Chapter 240

Chapter 240: An Impossible Sight Ahead

Goathead was not there.

This was even more unbelievable than that absurd, eerie dream.

Duncan stood frozen in the doorway for a long time before he slowly came back to his senses. Then he drew the sword at his waist and moved forward, fully on guard.

Goathead really was gone. Only the enchanted sea chart and a few odds and ends lay on the familiar chart table, and the spot where Goathead had once sat was nothing but bare tabletop.

Duncan stared at the empty tabletop for a few seconds before slowly looking away. Then he lifted his head and looked around.

Even more wrong-looking details came into view.

Everything in the room looked mottled and old. Cracks of different depths covered the walls and pillars. Many items were missing from the nearby shelves; almost nothing was left but bare frames. The wall that had once held a decorative tapestry now showed only a suspicious, black stain. Beside that stain was a window, filthy and grimy. Outside it was dim and chaotic. Now and then, a suspicious glimmer flashed past.

It was as if some very fast-moving shadows were darting through the air outside the glass.

The whole enchanted sea chart room felt as if it had been abandoned for many years. Time had ruined most of the furnishings here, and some rough force, more dangerous than time itself, had left those deep and shallow, dark marks on every wall, the ceiling, and the floor.

Duncan even pinched his own thigh again, unable to stop himself, wanting to make sure once more that he was not dreaming.

The sharp pain and his clear thoughts reminded him at the same time that this was not a dream, but the Mortal Realm. A Mortal Realm that felt… very strange to him.

The feeling from his first step onto the Vanished surged up again. Surrounded by endless weirdness, Duncan felt his brow slowly furrow.

But compared to that first time on this ship, he adjusted much faster now. After a few deep breaths, he was completely calm.

After all, he now had many strange experiences that he could never have imagined in the first half of his life. The experience he had gained dealing with this eerie world, and the control and confidence he had in his own power, meant he was no longer that confused rookie from before.

Now the only thing that truly worried him was that his fear that the Vanished was unstable and would run into trouble sooner or later seemed to be turning into fact.

This ship had changed in some abnormal way.

Duncan walked another circle around the room. He checked the now-empty shelves, looked over the walls that were nothing but grime, and glanced at the corner where two wooden chests had once stood. Most things were gone. Aside from the chart table, the place had almost become an old, ruined empty room.

But one more thing still sat in its original place: the Oval Scrying Mirror with the ornate patterned frame.

Duncan walked to the mirror and cautiously looked into it.

No terrible scene appeared. The mirror did not show a bloody hell or any twisted, deformed face. It was just very dirty. Dark stains covered the glass, yet in the cleaner patches he could still see his reflection normally.

Duncan did not stay before the mirror for long. He went back to the chart table and let his gaze sweep over the enchanted sea chart.

In the next second, his eyes suddenly froze.

The enchanted sea chart had changed too!

The fog that had once covered almost the whole chart had almost completely vanished. With the mist gone, clear and complex sailing routes showed on the parchment.

Duncan leaned in without thinking, trying to make out the details on the enchanted sea chart, but he soon sensed that something was wrong.

Lines crisscrossed the enchanted sea chart, routes tangled over one another. Yet he could not see a single meaningful mark or place. It looked more like a mess of lines drawn at random, recording a muddled sleepwalk. Between those lines there were no islands, no city-states… nothing at all.

He could not see Pland, could not see Lunsa, could not see Cold Harbor or Qingfeng… Most of those city-state names were still strange to him, but at least he knew they existed and should definitely appear on this enchanted sea chart now that the mist was gone.

Duncan’s frown grew deeper. After he realized there was no landmark at all on the enchanted sea chart that he could use, he slowly straightened up and tilted his head, listening for any sound outside the window.

There was no movement outside. No wind, no waves. Only silence… just like that strange, brief nightmare.

The lines on the enchanted sea chart marked the sailing track of the Vanished. Those tracks updated themselves as the ship drifted. So the lines now marked on this mist-cleared, crisscrossed enchanted sea chart… from which dimension of the Vanished’s voyage were they taken?

Duncan let out a soft breath. Then, as if he had made up his mind, he turned with sword in hand and walked toward the captain’s cabin door. In theory, beyond that door lay the deck of the Vanished.

He gripped the handle, took a deep breath, and pushed the door open.

The Vanished sailed through a dark, hazy chaos. Everywhere he could see, the deck and the structures on the ship were in ruins, long since abandoned.

