Chapter 573

Chapter 573: Sailing in Darkness and Fog

With a loud bang, the Annihilator spat blood and flew more than ten meters away. He only stopped when he slammed into the trunk of a towering tree, then slid down like a torn sack.

The last look in his eyes was one of huge shock and confusion. Maybe in his life he had imagined all kinds of strong enemies and traps, but he probably never thought he would one day be sent flying by someone hitting him with a dog.

Shirley held Dog’s chain and walked step by step to the cultist who could no longer move even a finger. She stopped at a relatively safe distance.

The cultist was still alive, or rather, in this “dream”, a wound that would be fatal in the Mortal Realm did not seem enough to kill him. His head was almost smashed into his neck. Most of his joints bent at strange, terrible angles. Yet he was still alive, only too weak to move and able to stare this way with eyes full of hate and a little fear.

Shirley ignored his frightening stare. She lifted the chain in her hand a little, and Dog stepped forward, sticking close to the cultist’s face.

“What are you…” The Annihilator forced the words out of his throat with difficulty. He looked at the fierce, terrifying Abyssal Hound drawing up beside him. A trace of fear finally broke through into his eyes. Not far away, the Death-Omen Bird that shared a symbiotic pact with him also struggled a few times, as if trying to resist, but soon fell quiet again because its partner was so weak. That made his voice sound even more hollow and forced. “What are you going to do?!”

“This place is a dream. Once you’re back in the Mortal Realm, I won’t be able to catch you,” Shirley said as a slow smile spread across her face. She raised the arm that shared the symbiotic pact with the chain and gently rubbed the black links against her cheek. Her expression still looked harmless. “And if we meet when I’m not ready, it would be dangerous if I don’t notice you in time. So I need to leave a little mark…”

“A mark…?”

The Annihilator lying on the ground froze for a moment. The next second, he saw the Abyssal Hound beside him suddenly open its jaws. Its horrible bony fangs bit down without mercy. He had time for only one scream of terror before the pain almost tore his mind apart. One of his arms had already turned into bloody chunks in the hound’s mouth.

“I’ve memorized your scent. We’ll catch you in the Mortal Realm…” Dog lifted his head. His eye sockets glowed with blood-red light as he stared at the wailing Annihilator. A hoarse, low voice came from his ribcage. “We’ll bring you in alive. He will reward us…”

His cries cut off at once. The cultist’s eyes flew wide open. He stared fixedly at the savage Abyssal Hound in front of him, mouth gaping. He did not know whether he was more shocked that this Abyssal demon could speak, or at the huge fear and danger he felt in those last words. “He” will reward us… What were this strange girl and this strange demon? Who was the “He” they spoke of?

The next second, the Annihilator’s form began to blur and twist. In just a breath or two, his figure vanished into thin air before Shirley and Dog.

“He ran off after all,” Dog said, turning his head and shaking it from side to side. There was a hint of helplessness in his tone. “His allies in the Mortal Realm must have sensed something and yanked him away by force… we can’t stop this kind of transfer on the level of the mind.”

“It’s fine. Didn’t you memorize his scent?” Shirley waved her hand and then asked again with a serious look on her face. “Once we’re in the Mortal Realm, can you really find him?”

“As long as he isn’t too far away. If he happens to show up within my sensing range, I can definitely track him down,” Dog muttered. “Abyssal Hounds are the demons best at tracking. He can’t erase the mark I left.”

“Good,” Shirley breathed out in relief. “If we can really catch him alive, that would be great. Even if he’s only worth two test papers…”

Dog ignored the rest of Shirley’s muttering. He lifted his head. Chaotic wind and noise rushed through the forest from every direction. The trees in the distance were turning transparent and dim in large swaths. The signs that the dream was about to break apart were growing clearer.

Clearly, something was pushing on this dream. It was about to wake up.

…

In the darkness, some sounds seemed to drift over. They sounded like chaotic winds howling, snapping branches as they rushed through the woods. But when he listened more closely, they seemed almost like illusions.

Duncan had no attention left for the faint sounds from the dark. All of his focus was on the unbelievable scene before him.

It really was the Vanished. After he had spread his senses deep into the vine, he saw, at the center of this darkness and fog, that familiar ghost ship.

