Chapter 444

Chapter 444: Fishing, Petting the Dog, Feeding the Pigeon

In the pale light of dawn, Vision 001, locked in place by a pair of rune rings, slowly rose from the distant sea horizon. In the spreading glow of the morning sky, the huge sailing ghost ship floated on the endless, calm surface of the sea and slowly gained a soft shine in the morning.

At the far edge of the sea, through the thin morning mist, one could faintly see the silhouette of the city-state of Frostholm. From this distance, the city’s wounds and the joys and sorrows of countless people all turned into a blurred shape in the fog, as if they had faded away into the sunlight.

Duncan sat quietly at the edge of the foredeck. He had set up a fishing rod by his side and watched the fishing line reflect the sunlight in the morning glow. Now and then, Duncan raised his head to look into the distance, in the direction of Frostholm.

At this hour, most parts of the city were still very quiet. He did not need to spend much attention on the avatar form he had left in the city-state, so he could finally relax a little and enjoy the peace on the ship.

AI the pigeon walked back and forth on the big wooden barrel beside him. A pile of fries lay on the lid of the barrel, brought aboard from the city-state of Frostholm. Unlike the fries from Pland, the people of Frostholm added special spices when they fried potatoes, giving them a salty, rich smell. AI was clearly very pleased with this. Now and then, it looked up at its Master, who was fishing, or glanced at the distant sea. The rest of the time, it just lowered its head and ate with all its might.

On Duncan’s other side, Shirley lay sprawled over a shorter wooden barrel, writing hard. Her face looked so bitter it was as if she were facing a life-or-death enemy.

Dog lay quietly beside Shirley, holding a copy of Modern Geometry between his two paws. The deck next to them was piled with scrap paper covered in marks and shapes.

Feeling this brief moment of calm, Duncan could not help curling the corners of his mouth. The gloom that had been building in his heart for many days slowly faded.

But clearly, not everyone here was enjoying this “calm.”

“Why does Nina get to sleep in down in the cabin… while I have to get up early to rush my homework out here…” Shirley muttered, unable to hold it in. Her face looked so miserable it could have wrung out water. “If I’d known I would only be doing homework back on the ship, I might as well have stayed in the city. At least I could have gone out for a walk once in a while…”

“There isn’t much to stroll around in Frostholm right now, and for the foreseeable future life in that city won’t be very comfortable,” Duncan said calmly when he heard her. “Besides, stop complaining about your homework. You were the one who said your homework got eaten by a stray dog.”

Shirley raised her head in protest: “Then why doesn’t Nina have to make hers up?”

“Anyone can tell she has already finished,” Duncan glanced at Shirley. “Later, Mr. Morris can just give her a full set of review papers to test how she has been studying on her own. Nina is not like you. She does not need anyone to push her.”

Shirley shrank her neck: “Th-then is it possible that I actually already finished…”

Duncan kept a straight face: “How do you spell the plural form of ‘pebble’?”

“I haven’t memorized that yet…”

“That was on the second page of your previous homework. So you actually didn’t even finish either page.”

Shirley’s face went blank. She fell silent at once, then the young lady let out a long sigh and lowered her head to continue her life-and-death battle with her spelling homework.

Duncan just smiled and shook his head. Then, without meaning to, his gaze fell on the dog beside them. Dog had set the book down for the moment and was holding a pencil between his paws, drawing auxiliary lines on the scrap paper on the deck.

Duncan’s gaze made Dog’s soul suddenly shiver. Dog’s skull gave an involuntary twitch, and the auxiliary line went crooked.

“C-captain?” Dog raised his head nervously. He wanted to avoid Duncan’s eyes but did not dare to really turn his head away, so his bony head kept wobbling.

Duncan reached out and rubbed Dog’s ugly skull. His expression was a bit strange, and after a few seconds he could not help speaking: “Isn’t your study progress a little too fast? I feel like before long you’ll be able to keep up with Mr. Morris’s lessons directly.”

“Huh? I don’t feel that way,” Dog froze for a moment when he heard this. The red light in his hollow eye sockets flickered as if he were dazing out. “I just think all this stuff is pretty interesting… Is there something wrong with learning fast?”

Duncan thought for a moment, then smiled and shook his head: “Forget it, there’s no problem. Learning more is always good. This way, if I average you and Shirley together, at least you two won’t count as illiterate.”

Dog let out a confused “oh.” Duncan let out a small breath and looked back at the fishing rod, which still did not move at all.

He had not caught a single fish all morning.

