Chapter 306

Chapter 306: Remains in the Depths

Dog staggered forward on unsteady legs for two steps, then finally stopped. Thick, pitch-black smoke and dust rose from the gaps in its bones. Every bone plate on its body trembled as if in spasm, and in its blood-red eye sockets, the light flickered on and off.

Such an obvious reaction from this Anomaly naturally startled Shirley. She stopped at once, grabbed Dog’s huge skull, and shook it while calling his name in a panic. She called seven or eight times before Dog finally came back to his senses. Dog slowly raised his head and let out a hoarse, low sound from its throat: “Why did I suddenly… feel like I can’t move my legs…”

“Are you alright?” Duncan also walked over at this time. He frowned as he looked at the Abyssal Hound, whose state was clearly wrong. There was some concern in his voice as he asked: “Does anything hurt?”

“I… don’t feel sick,” Dog’s skull swayed as if it could fall asleep at any moment. “I just feel like I don’t have any strength, and… I really don’t want to go near that pile of stuff.”

“You really don’t want to get close?” Duncan turned his head and looked at that strange thing at the end of the room, which still slowly writhed in the firelight like a hill of sludge.

Was that weird “sludge” affecting Dog? Some kind of instinctive suppressive force?

Dog’s strange reaction drew everyone’s attention and also pushed Duncan into thought. The first thing he thought of was whether Dog’s strange “senses”, which far surpassed those of humans, had once again noticed something invisible.

But judging from Dog’s reaction, Dog did not seem to have “seen” any kind of Anomaly.

“The Abyssal Hound counts as a rather powerful bloodline among Abyssal demons. They rarely end up like this just because they face the pressure of a strong individual,” Vanna squatted down and, without any hesitation, patted Dog’s bone plates. Then she turned and glanced toward the end of the room. “Besides, that thing hasn’t released any aura of pressure at all…”

“You can take out ‘rather’,” Shirley muttered to the side. “Dog is already really strong…”

“I’m not strong, not strong at all,” Dog quickly shook his head. “Isn’t this place a bit too creepy? Maybe we should come back next time?”

“There won’t be a next time. This ghost ship may not stay here obediently, waiting for us to explore it over and over,” Duncan shook his head. “But you really aren’t in any condition to keep going.”

Dog was clearly under the influence of some unknown power. If he kept forcing Dog toward that thing, it could lead to unpredictable results. The best choice now was to send Dog and Shirley back to the Vanished for the time being.

Duncan waved to the side. AI immediately flew over, circling in the air while squawking: “Who is calling the ship… It’s a trap! Abandon ship!”

“You take Shirley and Dog back to the Vanished first,” Duncan ignored the noisy bird. He pointed at Dog, who was sprawled on the ground, and at Shirley, who looked very worried. Then, after thinking for a moment, he pointed at Nina as well. “Take Nina back too.”

“Ah?” Nina did not react at first. “Why do I have to go back? I feel fine right now!”

“That thing just now tried to copy you. It was interrupted by you, but we don’t know how that mass at the end will react when you get close,” Duncan explained simply. “In a situation like this, it doesn’t hurt to be extra careful.”

Nina listened carefully, then nodded obediently at once: “Ah, alright, I’ll go back then.”

Duncan had prepared a lot of words to persuade her. After all, Nina was a curious young lady and had always looked forward to this kind of adventure. He didn’t expect her to agree so quickly, which left him a bit surprised, but soon he just smiled and shook his head.

She was still so sensible.

The undead bird’s flames roared through the cabin, taking Shirley, Dog, and Nina out of the Obsidian.

But the space did not fall into darkness because AI left. The bonfires Duncan had lit with that dry, sluggish sludge as fuel still burned, lighting up this gloomy, eerie place.

That strange mass at the end of the cabin still lay there, quietly writhing as if half-asleep, as if lurking in a dream.

But as soon as Duncan turned his gaze back on it, a clear “thump” sounded from inside that mass.

“The children are gone,” Duncan let out a gentle breath and walked toward the dark mass. “Now it’s time for the adults to solve this problem.”

