Chapter 449

Chapter 449: .

The winch turned and the steel cable pulled taut. The metal “iron cage” rattled and creaked as it descended, while darkness spread outside the cage. Dim gas lamps were set into the sides of the shaft wall, driving back the depths of the mine’s darkness and bringing a limited but necessary sense of safety.

Agatha stood at the edge of the Shaft Lift. Her “gaze” passed through the railing, looking into the shaft that stretched ever downward. The black cloth over her eyes, like a veil of night, hid both her sight and most of her expressions, leaving others almost no way to guess what she was thinking.

“It’s so deep down here…” A voice suddenly broke the calm inside the Shaft Lift. Alice stood nervously behind Duncan, looking up at the gas lamp light sliding past on both sides of the shaft wall as she spoke with a bit of fear. “I feel like we’re about to go straight through the city-state and fall into the sea…”

“Dropping without a break will give you that illusion,” Morris’s voice came from one corner of the cage. The old scholar was curiously examining the inner structure of this large Shaft Lift as he spoke without turning his head. “In fact, we’ve probably only gone down two or three hundred meters.”

“Oooh—” Alice drew out the sound. It was hard to say whether she really understood how deep “two or three hundred meters” was. In any case, the doll girl’s face showed an expression of “that sounds amazing.”

Duncan paid no attention to the exchange between Alice and Morris. He moved over to stand beside Agatha, who was silently standing at the edge of the car, and glanced at this Gatekeeper. “You look troubled.”

“…I just couldn’t help thinking of many things once we went down the shaft,” Agatha said after two seconds of silence, her tone complicated. “They say… ‘the other me’ stood right here back then, leading the members of the exploration unit down this shaft into the depths of the Boiling Gold mine…”

Her voice was hoarse, with a hint of hesitation.

“Back then, ‘she’ seemed to have already sensed the truth about herself. According to the details described by several Guardians who went down with her, she already carried a strange, resolute air at the time. No one knew why…”

“If that ‘replica’ really restored most of your thoughts and memories, it’s not hard to imagine her realizing the truth about herself,” Duncan said quietly. “Even a replicant can have a strong will and a noble heart.”

Agatha did not speak for a while, as if lost in tangled, heavy thoughts. After a long time, she suddenly broke the silence. “I’m just wondering… what she was thinking about then, what she was remembering. Was she ever afraid, or did she regret it? She had my memories, yet only a few days of real life. Faced with all this… would she hold any hatred in her heart?”

Duncan turned his head and fixed his gaze quietly on Agatha.

After a moment of that gaze, he slowly spoke. “If it were you, would you harbor hatred or regret your own decision?”

“No.”

“Then clearly, she wouldn’t either.”

“But…” Agatha went on. “But… I think I would still have some regrets. When I died in the dark, I would think of the city-state under the sunlight, of the familiar people and things in the city. And if I were a replicant, I would also regret that I could not cross Bartok’s great gate, because I wouldn’t know whether I had a soul. I…”

She stopped and took a gentle breath, her tone holding a touch of sadness. “Yes. If it were me, I would feel regret.”

Duncan looked at her for a long time before withdrawing his gaze and turning to the darkness slowly rising around them and the lights within it. “Then she would too.”

Agatha fell silent for a moment, as if talking to herself, yet also quietly asking: “What will we see down there…”

“I don’t know either. That’s why we have to come down and check,” Duncan said, glancing back at the others in the car—Alice, Morris, and Vanna, who stood in the middle of the Shaft Lift with her arms folded and eyes closed, resting. Besides those three, plus Agatha and himself, there was no one else here.

“You didn’t bring any subordinates and only called on us. Was that out of caution?”

“I don’t know what will happen below. It might be corruption left behind by the Elder Gods, or a ‘truth’ that can spread. When the situation is unclear, bringing ordinary Guardians and priests would only add more variables,” Agatha said frankly. “You and your followers are clearly not afraid of those things.”

Duncan listened, just smiled, and said nothing.

Just then, the car began to slow quickly. With the creak of automatic mechanisms and a final clang as the “iron cage” touched bottom, the Shaft Lift finally reached the mine floor.

“We’re here,” Agatha said, lifting her head to look outside. She opened the gate and stepped out first, reminding the people behind her without thinking: “Be careful. They’ve only done a preliminary cleanup here—the emergency crews pulled out hours ago. Where we’re heading next is the truly ‘unknown deep darkness.’”

As she spoke, she suddenly stopped and turned to Duncan with a hint of awkwardness. “Of course, these warnings might be a bit redundant for you…”

Duncan waved his hand to show he didn’t mind and looked into the depths of the tunnel. Only a few gas lamps shed dim light in the darkness, making the passage ahead even more hazy. Suspicious piles lay everywhere, and an uneasy, eerie air hung over everything. It was hardly a comforting scene.

