Chapter 238

Chapter 238: The Radiant Star’s Pursuit.

There were still three hours before the Sun would rise from the far edge of the sea. The relatively safe and stable daylight would replace the unsettling veil of night – if the Sun really rose normally at all.

Duncan glanced at the mechanical clock hanging not far away. Its hands were ticking along at an unhurried pace.

Goathead’s voice suddenly sounded: “Are you planning to wait for sunrise? There are still three hours left.”

“…Sitting here for three hours doing nothing is even more boring than staring at this enchanted sea chart that is almost blank,” Duncan shook his head. He stood up, rolled his shoulders, and slowly walked toward the bedroom. “I’ll go rest for a while. If I still haven’t come out before sunrise, you can just call me.”

“Happy to serve you.”

Duncan nodded, pushed the door open, and returned to the bedroom. He casually threw the sheet of paper covered with mysterious emblem patterns onto the table, then walked toward the bed not far away.

This body of his almost did not need rest, but every now and then he still took a short nap before dawn came – not to ease any real fatigue, but simply so he could “get up and greet the sunrise”.

It let him keep a feeling of being “alive” aboard the Vanished, so he would not slowly lose his own humanity on this ghost ship. Even though he did not know whether there was really any danger of that, once he had noticed that the Vanished was not as stable as he had imagined, he had been consciously keeping up this habit of “maintaining human ways of living on the ship”.

Duncan lay down and closed his eyes. In his ears he heard the low whisper of wind and waves from the sea surface. Under his body he felt the constant slight rocking of the great ship. Bit by bit, he forced himself to relax.

…

On the Radiant Star, in the captain’s quarters that were arranged with a distinctly feminine touch, Lucretia, wearing a silk nightgown, suddenly sat up in bed.

Her hair was a bit messy. Her face showed a trace of fatigue and irritation. As she sat up, she was still holding a huge stuffed rabbit doll half as tall as a person, its shape comical yet faintly eerie.

The doll was pieced together from pink and blue fabric. A scar ran across its face, and its jagged mouth was smeared with a strange, blood-red color. At the moment Lucretia sat up, the stuffed rabbit doll twitched a little, then slowly turned its head. Its button eyes looked toward its mistress, and from its cotton-filled body came a little girl’s voice: “Mistress, I thought you had finally fallen asleep…”

Lucretia glanced at the clock beside her and spoke in a slightly annoyed tone: “I slept for a few dozen minutes at best and then got scared awake by a bad dream… What time is it now?”

“Two hours before sunrise,” the stuffed rabbit doll said as it jumped down from its mistress’s arms to the floor. It hopped over to the cabinet, used its soft plush paw to open the door, took out the captain’s treasured wine, poured a small glass, and held it up to Lucretia. “You could still sleep a bit more – this will help calm your mind.”

Lucretia took the glass and drained it in one gulp, but she still stood up: “No need. Lying there will only make me more irritated… Help me get ready.”

“All right, Mistress.”

The stuffed rabbit doll with the little girl’s voice answered crisply. It took the glass from its mistress’s hand and put it away, then began hopping around, tidying the bed, clearly very used to the routine.

At the same time, Lucretia snapped her fingers, and the lights in the room came on. She let out a slow breath, dragged her steps over to the dressing table, and tapped a drawer beneath the mirror with a fingernail. At once, the drawer slid open.

A wooden toy seaman jumped out. The seaman wore a navy uniform from an ancient age and held a tiny command sword in his hand. He first bowed to Lucretia, then stood on top of the drawer and waved his sword, shouting sharp little orders.

A whole crowd of toy soldiers rushed out of the drawer. They quickly formed up and did a roll call, then ran to the side to pick up a comb, a hand mirror, a water cup, and a toothbrush. Lined up in order, they ran nimbly onto Lucretia’s body or the back of the chair behind her and began carrying out their mistress’s morning wash.

Lucretia sat listlessly in front of the dressing table and let the dolls fuss around her. She herself was fighting the fatigue and pressure brought on by a sleepless night and wild thoughts. At the same time she absentmindedly turned over matters related to the Vanished. After quite a while, she took a deep breath and forced her mind to clear.

Just then, a faint thread of golden light slipped in through the crack in the curtains not far away and fell into the sight of this “sea witch”.

Lucretia saw that ray of light. At first she did not react, but after only two or three seconds her eyes suddenly narrowed. She quickly looked toward the mechanical clock at the side.

There was still one hour before sunrise.

This was not the time for the Sun to rise!

She suddenly stood up.

The toy seamen had a brief moment of confusion, then, as if long trained, they packed everything away while reforming their ranks. The stuffed rabbit doll, which had already finished tidying the bed, noticed its mistress’s movement and hopped over: “Mistress, it looks like it’s getting light outside!”