But… why? Why would the Vanished appear in this place?

Duncan moved closer and saw that the Vanished seemed to be floating on a pitch-black surface of water. Thick, inky darkness swallowed the lower half of the ship. On the tall deck above, the whole ship lay silent. No sound came from it.

After a brief pause, he “flew” up onto the Vanished’s deck.

In this darkness, he was moving only as a viewpoint, and that gave him plenty of freedom.

There was no one on the deck. Everywhere he looked he saw old, familiar sights.

Following the paths in his memory, Duncan slowly checked every feature on the deck and the nearby cabins.

Everything matched, down to the last detail.

But he knew this was not the real Vanished, nor some kind of projection of it. He did not feel the close bond that existed between himself and his ship. He did not feel any feedback from the flame.

This ship had been made by some other power.

Once more, faint wind and noise came from the dark, a little clearer than before.

Duncan paid some attention to the sounds coming from deep in the darkness. Then he went to the aft deck and stopped in front of the captain’s cabin door.

His gaze lifted and then froze.

There was a line of strange words carved on the doorframe: “May He wander in the dream.”

It was not “Door of the Lost Ones”?!

Duncan felt a jolt of shock. He clearly remembered that the words above the captain’s door should have been “Door of the Lost Ones”, and that this door was the only way to his little “bachelor apartment”… This Vanished that had appeared deep in the dark fog matched his memory in every way. Why was the writing above this door the only thing that was different?

He drew his eyes away from the frame and looked at the door itself. The next second, the door swung open without a sound, almost as if it were inviting him in.

The familiar captain’s cabin appeared before him. A dim yellow light shone inside. Every piece of furniture was in place, and Goathead stood at the edge of the chart table in the lamplight.

“Goathead?”

Duncan’s heart gave a sudden thump.

He remembered that when he had first stumbled into Subspace, the damaged Vanished on the Subspace side had not had Goathead. In his own bachelor apartment, the model of the Vanished had not had Goathead either.

Whether Goathead was present or not seemed to be a subtle but key point that set the different “versions” of the Vanished apart.

A stream of guesses and memories flashed through his mind as he stepped through the captain’s door. He walked carefully up to the chart table and looked at the black “wood carving” on its edge.

Goathead sat quietly on its base, motionless like a real wooden carving. It did not react at all to the captain’s approach.

Of course, that might also be because Duncan’s presence here was only that of a viewpoint, not a visible body.

Duncan did not try to disturb Goathead on the table. He kept watching carefully instead.

Soon, he noticed another wrong detail.

On the table lay the enchanted sea chart. It was supposed to be the chart that recorded the routes the Vanished had sailed, the known city-states and sea lanes on the Boundless Sea. But now it showed a scene Duncan had never seen before, a completely unfamiliar map.

It looked like a forest viewed from the air. In the tiny, almost three-dimensional image he could see rolling ridges, huge plant structures, and strange sites scattered through the dense woods like clusters of buildings. A translucent icon that stood for the Vanished floated over this miniature scene and was moving through the forest at an extremely slow speed.

Filled with shock, Duncan stared at the strange enchanted sea chart for a long time.

Of course he could not pull any useful information from such an unfamiliar map. But he remembered another strange enchanted sea chart he had seen on the damaged Vanished in Subspace.

On that Vanished sailing through Subspace, the enchanted sea chart had also shown an eerie scene. In some chaotic, shifted unknown sea, strange, jumbled sailing records lay everywhere.

Now he was looking at yet another unexplainable enchanted sea chart on this Vanished that had appeared in the dark fog. This time it even showed the ship sailing through a forest.

He could not stop a bizarre idea from rising in his heart.

Just how many different “versions” of the Vanished were sailing through different dimensions at the same time, recording different routes?

As this strange thought popped into Duncan’s mind, a faint creaking sound suddenly came from beside him and cut off his wild guess.

He instantly turned his gaze toward the source of the sound.

The black Goathead at the edge of the chart table was slowly turning its neck, bringing its gaze around to face him.

In its eyes, carved of black obsidian, a faint hint of awareness seemed to be forming.

The next second, Duncan heard a hoarse, low voice reach his ears.

“Who is there…”