Chapter 445

Chapter 445: A Fleeting Glimpse

When Agatha listened to Duncan’s instructions, she immediately thought of the “corpse” that had been used as temporary material for his descent before.

She nodded lightly and did not object: “Yes, I will consider this method.”

Duncan grunted in reply. Then he looked with some curiosity at Agatha, who was appearing in the fiery doorway, studying the faint, blurry scene behind her. He asked casually: “How are things on your side now?”

“The great Cathedral has already returned to normal. Today we are contacting the Cathedrals all over the city, confirming what manpower we still have and counting the losses from this last period,” Agatha answered. There was a hint of relief in her tone. “Last night, just as you said, the city-state passed the night in peace. No Shadows were born in the darkness at all. Even the mental hospital and the cemetery district, which were the most likely to have problems, showed no abnormal changes. That let me breathe a sigh of relief. If things can stay this way, then half of what we have to worry about will vanish.”

“I mean your condition,” Duncan raised his eyebrows. “With this body you have now, won’t such intense work cause problems?”

“I don’t feel tired. Perhaps becoming a corpse is actually a good thing for me now,” Agatha said calmly. “A corpse does not feel fatigue and does not need rest in the usual sense. As long as I can still gain calm from prayer and meditation, I won’t have any problems.”

“You seem to be in the Cathedral’s prayer room?”

“Yes, I’m in the great Cathedral. This used to be Bishop Ivan’s room. It’s very quiet,” Agatha turned her head and glanced at the familiar yet special room. There was a trace of sadness in her voice. “Now, it has been left to me.”

But a strange feeling suddenly rose in Duncan’s heart. He hesitated for a few seconds, then could not stop himself from asking: “You are contacting me like this inside the great Cathedral. Doesn’t Bartok mind?”

Agatha froze at once: “…”

Shirley and Dog beside him were also stunned.

“Captain, how do you always manage to think about things from such an unbelievable angle?” Shirley muttered under her breath. “And that question sounds kind of weird…”

Duncan shot the young lady a blank look: “Don’t interrupt when your Lord is speaking, and don’t use this chance to stop writing. You haven’t written a single word since just now, have you?”

Shirley sighed at once and went back to her life-and-death struggle with her homework. In the flames, Agatha’s projected form finally came back to herself. With a strange look on her face, she turned her head to glance at the nearby statue of the God of Death. Only after a long moment did she turn back: “I have never thought about that question at all…”

Then she paused and asked thoughtfully: “Vanna is at your side. Have you ever asked her this question? How did she answer?”

Duncan thought about it and felt she had a point: “I really haven’t asked. I can ask her when I have time.”

Agatha opened her mouth by instinct as if she wanted to say something, but in the end nothing came out.

After an awkward silence of a few seconds, she finally found another topic: “Besides, I am already prepared to go check the situation inside the Boiling Gold mine.”

“Has the mine already returned to calm?” Duncan raised an eyebrow. “I remember you said we would have to wait at least a few more days.”

“It has mostly calmed down. To be honest… exploring the depths now may still carry some risk, but I don’t plan to wait any longer,” Agatha’s expression grew serious. She clearly had made up her mind. “I can feel that something in the depths is calling to me. This feeling has grown stronger and stronger since this morning. If I keep waiting… I’m afraid I will miss something very important.”

Duncan nodded slightly. After a few seconds of silence he suddenly spoke: “Before you set out, come find me at 44 Oak Street.”

Agatha’s eyes widened in surprise at once: “You are coming with me?”

“I’m also very curious about what was left there.”

“I understand. I’ll come to you before I leave.”

Duncan nodded, then waved his hand to disperse the flames in midair. He let out a breath and lowered his head to look at the empty fishing rod in his hand.

“…Forget it, coming up empty is also part of fishing,” he muttered. He turned his head to glance at Shirley and Dog, who were still by the barrel. “I’m going back to my room first. Dog, keep an eye on Shirley. Make sure she at least copies the first five pages of the vocabulary book. Once her homework is done, she can play however she likes.”

Dog hurriedly stood up, nodding eagerly and wagging his bony tail. Only after Duncan’s figure vanished at the stairway not far away did the Abyssal Hound finally breathe out in relief and return to the spot where he had first been lying. But before he lay down, he suddenly looked up at Shirley: “Don’t get distracted. Hurry up and write.”

