Chapter 308

Chapter 308: Dog’s Fierce Reaction

Inside the room with the blue door, Duncan and the others stayed silent. The twisted mass of living tissue stuck to the door panel also stayed silent for a long time.

After an unknown stretch of time, Duncan finally broke the silence: “Is there anything else you need us to do for you?”

“I do not think I have any regrets,” Cristo’s voice came from the door. “I cannot think of anything to ask for either. Good Samaritan, what could you do for a restless soul who has been dead for so many years?”

“What about your family?” Vanna could not help asking.

“Family…” Cristo clearly hesitated, as if some memories had only just appeared inside this twisted ‘body’. “Oh, right, my family… my wife and daughter. They live in Frostholm, at the end of Hearth Street…”

Cristo mumbled softly, his voice growing lower and lower, as if he was about to fall asleep. But all of a sudden he woke up again, and his voice became a little clearer: “Ah… if you ever get the chance, go and see them for me. Carry a message back. Even though they should already know what happened to the Obsidian.”

“Is there anything special you want us to tell them?” Vanna asked.

This time, Cristo thought for a long time. Just when Vanna thought he was going to fall asleep again, the squirming mass of flesh suddenly spoke: “I cannot think of anything. I cannot even remember what they look like anymore… Just tell them good morning for me. Tell them I left with no real regrets and not much pain. That is all.”

“We will pass it on, if they are still at that address,” Duncan said with a light nod. At the same time, his gaze fell on Cristo’s body – that faintly writhing, swelling mass of flesh.

It was not an illusion. The living tissue was slowly losing its vitality. Cristo’s mind seemed to be leaving this body bit by bit, and a thin layer of dull gray was spreading along the edges of the mass.

All these changes were probably related to that heart deep inside the Obsidian that had stopped beating.

It was time to leave.

“We should go,” Duncan said calmly.

“It is about that time…” Cristo’s voice became lower and more blurred, but it was still clear enough to hear. “Then I wish you a smooth voyage ahead. Just leave me here. A captain should stay with his ship.”

“…In fact, we are going to sink this ship before we leave,” Duncan hesitated for two or three seconds, then still chose to tell him what would happen next. “Captain Cristo, you can probably guess. The Obsidian has already been corrupted. We cannot let this ship keep drifting on the Boundless Sea. It is a threat to ordinary sailors.”

Cristo stayed silent for a moment, then spoke softly: “Thank you, Good Samaritan.”

Duncan watched this captain for a few seconds and nodded quietly, ready to turn and leave.

But just as he was about to step past the door, Cristo’s voice suddenly sounded in his ear again: “Among you… is there a believer of Death God Bartok?”

“…I am sorry, no,” Vanna shook her head. “Why do you ask?”

“Ah, I was only hoping that a believer of Death God Bartok could help me with a soul-sending prayer,” Cristo said. “After everything that has happened, my soul is no longer clean. I doubt I can pass through Bartok’s gate of life and death. If there was a soul-sending prayer, maybe my soul could disperse a bit faster… But if not, then forget it. Life rarely goes the way we want, does it?”

Vanna and Morris instinctively glanced at each other. After a brief pause, Morris spoke: “We are clerics of the Storm Goddess and the God of Wisdom. We will pray for you after we leave – though for a believer of Death God Bartok, it may not have much effect.”

“I do not know much about Death God Bartok,” Duncan said as he stepped forward and took the hand stuck to the door panel. “But if this is a dying believer’s greatest wish… then I hope you get what you wish for.”

“…Thank you, Good Samaritan.”

No more sound came from the squirming mass of flesh. Its movements grew slower and slower. The gray of death had spread across it. He was not completely dead yet, but his last bit of life was no longer enough to support a conversation.

Duncan nodded silently to the captain of the Obsidian, then stepped through the door.

They left the Obsidian’s captain’s cabin, passed through the twisted, upside-down corridor, went through the three nested doors, and returned to the deck of the ghost ship.

The sun was already leaning toward the west.

With a heavy beat of wings, the undead bird wrapped in blazing flame flew over from the direction of the Vanished and circled above Duncan and the others.

Pale green fire rose from the Obsidian, then turned into a falling star and flew back to the nearby Vanished.

