Chapter 35

Chapter 35: Calm and Normal

The sea grew calm.

Alice saw the tentacle lying on the deck and pieces of flesh filled with some great power scattered at the captain’s feet. Life quickly drained out of that flesh. At the same time, the huge thing lurking beneath the water around the Vanished began to dive away faster. After paying one tentacle as the “price”, it left the waters around the Vanished in a rush, almost as if it were fleeing in panic.

As that vast shadow sank back into the Deep Sea, the ocean returned to calm with a speed that was shocking. The dark clouds in the sky, black as ink, vanished completely along with it.

…Maybe they had not been clouds at all.

Alice looked up at the sky. She still remembered what those clouds had looked like. Thinking back to their outline as they faded, she finally faintly matched them with the shadow that had been under the water around the ship.

The thick clouds above had looked like a patch of shadow—the shadow cast onto the sky by some enormous creature in the sea.

The crackle of burning flames came from the edge of the deck, snapping Alice out of her daze. She quickly looked toward the captain and saw that he had already returned to his usual appearance. The tall man wore a cheerful smile. He had already noticed Alice standing not far away and waved for the doll to come over.

When Alice walked up to him, Duncan nudged the big fish on the deck with his boot and said in a slightly proud tone: “Look, I caught a big fish!”

“A b-big fish?” Alice’s expression went blank. She stared at the lump of flesh by Duncan’s feet. Among the twisted, rolling meat, countless eyes, split open in the flesh, still half-open and half-closed, gazed up at the sky, while jagged teeth between the eyes glinted with a metallic cold light.

As Duncan’s boot nudged it, about half the eyes on the severed tentacle suddenly blinked, then all closed at once.

“Yeah, a big fish,” Duncan said happily. “Look, it took quite a bit of effort to haul this thing up here.”

Even though she was only a doll, Alice still felt as if some “muscle” at the corner of her eye twitched for a moment. She opened her mouth to speak, but did not know where to even start correcting him.

She looked at the “fish” at Duncan’s feet.

A hideous big fish lay there—black and dull, with pitted, uneven skin. Strange gray-white markings spread around the fins. Bony spines jutted from its head, and a pair of lifeless fish eyes met her gaze.

There were also many “small fish” scattered across the deck nearby.

Alice suddenly lost all expression and words. She stared wide-eyed at the scene before her, at the “fish” lying on the deck, at these things that, a second ago, had not been “fish” at all.

The doll, lacking any real life experience, did not yet understand what “questioning one’s life” meant. But in that moment, she truly began to doubt everything. She even wondered if she was dreaming—where had the tentacle and all those chunks of flesh gone?

Maybe her moment of blankness was too obvious, because Duncan immediately noticed Alice’s odd reaction. He raised an eyebrow and looked at the doll: “What is it? Is something wrong?”

“I…” Alice opened her mouth, but just as she was about to correct him, the rules Goathead had told her earlier suddenly surfaced in her mind.

On the Vanished, Captain Duncan was absolute authority. His words were absolute “fact”—if the Mortal Realm disagreed with what Captain Duncan said, then the captain’s judgment was the one that counted.

“Nothing is wrong!” Alice snapped back to herself and blurted out quickly. Then, as if to cover how tense she sounded, she hurriedly changed the subject: “By the way, Captain, that storm just now was really scary…”

“Storm? You mean those waves?” Duncan looked at the doll in puzzlement. “Those waves were not small, but they were far from a real storm… Then again, you have never seen a true storm.”

Alice said: “…You are right.”

If Captain Duncan called that storm that had almost covered the whole sea “waves”, then they were waves. If Captain Duncan thought what he had dragged onto the deck were “fish”, then these things were fish.

“…I feel like you are a bit tense. Are you really all right?” Duncan still picked up on something off in Alice’s tone. He looked at his “Crewman One” with some concern. “Are you seasick? Can you even get seasick?”

“I am fine. It was just that the ship was shaking so hard just now, I…” Alice looked at the captain’s concerned face, unsure whether she should feel comforted or even more afraid. She could only stiffly change the subject: “Right, these… ‘fish’ you caught—what are you going to do with them?”

“Do you even need to ask?” Duncan laughed at once. “Of course we are going to eat them!”

Alice’s expression froze at once: “…Eat them?”

“What else? Have you not noticed how boring the food stores on the Vanished are?” Duncan was clearly in a very good mood. “I plan to cut up the big one, stew part of it and roast part of it. These few smaller ones, we will salt and dry into fish jerky…”

He happily talked through his plan, but even though he sounded confident, he was actually not sure he could pull it off. His cooking skills were only average. He had no experience dealing with such a huge sea fish, and as for making dried fish, he had only some theoretical knowledge and no practice at all.

But how would he know if he did not at least try?

The only problem… was not to poison their stomachs.

Even in the joy of such a rich haul, Duncan still kept some reason. He looked down at the big fish by his feet with care, wondering whether this gift from nature might be poisonous.

The safest way was to find some unlucky soul to taste it first.

He first thought of Goathead in the captain’s cabin, then ruled that option out at once. Then he glanced at the cursed Doll across from him—but that doll would not work either.

Alice did not even have a stomach.

At last, he looked at the pigeon on his shoulder.

The pigeon tilted its head and looked back at him.

No matter how you looked at her, AI did not seem like a normal creature. But if he had to find some living being with flesh and blood on this ship, it seemed only this pigeon was left…

A moment later, Duncan left the deck with his “harvest”. Lunchtime was close, and he could not wait to improve the meals on the Vanished.

Alice stood there in a daze for a while, then walked to the door of the captain’s cabin.

She had not planned to seek out Goathead. Ever since she had seen how terribly chatty this “First Mate” could be last time, she had developed a deep awe of the entire captain’s cabin.

If she could help it, she never wanted to step through that door on her own.

But what had happened today was just too strange. She felt it was still necessary to consult the experienced Mr. Goathead and see whether this was actually something normal on the Vanished.

She was not breaking any crew member rules. She was only asking about the situation. That should not count as a taboo.

After hesitating for a good ten seconds, Alice finally worked up her courage and pulled open the door to the captain’s cabin.

The next second, she stared in shock. Goathead had already turned to face the doorway and was staring fixedly in her direction—as if he had been waiting for her to come.

“What happened out there?” Goathead spoke, unusually brief and to the point.

Alice sensed that something was off from this uncharacteristic behavior. She quickly turned to shut the door behind her, then walked to the chart table and told him everything she had seen.

When she finished speaking, Goathead fell into an unusually long silence—for nearly a full minute, he did not say a single word.

The carved wooden Goathead could not change expression, but Alice could plainly feel that… things seemed to have gone a bit beyond this “First Mate’s” understanding.

Alice suddenly grew nervous and leaned forward without thinking: “So this is not something that normally happens on the Vanished? Has the captain really…”

“The Vanished is perfectly normal,” Goathead finally snapped out of his silence and answered quickly, cutting off Alice’s words as if to plug some gap at once. “Listen. The Vanished is perfectly normal. It is always normal, and the great Captain Duncan is exactly as he has always been!”

“Then… it was just how you reacted…”

“Things are a bit beyond what I expected—but that is only because my imagination and understanding are lacking,” Goathead’s words became smooth again as he slowly recovered from his shock. His mood clearly rose, and even his tone grew passionate and excited. “Yes, the great Captain Duncan—he should be even greater and stronger! There is nothing abnormal, Miss Alice. Listen, everything on the Vanished is as it should be! Let the captain do whatever he thinks is right. Do not keep talking about this… All you need to do from today on is remember this fact:”

“There are fish in the Vanished’s galley, and fish are delicious ingredients.”