Chapter 249

Chapter 249: The First Step Toward Honesty.

Tyrian felt himself wrapped in darkness. In that darkness, his senses rose and fell. It was as if some invisible force was pulling him, carrying him through a dimension that lay between the Mortal Realm and illusion.

He tried several times to open his eyes, but could only see a faint green glow and shadows rushing past in the dark. After struggling to make sense of it, he realized that what he saw was a bird’s-eye view of the city-state below.

It seemed something was carrying him through the sky.

That single thought flashed through his mind, and he lost consciousness again.

When he could once more feel his body, he had already been placed somewhere stable. A cold, hard feeling came from beneath him, like a bare concrete floor. Dim light shone around him, like cheap bulbs used to light a warehouse. A blurry figure sat beside him, leaning closer as if looking at him curiously.

Tyrian’s mind finally cleared.

But he did not open his eyes at once. Instead, he kept pretending to be unconscious while carefully sensing his surroundings. He tried to judge where he was from the dampness in the air, the tiny sounds near his ears, and what little he could see through his barely opened eyelids.

He had just managed to hear a bit of faint traffic noise and had just confirmed that he might be in a building facing a street, when a voice he had heard right before blacking out suddenly sounded beside him. It was a voice that was all too familiar in his memory: “You’re awake. Your eyelids are moving.”

Tyrian’s heart lurched. He knew he had been found out, so he could only open his eyes helplessly.

Then his whole body stiffened. The person he saw left him shocked and at a loss.

He saw Ray Nora, Queen of Frostholm—exactly the same as in his memory, and not the blonde lady from before whose hair color had clearly been different.

The silver-haired “Queen of Frostholm” sat upright on a chair beside him. Her expression was calm and indifferent as she gazed at Tyrian lying on the floor. Tyrian stared blankly for several seconds before suddenly snapping to his senses and jerking himself upright.

A sudden wave of pain in his head almost knocked him back down, but the pain sharpened his mind, driving out the last bit of dizziness left from his fainting spell. First he confirmed that he was truly awake. Then he quickly looked around, trying to figure out where he was.

All he saw was a warehouse packed with shelves and wooden crates. High and low racks were crammed with old objects whose exact ages and origins were impossible to tell. The worn crates were piled in somewhat messy stacks along the walls. There were no windows in his field of view, so of course he could not see outside. The only door stood behind the chair where the “queen” was sitting.

It looked like just a warehouse. There was no way to judge where in the city-state it might be.

Tyrian’s gaze came back and finally stopped on the “Queen of Frostholm.”

But after that first wave of shock and excitement, the Pirate Lord’s first true reaction, once he calmed down, was doubt. He thought of the blonde lady he had seen earlier and the things she had said. His brow furrowed: “You are not Her Majesty Ray Nora. Who are you really?”

“I said already, my name is Alice,” the silver-haired woman on the chair answered with a smile. “Ah, if you mean my hair… I disguised it before. Captain said my real appearance might cause trouble in the city-state.”

She mentioned the captain again.

The first time she had brought up this “captain,” Tyrian had only felt a bit confused. Now, when he heard that title again, his first reaction was a strong sense of wariness and danger. He was sure this was not some bad joke, and not some stupid trap set up by a captain who hated him. Behind all of this, there really might be his terrifying father.

Tyrian slowly stood up. He watched the silver-haired woman who called herself Alice with full caution and said in a low voice: “Is it really him?”

“Yes. He has something to discuss with you,” Alice said. She rose from the chair and walked to an antique mirror nearby. “Captain, he’s awake.”

In the next second, pale green flames rose along the edges of the mirror. Tyrian thought he heard a faint, unreal crackling sound. The mirror surface suddenly turned black, and a familiar, dignified figure slowly emerged from that darkness.

“Tyrian, we meet again,” Duncan’s voice came from inside the mirror.

“…Yes, we meet again,” Tyrian replied, hesitating. Even though they had already met once, speaking again with a clear-minded, rational father still made him feel extremely awkward. “Why did you use this method? I thought you didn’t mind contacting me in the Cathedral.”

“We can catch up in the Cathedral, but it’s not suitable for certain private topics,” Duncan said unhurriedly. His gaze swept past Alice. “There are some things I don’t intend to let Gamona listen in on. You’ve met Alice already. You should have a lot you want to ask.”

