Chapter 464

Chapter 464: The Future of the White Oak

In Duncan’s eyes, the tangled, chaotic black shadows had once again “collapsed” into that valiant female adventurer. Deep in the mirror, the layered silhouettes no longer trembled in disorder.

Duncan watched the scene with his gaze and stayed silent for a long time.

Inside the mirror, once Martha had reformed, she stayed frozen for a moment, like a film stuck right before it officially started. After two or three seconds, a lively, human light returned to her face. She lowered her head in confusion to look at herself, then belatedly raised her head: “What… did you do?”

Duncan pulled himself out of his thoughts and shook his head lightly: “Nothing. Just welcoming you.”

He paused, sorted out his thoughts a little, then spoke: “If you are going to stay ‘Martha’ from now on, do you still plan to tell Lawrence the truth?”

“He might… already know,” Martha hesitated, then slowly said: “I once hinted at a few things with him. I told him I was built with Martha as the base and pieced together from his memories. With Lawrence’s sharp mind and his experience in the supernatural field, plus all the information I let slip that went far beyond what was needed, it shouldn’t be hard for him to guess that since ‘Martha’ can hold one set of memories, she can hold countless sets. After all…”

The female adventurer paused, a complicated smile on her face: “After all, back in that city of mirror world, I looked like I knew far too much.”

“What was his reaction?”

“He… didn’t care,” Martha shook her head. “But I don’t know if he will always not care.”

Duncan watched her quietly for a while, then suddenly laughed.

“You worry about these things. That means I really don’t need to,” he said in a relaxed tone. “So let’s set it aside, Lady. Out here on this vast sea, dark and uncanny things are countless, so every bit of warmth is worth treasuring all the more. Lawrence understands that very well.”

In the mirror, the female adventurer looked thoughtful. Outside the mirror, Duncan paused briefly, then went on: “About the Deep Sea beneath Frostholm, what else do you know?”

“The Deep Sea…” Martha frowned. She drew in her drifting thoughts, sorted through her vast store of memories, and spoke slowly: “I do have some… ‘memories’ that point to the Deep Sea, but most of them were dark and blurry, mixed with the fear of sinking without end and absurd hallucinations born in cold suffocation. These things probably can’t be used as solid reference. But…”

Duncan raised an eyebrow: “But?”

In the mirror, Martha thought for a moment, then spread her hands.

Her figure suddenly faded in the mirror, like ink bleeding in water. Black lines spread quickly across the surface. In that spreading darkness, hazy shapes began to appear.

A vast stretch of shadows floated in endless void, like a lonely island, like an irregular, jagged mass. Around that island of shadows drifted countless tiny things, like fragments broken off from its surface, circling and orbiting it like debris.

In the center of that floating “island”, there seemed to be some huge pillar-like thing. In the dark, it extended upward and downward without end, as if it pierced straight through the shadows, then pierced through the whole void.

Martha’s voice came from deep within the mirror:

“I ran through all the memories that point to the Deep Sea. The great terror that countless devoured minds felt as they sank was stacked together into this scene. I don’t know how to interpret it. It looks like a large floating object in the Deep Sea, pierced through by a giant ‘pillar’. But without anything to compare it to, I don’t know how big that thing is, or how big that pillar is.”

Duncan stared for a long time with his gaze at the image in the mirror and did not speak.

In his mind rose all kinds of information about the Abyssal Trench Project—the submersibles that never came back, the Deep Dive vanguard teams that went mad, the insane reports of the trench beneath the sea, and the great Hollow deep inside the Boiling Gold mine, along with that tentacle of the Elder Gods that crossed the boundary between real and unreal and stabbed deep into the city-state of Frostholm.

There really was an entity in the Deep Sea.

The illusion in the mirror faded, and Martha’s figure appeared before Duncan again: “That’s all I know. I keep many memories, but very few of them point toward the Deep Sea while I am still relatively clear-headed. You…”

“It’s all right, Lady,” Duncan said softly, cutting off the female adventurer. “I will go see it for myself.”

…

On the deck, Alice and the mummified corpse “sailor” had already found a second little bug. The two “people” were still poking at it.

But this game clearly was not as fun as fighting with the pots and pans in the kitchen.

“I’m starting to feel bored,” Alice threw away the little stick in her hand and looked up at the deck, which still felt quite unfamiliar to her. “Why isn’t the captain back yet…”

The “sailor” clearly shivered when he heard the doll Miss mention the word “captain”. He lifted his head, opened his mouth, hesitated for a long time, and finally spoke: “When you usually stay with him… you’re not scared?”

