Chapter 438

Chapter 438: Getting to Know Each Other Again

Agatha did not hold anything back. In front of this benevolent being who had already saved Frostholm from the brink of destruction, she laid out all the information she currently had.

One part of the intel came from her own observations and conclusions during the mirror world Frostholm operation. The other part she had pried out bit by bit after she returned to the great Cathedral, from various priests and from her own trusted aide. All of it had happened while she was trapped in that mirror world city.

They were things that the “other her” had experienced.

The Boiling Gold mine that Frostholm relied on for survival hid a huge secret. The so?called Boiling Gold ore had already run dry back in the days of the Frostholm Queen. The governors of each generation might be holding an enormous secret. Governor Winston and the “other Agatha” had vanished together deep in the mine, and before they disappeared, that “other Agatha” seemed to have discovered some shocking truth. The intense surge of her will had even reached the real Agatha on this side…

Duncan listened in silence, only now and then asking about some point of detail. He waited until Agatha finished everything before he finally let out a quiet sigh.

“You just told me Frostholm’s biggest secret—at a time like this, you’re not worried I might be a being with bad intentions?”

“After seeing the methods you used to destroy that mirror world city, I decided there was no point in guessing at your intentions anymore,” Agatha said calmly. “If you really meant this city harm, all of us would be dead before the Sun went down.”

“…Is this how all you protectors of city-states give compliments, so unique?” Duncan muttered, then quietly glanced at Vanna beside him.

Vanna instantly turned her gaze away and pretended she had not heard anything.

The old scholar Morris, sitting across the table, could not help leaning forward. After hearing the shocking fact that the Boiling Gold vein had already dried up long ago, his curiosity had clearly swelled to the point of bursting: “So what is the situation in the Boiling Gold mine now? Can you still find raw ore? The stuff you have been digging out all these years… was it really Boiling Gold?”

“The mine is still sealed,” Agatha answered frankly. “After the mirror world incursion faded, there were loud crashes and tremors from the shafts. For safety, and because we are short of people, we still have not confirmed the situation inside. But according to reports from the transit station and the smelter at the mine… at least the Boiling Gold that was brought out earlier has all stayed the same.”

“The mirror world city has been destroyed… but the Boiling Gold, which in theory counts as an ‘Anomaly product’, did not vanish? Now that is interesting…” Morris rubbed his chin without thinking. “You know, the replicas and monsters in the city all turned into piles of sludge the instant the mirror world city collapsed… so all that Boiling Gold was real? How does that work? Can the Sacred Abyssal Lord really create true Boiling Gold?”

“This is not the time for academic research,” Vanna could not help grumbling, then turned her head to Agatha. “So when are you planning to go down and confirm what is happening in the mine?”

Agatha hesitated, then spoke, not very sure: “I think… at least after order in the city has roughly stabilized, after the tremors and crashes in the shafts have stopped. And… at the very least, we have to get safely through the first night after the disaster.”

As she spoke, she lifted her head and, almost without thinking, glanced out the window.

Snow was still falling. It was still daytime, but behind the clouds the Sun was slowly sinking. That hazy ball of light was about to brush the tip of the far-off Cathedral spire.

“In two hours, the Sun will set. That will be the first test we face after the disaster…”

“Sorry, let me cut in,” Vanna suddenly raised a hand, breaking off Agatha’s worried sigh. “I think… you actually do not have to worry about the veil of night descending. Compared to all the other troubles you are facing, ‘night’ might become the last thing this city-state needs to fear from now on.”

Agatha froze for a moment: “Why do you say that?”

“…Experience,” Vanna said. She then glanced back at Duncan, and only after seeing him give her a small nod did she turn back to Agatha and go on: “Pland’s experience.”

“Pland…” Agatha was confused for a second, but the next moment she suddenly remembered the reports she had received before, the messages that had come from far away—about the large-scale Visions that had struck Pland, the crisis of the Black Sun, the history rebuilt in flame, and…

…a “rumor” that had spread from Pland through all kinds of channels.

About that chilling ghost captain, a moving calamity on the Boundless Sea, the terrifying Subspace Shadows—about Duncan Abnomar, who had already regained his humanity.

