Chapter 51

Chapter 51: Dual Operation

This world had gone through astonishing upheavals. With the “Great Annihilation” as a turning point, even the basic laws of the world had been turned upside down. The Deep Sea Era after the Great Annihilation and the Age of Order before it could almost be seen as two completely different “worlds”.

But even so, some people still worked tirelessly, sorting through all the historical materials passed down since the Great Annihilation. They tried to piece together the true shape of history from the broken and even contradictory archives of the various city-states.

Unfortunately, maybe because the break in transmission had been too complete, or because the contradictions between the city-states’ records were too chaotic, people still had not found any relatively complete and trustworthy history from before the Great Annihilation.

No one knew what the world of the Age of Order had really looked like.

But fortunately, the world after the ancient kingdom of Critt had left behind a relatively clear historical line. City-states on the Boundless Sea had risen and fallen, split and merged again and again, but the continuation of civilization itself had never been cut off. The memory of that ancient kingdom had remained, whether written in books, carved into stone, or passed down generation after generation in old, hidden families and societies. Much had been lost, but a rough thread still remained.

Scholars believed that the reason civilization in the Deep Sea Era could survive under such harsh conditions and endure to this day owed more than half of its credit to the sacred miracle that shone upon the world:

Vision 001, the Sun.

This was the Vision with the widest influence and greatest power that humans currently knew of. In fact, because its scale was so vast, and its existence felt so “natural”, many scholars argued about whether the Sun itself was really a Vision or a natural phenomenon. But the very first recorders after the fall of Critt, the survivors of that ancient kingdom, had simply called it Vision 001. That old number had been handed down ever since and had never changed.

Clearly, not all Visions were terrifying and harmful. Vision 001 brought safety to the world for half of every day. In the daytime under the Sun’s light, the corruption from the world’s deep layers was almost completely held below the surface of the sea. Only because of this stable daylight had the city-state civilizations been able to develop to what they were today.

According to records left by the ancient kingdom of Critt, after the Deep Sea Era began and before Vision 001 appeared, for a full century the entire world had been shrouded in the veil of night. The cold, dim glow of the World’s Wound had shone on the Boundless Sea for one hundred years.

So the people of the ancient kingdom had called their land “Eternal Night”, and even used it as the name of their era.

Duncan stood at the narrow window, deep in thought as he looked at the world under the sunlight.

What had the world before the Great Annihilation really been like?

Before those terrible hundred years of Eternal Night arrived, had this world once been lit by the Sun’s light?

It most likely had. No matter how incomplete or contradictory the ancient records of the various city-states were, they all agreed on one point: the Age of Order had been an era of light, safety, and prosperity.

But no matter what, that bright and prosperous era was gone. The Boundless Sea of today was lit by Vision 001. Everyone knew this and felt grateful for the daylight it brought.

In such an age, those cultists who worshipped the “true Sun” of ancient times, and even used that to attack the Sun now hanging in the sky, calling it the “false Sun”, naturally seemed especially twisted and extreme, and were rejected by the world.

They were not only attacking the Sun in the sky. They were attacking the very thing human civilization in the Deep Sea Era relied on to struggle and survive to this day.

Yet Duncan knew that the Sun those cultists worshipped very likely was the true form of the Sun that had existed before the Great Annihilation.

In a way, those cultists had grasped a part of real history. Sadly, in this age, that truth had become the very root of their madness.

Duncan did not believe their grand wish could succeed. He did not believe they could really use live sacrificial rites to create a blazing, fusing star. The distortions of this world went far beyond imagination. The state of the Deep Sea Era could never be explained simply by “the star was gone”.

The night sky here did not hold a single star.

Duncan went back to his room and closed the door. He waved at the cabinet beside him, calling AI down from where the bird had been grinding its beak on the cabinet top.

The pigeon landed on his shoulder and tilted its head. “Who is calling the fleet?”