“Not scared at all,” Alice turned her head and looked at the ugly mummified corpse with a puzzled face. “I like being with the captain. Why would I be scared of him?”

“That’s Subspace! Do you understand Subspace?” The mummified corpse’s expression was full of horror. “Just looking at him once, I feel like my sanity is going to ‘fall’ off. And you dare cling to him all day. I think you’re the one who should be numbered 077. You’re way more freakish than me.”

Alice scratched her hair, did not bother with the mummified corpse, and instead looked curiously toward Lawrence in the distance.

Lawrence was standing with his first mate, Gus.

“Suddenly, everyone can control the flames on their bodies,” First Mate Gus opened his palm and showed his captain a small, quietly dancing flame. Where the flame touched his skin, his flesh had turned faintly transparent, like a spirit form. Outside the flame’s edge, it was still normal flesh and blood. “Do you have any idea why?”

“I’m not sure either,” Lawrence frowned a little. He snapped his fingers and watched a spirit flame jump at his fingertip. Then he waved his hand, and the flame went out without a sound. “The change started not long after Captain Duncan boarded… so it might be connected to him.”

“Maybe… but either way, it’s a good thing,” First Mate Gus said. “Before, the flames on us would pop out of nowhere, like something had set them off, and we never found the cause. Honestly, it kept everyone on edge. Some people even worried that we might never be able to act normally on land again. After all, not every city has seen as much as Frostholm and Pland…”

“The future…” Lawrence’s voice held a hint of emotion and thought. He unconsciously clenched his fist and opened it again, feeling the Power of Flame flow calmly in his body while he thought about his own future and that of the whole crew of the White Oak. “It really is time to think about the future…”

He lowered his head and rubbed his fingers together. spirit flame flowed like water between his fingertips.

A deep, stern voice came from behind him: “Having fun?”

Lawrence and Gus both shivered on the spot. Flames shot two or three meters high from their bodies…

A second later, Lawrence hurried to press down the flames on himself and turned toward the sound. Duncan was standing there, looking at them with a strange expression.

Duncan let out a quiet sigh.

The moment he came out, he saw Anomaly 077 and Anomaly 099 squatting on the deck poking bugs. Then he saw the captain and first mate of his new subordinate ship playing with fire in the doorway. If you knew this was the Vanished Fleet, fine. If you didn’t, you would think this ship was heading for a kindergarten… Just what kind of people had gathered around him?

“C-Captain Duncan!” Gus snapped to attention at once. While slapping away the last sparks on his coat, he spoke in a panic: “We… we were studying how to control the Power of Flame, to stop anything like what happened in Frostholm from happening again…”

“The same kind of thing? You mean a captain leading a whole marine squad and getting arrested by the local constable, and then I had to send my envoy to the security bureau to bail them out?” Duncan pressed his fingers to his temple and waved his hand. “Forget it. As long as you’re happy…”

As he spoke, Alice had already run over. She grabbed his arm and shook it hard while shouting: “Captain! You finally came back! You finished your work?”

“It’s finished, it’s finished—stop shaking, or you’ll yank one of your joints off again,” Duncan said as he held down the overexcited doll Miss. Then his gaze fell on Lawrence, and he nodded lightly. “Don’t worry. Martha is doing very well. I have officially accepted her as a member of the Vanished Fleet.”

Lawrence froze for a moment, then sensed the weight and deeper meaning in Duncan’s words.

“You… saw that she actually…”

“You don’t want to care, and she doesn’t need to care. As for me… I don’t mind,” there was a faint smile in Duncan’s eyes as he said calmly: “The Boundless Sea is very wide. The Vanished Fleet has always dealt with all kinds of strange things. One more harmless ghost ship is nothing.”

Lawrence opened his mouth but could not say anything. In the end, he just drew in a slow breath and bowed deeply in front of Duncan.

“In any case, welcome to my fleet,” Duncan laughed and patted Lawrence’s shoulder. “Speaking of that, I think I heard you talking about… the future just now? Do you have any plans?”

“The future…” Lawrence hesitated, a complicated look on his face. “I really have been thinking about it. Do you think… we can still return to a normal harbor like before?”

Hearing the hesitation and struggle in Lawrence’s voice, Duncan sighed softly.

The future of the White Oak… really was a problem.

—