Chapter 496

Chapter 496: Duncan’s Bold Idea

As the eerie green flame lit the cabin, the distant sound of waves outside the hull slowly seemed to come from a hazy, dreamlike place, and the secrets from the endless Deep Sea, from that dark and frozen region, seeped into everyone’s mind like terrifying shadows.

The only shelters mortals had on the Boundless Sea were all built on the corpses of unspeakable giant beasts—their withered tentacles hung from the undersides of the city-states, and their pale, horrible eyes cast a gaze into the bottomless ocean trench.

All living beings in the mortal world were Spawn of the Abyssal Lord, and the flesh of the Elder Gods formed everything in existence. What had happened in Frostholm had not been a simple invasion, but the Elder Gods “waking” from their own creations.

The Four Gods were not necessarily a stable embodiment of order. They too might fall into a corrupted runaway state, and a similar “runaway state” might already have happened more than once in this world. The reason the mortal world was now under the protection of the Four Gods might simply be that, among all the Gods, only they still remained awake.

The catastrophe in Frostholm would not be the last. As the condition of the Abyssal Lord worsened, and as the flaws in the “creation Blueprint” grew over time, similar “awakenings” were very likely to break out across the world. Wrong “replicants” of the Elder Gods would crawl out of the Deep Sea, out from the depths beneath the city-states, and even… out from inside every mortal.

With a calm, steady tone, Duncan told his followers everything he had learned in the Deep Sea, and everything he had worked out from the information they already had.

After that, the cabin fell into a long, deathly silence.

Even thick-skulled Alice and carefree Shirley sat quietly for once, and they realized how serious the problem was… probably.

After a long time, Vanna finally broke the silence. She took a deep breath, a gloomy look gathering on her face like a dark cloud: “If I hadn’t heard this from you personally, I would have taken every line of this information as the mad ravings of a Ender…”

“Even the most deranged Ender probably couldn’t make up something on this level,” Morris said slowly. He lifted his pipe to his mouth, noticed that the tobacco inside had gone out at some point, and set it down again with a bitter smile. “Ah, right, the Enders… and the ones who dealt with the Queen of Frostholm. One of the craziest things in this world is that among those Subspace believers, there are actually some who can stay clear-headed…”

Tyrian frowned, stayed silent for a long time, then finally could not help looking up: “Father, is all this information real?”

As soon as he said it, he felt he had asked a stupid question, but right now this stupid question felt necessary—everyone at the long table probably had the same thought in mind.

“At the very least, this is indeed what I saw and heard,” Duncan said calmly. “Of course, limited information can be misleading. Even the clearest clues can be interpreted in several ways.

“Besides, the Queen of Frostholm might not have told us the whole truth. Even if she did, she could still be wrong herself—we can only use the information we have right now to work out the possibility that is closest to the truth.”

“The possibility that is closest to the truth right now…” Tyrian repeated in a low voice, then asked, “Did the Queen mention what signs there would be if another city-state went through an ‘Elder Gods awakening’ like Frostholm?”

“No,” Duncan shook his head. “She couldn’t confirm the mechanism of this ‘awakening’ either. Maybe the only way is to enter the Abyssal Deep Sea itself, and check the true state of the Abyssal Lord directly.”

As soon as he finished, several pairs of eyes in the room turned at once toward Dog, who was hunched in a corner.

“Don’t look at me!” Dog almost jumped up on the spot, its huge skull shaking back and forth. “It’s not possible. I can’t get anywhere near the Lord, and I definitely can’t take people in there…”

“But you can open a ‘passage’ to the Abyssal Deep Sea, and you can even take Shirley through that passage to run,” Duncan said, looking seriously at the only Abyssal demon present. “You also said Abyssal Hounds are a kind of demon born near the Lord. Your ‘hometown’ is right next to the Lord.”

“That’s a shallow passage. It only skims past the outermost edge of the Abyssal Deep Sea. It’s meant for running away,” Dog said. With everyone staring at it, it hesitated for two seconds, then had no choice but to spill these secrets—secrets that had been its and Shirley’s trump card for staying alive for many years. “The Abyssal Deep Sea is far more complicated and strange than you think. It isn’t one whole. The different ‘zones’ are not connected in a continuous way…

“From the shallow layer you can see the deep-layer zones, but without the right method, you wouldn’t ‘walk’ to your destination even in ten thousand years. There, ‘distance’ is an illusion, and ‘movement’ is only a false appearance…

“I have already been ‘banished’ from the Abyssal Deep Sea. I can’t explain the exact principle—maybe because I grew a ‘heart’. Many years ago, I already lost the ability to open a passage that leads to the Lord’s side. And besides that, I am now very unwelcome among the ‘locals’ over there. Even if I only skim past through the safe part of the shallow layer, I will draw countless demons to attack me…

“And even putting all that aside, I can’t just take any ‘person’ through. Abyssal demons can only take the person linked to them by a symbiotic pact through a passage—I can only take Shirley, not anyone else.”

