Chapter 555

Chapter 555: It Lives

The corridor in the underground archive became quiet.

This place lay under the highest-level City-State University of Lightwind Harbor. Compared to city-states managed by the Deep Sea or the Church of Death, this place was like the central Cathedral of the whole city. Any sealed object held in a place like this was of course far from ordinary. It had to be at least an Anomaly in the top hundred, like Alice, or a vessel of corruption with a similar level of threat.

Anomalies and corruption vessels of this level shared one trait: the features of a living thing.

They might have incredible thinking abilities. They might have ways to speak with people. They might be able to move and try to escape. No matter how strong or weak these “living traits” were, they at least reached the instinct to seek benefit and avoid harm, just like Alice back then, who had instinctively behaved herself even when she had not known Duncan at all.

In short, they had a bit of a brain. Not much, but they were afraid of dying.

Duncan liked things that had a bit of a brain. They made many things easier.

Lucretia looked over with a touch of awe. Nina and Shirley first widened their eyes in shock, then lifted their chins in pride. Duncan had no idea what they had to be so proud about.

Ted Riel was stunned for a moment. His gaze at Duncan turned complicated. It did not hold the fear of an ordinary person, but it also held no wariness or hostility. He seemed to be thinking about something. After a few seconds, he suddenly said: “While you’re staying in Lightwind Harbor, you can come walk around here more often.”

“Oh?” Duncan was a bit surprised. “Other city-states, when dealing with me for the first time, have all wished I would stay far away. A place like their central Cathedral would be heavily guarded right away. Why are you inviting me here instead?”

Ted raised his hand and pointed at the now quiet corridor: “If you’re here, I can take a vacation.”

Duncan: “…?”

Yet the Truth Keeperdid not care about anyone’s subtle reaction to his words. He just said it, then walked on toward the deeper part of the corridor.

The others followed. This time Duncan fell back a few steps on purpose and walked beside Lucretia. He lowered his voice and asked: “I don’t remember anything about this Truth Keeper. Has he always been like this? I mean… this feeling like he has worked overtime his whole life.”

Lucretia also lowered her voice: “Lord Ted is in charge of the graduating class right now.”

Duncan froze at once: “…The leader of the Guardians in a city-state has to do that too? I remember Vanna, back when she was an Inquisitor, didn’t have extra work like this.”

“divine gifts are closely tied to the words and actions of believers. Studying and spreading knowledge are part of how Rahm’s believers ‘carry out holy work’. Because of this, the whole priest system of the Truth Academy is built in the form of an academy. High-ranked priests must serve as mentors and teach students. The higher the rank, the heavier and harder the teaching duties are. So the Truth Keeperhas to take on a graduating class, and it’s the hardest class to handle.”

Duncan: “…”

As he listened to Lucretia talk about this strange new knowledge, Duncan felt something odd rise in his heart. He could not help lifting his head to look at the Truth Keeper walking ahead.

Ted Riel, walking in front, sensed the gaze at once. He turned and glanced back, a hint of doubt rising in the Truth Keeper’s mind.

This Captain Duncan, whose memories had been damaged by Subspace and who had acted like a stranger to him just now, was suddenly looking this way with a gaze full of inexplicable understanding, nostalgia, and sympathy. Why?

After a brief moment of doubt, Ted Riel shook his head and stopped in front of a door near the end of the corridor.

“Here we are. containment room 24.” He raised his hand and pointed at the door in front of them.

Many Sacred Sigils were drawn on this door. It seemed to be made of black steel, with tiny silver-white metal grains inlaid in its surface. Shirley looked at the door a few times in curiosity, then felt as if her gaze was being pulled into that deep black and those silver specks. A feeling like her senses were drifting out of her body rose in her. She got scared and quickly pulled her eyes away.

Nina raised her head and looked back at the corridor they had come from, then looked around containment room 24. She frowned in curiosity: “There isn’t even one guard here? In a place this important and dangerous, don’t you assign anyone to stand watch?”

“There are wardens at the necessary Nodes, but near the containment rooms themselves, the fewer people the better,” Ted Riel said. He gave the curious girl a glance as he explained: “Some Anomalies have the ability to parasitize minds and jump between them. If there are too many wardens near a containment room, it actually gives those things a chance to break out.”

