Chapter 23

Chapter 23: Bird.

Alice did not understand many things in this world.

But at least, she had heard countless low whispers while inside the wooden crate, talks filled with fear and tension. From the mouths of those crew members and wardens whose nerves were extra tight because they were in charge of escorting Anomaly objects, she had built up the most basic understanding of certain “unusual matters”.

If something clearly went against common sense but still truly existed, then the first thing to do was to follow the existing safety rules. Only after keeping a safe distance should one think about study and analysis. That was the way to stay alive.

Alice actually did not feel much about the fact that she was “Anomaly 099”. She did not know what she could do, or what she had done, that made humans fear and guard against her like that. She did not know how an intelligent “Anomaly” was supposed to think to be “normal”—at this moment, she was simply thinking like a person.

Since Goathead said that the crew member rules had, and would only ever have, six items, then there were six. Since Goathead had mentioned a seventh rule, then she would also remember that seventh one.

But she still could not hold back some questions: “When I tried to push the captain’s door just now, it really did open outward—that is such a natural thing. Why do you have to stress it in the rules?”

The wooden Goathead quietly stared into Alice’s eyes. After a full two seconds, he spoke, more brief than ever before: “Sometimes, it can open inward.”

“Then…”

“If you see the door open inward, you must never go in. On the entire Vanished, only the captain has the right to do that.”

This was the first time since they started talking that Goathead had spoken in such a serious, even slightly threatening, tone. He had not been this serious even when he was explaining the crew member rules.

Alice was startled by his extra solemn tone.

Then right after that, Goathead’s tone turned light again. He spoke cheerfully, as if the serious topic had never happened: “All right, the necessary introduction process for a new crew member has ended. Now let us talk about something else… Ah, right, lady, did you come to the captain’s cabin for something? If you do not know how to use some facility on the ship, there is no need at all to bother the great Captain Duncan. If you just want someone to chat with, then you have come to the right place. I am very good at finding topics and I know countless great deeds related to this ship… Not interested in great deeds? Then I can introduce you to the most famous dishes on the Boundless Sea. I know a thing or two about cooking…”

Once Goathead started talking, he immediately got into the mood. Alice tried several times to interrupt but never found a chance, and by the time she realized that things were going very wrong, it was already too late.

Anomaly 099, the doll Miss Alice, today faced the second Great Terror on the Vanished, other than Captain Duncan.

At the same time, in the cabin on the other side of the wall, Duncan was quietly listening to the sounds coming from the enchanted sea chart room.

He had just woken up. His soul had returned to the Vanished from a distant body. He had not heard the start of Goathead and Alice’s talk, but he had heard those “crew member rules” and the part about the “captain’s door opening outward”.

It was important information, an unexpected gain.

Duncan had not yet finished digesting the information he had just gathered from those cultists when he unexpectedly heard the conversation between Goathead and Alice. Both the strange and eerie “crew member rules” and the information hinted at by Goathead at the end were extremely important to him.

As expected, Goathead had known when he pushed the captain’s cabin door inward to return to the “other side”. For Duncan himself, that action was simply going back to his small apartment. But for this side, the Vanished, it seemed to mean that “the captain had temporarily left”.

Goathead had no doubt about this at all and saw it as something Captain Duncan would naturally do.

So… had the “real Captain Duncan” of this ship also pushed open the door of the captain’s cabin in the past and gone to some mysterious “world”? And had this not only happened once, but many times, so that it became something completely normal in Goathead’s eyes and even became part of the Vanished’s crew member rules?

This news was a good thing for Duncan. It meant that he would not need to worry too much when he went back to the “other side” in the future. Even if more new crew members joined the ship, he could openly disappear in front of everyone by using this method, and he would not have to worry that anyone would copy him, follow, and discover his “secret”.

But on the other hand, Duncan also could not help thinking more. This was related to the “six plus one” crew member rules that Goathead had purposely brought up.

What did these crew member rules really mean? On what were these rules based, rules that sounded bizarre, dangerous, and even self-contradictory? Some parts sounded as if they existed only to stress the captain’s authority, but that clearly was not the whole truth. Those strict limits on behavior were more like a way to let the people on the ship live in some danger-filled environment, a way for the crew members to avoid invisible dangers by following fixed rules.

Duncan frowned slightly. He was thinking about his true place within these rules. Judging from the content of the rules, he, the “captain”, seemed to be the only one who held the greatest freedom and control. He did not need to fear the “invisible risks” on the ship. He was even the one who decided the range of many risks. But… all of this assumed that he was the “real Captain Duncan”.

That was the part most worth worrying about.

But then he suddenly remembered his recent exploration on the Vanished, and how he had walked around the cabins as he pleased.

Goathead had never reminded him about the crew member rules and treated him as the real Captain Duncan. While he moved about on the ship, he had never run into any “eerie danger”, and there could not be a second “captain” jumping out to give him any limits on where he could go.

From this point of view, the dangers mentioned in the “crew member rules” by Goathead did seem to be things he did not really need to care about.

Duncan let out a light breath and continued to listen carefully to the sounds from the enchanted sea chart room.

Half a minute later, he hated that he had no way to turn off his ears.

A trash-talking doll and the noisy Goathead started to talk with each other, and the latter clearly held an overwhelming advantage. His clattering nonsense rolled through the enchanted sea chart room like the waves on the Boundless Sea, and even Duncan, who was hiding in the cabin and secretly listening, could hardly bear it.

He felt that he should hurry out and rescue that poor doll, Miss Alice. With her lack of social experience, Alice was clearly no match for Goathead. But after a slight hesitation, Duncan still stopped.

He had just finished a strange “soul journey”. He still had much information to sort and even more experience to sum up. He had to figure out what exactly had happened to him just now and whether this process was under his control. From what he had seen so far, this ability to project his mind to a distant place would be his best tool for gathering information on land in the future.

Under normal conditions, he would also have to worry that staying in his room too long to study his new ability might draw Goathead’s needless attention. But now Alice was outside to pull that noisy thing’s attention away… which could not be better.

He silently said sorry to the doll, Miss Alice, in his heart, then lowered his head to look at his right hand. The next second, his expression froze.

The brass spirit compass, a bit larger than a pocket watch, had vanished at some point.

Yet he clearly remembered that until just a short while ago, he had been gripping that spirit compass tightly in his hand!

Duncan’s eyes suddenly grew sharp when he realized that he had not noticed the change in his hand at all. This kind of slack and carelessness had never happened since he came to this strange and eerie ghost ship.

In the next second, he closed his right hand slightly. A dim emerald flame quietly appeared between his fingers. Then he stood up from behind the desk, ready to use the link between this spirit form flame and supernatural objects to check whether there were any Anomaly traces in the cabin.

But just as he straightened up, Duncan’s movements suddenly stopped. Some subtle connection rose from deep within him. He looked, without thinking, toward the direction of that link, and in the corner of his eye he saw a few feathers, half real and half illusory, drifting down from the air.

Duncan looked in surprise to where the feathers were falling and saw a patch of phantom light quickly appear and gather in front of him. In just two or three seconds, the phantom formed into a snow-white…

Pigeon.

The missing spirit compass hung on that pigeon’s chest, and a familiar Obsidian Dagger lay quietly at the pigeon’s feet.