Chapter 285

Chapter 285: Welcoming the Newcomer

To Vanna, everything that had happened over the past two days seemed to be covered by a filter of unreality. Her life had been turned upside down, so much that it felt like an absurd dream. She often wondered if she had already fallen into an illusion without knowing it—and in this moment, her doubt about herself reached its peak.

She actually saw Mr. Morris standing in front of her, with a smile on his face.

The young Inquisitor squeezed her eyes shut and knocked hard on her forehead. When she opened her eyes again, Morris was still there—and now there was also a tall figure beside the old mister.

It was that gloomy, dignified ghost captain.

“Welcome aboard, Vanna,” Morris said. “I know you have many questions…”

Vanna opened her mouth, but before she could speak, there was a sudden bang beside her. She did not feel any threat in that sound, but it still startled her. She turned her head on reflex and saw a big burst of colorful paper scraps and ribbons flying toward her.

A beautiful lady with silver-white hair down to her waist was staring blankly in this direction. Smoke from spent gunpowder still rose faintly from the tube in her hand.

Vanna: “…?”

Before she could react, the silver-haired lady happily grabbed a second paper tube from the side. She fiddled with it in front of Vanna, lifted it, and pulled the little string on it.

Seeing this, Vanna quickly tried to warn her: “Ah! You are holding it the wrong way…”

Her warning came too late.

The small charge inside the tube exploded with a bang. The silver-haired woman was hit full in the face by the ribbons and confetti that sprayed out. She instinctively threw her head back. Then there was a strange popping sound, and a head rolled down onto the deck under Vanna’s gaze.

Vanna’s eyes went wide. Even with her mental discipline, she almost jumped on the spot. Right after that, she heard a cry from behind her: “Ah! Uncle Duncan! Alice’s head fell off again!”

In the next second, a girl who looked about high-school age rushed over from the side, scrambling after the head that was rolling around on the deck. Another girl came running from another direction, holding the leash of a huge black dog. She joined the chase and shouted: “I told you earlier it was a bad idea to let her hold it!”

“You were too scared to hold it yourself!”

“Even so, we cannot just let Alice handle it alone… Ah, her head rolled down the stairs!”

“A hook, where is a hook… A stick works too…”

“I found a rope! Throw it down, throw it down… Miss Alice, bite it yourself, I will pull you up!”

The deck turned noisy in an instant. The two girls rushed up and down after the rolling head, while the headless silver-haired woman stumbled around in place, completely at a loss.

Mr. Morris, who had been speaking a moment earlier, now pressed a hand to his forehead and sighed nonstop. The air still held the odd smell left by the spent confetti tubes.

Vanna was in a rare state of utter confusion. She stared at the chaos on the deck, strands of colorful paper hanging from her hair and shoulders. She felt she sort of understood what had just happened, but also felt it might be better not to understand at all.

It was a welcome ritual—under any other circumstances, it would have been quite a happy sight.

“You see? I told you I have a very troublesome group of crew members,” the gloomy, dignified Captain Duncan finally spoke. His voice pulled Vanna out of her daze at last. “This ship is always this noisy. But from another angle, your life here should not be boring.”

Vanna’s face stayed blank. Deep inside, her thoughts were roaring like a thousand explosions, but she truly had no idea what expression she should be wearing.

She looked up at the scene on the deck. Nina and Shirley had already ‘fished’ the head out from between the stairs and were clumsily putting it back where it belonged. A fat pigeon had flown in from somewhere and was flapping nearby, loudly shouting something strange like “Little hammer forty, little hammer forty.”

She finally got a clear look at the silver-haired woman’s face and remembered where she had seen it before.

It had been in the antique shop in the Lower City.

Back then, the woman had golden hair. Now that Vanna thought about it, that must have been a disguise.

She looked at Shirley, then at Nina, then at Mr. Morris, who stood nearby with a helpless look and his hands spread. Vanna finally understood everything.

The entire world had already changed in secret, and she was only now finding out.

“How many more ‘secrets’ are there?” Vanna’s mouth twitched at last, and she regained the ability to speak. This respected scholar had been a senior she had known since childhood. Him appearing on this ghost ship was the most unbelievable thing she had seen today. But right now, this senior was also the only person she could think to question. “How long have you been…?”