When Tyrian heard his father mention the Storm Goddess Gamona, a strange look crossed his face. But very soon, his attention was drawn back to Alice, whose face was exactly the same as the Queen of Frostholm’s. After frowning and thinking for a moment, he suddenly remembered something. His expression changed sharply: “Earlier, the Explorer Association sent a warning to all captains on the Boundless Sea. They said Anomaly 099 was out of control…”

“As you can see,” Duncan said with a smile, “she is standing right in front of you.”

Tyrian immediately gave Alice, who wore an innocent smile, a quick, startled glance, as if he had only now noticed the inhuman traits hidden within that overly perfect face, and the decorations on her body that clearly served to cover her joints. In the next heartbeat, he instinctively raised a hand to touch his own neck.

As one of the most experienced captains on the Boundless Sea, and as someone who paid close attention to any information related to the Queen of Frostholm, Tyrian knew very well what Anomaly 099 was like.

His movement did not escape Duncan’s eyes.

“Relax a little,” the voice from the mirror said. “Anomaly 099 is under control now.”

“…The doll in the container has awakened and is freely moving about outside, and you call that ‘under control’?” Tyrian kept a wary eye on Alice’s actions as he spoke to Duncan. At the same time, his neck felt cold. “How did you do it? How did you make an Anomaly with such a low number work for you, and even suppress her decapitation instinct?”

“Alice is a friendly doll. She isn’t as terrifying as people think—at least, not when she’s by my side,” Duncan said casually. “But you, I thought you would first bring up the Queen of Frostholm. As far as I know, you served by that queen’s side even longer than you served in the Vanished Fleet.”

Tyrian slowly realized what Duncan was getting at. He watched the figure in the mirror with wary eyes and said: “You want to learn things related to Her Majesty Ray Nora from me?”

“Do you feel resistant to that?” Duncan asked. “Do you not want to talk about it?”

“…I still don’t dare to fully believe in your ‘humanity,’” Tyrian said quietly.

Duncan was silent for a few seconds before he spoke again in a low voice: “Do you know what my first plan was?”

“Your first plan?”

“To have Alice disguise herself directly as Ray Nora, Queen of Frostholm,” Duncan said. “To pretend she had truly resurrected, or to act out a wraith projection, or even to step straight into your dreams—that would all be very easy for me.” Duncan met Tyrian’s eyes. “I could guarantee that you wouldn’t be able to tell truth from lies, and that, under mental guidance, you would say many things. I could easily get the information I wanted that way.”

A chill ran down Tyrian’s back.

He believed every word his father said. He believed that his father could indeed do these things, and he knew that he himself would definitely fall for it. Even if he noticed something off in some small detail, it would only be after he had already given away a great deal of information.

Because even just now, after already seeing the “blonde Alice” ahead of time and knowing that the person in front of him could not possibly be Ray Nora, he had still almost believed that this was truly the Queen of Frostholm resurrected.

Tyrian lowered his eyelids slightly without even thinking, as if this could keep his gaze from directly meeting his father’s. He asked in a low voice: “Then why didn’t you do it?”

Duncan gazed quietly at Tyrian.

Why else? Because Alice could not remember a script that long and could not act through a scene that complicated. The moment the other side tried to trick her with a random question, she would panic. And if she forgot her lines, she would, without a second thought, start shouting for help from her captain—save save save—seventeen saves in a single second.

She was useless to a degree that was hard to believe.

“Of course it’s because I don’t want to deal with my own children through deception—even though I’ve already forgotten many things,” Duncan said with a serious expression and a low voice.

Then he paused and added: “I also don’t want to use that kind of ‘farce’ to insult the sovereign you once served. Although I don’t know her well, from that brief ‘meeting once’ I had with her, Ray Nora seemed to be someone worthy of respect.”

“Clap clap clap clap—”

Hearing such a righteous answer from the captain, Alice immediately began to applaud. She had barely understood anything the captain had said.

Duncan and Tyrian both turned and stared at this doll with strange expressions.

“…Was I not supposed to clap?” Alice shrank her neck, peeking carefully at the captain in the mirror. “I just thought the captain was right…”

A wave of tiredness washed over Duncan. He sighed and said: “…As long as you’re happy.”

At the same time, Tyrian suddenly realized a small detail hidden in his father’s earlier words, and he was struck with shock:

“You met Her Majesty Ray Nora?!”