A moment later, the Vanished slowly adjusted her position. The gunport shutters on one side of the hull all lifted, and one dark cannon muzzle after another slid out through the firing slits.

The cannons roared. Fiery meteors fell like rain. In the ever-tilting sunset, now faintly the color of blood, the Obsidian was wrapped in raging green ghost-flame almost in the blink of an eye. In a series of spectacular bursts of fire and explosions, she took on water, broke apart, and sank.

The ghost ship that had been completely corrupted by extraordinary power sank into the Deep Sea in a very short time, leaving only a few swirling whirlpools on the surface.

At the edge of the Vanished’s deck, Duncan faced the sunset and fixed his gaze on the place where the Obsidian was going down, watching the ghost ship until her very last moment.

Only after she had fully vanished beneath the waves did he pull back his gaze and look at Vanna and Morris, who were standing behind him.

“Sailing long-distance on the Boundless Sea is one of the most dangerous jobs in this world, and deep-sea captains are in the most dangerous position of all,” Morris said with a hint of emotion. “More than half of all deep-sea captains meet bad ends. Even those who manage to retire alive and settle on land rarely blend into the life of ordinary people. Most of them suffer under the curse and mental anomalies. Hallucinations of sound and sight and even broken memories haunt them all their lives. My daughter Heidi… deals with things like that all the time.”

Duncan did not respond to the old scholar’s sigh.

After all, from the view of ordinary people, this ship, the Vanished, and he himself, ‘Captain Duncan’… were also examples of those who did not meet a good end.

His ‘bad end’, though, was a bit more intense than most.

“How are Shirley and Dog?” Duncan suddenly asked.

“I just went to see them,” Alice raised her hand at once. “Dog said he is fine now. He is studying Nina’s primary school textbooks. Shirley said Dog needs someone to look after him, so she is napping beside Dog.”

“…A Abyssal Hound chasing knowledge and his illiterate master,” Duncan’s mouth twitched as he started toward the cabins. “I will go check on them.”

He went straight to the cabin that Shirley and Dog shared and knocked on the door, only to find it was only resting against the frame. He pushed it open and saw a certain dog sitting on his hind legs at the desk, holding a little primary school vocabulary book between his front paws and reading it with great interest.

And on the bed behind the dog, Shirley the illiterate was sleeping like a log.

Duncan’s mouth twitched again. He had already heard Alice describe this, but actually seeing such a strange scene still felt uncanny. Dog heard the sound at the door, looked up, and said: “Oh, Captain, you… ah, crap!!!”

He did not even finish his greeting before the Abyssal Hound suddenly let out a cracked, metallic scream. Then the whole dog shot up from the chair with a bang, almost jumping to the ceiling.

There was another loud crash as the black chain linking Dog and Shirley snapped tight. Shirley, who had been sleeping soundly on the bed, was dragged into the air and slammed hard into the nearby wall with a heavy thud.

“Dog, are you crazy?!” Shirley, knocked dizzy, bounced to her feet as soon as she hit the floor and lunged at Dog. “What are you doing, suddenly…”

She finally noticed Duncan standing at the door, and also saw Dog’s terrified look.

“Dog, are you okay?”

Shirley and Duncan spoke almost at the same time.

“I am fine, I am fine… no, no, I am not fine…” Dog still had not fully recovered. He was trembling all over, his eyes darting around. He seemed to want to look in Duncan’s direction, but his instincts made him avoid it. After holding it in for a long time, he finally squeezed out: “Captain, are you carrying something… in your left pocket…”

“Something?” Duncan froze, then reacted. He reached into his left pocket and took out a small metal case that he had once used to hold tobacco.

He opened the metal case. Inside lay a thumb-sized, dark, strange piece of “flesh”.

“I-I-I… what the…!” Dog became even more nervous the instant he saw that thing. He shot into the corner of the room in one bound. “W-w-where did that… come from?!”

“From the deepest part of the Obsidian,” Duncan said with a frown. “Why are you reacting like this? From this thing you…”

“The Abyssal Lord! The Abyssal Lord’s presence!” Dog was shaking so hard he might as well have been set to vibrate. “This is the Abyssal Lord’s flesh and blood!”