Dog rattled off this long string of words, then carefully looked around at everyone—especially at Duncan’s reaction. It shrank its neck and added: “I’m not making excuses, Captain. You heard it yourself, there really are a lot of problems.”

Duncan was not angered by this long list of difficulties. He only thought seriously for a while, then asked, deep in thought: “So you mean the space of the Abyssal Deep Sea is discontinuous?”

“…You can probably think of it that way,” Dog said after thinking for a moment and nodding. “I can’t explain the details clearly—lately I’ve been studying Professor Brandall’s book, ‘Three Conjectures on Asymmetric Space-Time’. Maybe once I finish it, I can explain it to you better.”

Duncan did not pay much attention to Dog’s last sentence. He went on thinking, then asked another question: “But I remember you once mentioned that in the years when the Vanished was in full runaway state, it smashed through the entire Abyssal Deep Sea.”

Dog’s expression—though its expression was always rather abstract—changed at once. Its whole skeletal frame froze with a creak.

Duncan thought Dog simply did not remember, so he added a few details: “You said it fell from the Mortal Realm toward Subspace, then rose back from Subspace, oscillating between the realms and passing through them again and again. Each time, it smashed through the whole Spirit Realm and the Abyssal Deep Sea. In that process, didn’t it basically break through the ‘spatial fault lines’ inside the Abyssal Deep Sea?”

This time it was not only Dog whose expression turned abstract. Everyone in the cabin now wore a striking look—an eerie feeling of horror hung over them all, even over Lucretia on the other side of the scrying crystal.

“C-Captain!” Dog’s raspy voice finally came out, and every bone in its body was trembling. “Please don’t say something that scary… You’re not really planning to… to smash it again, are you…?”

“Father, please be careful,” even Lucretia, who had hardly spoken and still seemed rather distant, could not help breaking the silence. She stared at Duncan’s side of the scrying crystal with a tense face, as if afraid that her father would turn back into that cold, merciless terror of a “God” at any moment. “Letting the Vanished return to a runaway state to smash open the gate to the Abyssal Deep Sea is absolutely not a good idea. Even as a ‘research project’… that would be a bit too extreme.”

Duncan had not expected such a strong reaction from everyone after he voiced just one bold idea, so he shook his head: “Relax. I’m not about to run such an extreme ‘test’—I’ve always been a cautious man.”

Everyone clearly let out a breath of relief.

But then Duncan changed the subject and added: “Still, even from a cautious point of view, this ‘old event’ gives me an idea. Certain properties of the Vanished can ignore the spatial fault lines inside the Abyssal Deep Sea. I will do some research based on that and see if I can open a door to that place while keeping things safe…”

Everyone’s hearts leaped back into their throats…

But at least this time no one raised as strong an objection as before. Only Morris and Lucretia, speaking as scholars, once again stressed the need for ‘safety’ and ‘caution’—judging from their attitude, they were clearly still worried that one day, on a whim, the captain might really steer the Vanished straight down into the Abyssal Deep Sea…

Luckily, Duncan moved on to the next topic soon after.

“Aside from the state of the Abyssal Lord, there is something else that concerns me more right now,” he said, rubbing his chin as he thought. “Those Enders—in strict terms, those ones who still have reason and act in a way completely opposite to ordinary cultists.”

He turned his head and looked at Tyrian.

“You once told Vanna that three Enders came to visit the Vanished and spoke with me through the whole night?”

Tyrian straightened at once, looking a bit awkward: “Yes, Father. Back then, I still could not confirm your… ‘state’, so I talked with Miss Vanna about some of your ‘old stories’.”

“It’s fine,” Duncan waved his hand. “I don’t remember much about those years, so it’s a good thing that you do.”

He calmly emphasized again that his “amnesia” came from the influence of Subspace, while also watching Tyrian’s and Lucretia’s expressions. Only then did he go on: “What I mean is, I have a feeling we will have to deal with those ‘sane Enders’ again sooner or later.”

Morris spoke up without thinking: “Why do you think so?”

“Because they seem dedicated to taking part in ‘historical events’ with far-reaching impact,” Duncan said slowly as he shifted in his seat. “And the disturbance caused by the Vanished… has been getting bigger and bigger.”