Chapter 231

Chapter 231: Reliable Messenger Polly

AI flapped into the shop, landed proudly on the stair railing, puffed out his chest, and let his little beady eyes dart around.

The large parrot with the colorful tail feathers flew in right after him and landed on the counter by Duncan’s hand. It strutted along the counter, head held high, as if it were at home.

Duncan stared in disbelief at this stranger that had flown in from who knew where. The big parrot lifted its head and looked right back at him without the least bit of shyness. After a long moment, it suddenly flapped its wings and let out a loud, sharp cry: “Ah! Polly!”

“Your name is Polly?” Duncan asked curiously. He did not expect a real answer. Parrots only repeated things, after all. But to his surprise, the bird actually nodded at his question and flapped its wings. “Polly! Name is Polly!”

Duncan’s expression went blank for a moment. Then he turned to AI, who was still standing on the railing and looking down proudly at the first floor. “Where did you find this… ‘friend’?”

“A friend came from afar,” AI said at once, flapping his wings. One eye looked at Duncan, while the other drifted toward the window. “Since he’s here, let him stay!”

Nina asked curiously from the side: “What does he mean?”

After learning the secret of the Vanished and Duncan, Nina had of course also learned that AI could talk. She had been very shocked at first, but now she had calmed down. Still, just like everyone else, she had a hard time understanding the strange lines the pigeon came out with from time to time.

“He probably means he doesn’t know where the parrot came from either,” Duncan translated for AI with some imagination. Then he turned to look at the parrot, then the pigeon. After holding it in for a long while, he finally could not help himself. “AI… I don’t mind you making friends, but have you noticed you’re not even the same species? At least find yourself a pigeon…”

“The sea holds all rivers, true greatness comes from tolerance,” the Pigeon Spirit cried, tilting his head and staring straight ahead. “Tolerance!”

Duncan: “…”

He often found himself pondering life and doubting his own sanity when talking with AI, wondering whether he and this bird spirit were even on the same channel.

This feeling, that nothing matched up yet somehow they could still communicate, was really something.

At this point, Shirley, Dog, and Alice were all drawn over. The three of them crowded around the counter, staring at the fearless big parrot. Alice even reached out and poked its wing in curiosity. The parrot only hopped aside twice to dodge a little, then tilted its head and stared back at the doll, big eyes and small eyes glaring at each other.

“What is this?” Alice looked at Duncan curiously. “It looks completely different from AI.”

Shirley answered right away: “Of course it’s different. This is a parrot. AI is a pigeon.”

“What’s a parrot?” Alice asked the question from her soul. “Can you eat it?”

“No.” Shirley shook her head, then asked the doll in turn, “You don’t even need to eat. Why are you always asking that?”

“I’m in charge of cooking for the ship… for Mr. Duncan!”

The chatter around the counter rose in a jumble, but Duncan did not join in. He only looked thoughtfully at the big parrot that called itself Polly. For some reason, he felt the bird looked faintly familiar, as if he had seen it somewhere not long ago.

“Where did you come from? Why did you come here?” he asked suddenly.

During the earlier exchange, he had already sensed that this parrot could actually communicate with people to some extent. Clearly, it did not have an ordinary origin.

The big parrot turned its head and tilted it. “Polly! Go, send message!”

“Send a message?” Duncan froze for a second, and his expression grew a bit more serious. “What message?”

The big parrot tilted its head as if thinking. After rummaging through its memories, it opened its beak, but before it could say anything, AI suddenly flapped over and yelled at the top of his lungs: “Get some fries!”

The big parrot jumped in fright. “Ah! Polly!”

“Get some fries!” The pigeon landed in front of the parrot and nodded with a very serious face. “Get some fries.”

“Polly?” “Get some fries!”

The two birds went on talking like that, until Duncan had to cut in: “Stop. AI, shut up. Polly, what message are you sending, and to whom?”

The big parrot clearly froze. After several seconds, it rocked its body back and forth hesitantly. “Get some fries.”

Duncan: “…”

He suddenly realized something. Whatever message this parrot had been supposed to deliver, it had obviously forgotten it completely…

But then Polly seemed to dig some useful scraps out of its remaining memory. It suddenly hopped up and flapped its wings hard: “Tell the captain, tell the captain! Tell… get some fries!”

