Chapter 356

Chapter 356: A Record

The people who should have finished their patrol and returned to the base still had not come back, and it made Nemo feel a bit uneasy.

Duncan spoke up: “Let’s go together.”

He also wanted to walk through this abandoned and mysterious “Second Waterway” and see whether some secret was hidden in this ancient legacy left by the Queen of Frostholm. “With more people, we can look out for each other.”

Nemo glanced, a little surprised, at the burly man in front of him, the “legendary captain” who sometimes made people feel a heavy pressure just by standing there.

To be honest, he still felt as if he were in a fog, as if none of this was real. He had heard the stories that the legendary “Captain Duncan” had returned from Subspace. The Sea Mist had even gone on a special long voyage because of it not long ago. But having Captain Duncan stand right here in front of him was another level of horror altogether. It was the sort of thing where, if he ran to the graveyard and told his dead Grandfather about it, the old man would jump out of the coffin just to tell him to shut up.

Yet it really had happened.

But after this brief contact, Nemo found that this “Captain Duncan” was not as terrifying as the legends said.

He was rational, could talk, and treated people politely. There were several “assistants” following him, and those assistants did not look like puppets controlled by some evil demonic magic.

Now, Duncan had even taken the initiative to offer his help.

This left Nemo a bit at a loss for a moment, but he soon nodded. Compared to figuring out what kind of temper his direct superior, his own old man, might have, the matter of Crow still not coming back was what really could not be delayed.

“I’ll go too,” Old Ghost’s voice came over just then. The old man walked to a nearby storage rack and rummaged through a heap of random “junk.” He found a safety oil lamp he could hang on his chest and a crowbar, then took a coil of rope from another rack and slung it over his body. He stepped toward the door: “No one knows the routes down there better than I do. If that kid really lost his way at some fork, you’ll need the wisdom of an old man.”

Clearly, this old man who drifted between confusion and clarity was in a good state again.

Duncan said nothing. He only signaled for Nemo to lead the way. The group left the Administrator’s little hut, passed back through the wide “junction” from before, and started along a sewer branch heading north to look for Nemo’s subordinate who had still not returned.

Once they passed that junction and went deeper into the “Second Waterway,” Duncan finally realized just how enormous this project really was—and how powerful the city-state under the Queen of Frostholm had been fifty years ago.

Wherever he looked, the walls were solid and the corridors lofty. This so-called “sewer” was almost like a grand underground palace. The crisscrossing network of passages was clearly not meant only for drainage. It likely had military uses, served as shelter, or even left room for underground factories. Above the wide corridors, pipes spread in every direction. Many of them had rusted badly or even snapped and fallen after years of abandonment, yet they still hinted at how magnificent this system must have been when it was first built.

On both sides of the corridor they sometimes saw large pipe openings and rusted grates. The drainage channels along the edges of the floor had long since dried up. Because this underground waterway had only been in use for a short time and had then been abandoned for many years, there was nothing here but a stale, moldy smell. There was no stench strong enough to be truly unbearable.

Even someone as well-traveled as Morris could not help clicking his tongue in admiration while walking through such an unbelievable facility. But along with his praise, the old scholar suddenly felt a bit puzzled.

“Even if this was built for the city-state’s development a hundred years into the future… this sort of massive underground system is still a bit exaggerated, isn’t it?” he said. “Pland’s sewer system is already considered advanced, but compared with this place it is still far behind. And this was built fifty years ago. Did Frostholm really need such a huge ‘Second Waterway’ back then?”

“The Queen had her own plans. Her judgment was always right,” Old Ghost, walking in front, spoke up as soon as he heard Morris’s doubt. “Her Majesty was a born Psionic. She could always see things ordinary people could not, and she could even see the future of the city-state. She relied on that judgment to make Frostholm strong, and we believed that everything she planned would be useful one day.”

Duncan suddenly frowned.

“A born Psionic?” He looked at the old man carrying the rope and the crowbar. “You’re saying the Queen of Frostholm could, to some extent, predict the future?”

“She said she couldn’t, but we all believed she could. Otherwise, how do you explain those unbelievable decisions she made?” The old man turned his head, his expression firm. “Anyway, that the Queen had supernatural senses is certain. Everyone from our time knew that.”

