Chapter 479

Chapter 479: “People”

With the low rumble coming from the ballast tank, the submersible passed beneath that upside?down, dead world and kept diving toward an even more unknown and more dreadful abyss.

The forest of tentacles hanging from the bottom of the city and that huge pale eyeball vanished completely from the searchlight’s beam. Endless open dark water once more filled the view outside the porthole. Only the small points of light that sometimes floated up from the depths of the dark—bubbles or drifting motes catching the light—reminded Duncan that he was inside a submersible sailing through the sea, and not floating in empty, lonely outer space.

But he could not help making a strange comparison. If he only thought about them as “unknown and secretly terrifying”, what real difference was there between empty outer space and the dark Deep Sea filled with billions of tons of water?

The steam core drove the propellers. A low noise came from the machinery compartment. The row of pressure gauges in front of the control console hissed now and then, showing the submersible’s current state. Duncan slowed the descent to keep sudden pressure changes from damaging the hull, then turned his head and looked at the silent Gatekeeper standing beside him.

“Agatha, what are you thinking about?”

“I am thinking… when the pioneers carried out the Abyssal Trench Project, did they also see what we saw?” Agatha said slowly. “The truth under the city, the unnameable remains, the tentacles and the eyeball hanging down into the Deep Sea… Before the whole project went into a runaway state, in all those dives, was there really no one who, out of curiosity—or even just recklessness—looked back once at what was ‘above’?”

Duncan did not speak for a moment. In his mind, he recalled the secrets about the Abyssal Trench Project that he had once heard from Tyrian.

Even Frostholm’s General, who had once been deeply trusted by the Queen, seemed not to know the full shape of the Abyssal Trench Project. Had no one really discovered the truth under the city? Or had this truth, too terrible to face, been buried away, just like the secret in the Boiling Gold mine?

After a few seconds of silence, Duncan said softly: “Maybe someone really did look back. But what they saw was fated never to be written down. You are the Guardian of the City-State. You understand better than I do what this truth would mean.”

“…Many people would go mad,” Agatha said slowly. “Even without the forces of the Deep Sea acting on them, a single terrifying truth would be enough to trigger widespread nightmares and panic. Then those nightmares and that panic would take form and could link with the ‘truth’ under the city in ways no one could predict. In the worst case… ‘it’ might come back to life.”

“Mortals live in a dark sea full of horrors. Even the footing under their feet is built on twisted, grotesque remains. Dullness and blindness are the only grace all beings receive. They let most ordinary people stay far from truths that would drive them insane. And in most cases, so long as a truth is not noticed, it will never enter our Mortal Realm at all. But the key problem is that there are always ‘some cases’.”

“…Are you going to make our discovery public?”

“At least for now, I will not tell any ordinary person news this shocking. Most people’s calm, simple lives do not need to be disturbed by it. But there is a saying you must have heard—‘Once you know it exists, it has already become part of the fate of the mortal world.’”

Agatha nodded and said: “The second law of Anomalies and Visions: anything that has been known can never be erased. The truth under the city has already appeared before us. The link in fate has already been formed. We will have to deal with it again sooner or later.”

Duncan nodded lightly and said nothing more.

Just then, a strange, abrupt, low “thump?thump” sound suddenly echoed through the submersible, cutting off his and Agatha’s thoughts.

The sound… was like something knocking on the outside of the submersible’s hull.

Agatha was startled at once by the sound. She jerked her head up in shock and said: “Did you hear that? It sounded like someone knocking outside…”

Duncan also jumped at the sudden sound. But he quickly glanced at the gauges on the console, frowned a little, and said in a low voice: “It should be water pressure. The huge pressure of the sea is making the submersible’s hull deform slightly. Don’t worry. This is normal and still within the design limits.”

Agatha seemed a little calmer, but she still looked tense.

Diving in the dark Deep Sea was an experience she had never had before. Even as a Gatekeeper with great power, she could not help feeling weak and nervous inside. It was a feeling she could hardly imagine while standing on the safe surface.

Here, far from the civilized world, the Gods’ divine blessing had already faded, and personal power meant very little. Between cold physical laws and unknown fate, there was only a narrow “gap”. Inside that gap was survival. Outside it was nothing but bones. And what they could rely on in that gap… was only a single steel sphere.

