Chapter 252

Chapter 252: The Deep Sea’s Silence

The city-state floated rootless on the Boundless Sea. Beneath its “850-meter-thick” foundation stretched dark water that seemed to have no end. The deeper you dove into the Deep Sea, the more you heard strange noises that could not be understood, and saw lights and shadows that made no sense.

The first explorer who went past a depth of one thousand meters rushed madly back to the surface and then went insane. The only sentence he left to the world was:

“We all died down there.”

That was what happened from the start of Frostholm’s Abyssal Trench Project up to the point when things began to turn wrong.

Duncan fell into a brief silence. He suddenly realized that even without going deep into the Spirit Realm or the Abyssal Deep, even just within this world’s Mortal Realm, the dangers and eerie anomalies hidden in the Boundless Sea were not lacking at all. After that short pause, he asked:

“What happened to that explorer later?”

“He died soon after. The rapid ascent and decompression killed him. After shouting and raving for a while, he died of a vascular embolism. At least, that was the cause on the Mortal Realm level.”

“There was only one person in a submersible?” Duncan asked again.

“It could only hold one person. Of course, that made the mental pressure much greater for the explorer, but we had no choice. On one hand, the technology back then was limited. On the other hand, that kind of exploration was not suited for a group. Under the Deep Sea, it is hard to be sure what might replace the companion beside you in the next second, and it is hard to know whether the voice you hear is real. So it was better to dive alone. At least that way, you did not have to suspect that there was someone else in the submersible.”

“The Deep Sea, darkness, loneliness, leaving the civilized world behind and facing bizarre unknown waters directly… any of that could have driven the explorer mad,” Duncan said, slowly shaking his head. “But that is not the important part. What matters is… this still is not enough to explain why the Abyssal Trench Project later became an absolute taboo.”

He turned his gaze on Tyrian’s eyes and went on: “So far, what you have told me is only an expedition that had an accident. Explorations like this happen every year. The Truth Academy even actively funds and encourages scholars and explorers to do such things. That is not a taboo, and it should not be tied to the Vanished at all.”

“…Yes. If the project had stopped at one thousand meters, none of the later things would have happened,” Tyrian said, shaking his head as he sighed over the past. “After the accident with the No. 3 submersible, Her Majesty Ray Nora once ordered the exploration to be stopped for a time. But a few days later, something happened, and things… slowly became strange.”

Duncan frowned: “Something?”

“At the edge of the sealed test waters, the No. 3 submersible shot up to the surface.”

Duncan froze for a second, then reacted: “A second No. 3 submersible?!”

“Yes, a second one,” Tyrian nodded. “It broke the surface right in front of the navy soldiers and started flashing light signals, asking for help to open its hatch. The well-trained soldiers panicked for a moment, but they still quickly followed standard procedure. They dragged the submersible onto the work platform and aimed twenty-seven rifles, two quick-firing guns, and a flamethrower at its hatch. Then a brave priest stepped forward, sprinkled holy water, and opened the lock.”

Tyrian paused for a moment, then slowly said: “The hatch opened, and a human who looked… very much like the explorer walked out.”

Duncan’s face grew dark: “Very much like?”

“The face and outline were similar, but the height and weight were different. He wore a Frostholm navy uniform, but there were many problems in the details of the clothing. More importantly… the person who came out of the submersible walked on land only for a short while before he died. He did not even have time to say a single word. When the soldiers undid ‘his’ clothes, they found that his flesh and the uniform seemed to have grown into one thing, and his body was covered in large and small wounds that no one could understand.

“After that, doctors and scholars from the Church examined the corpse together. The Queen of Frostholm seemed to have personally gone to see the dissection as well. But the results of the examination were never published. Or rather, before they had time to reveal anything, a third ‘No. 3 submersible’ appeared.”

Even Alice, who had been silent at the side and only listening in fascination, could not help speaking now: “There was a third one?!”

Tyrian glanced at Alice without thinking. His expression looked a bit strange. He clearly was not used to someone who looked exactly like the Queen of Frostholm standing here and shouting in surprise. But he quickly adjusted his expression and nodded lightly: “A third, and not just three. After that, every twenty-four or forty-eight hours, another ‘No. 3 submersible’ would come up from there…”

Alice listened to this bizarre story in shock. She thought for a moment and suddenly blurted out: “So you just had to wait there, and you would get an endless supply of submersibles? By the way, are those things called ‘submersibles’ very expensive? Are they worth more than cultists?”

