Chapter 473

Chapter 473: The Blasphemous Archetype and the Fall

Alice left.

Duncan did not know how much this silly doll had actually understood, but at least she now realized that the key was dangerous. Before they figured out its true nature, she probably would not think about winding herself up again.

Outside the window, the evening sun was slowly sinking. The two brilliant rune rings were drawing closer and closer to the distant horizon. Their spreading red-gold light dyed the whole sea, then passed through the window and spilled into the room.

Duncan sat at the desk by the window, quietly turning his gaze on the brass key. sunlight covered the handle, which was shaped like an infinity symbol. The fine patterns on it seemed to come to life in the light, flowing as the shadows shifted.

After a short moment of thought and hesitation, Duncan took a quiet breath and reached out to grip the key.

A trace of fine, ghostly green flame appeared at his fingertips and slowly seeped into the key.

He had not planned to use the fire of spirit form to study the key, because the Power of Flame could very easily damage the key’s extraordinary nature. Even if it did not destroy it, it might change what it was. But now he could no longer worry about that.

He had to find out what Ray Nora had left inside the key. Under that premise, he could only be extremely careful. He tried his best to keep the fire of spirit form from burning the thing too fiercely, while he felt for every tiny bit of information that the flames brought back. He was ready to snuff them out at once if anything felt wrong.

The flame flowed like water between his fingers and the key. The ghostly green light seeped bit by bit into the brass surface. In Duncan’s senses, his fire seemed to be sinking into a vast and boundless place full of strange chaos.

He slowly closed his eyes and used the spreading flames as his eyes, beginning to observe the “world” behind the key.

Mist. Endless mist. It flowed like dust and smoke, rising and sinking in his field of view, sometimes condensing, sometimes scattering. Everywhere the flame could see, there was only chaotic emptiness.

Duncan watched the dense mist in confusion, but in every direction he saw only the same, even chaos.

He knew this was the “reality” inside the key. He was doing the same thing he had done when he probed the doll’s spirit coffin back then. However, what he found here was completely different from the inside of that spirit coffin.

He stayed still in the endless fog for a while. He could sense the flames still spreading steadily, and the key itself showed no sign of being harmed or damaged. Only then did he breathe a little easier and tentatively try to move his view in one direction.

But as soon as he moved forward, he felt the texture of something foreign in his palm.

“The key?”

Duncan first thought of the brass key he held in the Mortal Realm. Then he realized something else—he actually had a “body” in this thick mist.

He clearly remembered that last time, when he had examined the doll’s spirit coffin, he had only had a “field of view”.

Why had this changed? Was it because the two extraordinary items had different natures, or because his own power had gone through some unknown change?

Questions rose sharply in Duncan’s heart. At the same time he lifted his hand without thinking and looked at the “foreign object” in his palm.

A rectangular object with a black shell lay quietly there. From the feel, he could not tell if it was metal or plastic.

Duncan froze.

It was only about half a palm in length and two fingers wide. Its smooth, flat surface was clearly the product of some kind of crafting. Under the black shell he could vaguely see fine lines that might have been decorative or part of the internal structure. At one end he saw a complex metallic port, with a row of evenly spaced raised contacts inside.

It looked as if it was some kind of “readable device” that could be plugged into a machine to store data or act as a starter.

Duncan held the black rectangle up before his eyes, studying every detail of it with a feeling of nameless shock.

He thought of USB drives from “the other world”, or portable hard drives, but the specifications of this device’s port were clearly unlike any he knew.

After he stared at it for a long time, another thing suddenly came to mind—

In Pland, in the History Branch that had been consumed by a great fire, he had seen the Sunspawn who invaded the city-state all holding a black parasol. Inside that black parasol he had glimpsed complex, advanced, and precise mechanical, even electronic, structures…

Duncan remembered the black parasol he had seen in Pland, and then examined the rectangular device in his hand again. In the end he confirmed that the Sunspawn’s black parasol and this strange “device” did not seem to have the same style. They looked like products of two different technological routes or design styles, yet they shared something in common—

Precision, advancement, complexity. Just from their appearance, they seemed far beyond the level of technology in this world.

At the very least, they did not look like anything the city-states of the Boundless Sea could make, or had ever made.

