Chapter 56

Chapter 56: Lower Deck

This whole thing was just too creepy, so in the end, Duncan still could not bring himself to finish that bowl of fish soup.

After all, every time he thought about the doll’s head bobbing and rolling in the soup pot, he felt as if the whole dinner had gone sprinting straight toward something out of “The Grudge” and a Death God story. Even though Alice’s real style was actually silly and slapstick, her head dropping into the pot like that was still a bit too horrific…

The doll looked a little hurt. She stared at the food Duncan had set aside and grabbed the lace trim at the hem of her dress with both hands: “Captain, are you angry?”

Duncan, exhausted in both body and mind, glanced at the doll: “If there’s anything on the ship that makes you unhappy, you can just tell me directly…”

“Ah? I’m not unhappy at all…”

“Then try not to go into the kitc—” Duncan started to say offhand, but he quickly noticed Alice’s face growing more and more downcast. In the end he could only shake his head helplessly and change his tune: “Forget it. Your intentions were good. I really am happy about that. It’s just, with cooking… if you’re not used to it, accidents happen. Once you get familiar with it, it’ll be fine.”

Alice instantly perked up: “Then I can still try again later?”

Duncan held it in for a long moment, then finally nodded: “…Just be careful.”

He had thought it through. This cursed doll clearly could not stand just idling away her days on the Vanished. Maybe there really was some kind of “nature” in her that made her need to do something on this ship before she could feel at ease. And she was an independent being with her own thoughts and personality. Duncan felt he could not keep dealing with this doll only by knocking her down.

Compared to that, letting Alice help out in the kitchen was better than letting her keep picking fights with ropes, anchor chains, and cannonballs. At least the pots and pans on the Vanished had relatively better tempers.

He lowered his head and glanced at the fish soup set beside him. To be fair, the taste of the soup was actually quite normal. The seasonings on the ship were limited, but the heat had been handled perfectly. And as a doll with neither taste buds nor a digestive system, for Alice to achieve this level just by listening to a few bits of theory (and that theory came from Goathead, who also did not eat human food) was already pretty impressive.

Two beings who did not eat human food had managed, working together, to cook something a person could eat. What more could he ask for? Duncan felt that as long as this doll was more careful in the future, she really could handle work in the kitchen—at least then, as captain, he would not have to cook for himself anymore.

“Then… Captain, should I make you something else?” Alice’s voice came from beside him just then, interrupting Duncan’s thoughts. “I also learned how to do grilled fish and fried fish fillets from Mr. Goathead. The kitchen already has everything we need…”

“Not now. I’m not hungry,” Duncan shook his head. This body of his did not actually need much food. Keeping three meals a day was mostly just to hold on to his habits as a human. And this bowl of Alice’s ‘special soup’ had already wiped out his appetite for half a day. He simply stood up from the table. “I’m going to walk around the cabins.”

“You’re going to the cabins?” Alice froze for a moment, then seemed to remember something. Her expression grew a bit tense. “Then… could you go and take a look ‘down below’?”

“Down below?” Duncan frowned.

“The deeper decks—the places I’m not allowed to go,” Alice said. “I keep hearing creaking sounds from down there. Sometimes it even sounds like someone is muttering under the floorboards. Maybe you could go and see… is something going on down below?”

Seeing the nervous look on the doll’s face, Duncan felt his heart slowly tighten.

The Vanished’s deep layers… that was the one place he had not yet explored.

The deepest part gave him a feeling that was far too strange and dangerous. Back then, he had not yet truly “taken the helm,” nor had he mastered the fire of spirit form. So in his previous attempts, he had always stopped at the hatchway leading down into the cabins of the deep layers. Of course, he had planned to explore further someday—but now it seemed plans could not keep up with changes.

Just then, Goathead’s voice suddenly came from the side: “Ah, sounds like the bilge is getting restless. Captain, are you going down to take a look?”

Duncan had not even spoken yet when Goathead started rambling to himself: “Now that I think about it, it really has been a long time since you checked down there. The bilge needs a bit of comfort from its captain, you know. It’s been soaking in the Boundless Sea for a very long time… Will you be taking your consecrated lantern? It’s still in the old place, just behind the door… You’ve been staying on the upper levels this whole time. The fellows down below have been noisy beyond belief. You have no idea how annoying they are. Sigh, I’m the quiet type, you see. I can’t stand those creaking sounds in the middle of the night…”

Duncan gave Goathead a silent look, and Goathead immediately fell quiet.

Truthfully, after hearing some of what Goathead had just muttered, Duncan felt even more of a resistance toward that eerie bilge. From the sound of it, the place had clearly been affected by the Boundless Sea on a deeper level and had already become a structure that counted as “wrong” even by the standards of the Vanished.

But that resistant thought stayed in his mind for less than a second.

