Chapter 462

Chapter 462: The First Step to a Good Relationship.

A spinning gate of blazing fire suddenly expanded over the deck. Then the Master of the Vanisheds Fleet stepped out from the gate.

He was tall and imposing, wrapped in spirit flame, his eyes blazing. His very existence seemed like fear given form upon the Boundless Sea. Wherever his gaze fell, it felt as if all the fires in the mortal world were stirred.

Behind that tall figure came another person: a graceful woman in a dark purple dress, with silver hair down to her waist and a beautiful face, though her skin looked a little pale. She followed closely behind Captain Duncan, her bearing mysterious and elegant, like an attendant.

Lawrence felt his heart pound and his nerves stretch to the limit. He saw Duncan walk toward him, and with every step the captain took, the stubborn spirit form flames on Lawrence’s own body burned a little brighter. Only when Duncan finally stopped on the deck did Lawrence come back to himself and lower his head: “Captain.”

“Your ship is nice.” Duncan said it offhandedly, then looked up and swept his gaze over the exploration ship he had once met only briefly, and whose fate had been tangled with his ever since. At the same time, a faint sense of novelty rose in his heart. Strictly speaking, this was the first time his true body had ever left the Vanished and boarded another ship.

Before stepping onto the White Oak, he had worried that leaving the Vanished might trigger some unforeseeable change. After all, walking through the city-states in an avatar form and letting his true body leave the ship were two very different things. But now it seemed that, at least while he moved within the Vanisheds Fleet, the Vanished did not have any trouble because of his absence.

Lawrence felt a strange mix of emotions. He could not tell whether Captain Duncan’s words counted as praise or not. He could only keep his head down in embarrassment: “Uh, as long as you like it…”

“Don’t be so nervous. This isn’t our first meeting,” Duncan said with a smile. Lawrence’s reaction was exactly what he expected. He had seen it many times. “Relax. Pretend you’re just meeting an ordinary senior from the Explorer Association.”

As he spoke, his gaze moved over Lawrence’s uniform. At the man’s collar he saw the badge of the Explorer Association.

Duncan nodded slightly and added: “Many years ago, I was an Explorer too. Sadly, my badge was lost in Subspace.”

Lawrence froze for a moment and then lifted his head, a little hesitant. His taut nerves eased a bit, and his sluggish thoughts finally started working again. He suddenly realized that this terrifying “Subspace Shadow” was telling the truth. A hundred years ago… Duncan Abnomar had indeed been a member of the Explorer Association, and even one of the most famous Explorers of that era.

Strictly speaking, the Explorer Association had not even removed this ghost captain from their rolls yet—because no one had ever thought to file the paperwork to deregister a Subspace Shadow…

Duncan did not care about Lawrence’s reaction or the conflict on his face. Once he saw that Lawrence had relaxed a little, he casually chatted in a tone like small talk: “Was the trip here smooth?”

“Uh… smooth,” Lawrence answered honestly, trying his best to act normal. “We set off from Frostholm’s East Harbor and passed through the blockade line the Sea Mist Fleet set on the outer sea. They guided us through…”

“Mm. I told Tyrian, so the Sea Mist Fleet wouldn’t trouble you,” Duncan said with a nod. Then he looked up at the nearby flagpole. “Is that Anomaly 077 hanging up there?”

“Y-yes.”

“What did he do wrong? Why is he hanging from the flagpole?”

Lawrence: “…”

He hesitated for several seconds before twitching the corner of his mouth: “He asked to be hung there himself. He wanted to use this to return to a sealed state, but it doesn’t seem to be working very well.”

“…Why are all the humanoid Anomalies I meet so strange?” Duncan muttered. He turned his head to glance at Alice, who followed behind him looking graceful and proper but in fact was off in her own world. Then he pointed at the mummified corpse hanging in midair: “Come down.”

As soon as he finished speaking, the mummified corpse that had been playing dead a moment ago shook once, fell onto the deck with a bang, then tumbled and scrambled to Duncan’s feet. He shook all over like Frankenstein touching electricity for the first time: “C-captain, S-Sailor r-reporting to you!”

Duncan frowned: “Are you a stutterer?”

“I-I am Sailor…”

Seeing his reaction, Duncan actually found it funny. He had not expected a sapient Anomaly ranked in the top hundred to fear Captain Duncan this much. Then Duncan turned his head in puzzlement to look back at Alice behind him.

They were both top-hundred Anomalies with minds like humans. So why did this Doll not know fear? Back then, she had only been nervous for a moment on the Vanished, then quickly adapted to the ship. Now she could even bicker with the pots and pans on board.

Alice noticed the captain’s gaze and answered at once with a bright, almost solidly stupid smile.

