Chapter 395

Chapter 395: The Approaching mirror world.

On the patrol ship, everyone stared in shock at the huge vessel that had suddenly rushed out of the dense fog. They watched its bow, nearly twice as tall as the patrol ship, slide past almost scraping the rail. They watched its mottled, rusted hull move slowly forward. Above the Valiant there still seemed to hang old, ragged flags. Those strips of cloth, their original patterns long gone, flapped wildly in the night wind and looked like a loosened… shroud.

The patrol ship’s commander was the first to react.

“Keep turning, speed up and move away!” he shouted. “Don’t let us get caught in that ship’s wake!”

Passing this close to a main battleship was extremely dangerous, especially for a small vessel like a patrol ship. The water around and behind a large ship could badly disturb a smaller ship’s course. In the violent rolling, any scrape could be fatal.

The steam core began to roar again. By now the helmsman could already feel the terrible effect of the great ship. The patrol ship’s hull was drifting and rolling to one side. He had to use all his strength to hold the ship steady in the chaotic currents and to speed away from the huge mass so close by.

The helmsman’s efforts were close to failing.

The Valiant’s speed was faster than expected, and the chaotic currents swirling around it were even stranger, beyond anything the helmsman had seen in all his years of experience. He felt as if countless invisible ropes had wrapped around the patrol boat’s rudder and keel down on the seafloor, maliciously dragging the little vessel toward that old warship that looked like a ghost ship.

The whole ship began to creak and groan in a disturbing way, as if something unseen were trying hard to tear it apart.

The tiny gap the patrol ship had won at the start by its sudden turn and full engines lasted only a few breaths. Then the whole ship began to slide toward the Valiant’s stern at a speed the naked eye could see. That rusted “cliff” grew quickly larger in everyone’s view. Many wavering, half-human, half-not shapes appeared near the Valiant’s rail and looked down at the small ship about to capsize with a gaze that made one shiver.

“We’re going to hit! We’re going to hit!”

Someone cried out. The seamen ran at once to the nearest railings or handholds to keep from being thrown overboard at the moment of impact. But at the very instant the side of the patrol ship touched the Valiant’s stern—the latter vanished.

The Valiant was gone. It vanished before all their eyes.

Like a nightmare from which they had been shocked awake, the old main warship that had blotted out the sky a second ago simply vanished in an instant before the soldiers’ eyes. It left only a terrible image and a shaking fear in every heart. On the bridge and on the deck, people looked at one another as if they had just woken from a long dream, not sure where they were.

The fog thinned and faded. The cold light of the World’s Wound spilled over the sea. The icy sea wind cleared many minds. On the empty surface, only choppy waves remained, along with drifting fragments of ice far away.

The patrol ship’s commander slowly let go of the rail he had been gripping and walked to the porthole to look at the sea outside. A subordinate came to stand beside him and muttered as if talking to himself: “A group hallucination? Was that just an illusion?”

“…It was not a hallucination,” the commander said in a low voice. He raised his hand and pointed at a section of rail outside the porthole. “See that? The rail is damaged. We did hit it just now.”

“Then where did it go? The Sea Swallow before was not like this… the Sea Swallow never ‘vanished into thin air’ like that, not until it was completely blown apart. And just now the currents around us suddenly changed. The helmsman could not even control our course…”

The commander did not answer at once. After thinking for a long time, he finally said slowly: “Maybe… we just sailed into some kind of gap. The one that suddenly appeared and suddenly disappeared was not that ghost ship, but us.”

Shock and fear flashed across the subordinate’s face. He then looked instinctively toward the distant sea and the direction of the city-state of Frostholm. After a few seconds he spoke: “Then… have we now returned to the Mortal Realm?”

“…Call both the Sea Mist and Frostholm Island at the same time,” the commander said quickly after a short pause. “Compare their replies and judge our own situation from that. Before we are sure, do not go near any ship that appears in these waters.”

“Yes, sir.”

…

“They ran into a warship that sank forty years ago? And that warship suddenly vanished just before it hit them?” In the captain’s cabin of the Sea Mist, Tyrian leaned back in his chair and raised his brows after hearing First Mate Aiden’s report. “Now they are still circling in their patrol area, because they are not sure whether they have really returned to the Mortal Realm?”

