Chapter 564

Chapter 564: A Quick and Hasty Exchange

In the deepest part of Alice’s Mansion, at the edge of this eerie garden, in the shadows between the lush bushes and low trees, twisted tendrils crawled and wandered, as if covered in fine metallic scales.

The faint rustling sound came again from another direction. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw another dark tendril, a limb like some kind of soft-bodied creature, slide through the gaps in the shrubs. It shook the branches, rubbed against the rough soil, and made a soft, scratching sound.

That faint rustling almost sounded like a call.

Duncan instantly spread out his senses, carefully watching for any movement in the garden. At the same time he locked onto the direction where one of the tendrils had just vanished and walked that way.

Behind him, under his feet, pale green spirit form flames spread with his steps, leaving a faint path of fire. The flames quietly seeped along the cracks in the ground, bit by bit reaching deeper into the garden.

This was “Alice’s Mansion”, very likely a crucial part of Alice’s “soul”. Duncan would not casually set such a place on fire. But now something strange had appeared deep in the garden, and he had to prepare some countermeasures. If some dangerous thing had really invaded this garden, he needed a way to deal with the intruders without damaging the mansion itself.

With wary thoughts turning in his mind, Duncan followed the rustling and slowly reached a place far from the “sleeping doll”, at the edge of the mansion’s garden. After he passed several shrubs and a few small unknown trees, he noticed the light around him had dimmed. The glow from the “scribbled Sun” in the sky seemed unable to reach this far. Under the cover of the plants, the gloom was like dusk.

In this dusk-like light, he saw a clump of plants in front of him suddenly shake. Then a tendril slowly lifted from within and swayed gently before his eyes.

There was no hiding, no tricks. This tendril seemed to have invited Duncan here on purpose, and now it showed itself openly.

Duncan stared in surprise at this bizarre “limb”-

The tendril was dark in color. Its surface had fine patterns that looked like tiny metal scales. Between the rough, complicated ridges he could faintly see pale blue lines. Those lines felt very familiar to him, as if…

As if they were the markings on the surface of that Elder Gods tendril under Frostholm, in the depths of the Deep Sea.

A limb of the Abyssal Lord?!

Duncan’s heart gave a sudden jolt as he realized where that sense of familiarity came from. At the very moment he thought of the “Abyssal Lord”, the blindly swaying tendril in midair suddenly shivered, as if some vast and distant will had finally connected to this piece of flesh.

It bent toward Duncan. With a strange, low hum, the end of the tendril slowly opened. From within, an “eyeball” like an irregular crystal appeared, shining with a cold blue light, and it fixed a gaze on Duncan’s eyes.

A deep, murky voice suddenly sounded, without any trace of emotion or gender. It was as if it rang directly inside his mind.

The voice said: “Hello, Flame Usurper. I have something to say to you.”

Duncan jumped in shock. He frowned tightly and stared at the tendril in front of him: “Abyssal Lord? The Crawling King? LH-01?”

“All of them. But now listen to me,” the tendril trembled, as if already bearing a load far beyond its limit. The voice it carried grew quickly deeper and distorted. It sped up its speech: “My chance to communicate with you is extremely limited. I will only pass on the necessary information now. Whether you can understand it or not, remember this:

“The designed lifespan of ?#%?# is only eight thousand years. Now it is running in overload. We have not received the signal from outside &*%? within the time limit…

“This is the final Cycle Reset. After this cycle, ?*??# will not regenerate.

“Preserve the fallen ?#&** fragments. If nothing can be undone, use them to extend the lifespan of each Node city as much as possible. Stay alive. Survival is the First Directive.

“We do not know what you can do, but you woke at the Cycle’s End. That must mean something.

“We firmly believe that you, and we, are not alone.

“The necessary information has been delivered. If there is a chance, I hope to… speak with you face to face… under more stable conditions…”

The trembling of the tendril quickly weakened. A pale, dying color began to spread over its fine, metallic scales. Duncan could clearly feel the voice in his mind pulling away and fading. He did not understand the exact principle or process, but it was obvious that the Elder God called the “Abyssal Lord” had slipped through some loophole, or used some outside power, to force a link with him – and now this very limited connection was about to break.