“For most Anomalies and corruption-tainted items, the right sealing method is far more important than the number of guards,” Lucretia added from the side. “A stone placed in the right spot or some metal powder scattered on the ground can keep some Anomalies quiet for years. But one extra person might let a formless power break out of containment. So in many sealing facilities, the core area actually has the fewest people. Most of the sealing measures take effect on their own with no one around.”

“The guards posted outside the core area are there less to deal with the monsters inside and more to deal with intruders from outside, to keep anyone from coming in and breaking the containment conditions,” Ted Riel said with a nod. He put his hand on the door of the sample containment room. With a light click from somewhere, the door opened. “But… this sample we brought in this time is the most unusual one I have ever seen. I’m not even sure if we should keep it in a sample containment room or in some other place.”

The door opened. A bright but not very large room appeared before them. Complex and precise holy symbols were drawn all over the floor and walls. Oil lamps treated with special oils and gas lamps on the walls were so many that it was surprising. Other than that, the room held no extra furnishings or furniture. Only in the center stood a square platform, and on it lay that strange “sample”.

A member of the clergy stood by the platform. He wore an academy robe and a strange black mask on his face. Heavy shackles bound his hands together. He seemed to be the warden of this containment room. When Ted Riel led the group into the room, this “warden” with the odd shackles on his hands looked up, let his gaze rest on Ted, and gave a small nod.

“Has the sample shown any signs of becoming active?” Ted asked.

The warden silently shook his head.

“Any sign of the shackles opening?” Ted asked again.

The warden lifted his hands to show the shackles on his wrists to the Truth Keeper, then shook his head again.

“Good. Thank you. Go take a rest,” Ted said, looking relieved. He nodded slightly. “I’ll take over here. Remember, you must personally put the ‘shackles’ back on the ‘statue’s’ hands. Do not try to switch places with the statue. Do not respond to its ‘calls for help’ in any way.”

The warden nodded without a word and turned to leave the room.

“Those shackles are part of Anomaly-087, the ‘Statue’,” Ted Riel explained to Duncan and the others after the warden left. “Through a special ‘contract’ ritual, we can borrow the shackles from the Statue for a limited time. Anyone who wears the shackles cannot speak, and while wearing them can bind and restrain one chosen entity in front of them. We usually use it to help control newly discovered dangerous items whose nature is still unclear.”

“For example… an intruder from the mortal realm with a mysterious origin who suddenly appeared in the marketplace.”

Lucretia muttered softly, then looked up at the strange mass on the platform in the center of the room. It seemed quiet and still and had a dull iron-gray metallic sheen.

That thing looked like a lump of steel that had cooled and hardened. Yet the lines and contours on its surface still held a strange feeling of softness and smoothness, as if it had once writhed like some kind of soft-bodied creature and then rapidly solidified into this shape. On its smooth “skin” there were, here and there, some angular bulges. Those bulges gave the feeling that…

it was as if something inside the mass was trying to break out.

“These bulges appeared after the sample was brought into the containment room,” Ted Riel explained. “In the few minutes after it arrived, it suddenly became very active again, and its surface changed a lot. We thought it might try to break out of the seals here and even considered sending it to a higher-level containment sector. But after those few minutes, its activity dropped sharply again and kept falling to what you see now. It’s almost just a solid piece of metal.”

“Almost?” Duncan caught the key word at once.

“Yes, almost, because it is actually still ‘alive’,” Ted Riel said with a nod. “In the very core of this mass there is always a faint active ‘signal’. Even though the whole thing has solidified like this, that core is still moving. You can even hear it -”

As he spoke, the Truth Keeper opened his strange book again. He turned to a page and tapped it lightly with his finger.

A device like a stethoscope appeared out of thin air in the air above the page.

Ted Riel tucked the book back under his arm, picked up the “stethoscope”, and hung it around his neck. Then he carefully pressed the other end to the surface of the “solid metal” mass.

In the next second, a rhythmic sound echoed through the whole room –

Thump, thump, thump…

“It has a heartbeat,” Ted Riel said as he raised his head. “Inside this mass of metal, there is a heart that is still alive.”