At least, beyond the door it really was the deck of the Vanished.

Duncan stepped out through the door. His boots landed on a deck full of pits and cracks, as if it were close to collapsing. A harsh creak sounded at once, breaking the suffocating stillness.

He moved forward carefully at first. Only after he confirmed that the deck only looked ruined and was not actually about to cave in did he dare to walk a bit more boldly. Then he lifted his head to take in the surroundings of the Vanished.

Before his eyes stretched a barren, boundless expanse of chaotic space. Dim shadows hung everywhere. Between those shadows, gloomy, blurry currents of light appeared from time to time and then slowly faded. Now and then a strange flash or stream of light would suddenly flare bright, like a blind bolt of lightning that lit up the distant void. In that brief flash, he could faintly see some huge things floating in the emptiness, as if they were slowly turning and writhing.

The moment he saw those dark lights and flickering streams, Duncan could only curse in his heart.

This scene… looked a bit familiar.

It was exactly the same as the view beneath the hull of the Vanished—Subspace!

Duncan almost swore out loud. The corner of his mouth twitched twice. He thought that the thing he feared most would always be the first to happen. Not long ago he had been worrying that Subspace was too cursed and seemed to be calling to him, and that he needed to find a way to avoid touching it. Yet now, with just one blink, he had somehow ended up on a Subspace drift—how had he suddenly ended up here?!

But after the first wave of panic, he quickly calmed down and held back the urge to turn around and run back into the captain’s cabin.

He still could not be sure this really was Subspace. It only felt very similar to what he had seen outside the hull of the Vanished. And if this place truly was Subspace… then hiding back in the captain’s cabin would be pointless.

Besides that, he soon noticed something suspicious about his own condition.

He stood there, looking up at the scenery of this supposed Subspace, and felt no discomfort at all. His mind did not feel corrupted, and he heard no strange sounds. Yet by the “common sense” of this world… humans were not just unable to enter Subspace. Wasn’t simply looking at Subspace supposed to drive a person mad on the spot?

But he did not feel even the slightest discomfort.

Not only did he feel fine, he could still clearly sense his body back in Pland and sense Nina, Morris, Vanna, and the other “marks” he had left in the Mortal Realm.

Even if he, as a “ghost captain”, had some special traits and some resistance to Subspace, he still should not have been this… safe in a place like this, right?

Puzzled by his own state, Duncan even started to doubt whether this really was the so-called Abyss of World’s End. Then he steadied himself and walked toward the railing at the edge of the deck.

He came to the ship’s side and leaned out to look.

As he had expected, there was no sea beneath the Vanished. The ship seemed to be floating in space, surrounded by the same void in every direction.

He stood at the edge of the deck, gazing at the hazy, massive shadows in the distance and the streams of light that flared from time to time, and carefully planned how he should get out of this situation.

First, he had to confirm whether this place really was Subspace. Second, he had to look for and confirm whether there was still any link between here and the Mortal Realm.

Since he could come here, that meant there had to be some place that reconnected this space with the Mortal Realm. But that place did not have to be in the bedroom where he had woken up. He had already checked both the bedroom and the enchanted sea chart room and found no trace of any such “passage”.

After a moment of thought, he formed a rough plan. He turned away from the rail and walked toward the hatchway in the middle of the deck.

Just then, something caught the corner of Duncan’s eye, and he stopped without thinking.

He lifted his head and looked toward where his peripheral vision had just flicked. A slightly bright arc of electricity was slowly fading in the distant darkness. In that dying glow, he could faintly see some huge, lump-like thing slowly drifting over the Vanished.

Duncan stared hard. At that moment, another “flash” appeared. It was like a long, winding bolt of lightning that stretched across the high sky and lit up an enormous patch of “heaven” in an instant.

Duncan finally saw a hint of the giant shape’s outline—and his breath caught at once.

It was a piece of land… or rather a shadow of broken land. Its scale was unimaginably huge, large enough to trigger a fear of giant things in anyone. Its uneven outline looked as if some vast force had torn it straight off a planet and then hurled it here.

On that upside-down land he could even dimly see mountains, rivers, and some other lines that looked even stranger and more unsettling. But all of it had lost color and life. The entire “continent” was only a flat gray-black. The rivers lay frozen in the gullies of the earth. It looked like a rough model stripped of every shade of color, sealed into a lump of motionless amber in time and space.

This huge fragment of a celestial body moved slowly over the Vanished, showing Duncan some bleak, ancient image of doomsday.