Duncan had no time to be curious or to think deeply about the flood of information. By sheer reason, he chose to quickly force himself to remember everything first. Only after the other side finished talking would he have time to turn his mind and think about what he had just heard.

The first thing he noticed was those few “noises”. When this Elder God spoke to him, several key pieces of information – clearly important nouns – had turned into sharp, chaotic sounds in his ears.

It was as if the “meaning” in those syllables had been filtered out by something, or as if the sense those syllables carried lay beyond what this communication could hold, so it could not be delivered to his ears at all.

But this was clearly not the time to dig into those “noises”.

The Elder God’s whisper was about to fade. Only the last thin thread of its connection with him remained. Duncan looked up and saw cracks spreading all over the tendril’s surface. It might only last a few more seconds.

He made up his mind in an instant and used the last of the time to ask: “If I want to find you, how do I go to the Abyssal Deep in the Deep Sea?”

Going to the Abyssal Deep in the Deep Sea and speaking with the being face to face was without doubt the simplest and most effective way to solve all his questions.

The Elder God’s tendril was already growing stiff. Faded fragments fell from it like dust. The powerful, unspeakable will was slowly withdrawing from this fragile vessel. Yet before its link with the Mortal Realm fully broke, it still did its best to hold on to that last bit of connection and sent one final low murmur into Duncan’s mind –

“I do not know.”

Duncan: “…?”

He finally understood how the people around him felt when a single sentence from him crashed their brains.

He really had not expected the Abyssal Lord to give him such an answer!

But he only froze for a moment before another faint, low whisper sounded in his mind –

“Try catching a few Annihilators…”

“Huh?” Duncan did not react at once. “Aren’t they your believers?”

But no voice answered his question. The Elder God’s murmurs to him finally broke off completely. With a series of cracking sounds, the tendril that had borne too much power collapsed at last. It turned into dust and fragments that fell to the ground, then rose as thin blue smoke and faded away.

The rustling sounds around the edge of the mansion garden also stopped at the same time. The unnatural gloom under the trees faded with them.

Duncan stood quietly before the bushes for a while longer. Only after several minutes passed did he frown, shake his head, and pull himself out of his thoughts.

Everything that had just happened still felt like a dream. An Elder God called the “Abyssal Lord” had simply appeared right in front of him, rattled off a pile of things at high speed, and then left just as fast. Forget Lightwind Harbor – something like that would shake the entire Boundless Sea.

Yet when it happened to him… it somehow did not feel that shocking?

Duncan turned and looked back at the lush “mansion garden” not far away under the daylight, and at the silver-haired doll sleeping quietly in the sunlight clearing at its center.

Anomaly 099, born from the Abyssal Lord’s “copy” ability, and “Alice’s Mansion”, which was tightly bound to Alice – when it came down to it, this whole “mansion” already had countless ties to that Elder God in the Abyssal Deep of the Deep Sea. It was even very likely that the Elder God had shaped it on purpose as a vessel to send information outward.

So it was not unimaginable to see a projection of the Abyssal Lord’s power in the deepest part of this garden.

Duncan was thinking about something else –

The Abyssal Lord’s attitude, or rather its “state”, did not seem quite like he had expected. It still kept its reason, though it seemed to be under some extreme restriction. Its attitude was friendly, not the pure urge to destroy that people imagined.

But these “differences” did not mean much to Duncan. After all, very few people in this world had truly come into contact with the so-called “Elder Gods”. Information built on imagination was never reliable. On top of that, different people might see very different faces of an Elder God. The friendly, harmless good Neighbor in his own eyes would still look a bit unspeakable to an ordinary person. After living in this world for so long, Duncan at least had that much self-awareness.

What mattered most was still the “information” that Elder God had given him.

Duncan replayed those words over and over in his mind. They seemed to carry an enormous amount of meaning.

Some thing had been designed to last only eight thousand years, and now it was running in overload.

The “we” the Abyssal Lord spoke of seemed to have been waiting all this time for a signal to return from somewhere, but it had still not received that reply.

It had also mentioned a Cycle Reset… what did that mean?

He, this “Flame Usurper”, had awakened at the Cycle’s End – what did that mean?

And then there was preserving the fallen fragments, using them to extend the life of the Node cities…

As he pondered, Duncan’s expression grew more and more serious.