“After such a great battle, I’m afraid we won’t be able to catch any fish in these waters for a while,” he sighed with regret as he slowly packed up his fishing gear. “The disturbance was so big that even the Deep Sea spawn don’t want to come near this place anymore…”

When Shirley heard this, she could not help raising her head again: “So are we going to leave this place? When will you bring Mr. Morris and Sister Vanna from the city too?”

Duncan stopped packing up the rod and turned his head to look at Shirley: “Did I ever say the matter of Frostholm was completely over?”

“Huh?” Shirley was a little confused. “Isn’t everything already settled? And you even recommended Mr. Tyrian to City Hall. I thought you were going to leave the rest to him to wrap up.”

“It’s true, I do plan to leave all the troublesome affairs in this city to him,” Duncan went on packing as he spoke casually. “But there are still things the Sea Mist Fleet can’t handle. Those things I have to deal with myself. Before they’re taken care of, the Vanished had better not stray too far from here.”

Shirley still did not understand: “Things the Sea Mist Fleet can’t handle? What are they…”

Duncan lowered his eyelids and gave her a calm look: “Where did mirror world Frostholm come from?”

Shirley thought for a moment, then spoke, not very sure: “It was… summoned from the Deep Sea by those cultists?”

“More or less. It was summoned from the Deep Sea. mirror world Frostholm was a ‘product’, something formed by a transformation. Everything we destroyed in that process, including the sacrificial site deep inside mirror world Frostholm, was, in truth, only a ‘summoned thing’. Since there is a summoned thing, there must be a summoning source.”

Shirley finally reacted. Shock slowly appeared in her eyes.

“You mean… the thing under the sea is still there?!”

“If my judgment is right, everything close to the surface, whether those replicas or the mirror world city-state itself, was only the spread and projection of that power,” Duncan said calmly. “It was like a huge plant growing upward from below. In that fierce battle that just ended in Frostholm, we only destroyed the overgrown crown of that runaway plant. Its roots are still there. Don’t forget, back then the Queen of Frostholm had to throw several Deep Dive devices into the sea just to barely touch that thing’s true body. That power has a ‘real form’ in the Deep Sea.”

Shirley finally could not sit still. She almost jumped to her feet: “Huh? Then doesn’t that mean we still have to dive into the Deep Sea and fight that thing? Otherwise won’t it soon make another mirror world?!”

“Soon? It won’t be that quick,” Duncan said with a smile, shaking his head. “Things are not as serious as you think. Even if its true body is still there, it has surely been badly wounded. I have almost completely burned away the spreading part of it. The rest, after losing the support of those cultists’ rituals, is most likely in a state of sleep or dormancy. Even if we really ignored it, it might take another half century before it causes trouble again.”

As he spoke, he suddenly stopped and reached out toward the air beside him.

“Isn’t that right, Agatha?”

A tuft of ghost-green flame burst into life at Duncan’s fingertips. It quickly leaped and spread in the air, forming a whirlpool-like Veil. Inside the blazing Veil stood a blind priestess of the Goddess, dressed in a black gown and wearing an eyepatch, her hands clasped before her chest in a pose of prayer.

Shirley and Dog stared, dumbfounded, at the scene.

“Yes. That is exactly what we have been worrying about,” Agatha raised her head. Her slightly husky voice carried a faint, airy quality. “Everyone who knows the truth of the Abyssal Trench Project worries about this. We only destroyed the ‘product’ that appeared on the surface of the sea, and we had no strength left to destroy the ‘true body’ that may still be lurking in the Deep Sea.”

“We can’t just leave it there for another fifty years and then repeat the defense of Frostholm during the next crisis,” Duncan said. “I don’t mind helping every time, but war always brings many needless victims.”

“…The Frostholm of today probably no longer has the strength to build Deep Dive devices like that,” Agatha said after a short silence. “It’s not just the devices themselves. There is also the other equipment needed to dive, the data, the people, the resources… All of that is something a Frostholm that is still trying to rebuild simply cannot provide.”

“Then start preparing as soon as possible. Have your City Hall think of a way,” Duncan said lightly. “If it really doesn’t work, then prepare an iron coffin that can explode in the Deep Sea and put a corpse inside it. Through that medium I can go down to the seabed and take a look. Even though a temporary avatar form can only carry limited power, as long as a stable channel is set up, I should be able to spread the flames down to the bottom of the sea.”

In an age of supernatural awakening, the great edifice was about to collapse.

Flesh was bitter and weak—how could one ascend?

The story began with taking up a ruler that carried the Truth.)