Just a second earlier, Tyrian had still been sunk in his memories of the past. Now Miss Doll snapped his train of thought in an instant. He stared with his mouth half open, unable to pull his mood back: “We… never thought about that at the time…”

“Do not mind her. Her way of thinking is different from others’,” Duncan said to Tyrian with a serious look after glancing at Alice. “Go on. What happened after that?”

Tyrian finally came back to himself. After sorting his thoughts, he continued: “When the third submersible came up, it also flashed light signals asking for the hatch to be opened. This time the soldiers had some experience. They dragged the submersible into an even more heavily protected area, and the priest set up a large number of extraordinary wards in advance before opening the hatch. And this time… what came out was a swollen, twisted humanoid monster that no longer looked like an explorer at all.

“That monster also could not survive more than three minutes in the air.

“The fourth submersible had a mass of constantly writhing flesh climb out of it. This time, there was not even a trace of a human outline left.

“When the hatch of the fifth submersible opened, nothing came out. The soldiers on the scene went up to check and saw only a suspicious puddle of dark red sludge in the cockpit. That sludge carried a faint sign of life.

“The sixth submersible held only a small amount of black, fibrous, dried material. It looked like an unfinished nervous structure, or a dried specimen of blood vessels…”

As Tyrian went on, Duncan’s expression grew more and more serious. Even Alice at his side seemed to sense the change in mood and sat up straight.

In that ever more heavy and solemn air, Tyrian slowly said:

“The seventh submersible, which is also the last one I know of, was empty inside.”

“Empty?” Duncan lifted his eyebrow slightly, then shook his head. “That is even more unsettling.”

“Yes. Empty. So it was even more unsettling. The whole matter had completely entered a runaway state. We had to find a way to end it,” Tyrian said in a deep voice. “But thankfully, the No. 4 submersible was finally finished. It was originally designed as the follow-up model to the No. 3. After the ‘one thousand meters’ incident, the project was paused, and its construction stopped as well. But as more and more ‘No. 3 submersibles’ floated to the surface, the queen ordered the No. 4 submersible to be assembled as fast as possible and decided to use it to find out what had really happened in the water one thousand meters below.”

Tyrian paused, as if his memories had a few gaps. He gathered his words before slowly going on: “I cannot remember all the details of the No. 4 submersible. It was finished in a rush, and the Frostholm navy only handled part of it. I only know it was larger than No. 3. It could hold three people and had a sample bay. The scholars had planned to use it to collect samples from the Deep Sea, if there were samples to collect.

“The day after the seventh ‘No. 3 submersible’ appeared, the No. 4 submersible built by Frostholm was put into the sea. Inside it sat a scholar, an officer, and a powerful priest. At that point, we could no longer worry about the dangers of ‘multi-person exploration’. Preventing an eighth ‘No. 3 submersible’ from appearing was the first priority.

“The No. 4 submersible dove all the way down and soon reached the depth of one thousand meters. The priest inside used spiritual power to stay in touch with the surface. Maybe because the new submersible had better performance, they went down very smoothly and confirmed the sight of the city-state’s ‘foundation’ that the earlier explorer had reported. But soon, the link began to cut in and out. After they reached a depth of one thousand meters, the small cathedral on the sea platform almost could not hear a thing from the Deep Sea.

“But fifteen minutes after the link was broken, the priest on duty in that small cathedral suddenly heard a sound from the Deep Sea again. First they heard a scream. It was the priest in the submersible. In a terrified voice, he screamed to warn the others. He said: ‘Don’t look! Don’t think!’ Right after that came the officer’s voice, a roar. And then, a deafening blast.”

Tyrian raised his head and turned his gaze to Duncan.

“The No. 4 submersible detonated its explosives,” the Pirate Lord said slowly. “They had packed the sample bay full of high-energy charges to deal with ‘the final dangerous situation’.

“Then everything ended. The No. 4 submersible never came back up, and no more ‘No. 3 submersibles’ ever appeared before anyone.”