Duncan ignored the bird. He walked to the bed and, from the corner of the mattress, took out the Sun emblem he had hidden earlier. Then he thought for a moment, went back to the cabinet, opened the door, and found the drawer where the liquor was stored. He took out two bottles of strong liquor.

Something seemed to be stuck to the bottles. Curious, Duncan turned one in his hand and saw a small slip of paper. On it, in Nina’s handwriting, were the words: “Drink less.”

The note seemed to have been stuck there a long time.

Every bottle had such a note, and not a single one had ever worked.

Duncan chuckled, closed the drawer and the cabinet, then took the two bottles and the Sun emblem back to the bed. He poked AI again so the bird could see what he was holding.

“If you can, try to bring these onto the Vanished.”

The pigeon flapped its wings at once and let out a proud cry. “Dear, express delivery, postage paid!”

Duncan nodded and lay down in a comfortable position, starting to prepare for the crossing.

He had been away from the Vanished for too long. The ship would be fine without him watching it, but as captain, he could not keep himself locked in this room forever.

Nina had classes this afternoon, and after class she had a few other things to do. She would be busy until very late. Duncan had already talked with her and asked her to stay one more night in the school dormitory, and come back tomorrow afternoon after school.

During this time, Duncan would just take the chance to study the details of Spirit Realm travel. At the same time, he would test the plan he had thought of before: to see whether he could control both bodies at once without completely cutting off the Soul Projection.

From how he sensed the Vanished while he was “on this side”, this should be possible.

Now that he occupied this “fresh” body, the link between him and the true body on the Vanished was clearly much stronger and more stable. That gave him confidence and inspiration.

After his thoughts slowly settled, Duncan let out a soft breath. A tiny, ghostly emerald flame burned to life on his shoulder. With a sharp crackling sound, the pigeon AI turned into its Undead-bird form in the blink of an eye, and the brass spirit compass in its chest snapped open.

Boundless darkness, glowing lines, flickering starlight. The familiar feeling surged over him like a tide, and the route back to the Vanished appeared as the brightest route in that darkness.

Duncan’s consciousness rushed along that route, and in the blink of an eye he felt his main awareness awaken in the captain’s cabin of the Vanished.

But before he completely left that dark space, he forced himself to “brake” by relying on his control over the fire of his spirit form and his own soul, trying to keep his link with that “antique shop” room…

On the Vanished, in the captain’s cabin, Duncan slowly opened his eyes.

He looked down at his hands, then around him. What he saw were familiar furnishings. In his ears came the familiar sound of waves.

He slowly rose from the chair. In the depths of his awareness, though, the sensations of another body were clearly coming through.

A faint smile slowly appeared on Duncan’s face. Then, following his own understanding, he began to use that distant link to feel and control his other body in the antique shop.

He tried several times.

In the city-state of Pland, on the second floor of Duncan’s antique shop, the “antique shopkeeper” lying quietly on the bed suddenly opened his eyes.

The next second, that body on the bed began to turn its head bit by bit with a stiff expression, looking left and right around the room like a zombie. Then it slowly moved its hands and feet, as if someone were forcing a rusty machine to move, and finally managed to get its limbs working.

If an outsider had seen this scene, they would probably have been scared into running straight to the nearest constable to report that someone here was possessed by a Malevolent Spirit.

From another point of view, that report would not have been wrong.

In the captain’s cabin of the Vanished, Duncan let these strange thoughts spin in his mind while he awkwardly used a kind of “remote view” to control that body and slowly make it move.

It was very hard. To command a body with only a distant link while his consciousness was not inside it was harder than asking a beginner to control a twenty-eight-jointed Puppet on strings.

But after many attempts, he finally managed to make the body in the city-state of Pland sit up on the bed.

The next second, the picture coming from that distant body in his mind spun wildly.

The body had fallen face-first onto the floor.

Duncan sighed. “Alright, looks like I’ll have to practice for quite a while.”