Chapter 483

Chapter 483: Frostholm Queen.

At the center of that magnificent bed, the “master of the room” who had just woken up leaned against the pillows and studied Duncan, the uninvited guest, with curious eyes. That silver-white hair and those violet eyes were so familiar.

Duncan had blurted out the name “Alice” without thinking. The deep, hoarse “voice” that sounded like a dull echo came straight from the chest of this shell of a body.

But then he frowned a little. He woke from that instant of surprise and shock and looked thoughtfully at the lady.

She was not Alice. Though her face was exactly the same, her bearing was totally different. More importantly, Alice would not appear in a place like this. So the greater chance was that…

“Ray Nora,” Duncan guessed the woman’s identity. He looked into her eyes with a questioning gaze and spoke slowly: “Frostholm Queen?”

“It feels like a long time since I last heard that title,” the lady who had just awakened said with a smile. She adjusted how she leaned on the bed and looked at him with curiosity: “Who are you? How did you come straight into this room without opening that door?”

“Door?” Duncan frowned. Hearing her mention that word again stirred his curiosity, and he asked: “What door?”

The lady did not answer. She only raised a hand and pointed to a spot not far away.

Duncan looked in the direction of her finger and saw a closed door carved with complex patterns. It was clearly the bedroom’s main door.

“Anyone who can come here is either a servant of this house or a guest who holds the key,” she said calmly. “You are clearly not a servant of this house, and you do not have the key in your hand.”

Duncan’s heart gave a jolt—the key! She had just mentioned the key!

“The key you are talking about, is it a brass key used to wind up a doll?” He turned back, keeping his voice calm to hide every ripple in his feelings, and asked: “Are you really Ray Nora, Queen of Frostholm?”

“I am,” Ray Nora said with a smile, and she shook her head slightly. “But you still have not answered my question—who are you?”

Duncan drew back the emotion in his eyes. As he quickly sorted his thoughts, he spoke at an unhurried pace: “You may call me Duncan.”

He gave only his first name and did not mention the more famous family name. Yet when Ray Nora heard it, her eyes widened a little at once. Then an even brighter smile appeared on her face as she said: “Ah, so it is you—Captain Duncan, the legend. It makes much more sense that you could come into this room. But… I truly did not expect you to look like this.”

Duncan paused at her words, then lowered his head and looked at his body.

It was still that extremely strange pitch-black human shape, like a rough husk the Creator had not yet had time to refine when making humans. This abstract form could not be called “friendly-looking” at all.

“This is only a temporary avatar form,” Duncan said offhand, with a bit of awkwardness. Then he noticed something strange in her manner and asked: “You do not seem very surprised. Did you already know I would come?”

“I did not know, but I lost the ability to feel ‘surprise’ many years ago,” Ray Nora said calmly. “If you always see too many things you should not see, if you learn all kinds of strange forms this world can take, always experience death before it comes, and fall into dreams before you truly sleep, then you will lose that ability sooner or later too…”

She smiled. Her light tone sounded as if she was only talking about the weather as she said: “Even if this world still holds things no one can foresee, numbness will let you face every surprise calmly.”

Duncan looked into Ray Nora’s eyes. Behind her calm attitude, he recalled all kinds of information about this Frostholm Queen—

It was said that Ray Nora was a born psionic. Her gift of Spiritual Insight let her speak with many unseen beings. People said she could even have Foresight of the future and know Truth out of thin air…

As he sorted this information in his mind, Duncan’s expression did not change. He walked over to one corner of the room, dragged a chair to the big bed, sat down, and looked seriously into the Frostholm Queen’s eyes: “I have many questions. I hope you can answer them.”

“I also have many questions,” Ray Nora said with a smile. “It has been far too long since I last talked with anyone. A Visitor is very precious to me—so if you are willing to answer my questions, I am willing to answer yours.”

“Very well, then I will not be polite,” Duncan said, getting straight to the point. “What exactly is this place? Why are you here?”

“Ah, such a hard question right at the start…” Ray Nora frowned, as if she truly struggled over how to put it into words. After a moment, she spoke slowly: “To explain it in a way that is easier to understand, this is a ‘drifting place’. It is not one fixed location. It is a ‘link’ between many places. Do you see the darkness at the edge of the room? The view outside can sometimes change into other shapes—the right conditions can link it to the right ‘place’. But for me, it has only one use. It lets my dreams link to the Deep Sea under Frostholm.”