His steps did not hesitate at all. As he moved closer, the mass that had seemed to be in a dormant state reacted at once. The writhing at its edges grew more obvious, the swelling and shrinking of its surface became more frequent, and the beating sounds from within grew faster and louder.

When he was ten meters away, it had already turned into a clear rhythm of a heartbeat –

Thump, thump, thump – the clear, powerful heartbeat echoed again and again, ringing through the wide, dim cabin.

But aside from the constant heartbeat and the ever-stronger writhing on its surface, the thing did not show any other reaction.

Even when Duncan stood right in front of it, it only kept up this “full of life” state.

“Goddess… what on earth is this blasphemous thing…”

Vanna spoke with her brow tightly furrowed, unable to hide the disgust in her voice.

Now that she was close enough, she could finally see the true shape of this mass more clearly. It did not have any outline that a living creature should have. Its surface flowed like mud, yet from time to time questionable bumps rose beneath that mud, like half-melted organs or suddenly swelling blood vessels and bundles of nerves. At the same time, as it kept making heartbeat sounds, it showed some traits that looked like responses to outside stimuli – traits that, in the end, still just turned back into blind, pointless squirming.

From the day she became an Inquisitor, Vanna had seen more heretical evil than she could count. Yet the level of blasphemy and corruption in this thing still shocked her deeply.

Even Alice at the side looked a little dazed. The doll stared at the pile of flesh for a long time before finally saying: “It doesn’t look like something you can cook…”

Vanna’s eyes widened at once as she stared at Alice – she was shocked yet again.

Morris, on the other hand, showed the carefulness and curiosity a Scholar should have. He seemed to ignore the discomfort and resistance in his heart. He stepped closer to the mass and studied it for quite a while. Then, as it swelled and writhed, he suddenly noticed something: “There seems to be something wrapped inside!”

“Inside?” Duncan was slightly startled. Right away he noticed what Morris had seen: near the edge of the sludge, there was a small strip of something that looked like a torn piece of clothing.

Was this constantly writhing sludge just a covering layer?

Realizing this, Duncan immediately reached out his hand and pointed at the writhing mass.

The many bonfires burning around the cabin instantly stretched out thin lines of flame. Streams of spirit form fire almost gathered onto that “living mud” in the blink of an eye.

The spirit form flames blazed up at once.

The fire was fierce, yet under precise control. Duncan ordered the flames to only burn away the black sludge and not harm whatever lay inside. Under his conscious pushing and control, it took only a few seconds for that disgusting writhing mass to be burned away completely.

The thing that had been buried deep under the sludge finally appeared before everyone’s eyes.

“This is…”

Morris stared at the scene in front of him in shock.

A human, a middle-aged man, leaned against a pile of wreckage and lay among the embers left behind by the spirit form flames. His eyes were wide with rage, as if in his final moments he had been fighting some fierce enemy with his life. Yet one of his hands covered his mouth in a death grip, as if he had been holding back some immense terror. His body was in a horrifying state –

More than half of his body had been dissolved by something, broken down into a structure that made one’s skin crawl.

Only one heart was left, exposed outside his open chest cavity, beating slowly yet strongly.

Thump… thump… thump…

The heartbeat, filled with some powerful will, echoed through the whole cabin.

So the heartbeat Duncan had heard on the way over had been coming from this heart.

But this human was clearly long dead. His heartbeat did not mean any life at all.

“A human?” Vanna instantly furrowed her brow again, watching the middle-aged man who had died in the deepest part of the Obsidian with great caution. “Is this also a replica created by the Obsidian?”

“His twisted, mutated body structure matches the traits of a replica, but something about it still seems off…” Morris muttered under his breath. He carefully prodded the remaining parts of the corpse’s limbs with his Gatekeeper’s cane. Studying the scattered scraps of clothing, he tried to figure out what they had looked like when intact. “These clothes… they look like a uniform.”

“It is a uniform,” Duncan suddenly said. He seemed to have noticed something. As he spoke, he bent down, ignoring the terrifying remains, and felt around near the still-beating heart. From a strip of torn cloth, he took off a small object.

It was a small metal badge.

On it were written a title and a name.

“He was the captain of the Obsidian, Cristo Barbelli,” Duncan looked at the badge and said calmly.

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