The expression on the young Gatekeeper, who was also the acting Archbishop, instantly became very interesting. She stood up so quickly that her chair gave a loud creak.

All the suspicious clues suddenly found their answers. All her uneasy guesses were abruptly confirmed. The scattered, messy pieces of information were strung together.

“I admit, this is a bit awkward,” Duncan said with a shrug, his tone a little helpless.

Agatha still stood there stiffly, staring at Duncan without moving. No one could see her “eyes” just then, but the expression of this Miss Gatekeeper was clearly more than simple embarrassment.

After a long time, she finally broke the silence: “No wonder… your followers call you ‘Captain’… I should have thought of it earlier. On the Boundless Sea, what other ‘captain’ could be as special as you?”

“About the Viseran Thirteen Isles, I am very sorry,” Duncan said. “I have no memory of it at all, but the evidence seems solid.”

As he spoke, Duncan tried his best to make his voice sound warm and reliable. But considering his fearsome “reputation”, and the display of power he had shown in front of Frostholm just a few hours ago, that bit of gentleness in his tone clearly did not help much. Anyone could see that Agatha had stayed tense ever since.

Only after quite a while did Agatha herself break that stiff, awkward state: “I… well, I will be honest. Ever since the day I advanced to Saint, the Church has kept stressing to us that once we found any trace of ‘Subspace Shadows Captain Duncan’, we must report to the highest Death Sanctuary at once—its priority was above all natural Calamities, on the same level as a Subspace incursion. I do not know if you can understand what that means.”

“Oh, I understand,” Duncan was about to answer, but Vanna spoke up first instead, casually chatting with the colleague in front of her: “We get reminders about that every year on our side too, and we even have special disaster-response plans for it, though we never actually used them.”

Duncan gave Vanna a strange look: “You are saying this right in front of me?”

Only then did Vanna suddenly realize it and quickly straighten her face: “Ah, sorry, Captain…”

Agatha was a little slow to catch up, or maybe Duncan’s presence had simply shocked her too much. Only now did she suddenly focus on the tall lady in front of her: “Wait, so you are…”

“Inquisitor of the city-state of Pland… in a sense, we are colleagues,” Vanna said, looking a bit embarrassed. “Sorry, I did not mean to hide it.”

One wave of information after another pounded her mind. Agatha felt almost dazed. Only now did she realize that the end of a disaster really was only a beginning—and the complicated situation after the disaster was pressing toward her from a direction she had never imagined.

She hesitated, then sat back down in her chair, and looked at Vanna with a hard-to-read expression: “But why are you with Captain Duncan? You should be one of the highest representatives of the Deep Sea Church in Pland… does Pland not need an Inquisitor anymore?”

“This is exactly the Church’s arrangement. The details are not convenient to explain for now. I can only say… this matter cannot be made public yet. If your status did not meet the need-to-know level, I would not be telling you even this,” Vanna said seriously, then paused for a moment. “As for Pland… yes, as you said, right now it does not need an Inquisitor, at least not the old kind of Inquisitor-and-Guardian system.”

Agatha could not help rubbing her forehead. Other reports that had come from afar recently, reports she had not yet had time to verify, rose in her mind. She spoke hesitantly: “So… just as the intel said, Pland really has peaceful, quiet nights now?”

Vanna looked a bit surprised: “The news has already reached Frostholm?”

“We are only remote, not cut off,” Agatha said, and then could not help pressing on. “Please tell me, has Pland truly stopped fearing the dark?”

“…At least so far, the nights in Pland are even safer than the days in many city-states. My uncle is even thinking about opening a kind of evening market to fit the city’s recent changes, though that still needs careful discussion and testing,” Vanna nodded. “Since you already know about that, I imagine you have heard the other piece of news too—after the Black Sun incident ended, Pland gained a new identity.”

“Vision-Pland, the first Vision in history without a number,” Agatha said without thinking. Her gaze could not help drifting to Duncan. Now she finally understood what Vanna’s earlier words had meant. “So… Frostholm will now undergo the same change?”

Feeling that invisible yet very real “gaze”, Duncan only smiled and nodded: “Maybe.”