And the “thump?thump” that kept coming from the submersible’s hull kept reminding Agatha that, under the weight of billions of tons of water, it was as fragile as paper. What kept this shell from collapsing, besides the toughness of the steel itself, was only the delicate balance of its structure.

This was a kind of fear completely different from facing a heretic Eldritch God or a calamity born from a Vision. This kind of horror… was called “natural law”.

Maybe it was because she was nervous. Maybe it was because the silence inside the submersible and the sounds outside made the air feel too heavy. After a few seconds of quiet, Agatha started looking for something to say. She watched Duncan working the levers and cranks and said: “You have quite a talent for handling machines. I thought you would ask Governor Tyrian to send an engineer who knew how to pilot this thing. I did not expect you to be so skilled with it.”

“Skilled?” Duncan tilted his head a little. “But in fact I did not know how to operate it at all—at least, not before today.”

Agatha said: “…Ah?”

“But none of Tyrian’s people can pilot it either, not even the engineers who can read the blueprints,” Duncan shrugged and went on. “They could only tell me, from the drawings, what each lever is supposed to do. Once you know what each lever does, their ‘piloting skill’ is the same as mine. No one knows how to run it. No one has ever run it. This thing was built by the governors of Frostholm. Its controls are completely different from those of the submersibles from fifty years ago. And the people who truly understood it are all dead. That is the truth.”

Agatha stared, her mouth half open, suddenly not knowing what to say.

Duncan noticed her reaction and smiled as he shook his head: “But I still have at least two advantages over them. First, I do not need to worry about safety. No matter how bad things get, I can return safely. Second…”

He paused and looked down at the control stick in his hand and the console in front of him.

Fine ghostly green flame moved between the gears and rods. Holy steam and oil soaked this huge, complex machine, and the glow of the spirit flame filled that steam and oil.

The steam core was like a powerful heart, obeying Duncan’s every command.

Of course, it was not as “obedient and handy” as the Vanished. This soulless machine could only feed back some rigid, faint sensory signals at best. But that was already enough.

“Second, these machines are fairly obedient in my hands.”

Agatha felt the flames flowing.

The flames filled the steel and oil around her. They flowed through the hissing steam and gears, running inside this soulless machine like blood, just like the flames that flowed in her own body. The two seemed to echo each other in a faint resonance.

That thin stream of spirit flame even made her feel a bit safer here at the dark, icy seabed.

She lowered her head slightly, as if saluting Duncan.

But Duncan did not pay attention to Agatha’s reaction. His focus had already returned to the work of piloting.

After all, even though the fire of his spirit form let him sense this machine’s state better, he still had to do the actual operation himself.

He had no choice. The first time he had been pushed onto the helm of the Vanished, he had never captained a ship either. He had already grown used to this rhythm of life where, even if he did not know how some thing worked, he could only grit his teeth and charge ahead…

Just then, another knocking sound suddenly came from outside the hull—

“Thud.”

It was short and clear, like bumping into something, faintly different from the earlier “knocking” on the hull.

Agatha noticed the strange sound at once and said: “There it is again… is the hull deforming too?”

But Duncan suddenly frowned and put his hand on another lever.

“It does not sound like that… it is something else.”

He clearly felt that something really had hit the submersible’s hull. It had bumped it from below.

A hum of machinery came from inside the submersible. Outside the porthole, the searchlight swung slowly through the pitch?dark water. The propellers spun, adjusting the submersible’s heading.

At last, something appeared in the light outside the porthole.

A person.

Something that looked like a human… shape.

Agatha “saw” it at once. That human-shaped outline suddenly appeared in her sight, giving off a living faint glow, just like other people she saw on the surface.

Only this glow was a bit dimmer and much paler.

She let out a low cry: “Ah!”

Even Duncan’s eyes widened at once, and an “oh damn” almost slipped out of his mouth.

In the Deep Sea nearly a thousand meters down in the Boundless Sea, directly under the city-state of Frostholm, a person suddenly floated into the submersible’s porthole. The impact of that sight was almost no less than the forest of tentacles at the city’s base and the pale, giant eyeball between them!

And right after that, as the submersible shifted position and the light swept around, an even stranger, more terrifying, even hair?raising scene appeared before Duncan and Agatha—

People. Crowds of “people”, packed thickly together, floating in this deep, dark, icy water!