And in this world, things like this seemed to have a special name:

Blasphemous Archetype.

Dog had once described them like this:

“In the long river of this world’s years, some parts of history are ‘locked’. The things that were born in those forbidden histories are Blasphemous Archetypes. In most cases, their very existence is harmful to living beings in the Mortal Realm…”

This “black box” that looked like some kind of data device… was it a Blasphemous Archetype?

Duncan frowned slightly, turning the little device over and over in his hand while he thought about what connection it had with the brass key he was holding in the Mortal Realm. Just then, a strange, low rumbling sound suddenly came from somewhere extremely high and far away, cutting off his thoughts.

Duncan lifted his head in shock and looked toward the source of the sound.

The next second, he saw a sudden bright light appear in the endless chaotic mist that filled the space. The light came from far away like a meteor falling hard, then formed a blazing fireball in the fog.

It roared over Duncan’s head, lowering in altitude as it flew. The mist was blown aside. Within the dazzling ball of fire, some huge thing took shape. Duncan saw a solid object driven by flame—

It looked like three spindle-shaped bodies bound together. At the end of each spindle he could see a huge stream of light bursting from some kind of thruster. Thick smoke billowed along the outer hulls. Fire flared everywhere, and shocking explosions and tears kept ripping through them. Chunks of debris kept breaking off from the blast points and fell like rain into the thick mist, turning into shooting stars as they fell and burned out in the sky…

With no point of reference, Duncan could not judge how big the “three-bodied ship” streaking across the sky really was. But he could feel the overpowering shock and pressure of that huge form wrapped in flame and smoke. It might have been bigger than a city-state, even bigger than many city-states put together. It might have crossed a long journey, gliding past the stars on some astronomical scale.

Now it slid and fell through this vision wrapped in mist, and in Duncan’s stunned gaze, the fall ended in a world-shaking explosion—

With an explosion that seemed enough to shake all of space and time, the “ark-ship” made of three spindles broke apart.

It split into three pieces that became three burning fireballs. Three blinding trails laden with thick smoke scattered into the depths of the fog.

They were very far away, at a distance one could never reach on foot.

Moreover, Duncan doubted that even if he could teleport thousands of miles, he still would not be able to reach the place where those three pieces of wreckage had fallen.

Because this fog only recorded something that had happened in the distant past.

A faint warmth came from his palm. Duncan lowered his head and saw a brass key lying quietly in his hand. The handle at the end of the brass key, shaped like an infinity symbol, was giving off a soft glow. The fine lines on it slowly moved in the light and formed symbols he could recognize:

“The New Hope”

“Boom!”

A phantom roar suddenly exploded in his mind. The fog around him vanished into darkness. Then light and shadow shifted, and the familiar scene of his bedroom returned to his sight.

Duncan steadied himself and felt his senses quickly return. He lowered his head again and saw the brass key still lying quietly in his hand.

The key was no longer warm or glowing. The fine lines on its handle no longer flowed. The characters that had floated before his eyes just now felt like bubbles that had vanished with the end of a dream.

But Duncan still clearly remembered everything he had seen. He remembered that name—

The New Hope.

He frowned, quickly stood up, and took the notebook from the desk. He wrote down the words “The New Hope”, then hurriedly jotted a rough record of the scene he had seen in the “vision”. Only after he had written everything down did he breathe a little easier and sit back the way he had at the start.

In this world, it was unlikely that anything could affect his memory and thoughts, but he still had to keep the necessary caution.

After finishing the record, Duncan fell into deep thought.

He did not know the causes and consequences of what he had seen. He did not know what kind of link or “transformation” process existed between the black data device in the vision and the brass key. He did not know where the fallen ark-ship was now. But he believed that everything he had seen was not some confused hallucination.

It was something that had really happened once. It was real history that had taken place in this world in the distant past, in years before even the Age of City-States had begun.

A huge ship had crashed into this world. It exploded as it fell, and its wreckage scattered across the mortal world.

Duncan let out a soft breath.

He put the key away close to his body, raised his head, and looked out the window at Vision 001, which had almost completely sunk down to the sea’s surface.

“This time… things just got a lot more interesting.”