Chapter 422

Chapter 422: What Was Seen in the Dark

How had The key ended up in the hands of the first Governor?

That was the question Agatha cared about most at this moment. In every record of history, whether from the viewpoint of the Queen’s supporters or from the viewpoint of The authority that ruled the city-state now, all descriptions of the “uprising” or “rebellion” fifty years ago agreed on one thing: there had been an irreconcilable conflict between the Frostholm Queen and the rebels.

They had been enemies, with no chance for understanding or cooperation, let alone any kind of shared “legacy”. So how had The key of Queen Ray Nora ended up in the hands of the city-state’s Governor? And why had Winston called it both “The curse” and a “gift”?

As she thought quickly, Agatha lowered her head and fixed Winston with her gaze: “So there was another truth behind the uprising back then—did the Frostholm Queen and the rebels plan it together…?”

“There was no twist that dramatic, Lady Gatekeeper,” Winston said. “Although it does sound like a good story. A mad City Lord and a Rebel Commander who understand each other, using a great uprising that ends the old chaos to pass on power and duty. Playwrights and novelists would love it. But sadly, real history held no such warmth.

“The great uprising was bound to happen. The rift between the mad Queen and the people of Frostholm could not be healed. She had once been great, but her failure in the Abyssal Trench Project pushed the city-state to the edge of collapse. The first Governor raised troops against the Queen to let more people live. From the very start, there was no room for peaceful talks between them.

“But you were right about one thing. There really was a kind of ‘tacit understanding’ between the Queen and the rebels. The Queen knew that being overthrown was her unavoidable end. The rebels also knew that her madness was not as simple as ‘losing her mind’. She must have had many secrets.

“So, on the night before the execution, the Rebel Commander, who later became the first Governor, went to see the imprisoned Queen. He wanted to learn what she was hiding.

“So the Queen gave him The key and told him: after the execution, after her life ended, the one holding The key would naturally come to know everything.”

Winston stopped. A mocking yet helpless look came over his face. He lowered his head and stared at the brass key in his hand. After a long time, he gave a bitter smile and said: “Do you know what her last words to the Rebel Commander were? The history books never record them. Only the Governors of each generation know this line.

“‘I did my best. If you think you can do better, fine. Now it’s your turn.’ Those were the words she spoke after the first Governor took The key from her.”

“…Every choice had a price.” After hearing this unknown piece of history, Agatha let out a quiet sigh.

“Lady Gatekeeper,” Winston suddenly raised his head. With a strange smile, he lifted the brass key. “Do you want to try? Take The key, and look at the sights Ray Nora once saw?”

Agatha suddenly hesitated. She stared hard at The key Winston held out to her. Her heart, which had been beating slow and sluggish, began to pound again. A heavy pressure spread from The key, as if half a century of darkness and malice had gathered inside it. Yet after a few seconds of silence and doubt, she still took a soft breath and reached out her hand toward The key.

A faint, icy chill came from her fingertips.

In the next second, countless phantoms surged out of endless darkness. Broken flashes of light and shadow swept in like a storm and flooded Agatha’s mind. In that wild rush of information, scenes began to flash one after another inside her head—

In the endless darkness of The Deep Sea, some huge and terrifying limb of shadow slowly grew and spread.

An ancient, chilling gaze looked toward the city-state from The Deep Sea, sweeping over the living world with the cold indifference of an indescribable Elder God.

Dark and dreadful matter overflowed from The Deep Sea and rose upward. It formed a replica of the Mortal Realm. As illusion and reality shifted, that matter sometimes became Shadows, sometimes turned solid. The boundless Deep Sea was packed full of filthy, chaotic figures, crowding together and lifting their empty eyes toward the city-state.

Farther away, in even deeper and darker waters, the whole world—the entire Boundless Sea, and the seabed beneath hundreds and thousands of city-states—lay in vague, shadowy shapes, as if an ancient world had sunk into that endless darkness. Abominations grew from the old corpses there, rising and rising without end…

And in the depths of these countless visions, Agatha always felt a kind of “gaze”. It was not a single look, not any will with a clear source. She felt as if time itself were staring at her. Something older than history, larger than the city-state, as if it came from the deepest part of this world… was gazing at her.