Duncan: “…”

He suddenly felt that Alice might not have adapted quickly at all. She was just slow to react. She had probably been scared at first and then simply forgotten about being afraid…

At the same time, Alice also noticed the mummified corpse standing opposite her and shivering. She thought very hard, as if finally recalling what the captain had told her before they left. Her face lit with a smile and she greeted him first: “Hello, my name is Alice. I heard you’re an Anomaly too?”

The mummified corpse froze for a moment and looked her up and down in confusion. The “elegant lady” before him looked no different from an ordinary person, yet every tiny movement felt oddly off. “You are too?”

“Yes!” Alice said happily. “My number is 099.”

Sailor scratched his head awkwardly. This was probably also his first time dealing with another runaway state Anomaly like this. “Uh… I’m 077.”

Alice thought for a bit and looked proud: “Then my number is bigger than yours!”

Duncan finally could not hold back: “Anomaly numbers go in order from the front. 077 comes before you.”

Alice processed that for a moment and, like a sacred miracle, actually caught up: “Ah… so that means he’s stronger than me?”

“Not necessarily. Anomalies ranked in the top hundred are all extremely bizarre. You usually can’t judge strength by numbers alone. Their dangers show up under different conditions,” Duncan explained patiently. “At sea, he should be stronger than you. On land, you are stronger than him…”

Alice did not know how much of that she understood. She only curiously watched the Sailor in front of her, then suddenly reached out and grabbed at the air.

The mummified corpse froze in place at once, as if even his soul—if he had one—had been instantly locked. Then all his joints and skin started to rapidly shift toward a Puppet-like transformation.

Alice abruptly let go.

Sailor staggered back a few steps and stared at the Doll in horror: “Wh-what the hell?”

“Not strong,” Alice shook her head. “You don’t even know how to protect your own strings.”

“Don’t go grabbing other people’s ‘strings’ without permission. Did you forget?” Duncan said sharply at once. Then he frowned. “Wait, you’re saying Anomaly 077 has strings too?”

“Yes. There are several drifting off him,” Alice said as if it were obvious. “But his strings are a little odd. An ordinary person’s strings float up high into the sky and then slowly fade. His strings float out and then curl back into his body, like they’re forming a loop…”

Duncan frowned and looked Sailor up and down, still shaken there in front of him. Then a faint green flame flashed in Alice’s eyes beside him.

The next second, Duncan also saw Anomaly 077’s strings—almost transparent white threads extending from the mummified corpse’s skull and joints, swaying in the empty air around him and then folding back into his body.

There really were strings.

Did all sapient humanoid Anomalies have strings like this? Or was this unique to Anomaly 077? And what was going on with these strings that looped through themselves instead of rising away like an ordinary person’s?

Questions flashed through Duncan’s mind, but he quickly put them aside for now. He looked at Sailor and apologized seriously: “Sorry. Alice is not very sensible. She meant no harm. She just wanted to say hello.”

“No, no, don’t apologize!” The mummified corpse almost jumped on the spot. He hurriedly waved his hands and backed away. “I’m fine, I just got startled… Alice, right? Got it. I’ll just keep my distance from her from now on…”

As he spoke, he muttered under his breath, things like “no wonder she works on the flagship” and “of course the boss’s people are stronger,” loud enough that even Lawrence could hear him.

Lawrence blinked and watched from the side. He had no idea what had just happened. He only felt that the two Anomalies had “communicated” somehow and that Sailor had gotten scared again. Then something occurred to him. His gaze turned odd as it fell on the beautiful lady with the elegant air. “Wait, Anomaly 099… Captain, so this is…”

“The very ‘coffin’ you were escorting on your ship back then,” Duncan said with a smile, lifting his hand to introduce her. “But now the coffin has already been assimilated by the Vanished. The Doll that was inside has been in a long-term runaway state, just like the Sailor next to you.”

When Alice heard that, she stepped forward at once and chattered to Duncan: “Captain, Captain, I’m not in a runaway state. I’m usually very obedient…”

“Right, right, I’m not in a runaway state either,” the mummified corpse added quickly. “I usually follow orders very well. When Captain Lawrence told me to go ashore and fight those cultists to the death, I didn’t even hesitate…”

Lawrence listened in a daze. He looked up at the Sailor trying so hard to show himself off, then at the beautiful and elegant but apparently not quite right?in?the?head “Miss from the coffin” opposite him. At last his gaze landed on Captain Duncan.

Suddenly, the pressure and tension that had been hanging over him for so long faded away. Lawrence strangely felt that he and this ghost captain before him were much closer. He even felt a kind of fellow?sufferer sympathy rise up.

It was the sympathy between two captains on the Boundless Sea who both had to take care of a runaway state Anomaly with a hole in the head…