“I shouldn’t have had Nina go back to the ship so early,” he said casually. “A place this dark would be perfect for her.”

“Or maybe she’d get startled by something in the dark and blow up the whole tunnel with one several-thousand-degree sneeze,” Morris couldn’t help muttering. “I do not recommend you take Nina into any dark, cramped space—she’s still young and startles easily.”

Duncan shrugged. “Kids have to grow up. She’s almost done with high school.”

Morris’s expression went a bit stiff. The corner of his mouth twitched several times before he spoke, choosing his words. “Captain, under normal circumstances, a child graduating from high school chooses a party or a trip to celebrate adulthood, not an expedition in a mine tunnel tainted by Elder Gods’ corruption as a ‘graduation rite’…”

Duncan laughed cheerfully, then as if suddenly thinking of something, turned his head and asked Vanna: “How did you spend your coming-of-age rite at seventeen?”

He was only asking casually, wanting a reference for the day he would celebrate Nina’s or Shirley’s own coming-of-age rite.

Vanna hadn’t expected the topic to suddenly land on her. The beautiful warrior maiden froze for a moment, her face quickly showing a bit of embarrassment. As she walked forward, she muttered under her breath: “…Studying for make-up exams after a delayed school year…”

Duncan: “…”

The mood turned a bit awkward. Duncan could only spread his hands helplessly, while Agatha, walking in front, suddenly looked back, as if casting an incredulous “gaze” at him.

“What is it?” Duncan asked offhandedly.

“No matter how many times I see it, the way you interact with your followers still feels truly strange,” she said. “You, after taking back your humanity, are completely opposite to the you in the legends of the past century. I think I can somewhat understand why Captain Lawrence of the White Oak and his subordinates are such an interesting group.”

Duncan had no reaction to the first part of her words, but his expression turned odd at the end. As soon as Agatha finished speaking, he said: “Let me stress again, while everyone on the White Oak technically counts as my subordinate, I’m really not familiar with them…”

Agatha nodded. “Yes, you’re not familiar with them—you’ve emphasized that before.”

Duncan couldn’t hear any seriousness in her tone and could only sigh. “So how was it resolved in the end? I mean Lawrence’s ‘cargo list.’”

“Frostholm needs supplies now, and we never break a contract. Since the cargo has arrived, of course we have to pay,” Agatha said, then shook her head. “But we could only pay part of it.”

“Oh?”

“The most critical ‘cargo’, Anomaly 077 in runaway state, couldn’t be delivered,” Agatha explained. “The contract called for the White Oak to hand over ‘Sailor’ to Frostholm’s sacred relic Hall in a sealed state, not a lively, bouncing mummified corpse…

“Then again, that mummified corpse himself seemed very eager to be ‘delivered.’ When he heard that the cargo list for Frostholm included him, he almost cried with joy. Sadly, we have no idea how to deal with an Anomaly stuck in a long-term runaway state that can’t be sealed again. It’s better to hand him over to you to handle personally.”

“An Anomaly in a long-term runaway state, huh…”

Duncan muttered without thinking and turned his head to look beside him.

Alice turned her head too and found the captain looking at her. The doll girl’s face immediately lit up with delight. “Hehe…”

Duncan sighed. “All right, I do have some experience.”

Agatha also glanced at Alice without thinking, a somewhat complicated expression on her face.

By now, she had already learned from Duncan the true identity of this “doll girl.” As someone born and raised in Frostholm, she naturally knew how extraordinary it was for “Anomaly 099” to be strolling openly through the city.

She had countless questions she wanted to ask. Strong curiosity and a vague unease stirred in her chest, which had long since grown cold. Yet faced with Captain Duncan, who seemed not to care about anything, she never found a chance to speak.

“I was thinking…”

Agatha seemed to have finally made up her mind and broke the silence. But just as she was about to ask something about Alice, a sudden jolt of dread made her stop short.

At almost the same moment, everyone in the group halted.

Agatha turned her head and looked toward the deepest point of the long, deep tunnel. Under the thick black cloth, her sight, which had already been sublimated in the flames, shook, trembled, and twisted. It was as if invisible winds were blowing straight toward her, and countless chaotic voices were mixed in those unseen gusts, battering her senses.

She felt her mind being disturbed. Some vast presence in the depths of the tunnel—no, strictly speaking, the echo left behind by some vast presence—was resonating with her reason. She could not “see” what was there, but she could feel that within that immense, tangled echo, there was a faint response.

That faint response was softly calling her over.

“What’s… over there?”

The blind Goddess official spoke, reaching out without thinking as if to steady her slightly shaking body.

A hand reached out from the side, a little large but clearly with feminine lines—Vanna took Agatha by the arm and lifted her gaze to the vast darkness at the end of the tunnel.

“It looks like a hollow,” Vanna said softly, her voice carrying a bit of tension. “A huge… hollow.”