“Actually, not for very long—only a little earlier than you,” Morris answered with a gentle smile and a light nod. “Heidi does not know about this.”

“Ah, she really looks like she does not know. She was still complaining to me today, saying you suddenly went out to deal with something without explaining anything,” Vanna said in a complicated tone. “Who would have thought… that you would just appear in front of me like this, on the ‘Vanished’.”

“It seems I did leave in a bit of a hurry,” Morris said with a nod. “I should bring her some local specialties from the north as a gift later.”

Vanna pressed her lips together, then turned to look at the master of the ship.

“What other ‘surprises’ are coming?” she asked helplessly. Everything that had happened after she stepped through that gate of flame had shattered all the mental preparation she had been doing since morning. She had never felt this lost and flustered in her life. “Tell me in advance so I can at least be ready for it.”

Before Duncan could answer, Nina already ran over, speaking to Vanna with great excitement: “We are having a banquet tonight! A welcome party for the new crew member!”

“There will be really tasty fish soup!” Shirley shouted from the side. “Fish caught personally by the captain.”

“And then a deck barbecue!” Nina quickly added. “There will be fish, beef, and wheat juice!”

“No alcohol,” Duncan’s voice came from right behind Nina at once. “Not even if you call it ‘wheat juice’.”

Nina’s face drooped at once: “…Not even a little?”

“The sweet fruit wine from last time was already the limit,” Duncan said with a straight face. “Beer is still too early for you.”

“Oh.”

Vanna looked at Nina, then at Duncan. Only after a long moment did she sigh softly: “So that antique shop really had problems—and I did not notice anything.”

“We have always operated legally. The goods are not genuine, but the prices are fair,” Duncan said with a faint, amused look. “As for you not noticing anything… actually, that is a good thing. You know what I mean.”

“Yes. Her Eminence the Pope reminded me to rein in my urge to pry when I am near you,” Vanna sighed again and looked at the ugly, skeletal giant dog beside Shirley. “If I am not mistaken, this is a Abyssal Hound, isn’t it? And this little girl is a Summoner who formed a symbiotic pact with Abyssal demons?”

Dog shook his head eagerly: “Ah, yes, yes, yes.”

Vanna jumped in surprise: “…This demon can talk?!”

“It can not only talk, it can now even spell its own name and do addition and subtraction within one hundred,” Duncan said casually. “Among the crew members of the Vanished, it is considered fairly well educated.”

Vanna stared for a moment, then looked at Alice, who was a short distance away, rolling her neck. She had already noticed the details of Alice’s joints earlier, and now she spoke thoughtfully: “A doll… so that means…”

“Anomaly 099. Its former name was ‘Doll spirit coffin’. Now you people seem to just call her ‘doll’, but she has her own real name, which you should already know. Here, you can just call her Alice,” Duncan said calmly. Then he added, “Do not worry. She is very safe now.”

“Hello!” Alice waved and smiled, her face full of harmless cheer. “I did not scare you just now, did I?”

Vanna reached up and touched her own neck on reflex. Then she managed a slightly stiff smile in return, counting it as an answer to this cursed Doll’s greeting.

Just then, Shirley ran to a wooden barrel nearby and pulled out another paper tube with bright, colorful wrapping. She held it up happily and ran back: “Alice! Alice! There is one more here! Do you want to…”

“Stop playing with those things!” Duncan glared at Shirley. “So who bought them? And why are they not on the purchase list?”

“I…” Nina shrank her neck at once and spoke carefully. “I used my own pocket money to buy them.”

Duncan was silent for a moment, then turned to look at Alice: “Next time they give you some strange thing to play with, come tell me first.”

Alice nodded while picking colorful scraps of paper out of her hair: “Oh.”

Vanna let out another long, deep sigh.

She went over to Morris and lowered her voice: “It is… always like this here?”

“From what I have seen, always,” Morris replied just as quietly. “Sometimes it is even livelier—especially when Miss Alice has some new ideas.”

Vanna: “…”