Duncan looked at Morris beside him. At this moment, Morris also looked thoughtful. He lowered his voice and said: “There aren’t many historical records about the Queen of Frostholm. Most of the information was lost in the rebellion, or was deliberately hidden or altered. In what little I know, there is no record that ‘the Queen was a born Psionic’ or that ‘the Queen had prophetic powers.’ The documents only say that she was extremely intelligent and had a flexible political touch.”

Duncan listened and silently glanced at Alice, who was walking obediently at his side.

She was not intelligent at all and had no idea what “political touch” even meant. She had not yet learned how to spell the word.

Alice noticed the captain’s gaze. She quickly turned her head away, her eyes curving as she smiled.

“…Records can be incomplete, especially when rebels would certainly hide many things on purpose. I’m quite willing to believe that the Queen of Frostholm did indeed have some special traits,” Duncan said, pulling his gaze away and trying to erase Alice’s silly smile from his mind. “It’s just this enormous ‘Second Waterway’ in front of us… What exactly was she thinking when she decided to build such an unbelievable thing back then…”

No one could answer Duncan’s question. At that moment, Vanna suddenly noticed something strange in the distance.

“There’s someone lying on the ground over there!” she called out, pointing ahead.

Everyone looked in the direction she indicated. Sure enough, they saw a figure in a blue coat lying on the ground.

The group ran over. Nemo reached down and turned the person over. A pale face came into view.

“…It’s Crow,” Nemo said. His expression instantly darkened, then he slammed a fist into the floor beside him. “Damn it!”

Vanna crouched beside the already dead young man. She seemed to notice something off about the body. After a closer check, she suddenly frowned: “He… drowned?”

“…Drowned?” Morris was shocked. Then he noticed the wet coat and the unnaturally swollen, waterlogged skin. But when he looked around, he only saw dry floor everywhere nearby. The only trace of water was the damp patch under Crow’s body.

Vanna leaned in even closer. After examining the body for a while, she raised her head: “The smell of sea water. He drowned in the sea.”

“There’s no sea water here. Even the underground river nearby is fresh water,” Old Ghost said as he came up from behind. When he saw the dead Crow, the wrinkles on his face twisted even tighter. “Poor young man. He must have been caught by the rebels, drowned, and then dumped here…”

“Whether it was rebels or not is uncertain, but the corpse being dumped is very possible,” Morris said gravely. “This is clearly not where he died… Hm?”

He seemed to notice something, so he reached into Crow’s coat pocket and felt around. He pulled out a piece of paper that had also been completely soaked. A small corner of it had been peeking out earlier, which had caught his eye.

Everyone’s gaze fell on that sheet of paper.

Morris pinched the paper between his fingers. Because it had been soaked, it was very fragile, so he unfolded it with great care.

There was writing on it. The ink had been blurred by water, but the words had not fully dissolved.

With the extra light from Old Ghost’s oil lamp, Duncan tried to make out the text. The content, however, was baffling. It was a series of broken, incomplete lines:

“…The council of the lost Elder Kings met again and again. The first plan was set. Most of the people in the ashes received protection. They were to stand up in the light and warmth…

“…But the Elder Kings began to argue again. They saw a clan hiding in the shadows…

“The abandoned ones, their flesh would melt in the light. They could not receive divine blessing from the newborn world. The king of this clan came to the council of the lost Elder Kings and asked for the same protection. But what they wanted would be terribly harmful to the others in the ashes, so the lost Elder Kings could not agree. Thus they were abandoned.

“They went into the shadows, imprisoned themselves in the dark places, yet could not fully die. They cried out and searched bitterly for the protection of their homeland, but could not obtain it. So they fled deeper into the darkness. They did not like the dark at first, but only in darkness could they escape the poisons of this world. And so they lived in the dark for a very, very long time…”

(Under Doomsday, twin moons hung in the same sky and Anomalies lay everywhere. The main character possessed a Probability-Twisting Gift, the O-03 Probability Dice. After he was framed, he set out on a path of revenge and a search for the truth.)

—