Chapter 299

Chapter 299: Undying Amusements

The captain often came out with strange phrases whose meanings were obscure and whose word?making was wild, but the crew of the Vanished usually took it in stride.

After all, there was an even more baffling pigeon on board. The captain and the pigeon always communicated smoothly, which proved that the bizarre words were not the captain’s problem.

The problem lay with the mortals, whose limited experience made it hard for them to understand.

In any case, anything they could not understand, they simply treated as a Subspace dialect.

Morris did not ask what “PTSD” meant. He just silently digested the information the captain had revealed. Duncan did not hold back and told them about his experience in the graveyard the previous night.

He mainly wanted to hear the opinions of the “professionals”.

Duncan’s story quickly drew the attention of the others in the restaurant. Nina was the first to come over, followed by Shirley, Alice, and Dog. In the end, even Vanna, who had been sitting quietly by herself, could not resist her curiosity and drifted over to the long table to listen in.

“Annihilators…”

Once Duncan finished, the first to frown was, of course, the most knowledgeable, Morris. “Why would they be interested in corpses…”

“Annihilators aren’t supposed to be interested in corpses?” Duncan asked curiously.

“They’re not necromancers,” Morris said, shaking his head. “Annihilators follow the Abyssal Lord. They study knowledge about demons and summoning. They have no interest in the flesh and blood of the mortal world. Not just no interest—really, you could say they despise and loathe it. They are convinced that mortal flesh is weak and filthy, and that the demons in the depths of the Abyssal Deep and the Abyssal Lord are the ‘primordial form’ that truly possesses pure sanctity. How would a bunch of heretics like that end up stealing corpses from a graveyard?”

Listening to the old scholar’s explanation, Duncan also frowned.

Annihilators despised the flesh and blood of this world and followed “beings in the Abyssal Deep that possessed pure sanctity”? They even believed that Abyssal demons and the Abyssal Lord had that “pure sanctity”?

Although he had known from the start that the cultists in this world each believed in something more twisted than the last, the Annihilators’ determination to challenge the limit of aesthetics was a bit too twisted even for them!

Duncan couldn’t help looking toward Dog beside the table. Shirley had dragged the creature over here. Now it lay on the floor, holding a vocabulary book in its two paws and studying it intently, its ugly skull of bare bone bobbing back and forth.

Noticing the captain’s gaze, Dog jerked its head up at once, its fierce bones crackling all over.

“Pure? Sacred?” Duncan looked at the Abyssal Hound with a strange expression. “Even the primordial form of life?”

Dog froze: “…Huh? What?”

“I can’t imagine it,” Duncan shook his head. “The world those Annihilators see must be completely different from that of ordinary people.”

He was just speaking offhand, but Shirley reacted at once: “Who knows how their brains grow. I’m not an Annihilator.”

“No one said you were,” Duncan said mildly.

“Tsk, tsk. I don’t know about anything else, but that woman cultist who ran off is definitely dead by now,” Shirley smacked her lips and added: “dead without even a complete corpse left.”

Duncan had not really thought about what might have happened to the cultist who ran. Hearing Shirley’s words, he was taken aback: “Why do you say that?”

“She was dragged into the deep sea of the Abyssal Deep by her own symbiotic pact demon,” Shirley explained casually. “Annihilators, tsk. No matter how much those idiots worship the Abyssal Lord, no matter how tightly they tie Abyssal demons to themselves, once they go into the true depths of the Abyssal Deep, they’re still treated as humans. Those uncontrollable demons only recognize auras. They’ll tear her to pieces.”

“Other Abyssal demons will tear her apart?” Duncan muttered. Then he suddenly remembered something. “Wait, I remember you and Dog once ran away using a similar method. You jumped into a rift leading to the Abyssal Deep right in front of me.”

At the mention of that glorious escape, Shirley’s expression also turned a bit odd, but she quickly waved it off: “That was different. When Dog takes me running, it does everything it can to protect me. It tries to muddle my aura, and if it really can’t, it starts a big fight with the other Abyssal demons. So every time we use that trick to run, it ends up covered in injuries.

“Other Abyssal demons are a different story. Like the one you just mentioned, it won’t protect its master. Right, Dog?”