“Dog, are you really urging me?” Shirley’s shoulders drooped at once. “My hand is sore…”

“I don’t even have fingers and I can still write a diary. You at least have two hands with ten fingers,” Dog shook his head. As he lay down again, he kept muttering, “Read more books and learn more words, Shirley. Don’t get impatient. The captain really is doing this for your own good. Haven’t you always wanted a life like other children? I truly can’t give you that, but the captain wants to. A being like him has many ways to show favor, but he chooses to care about you and Nina like a human would. Do you know how…”

Shirley quickly waved her hands to beg for mercy halfway through: “Hey, stop, stop. I know, I know, I’m not stupid. Dog, why are you nagging like an old mother…”

Dog grumbled twice more but did not keep lecturing her. Instead he lowered his head and once again studied the geometry textbook in front of him with great interest.

On the pages, words and symbols outlined the knowledge and experience of those who came before. Lines and formulas told the story of how this world worked. The eye sockets filled with bloody red light in Dog’s skull were fixed on those chapters that held the wisdom of civilization. In his mind, which belonged to a Abyssal demon, one geometric figure after another, one mathematical formula after another, took shape as he followed the content of the textbook.

There was also a source of red light that flickered, and a series of flashing points of light lined up like a matrix. They flashed between those geometric images and formulas and then passed in an instant.

In the next second, Shirley seemed to sense something and suddenly lifted her head to look toward Dog. Almost at the same moment, Dog snapped out of some strange state. His whole body jumped several meters into the air: “Whoa, what the heck!!”

Shirley was yanked up into the air with him by the chain between them, then crashed down onto the deck with a bang. When she finally got up, dizzy and shaken, the first thing she did was pounce on Dog and grab his head, shaking it hard: “What kind of fit are you throwing?! And what was with you just now? I felt like even your aura changed!”

“I… I don’t know!” Dog’s head creaked as Shirley shook it. He finally managed to pull free, but he still clearly looked dazed. “Just now I think I saw something flash past right in front of me. I didn’t even have time to see what it was… but now everything seems fine.”

AI, who had been pecking at fries nearby, suddenly tilted its head and looked at Dog with interest: “Remote server not responding, please check network connection?”

Dog did not react for a moment and answered without thinking: “Huh?”

But AI only flapped its wings and walked off to the side as if nothing had happened, pacing and muttering to itself: “Top up Q coins? Top up the big monthly card? Top up the battle pass?”

“Don’t pay attention to it. That bird’s brain is even more muddled than Alice’s,” Shirley waved her hand and turned Dog’s head back toward herself. Worry clearly showed on her face. “Are you okay? Did you burn out your brain from doing math problems all day?”

“I’ve never heard of Abyssal demons burning out their brains…” Dog began to doubt himself. “I don’t even know if I have that organ.”

“Of course you haven’t. You’re the only Abyssal demon in the whole world who actually uses his brain. Even if your kind really have brains, they don’t get the chance to burn them out… Hey, hold still. Let me check you over.”

Muttering as she worked, Shirley hurriedly examined Dog from head to toe. Then, through the chain of the symbiotic pact between them, she carefully felt for any change in their shared spiritual level. In the end, she still did not find any problem.

Everything was normal.

“I told you there was nothing wrong,” Dog breathed a sigh of relief and said casually. “Maybe I attracted something while I was reading, and when it was just about to come out, it found out I was a ‘colleague’, so it went back…”

As he muttered, he lay down again and pawed at the scrap paper in front of him.

Shirley grew anxious at once: “Hey, you still plan to keep reading?”

While drawing new auxiliary lines on the paper, Dog replied casually: “I’m only one big problem away, just the last step. I finally got an idea.”

Shirley: “…”

She watched Dog, who was writing and calculating there, with great worry, ready to yank on the chain around her arm at any sign that something was wrong. But until he finished solving that big problem that, in her eyes, looked like an indecipherable heavenly script, nothing happened at all.

Dog tossed the pencil onto the deck and looked up at Shirley.

“See? I told you there was no problem—” There was a trace of comfort in his tone, but soon his gaze fell on the wooden barrel beside them.

“Shirley, you still haven’t finished your homework.”

“Aaah—”

Hearing the girl’s drawn-out wail, Dog only shook his head. Then his eyes fell again on the book he had been reading.

It seemed… there really had been no problem.

But Dog was sure he really had seen something. It was not a “colleague” drawn in by the book, but something else, something more mysterious and more strange.

Just what… had he seen?