“Yes. From the signs during their encounter with the Valiant, that patrol ship’s commander seems to think they briefly sailed into an Anomaly sea area. Now they are contacting both the Sea Mist Fleet and Frostholm at the same time to try to use the answers to judge whether the environment around them is real,” Aiden nodded, then shrugged. “I think they might be a bit terrified and jumpy.”

“…No, that is the right kind of caution,” Tyrian shook his head, his face quite serious. “We may not like the Frostholm navy as it is now, but we have to admit that they have truly guarded the city-state for fifty years. In experience with fighting supernatural Visions, they are no worse than we are. That commander’s judgment is probably correct.”

Hearing the captain’s words, Aiden’s face also grew serious at last: “So… they really did briefly sail into an Anomaly sea area that might overlap with the Mortal Realm? And they met the Valiant there?”

“The Valiant… I still remember that ship. When it was first built, the Queen herself came to cut the ribbon for it,” Tyrian said with some feeling. “Do you remember how it sank?”

“Of course I remember. We were the ones who sank it,” First Mate Aiden nodded. “After rebels took control of that ship, they rebuilt it and then sent it to wipe out our ‘defector fleet’. In the very first battle, it was sunk by the ambush you set up off the coast of Frostholm. Several rounds of shelling hit its magazine and fuel stores in turn. It was almost broken in half.”

“Yes, broken in half. But the Valiant that patrol ship saw was a whole, intact ship,” Tyrian said. “So it is clear. It is a replica, like the Sea Swallow.”

“Frostholm has been trying to find where those replicas come from, because they always seem to ‘appear out of thin air’…” Aiden said in thought. “Could it be… a hidden overlapping space?”

“Frostholm will get the news soon enough. Their smart ones will work out that possibility. As for us, we do not need to worry for them. We have our own task.”

“Are you going to report this to the old captain?”

“Of course. He has been waiting for my new report,” Tyrian said. He raised his hand and pointed toward the door. “Go out first and close the door. Do not let anyone else come in.”

“Yes, Captain.”

…

“Tyrian has reported something new.”

In the city-state of Frostholm, inside a temporary residence on Oak Street, Duncan spoke to Morris and Vanna, who sat across from him.

Beside him, Nina was happily reading a history book. Shirley, who had followed Duncan around outside until midnight, was already so sleepy that she was almost falling off her chair.

“Something new?” Morris quickly adjusted his sitting posture. “Did something happen at sea?”

“A Frostholm patrol ship in the southwest waters met a navy warship that sank forty years ago. It seems to be a replica like the Sea Swallow. But the two sides did not fight. After a light collision, that replica warship vanished into thin air right before the patrol ship’s eyes. Right now it is hard to say whether a new replica has suddenly appeared on the sea, or whether that patrol ship briefly sailed into an Anomaly sea area that runs parallel to the Mortal Realm. The second possibility is more likely.”

“…An Anomaly sea area parallel to the Mortal Realm…” Morris weighed this line and his expression slowly grew grave. He looked up. “This seems to confirm what you found tonight…”

“Yes. There is another Frostholm in the mirror. If all the replicas, and even the cultists’ lairs, are hidden inside a ‘mirror world’, that would explain why we could search the whole city and still never find the source of the corruption,” Duncan said slowly. “And Crow, who once vanished without a trace and then returned out of nowhere, the many replicants in the city whose origins are unknown, certain people’s disappearances… all of that can be explained.”

Morris and Vanna looked at each other. In each other’s eyes, they saw the same heavy mood.

“…Ordinary heretics and demons I can handle. No matter how strong the enemy is, if we gather enough people and firepower, we can always wipe them out. But enemies inside the mirror…” Vanna frowned tightly and looked troubled. “I cannot think of a way to deal with them right now. I cannot even figure out how those heretics did it.”

“If this is also part of the Abyssal Lord’s divine authority, then His power has clearly not only spread from the Deep Sea to the surface, but is now spreading on a large scale. This is no longer just the ‘small trouble’ of making a few replicas,” Morris said as well.

The two “professionals” both seemed stuck in their worries. Seeing this, Duncan smiled: “In fact, I have already cast a Fire Seed into the other side of the mirror.”

Morris and Vanna: “…What?”