“It’s not time to get light yet,” Lucretia said quickly as she strode toward the window. “Where are we right now?”

“We’re still sailing along the route we set last night,” the stuffed rabbit doll answered at once. “We’re already close to the place where that big thing fell last time!”

The moment the stuffed rabbit finished speaking, Lucretia yanked open the thick curtains and then opened the window, which was reinforced with a fine metal mesh.

A thin, hazy fog floated over the sea outside. This was the most common sight in the border region. Deep within that fog, a vast patch of faint golden light was quietly drifting on the surface of the sea. For the moment, it was impossible to tell how far it was from the Radiant Star.

A massive glowing monster floated on the surface of the sea.

Lucretia stared hard in that direction, then took a deep breath. Her body suddenly turned into a flurry of flying colored paper. The colored scraps rushed out through the open window, swept across the deck, passed through stairwells, and flew into the wheelhouse on the upper middle deck.

Inside the wheelhouse, Lunie, a clockwork automaton dressed in a maid’s uniform, was at the helm. She sensed her mistress at once. As the colored scraps flew in and swirled, Lunie had already let go of the wheel. In the next second, Lucretia’s figure condensed out of the paper and reached out to take the helm.

“Mistress, I was just about to send someone to fetch you,” Lunie said as she stepped aside. “That patch of golden light suddenly appeared out of the fog. From the position, it should be the fallen relic we’ve been tracking.”

“Bring us up to full speed. All hands on standby. Have the stern ready to dive into the Spirit Realm at any time,” Lucretia said quickly. “Are our reserves of Aetheric Dust and Witch Oil full?”

Lunie answered just as fast: “Reserves are full. Your orders have already been passed on.”

Lucretia nodded, and at once the Radiant Star awakened completely under her command.

Large numbers of clockwork sailors, automata, and ceramic soldiers rushed to their posts. The special paddle wheels on both sides of the hull began to spin faster and faster. That engine system, which looked behind the times, slowly unleashed power greater than any modern screw engine and pushed the ship’s speed up quickly. At the back half of the ship, the ghostlike “original hull” became even more vague and unreal. Strands of blackness as thin as hair spread from the stern out into the surrounding waters. Seen from afar, it looked as if a black wake were stretching out behind the Radiant Star.

Under Lucretia’s own hands, the whole ship showed a form where magic and machinery coexisted, where beauty and grace were mixed with horror and ugliness.

As the Radiant Star’s speed rose further, the huge golden glowing orb floating between the thin fog and the sea surface finally came into clearer and clearer view before Lucretia’s eyes.

At the same time, its true, ever-growing scale revealed itself.

Even Lunie, the clockwork automaton, slowly widened her eyes and could not help letting out a soft gasp: “Heavens… Mistress, what is that?”

Lucretia did not answer. She only stared fixedly ahead at the giant golden phantom that was slowly emerging from the mist, already as large as a small mountain.

It was so big that from any single angle it was almost impossible to make out its full shape. It was so solemn and perfect that it did not look like anything humans could have built.

A huge and intricate golden geometric body floated quietly on the sea. Its entire mass glowed with a soft, soul-stirring pale gold light. Its height was more than three times that of the Radiant Star’s tallest mast. Its two sides stretched out like fortress walls. The upper half slanted slightly outward like a terrifying cliff. There were no extra bumps or details on its surface. Every part of it seemed seamless and whole.

As they got closer, Lucretia and Lunie began to see more details of the enormous thing.

“It looks half transparent,” Lunie said curiously as she leaned close to the broad viewing window. “It looks… like a glowing piece of stained glass?”

“…No, it doesn’t seem like it’s just transparent…” Lucretia shook her head. She stared ahead without blinking, as if she had noticed something wrong at the edges of the huge glowing geometric body. At that moment, a small black dot suddenly flew out of the nearby fog and entered her field of view.

It was a seabird – even on the Boundless Sea, even in this border full of strange phenomena, creatures like that still existed.

In fact, because they did not have complex intelligence like humans, these “wild animals” tended to live even better than those brave and powerful explorers in the eerie border waters.

Lucretia’s gaze was drawn to the seabird. She noticed that the poor thing seemed to have had its mind scrambled by the golden light on the sea. In its panic, it flew straight toward that glowing “mountain”.

Yet the next second, the expected violent crash and fall did not happen. The bird flew right in, into that slightly slanted “cliff face”.

A little later, in the corner of Lucretia’s eye, she saw that same bird fly out from another direction, looking completely unharmed.

Lunie had also seen it. The clockwork automaton muttered in surprise: “…Is that a phantom?”