Right after that, the big parrot flapped its wings and flew straight toward the door, still shouting “Get some fries!” Before anyone could react, it had already rushed out the door, into the sky, and was speeding toward Pland’s Upper City.

Nina tried to stop the parrot, but she was too late. She could only watch its figure fly farther and farther away with a regretful face, then turn back muttering: “Ah, it flew off.”

Duncan did not answer. When he heard Polly shout the words “tell the captain”, his expression had suddenly turned serious. At the same time, he remembered why the parrot had seemed faintly familiar.

He had indeed seen this bird before, when the Vanished and the Sea Mist overlapped in passing, in one of the Sea Mist’s cabins.

“AI, chase that parrot.”

…

“That is roughly the situation.”

In a quiet reception room somewhere in Pland’s great Cathedral, the old Bishop Valentine, dressed in plain clothes, spoke to Tyrian, who sat on the sofa across the coffee table.

“In the end, the Vanished took away the fragment of the Sun, stopped the creeping Sun Wheel from descending, and wiped out the effects of the historical corruption on the city-state, though we still cannot be sure of your father’s intent…”

Tyrian’s expression was both subtle and stiff.

He could no longer remember how many years it had been since shock had left his thoughts stuck like this. He understood every word the old Bishop said, but even in his wildest and strangest dreams, he had never imagined something like this could happen.

“The Vanished really just left like that? It looked like it came here just to save the day?” The famous pirate captain sounded full of disbelief. “It took the fragment of the Sun… and then? That was it? It didn’t do anything else?”

Valentine and Vanna exchanged a look. Both their faces held a mix of helplessness and hesitation.

At this point, it was really hard to say the words “your dad robbed half the city’s fries” to Tyrian’s face.

“…Nothing else,” the old Bishop said at last after much hesitation. He still could not bring himself to say it. He shook his head and sighed. “I know you are confused, Mr. Tyrian. We are as confused as you are. If even you don’t know what your father wants, then we know even less.”

“He stopped counting as my father a century ago,” Tyrian said slowly, shaking his head with a deep voice. “He is only a copy, torn apart by Subspace and then clumsily stitched back together. There is no trace of humanity in that empty shell…”

Tyrian suddenly stopped. For some reason, he recalled those few seconds when the Vanished and the Sea Mist overlapped, and the cold, distant words he had heard then.

“I’m busy.”

The Pirate Lord felt a sudden hesitation.

Was there really no humanity inside that body on the Vanished? The voice that had spoken to him back then, and the aura he had felt from that figure… were those really just the hollow, mad echoes of Subspace?

As Tyrian drifted off in thought, the young Inquisitor’s voice suddenly came from the other side, breaking his wandering thoughts: “Whether Captain Duncan still has ‘humanity’ is exactly what we are going to discuss next.”

“Hm?” Tyrian looked at Vanna in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“In fact…” Vanna hesitated, then turned to exchange a glance with Bishop Valentine before nodding lightly. “We have had more than one exchange with your father recently.”

Matters related to the Vanished were classified, and speaking with Captain Duncan was even more so. None of this should have been revealed. But Tyrian’s identity was so special that these rules clearly no longer applied.

“Exchanges? With my father?!” Tyrian was indeed shocked and almost jumped up from the sofa. “Is this some kind of bad joke?”

“Please calm down. This is a very serious matter, no one would joke about something like this after the city-state almost fell,” Vanna said calmly, looking at Tyrian before pausing slightly. “Strictly speaking, I am the one who has had several exchanges with your father. And from what I observed, ‘Captain Duncan’ no longer matches the description in the records.”

Tyrian sensed how serious she was and quickly calmed down. His own expression grew especially grave. “Miss Inquisitor, how did you establish contact? Why did he seek you out? And… what did he say?”

“At first, it was an accident… no, thinking about it now, it may have been a deliberate arrangement by your father,” Vanna said as she gathered her thoughts and recalled. “I came into contact with the ‘flame’ he left behind and used it to establish the connection. As for why he chose me… sadly, no one knows…”

Vanna left out the details about the mark placed on her and the corruption that could not be cleansed, summarizing it vaguely as “establishing contact”. Then she told the pirate captain in front of her the details of her talks with Captain Duncan.

The man who, in theory, knew Duncan Abnomar best.