“That’s a Death-Omen Bird,” Dog lifted its head and answered Shirley, glancing carefully at Duncan as it spoke. “Ordinary Abyssal demons really won’t actively protect their masters. They have no ‘heart’ at all. They only act together with Annihilators because the symbiotic pact binds them. Once they reach the deep sea of the Abyssal Deep, they go into runaway state at once. That cultist is doomed.”

“So that’s how it is.” Duncan rubbed his chin and muttered thoughtfully: “No wonder that fellow looked so reluctant when she was dragged in…”

Just then, Vanna, who had been silent on the side, finally could not hold back. She moved a little closer to the long table: “Those heretics… other than trying to lead you out of the graveyard, did they do anything else?”

Duncan looked up at Vanna, and she hurried to add: “It’s probably professional habit. I’m very concerned about those heretics’ goals. Like Mr. Morris just said, normal Annihilators have no interest in mortal flesh, which makes those cultists who appeared in the graveyard even more suspicious.”

“Now that you mention it, you do remind me of something,” Duncan said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “Not long after the body I was occupying left the coffin, it began to ‘fall apart’ in a very strange way. The skin and muscle cracked and crumbled off like dried mud. Those cultists seemed to have expected it.”

Vanna frowned slightly. She thought for a long time before something occurred to her: “So the key is the shell you were occupying at the time.”

“Do you mean…”

“Annihilators have no interest in mortal flesh. But what if that wasn’t ‘flesh from the mortal world’?” Vanna raised her head and looked Duncan in the eyes. “In fact, it might not have been ‘flesh’ at all.”

Listening to Vanna’s analysis, Duncan looked thoughtful: “Oh… then this is getting interesting.”

…

After a long absence, the Sea Mist finally returned to her home port.

At the edge of the secret island shrouded in pack ice, turbulent currents, and mist, the proud bow of an ironclad warship lay moored steadily at the end of the pier. Undying sailors bustled about in the cold wind and thin fog. Some checked the condition of the ship. Others counted cargo or directed the cranes on shore as they hoisted heavy crates from the hold to the dock.

The Sea Mist had returned from the warm Central Seas. This time she brought back no news of victory, but she did bring gifts and specialties from afar: fine wine and souvenirs that Pland’s authority had given to the “Sea Mist Venture Company”, along with tobacco, cloth, and handicrafts the captain had bought with his own money. For a cold, shut?in hidden island, such things were treasures.

Although the Undying had already left the world of the living, they still had their own personalities and emotions. They also needed a life of a certain quality. They needed entertainment and pleasures, and in some ways they needed such things even more than the living did.

Their souls always felt cold and hollow, so they needed the warm creations of the civilized world all the more to fill those empty spaces.

First Mate Aiden stood at the edge of the deck, carefully stuffing fine tobacco from Pland into an old?fashioned short?stemmed pipe. He lit it with a lighter, clamped the mouthpiece between his teeth, and took a deep, satisfied draw.

Then he held his breath and gave a little push.

A hazy cloud of smoke seeped out from his crew uniform’s collar, cuffs, and pocket seams on his chest, shrouding his entire upper body in white smoke.

Aiden turned his neck, glanced at the smoke around him, then pulled open his collar and took a look inside.

The bullet hole in his chest was still curling with thin wisps of smoke.

“Warm tobacco can fill the emptiness in the soul. But the holes in the body are another matter, aren’t they.”

A hoarse, dark voice suddenly came from behind him. Aiden turned and saw a pale, withered old man standing at the edge of the deck. The old man wore a priest’s robe. One side of his skull was caved in, and the half of his body on that side looked as if it had been soaked in seawater.

It was Will, the Sea Mist’s shipboard priest.

After muttering, the old priest raised a small bottle to his mouth and took a swig.

Thin trickles of liquor leaked from the cracked side of his cheek where his skull had caved in.

Aiden watched the old priest for a moment, then suddenly said: “Want me to teach you a trick? You could make that bottle last for days…”

“Tricks don’t help,” the old priest shook his head. “Mostly it’s just disgusting, and by the third time it starts to taste sour.”

Aiden shrugged, raised the pipe, and took another deep drag. He held his breath again, and once more his whole body was wrapped in smoke.

“Being Undying isn’t so bad, really. I couldn’t play like this when I was alive.”

“…It’s nice to have such an easy heart,” the old priest couldn’t help sighing.