a weak will fall under the curse, tainted and entangled by Shadows from the deep layers of the world. Yet Alice only felt that it was noisy.

She had the little note the captain wrote, so she no longer feared this drift. Now she was only bored out of her mind.

But that boring time finally ended.

A thread of morning light suddenly appeared over the distant sea. In the pale dawn, World’s Wound in the sky quickly faded and thinned, and the Sun, bound by double layers of runes, slowly rose out of the sea and leaped into the sky.

It was dawn.

Alice had not decapitated anyone.

Miss Doll happily watched the sunrise. She stood up from beside the chest, turned her head to the cultists, and said: “Hey! It’s dawn! You’re still alive! We can go back now!”

However, the three Enders did not answer her. They still hunched in the boat with their heads lowered, whispering softly. In the brief darkness before the sunlight spilled into the boat, they called on Subspace for “attention” one last time.

Only when Alice called out again did one of them finally raise his head. This cultist glanced at the sunlight slowly spreading toward them, looking a little dazed, but slowly a strange smile spread over his face.

“Oh, our day is over again…” the madman sighed softly. Then he slowly turned his head and looked into Alice’s perfect, gem-carved eyes. His smile held a twisted mix of madness and calm. “Doll, we will meet again one day.”

“Huh?” Alice was stunned. “What do you mean by that? It’s not like you can just run away into thin air…”

The sunlight spread over them.

The three Enders vanished without a sound in the morning glow, like yesterday’s fading phantoms.

“No way you could…” Alice finished half the sentence out of habit, then stared wide-eyed. “You really did run away?!”