“Do you need me to explain what the Deep Sea under Frostholm is?” she asked.

“No need,” Duncan said with a shake of his head. “Keep going. Why are you here?”

“All right. It seems you already know what lies in the Deep Sea,” Ray Nora said with a soft breath. “I stay here to hold a dream and make sure the being in that Deep Sea keeps sleeping.”

Duncan’s eyes grew serious as he asked: “The Abyssal Lord?”

“…It seems you know more than I thought,” Ray Nora said, giving Duncan a quiet look. “But you are wrong. Though it indeed comes from that ‘Crawling King’, the being in the Deep Sea is not the true Abyssal Lord. Strictly speaking, it is only a replica.”

In a flash, Duncan remembered a line he had seen earlier in that strange “dark space”: “Cluster Controller has begun copying itself.”

So the giant “pillar” in the Deep Sea really was not the true body of the Abyssal Lord. It was only a replicant that had somehow appeared in the Mortal Realm!

So the exact situation was this: a replicant of an Elder God had pierced the “original city-state Blueprint” in the Deep Sea. The power that leaked out from it had caused all the later events. And the root of it all… was the Abyssal Lord’s complete runaway state?

Could he take it this way: before this replicant appeared in the Mortal Realm, the Abyssal Lord had not been in a runaway state at all? Had its condition worsened bit by bit over long ages until it reached this point?

Then if he followed this line of thought further… what about the other deities? If the “terrible Eldritch Gods” in people’s eyes had also gone from stable to a runaway state, then what of the “Four Gods” in the mortal world? Would they also go into a runaway state? Or… had they already started to slip into that runaway state?

Duncan thought of Pland and Frostholm, both under the protection of the Storm Goddess and the God of Death, running into trouble one after another. He thought of Vision 001, which had already started to fail. This clear sign of large systems breaking down bit by bit—was it proof that the whole world was falling into a runaway state?

When that unresolved guess found confirmation, a flood of tangled thoughts rushed into his mind. In a heartbeat, Duncan linked them to the many events that had happened on the Boundless Sea during this time.

Right then, Ray Nora’s voice came again from the other side and cut off his storm of thoughts: “Now it is my turn to ask questions.”

Duncan quickly gathered his thoughts and put them in order: “Ask.”

“How did you come here?” Ray Nora asked. Curiosity filled her eyes.

“In the Deep Sea under Frostholm, I found that ‘replica’, and at its break point I found an ‘entrance’ that could lead here,” Duncan said without hiding anything. “As for how I came down this deep… I rode the city-state of Frostholm’s submersible.”

“A submersible?” Ray Nora frowned, but soon she seemed to guess something and said: “Ah, so they did build a new one in secret after all…”

“You knew the rebel government would build a new submersible after your… death?” Duncan asked with some surprise. “From what I know, the Abyssal Trench Project was the root of that rebellion. They also used it as the reason to ‘execute’ you.”

“They would,” Ray Nora said with a small smile. “Because they are Frostholm people.”

For a moment, Duncan said nothing. He only watched this former Queen in silence.

She went on calmly: “Frostholm people never die quiet and meek. When the darkest hour comes, we will burn everything to live on. So when my Abyssal Trench Project went into a runaway state and the city-state fell into a crisis of survival, there had to be rebels who rose up, overthrew me, and made sure more people could live. And when they found the secret in the Deep Sea, they would surely build submersibles just as I did and try to solve this problem.

“They will improve the machines, slow down the plan, and learn from my extreme mistakes. They will try to do all of this in a gentler, less harmful way. And if they still fail, then new rebels will appear. The ones who come after will cut off the heads of those who could not do the job and then try yet another way… They will keep challenging the cold darkness in the Deep Sea.”

“It will go on until the last Frostholm person dies, or until this darkness clears.”

She lifted her head and looked into Duncan’s eyes with a calm, almost divine gaze. On his strange, frightening rough husk of a body, only those eyes still held a trace of human light.

“I only did not expect that the one who came down in a submersible would be… the legendary Captain Duncan, and clearly a Captain Duncan who has gained his reason,” she said softly. “It seems my successors are even more extreme than I was back then?”

“…They failed,” Duncan said after a few seconds of silence, shaking his head slightly. “A disaster destroyed the city-state government. They did not restart the Abyssal Trench Project before things went into a runaway state. The only good news is that the disaster finally calmed, and we found that submersible as ‘spoils of war’ after everything settled.”