Sooner or later, he would have to explore the other parts of the Vanished in more detail, and sooner was better than later. Reason told him that the earlier he did this, the better.

The Vanished was huge. It was not just astonishingly long; its inner hull was divided into many layers. The areas Duncan understood so far were only the upper structures of the ship—the deck, the upper cabins below the deck, the magazines and gunnery deck, and then another level below that with storerooms, the freshwater tank, and some of the crew cabins. Based on his earlier attempts, he could easily imagine how much more massive structure still lay hidden in the darkness beneath those areas.

Those structures lay below the waterline. Judging by their depth, they were completely soaked in the Boundless Sea.

Dark, grim, echoing with hollow wind or distant howls—the deeper one went, the stranger the environment inside the Vanished became.

Duncan did not truly understand his own ship—and letting that situation drag on was definitely not acceptable.

He was already this ship’s captain. The Vanished was his foothold and his base of operations in this world. He could not remain so half-informed about his own foundation. Even just to survive long-term on the Boundless Sea, which was full of Anomalies and Visions, he had to understand both the potential and the dangers of the Vanished.

Who knew whether a crisis would arrive tomorrow? Who knew whether, in the very next second, the Vanished would collide with some Spawn from the Deep Sea, or with the crumbling border of a Mortal Realm?

What was more, Goathead had just mentioned something else: the bilge needed comfort from its captain.

The “captain” had stayed away from the lower decks for far too long… If this kept up, it sounded as if something bad might happen.

Duncan got up, went to the door, and found the consecrated lantern that Goathead had mentioned.

It was a very old consecrated lantern. Its copper frame was shaped like a hexagonal prism, wider at the top and narrower at the bottom. Glass panes were set into the copper frame, leaving the whole thing a little blurry. But inside that glass cover, Duncan did not see anything like a wick.

He did not show any curiosity, nor did he ask Goathead about it. After a brief and silent moment of thought, he tried to call up the ghostly green fire of his spirit form and poured that power into the consecrated lantern.

A bright green flame immediately jumped to life inside the glass. The old, simple lantern began to shed a steady glow.

Where the consecrated lantern shone, a cold, bleak atmosphere slowly spread for some reason, yet standing in that glow, Duncan felt an odd sense of calm and control rising in him. He seemed to sense his power spreading out with the light. Everything the glow touched, every tiny detail, reflected clearly in his mind.

The dove AI suddenly fluttered over and landed on Duncan’s shoulder.

It had already turned into that phantom, half-flesh, half-bone undead bird form—even though Duncan had not actively “activated” the dove at all. Under the light of the consecrated lantern, it still completed that “transformation” on its own.

Duncan glanced down at the consecrated lantern in his hand and decided this was probably a very good item. It seemed able to spread his power into the surrounding environment with very little loss and maintain a kind of “field” there. That field had the functions of detection, warning, and even control. This trait clearly made it very suitable for long-term exploration in unfamiliar or dangerous areas.

“Captain… can I go with you?”

Duncan turned and saw Alice standing behind him. She stared curiously at the consecrated lantern, her face full of eagerness. “I’ve never been to the lower decks! Mr. Goathead said I can’t go down there without your permission…”

Duncan thought for a moment, then nodded slightly: “You can.”

He still did not know what was in the lower decks, but no matter what, they were still part of the Vanished. Since he had already taken the helm, the bilge should not hold any danger that was too great. Bringing this doll along might even give him an extra pair of hands.

Goathead, left back at the chart table, did not comment. In his view, the captain going to inspect the Vanished was a perfectly normal thing—and taking along a helper was just as normal.

Outside the cabins, the veil of night was slowly falling. The cold glow of World’s Wound shone on the sea, and on the empty deck of the ghost ship. The half-transparent spirit form sails billowed in the air, slowly adjusting their angle with no one guiding them.

Duncan held the consecrated lantern, carried his saber and flintlock pistol, and walked with Alice across the empty deck, through the top two levels of cabins, and down the wooden stairs toward the deep interior of the Vanished.

The staircase at the end of the seafarers’ quarters was exactly where Duncan had stopped during his earlier explorations.

A strange dimness clung around the sloping stairway that led downward. In that gloom, he could only make out the supporting pillars and parts of the walls in a vague way.

“It’s so dark down there.” Alice stood at the top of the stairs, watching the shadowy space below with some nervousness. “Isn’t there any light down here? Every other place has those oil lamps that never go out…”

“No, there is light down there,” Duncan said slowly as he held the consecrated lantern. Under the power spreading from the lantern, he could finally see the space below more clearly than before. “…It’s just that the light down there is black.”

“…Huh?” Alice froze, needing a long moment to react. “There’s such a thing as black light?”

Duncan did not reply at once. He only carried the consecrated lantern and walked down slowly. Not until Alice followed him did he speak in a soft voice: “After all, we’ve already gone below the surface of the Boundless Sea.”