There was no feeling in that gaze, no malice and no kindness. It simply gazed. It was like a hollow shell, without a soul, looking at an uninvited guest who had stumbled into Truth, and saying calmly—

“Oh. You have come.”

Boom!

Agatha felt a loud crash in the depths of her mind. The last of her reason forced her to struggle upward through the layers of visions. In that process, her senses and thoughts were pressed to the limit. She could feel more information and more fragments of thought swirling around her. Some of them might even have held the will or words left behind by Queen Ray Nora. But she could neither see them clearly nor understand them.

When she finally took back control of her body, all the visions were gone. She opened her eyes in the dark chaos and saw the Governor, Winston, still in front of her, even holding the brass key out to her in the same pose as before—as if only a single second had passed.

She was back in this strange, crawling darkness again… Wait, no. Something had changed!

Agatha suddenly noticed something strange in her field of vision. She lifted her head in alarm and looked around.

The darkness in all directions seemed to have faded compared to before. The shapeless black things that had been slowly squirming and changing now seemed to be gathering and forming real shapes. Between illusion and reality, she saw many things spreading and growing out of the surrounding space from nothing. They looked like dry tree branches, yet they filled the whole space in dense layers. The black “branches” connected and joined in the void. Faint sparks of light ran along them, like…

like express dispatch capsules racing through steam pipes.

Deep inside this complex, bramble-like network of “branches”, through layers and layers of phantoms, Agatha saw a massive… limb.

It was a thick limb like a tentacle. Its huge size was like a pillar holding up the sky and earth. Its surface was covered in dull blue lines. The patterns formed by those lines looked like countless eyes.

[Mental corruption? An illusion? madness threshold?]

Countless thoughts flashed through Agatha’s mind. She shut her eyes at once, but the pillar that seemed to hold up the world still remained in her sight. She tried to offer a Prayer to the God of Death and to steady her will with divine magic, yet she found that her mind was clear. There were no signs of corruption at all.

After several quick emergency measures all failed, she realized one thing—

She was not mad. While fully awake and sane, she had seen a “view” whose place she did not know, and whose reality she could not be sure of.

She stood there inside this vast and terrifying “view”, almost unable to think, until the Governor, Winston, pulled her back with his voice: “Oh. Looks like you saw it.”

The middle-aged Governor slowly lifted his head as he spoke and sighed softly: “Magnificent, isn’t it?”

Agatha hesitated and looked down. Only then did she notice that what Winston was “leaning against” was not a tree stump at all. It was actually part of the huge branch structure around them, a piece that extended out from the branches. Above it were faint black structures that stretched all the way into the deepest part of this strange space.

“These… these branches…”

“This is the Elder Gods’ thoughts, made visible in the eyes of Mortals like us,” Winston said calmly. “You only touched The key for the first time, so you can see very little. But I have lived with this key day and night for more than ten years… What it has told me goes far beyond what you can imagine.”

Agatha felt as if she were falling into a dream. She slowly grasped Winston’s words and repeated without thinking: “The Elder Gods’… thoughts?”

“Hard to believe, isn’t it? These branch-like things are not truly there. What you are seeing is likely just a single thought that passed through the God’s mind for a moment. That thought burned itself into this place and became the huge structure you see. Oh, and don’t try to decipher anything from it. Don’t try to understand the pattern of those lights. You will go mad.”

Agatha turned her head sharply: “Someone went mad because of this?”

“Of course,” Winston said with a laugh. “Did you forget? Her name was Ray Nora…”

Agatha had no words for a moment. After a few seconds, she spoke softly: “Then… what is that thing outside the ‘thicket’?”

“The Abyssal Lord,” Winston said quietly. “A small part of It. The part that has pierced into the city-state.”