Chapter 589

Chapter 589: Meeting in the Shadows

In the chaotic veil of night woven together from sunlight and the World’s Wound, Duncan and his group moved quickly through the silent, empty streets. At last, they stopped at a junction where huge, lush plants had completely covered and blocked the road.

Towering trees blocked out the sky. Thick, twisted vines wrapped around the tall buildings lining the street. Roots rose from the pavement, crawling along the ground like swollen veins. The whole district was deathly still, yet from the dark forested depths there sometimes came faint bird calls or the sound of wind, so vague they felt half real, half illusion. Those airy voices seemed to cross the border between dreams and the Mortal Realm.

“…It really is still here.”

Standing at the end of the street, Duncan looked with a serious expression at the massive vine that stretched out of the darkness. He spoke almost to himself.

Alice craned her neck, staring at the long ramp where the vine had grown and spread. She watched it for a long time before she spoke, sounding a bit unsure: “Captain, does this thing look… bigger than last time? I remember it hadn’t stretched this far before…”

“You remember right,” Duncan exhaled and said in a grave tone, “it’s larger than it was. This vine… is growing.”

Alice blinked for a while, then let out a soft sigh: “Wow…”

Duncan did not say anything more. Before taking any further action, he checked on the state of Morris and the others in the depths of his mind—especially Vanna’s situation.

Aside from himself and the two dolls, everyone had reached the other side of the Nameless One’s dream, just like last time, and each person’s landing point in the dream had not changed much either. In this, the Nameless One’s dream showed a strange sort of… “continuity” that caught his attention.

Of all of them, Vanna’s situation was the most puzzling.

The Inquisitor miss had once again arrived in that barren desert. And this time, she had run into a giant there who claimed to be a “deity.”

Now Vanna was crossing the endless sea of sand together with that giant. From the information Duncan had received so far, the giant seemed very friendly and had told Vanna many things about the desert.

But what the giant said did not match any of the old legends Duncan knew, or any ancient stories known in this world!

What exactly was that desert? What was the origin of that giant who called himself a deity? How did those lost years he spoke of connect to the ancient heritage of the elves? And why had such a strange place appeared in the depths of the Nameless One’s dream?

Duncan only felt more and more confused.

Right now, all he could do was hope that Vanna could get more information from that boundless sea of sand and from the mysterious giant—or that the others might find some clue in the endless forest that connected to the “desert.”

Keeping the link between his mind and the others, Duncan took a deep breath and brought his attention back to what was in front of him.

The massive vine had once again appeared in the world of the Mortal Realm. For him, this was actually good news—he had worried that the “fright” he gave the Nameless One’s dream last time might cause some unpredictable change and make the vine disappear or move somewhere else. If that had happened, it would have been hard for him to keep investigating. But now… at least this thread had not broken.

Of course, the current situation also forced him to worry about something else:

The vine had not disappeared—but it had grown larger instead.

Would this thing keep growing until it wrapped around the whole city?

With that sudden, baseless worry in his mind, Duncan steadied himself, then stepped forward and slowly placed his hand on the end of the vine.

“Watch the surroundings. If anything big changes, wake me up at once,” he said over his shoulder to the two dolls behind him.

“Got it!” Alice nodded right away.

Lunie also bent slightly at the waist and answered respectfully: “Yes, Old Master.”

Duncan gave a small nod. Then he calmed his thoughts and carefully guided the power of flame, letting his senses spread and seep along thin streams of spirit-form fire, once again building a connection with the vine.

Because of his experience last time, he was even more cautious now, so he would not startle “Atlantis” again like before.

A moment later, Duncan opened his eyes in the darkness.

Endless mist once again filled his sight.

Following his intuition, Duncan looked toward the deepest part of the fog.

A huge, hazy shadow gradually appeared under his divine gaze. Boundless mist drifted and shifted, and the light and shadow within it outlined a familiar silhouette—the Vanished. That awe-inspiring ship floated in the void like a silent ghost, as if… it were wordlessly inviting Duncan aboard.

Duncan gladly accepted the invitation.

In the darkness, he condensed his spirit form into an avatar form. Then, while carefully controlling the flow of the flames around him, he flew toward the Vanished in the depths of the mist and landed silently on its deck.

Just like the last time he saw it, the ship was still empty. Wisps of mist floated over the silent deck. Familiar fittings of the vessel loomed in and out of sight in the fog.

This time, Duncan did not go straight to the captain’s cabin at the stern. After looking around, he stepped in another direction.

He walked through the mist curling over the deck, his footsteps echoing in the empty, deathly still place. He passed piles of coiled ropes and clutter on the planks, heading toward the entrance to the cabins.

The ropes and various items piled on the deck showed no reaction to Duncan’s approach—they simply lay there quietly like ordinary dead objects.

So Duncan noticed another difference between this eerie Vanished and the Vanished he was familiar with.

On the “real” Vanished, all these things on the deck would start moving when he came close. They would greet their captain eagerly or make all kinds of strange noises, trying to get his attention. But here… though the two ships were almost the same in every detail, everything on this ship was “dead.”

Frowning slightly, Duncan let his eyes sweep over the silent ropes, buckets, and iron hooks. He walked between them, then suddenly stopped.

His gaze had fallen on a mop leaning against the wall.

A moment later, he realized why that sudden feeling of “familiarity” had appeared. Alice had left that mop here when she came back to the ship earlier!

This eerie version of the Vanished not only looked exactly like the “real one” in the Mortal Realm, but it also matched the changes on the Vanished in the Mortal Realm in real time?

Many guesses suddenly rose in his mind. Duncan felt as though he had vaguely grasped some “essence” of this strange Vanished. At that moment, a faint sound from some corner caught his attention at once.

On this ghost ship where everything was so quiet, that tiny sound, like a whisper, stood out sharply.

Duncan instantly locked onto the direction it came from and walked toward it.

He stopped in front of a window.

On the glass, there was a blurry mass that looked like shadows or thick fog mixed with black smoke, slowly forming on the surface as if it were trying to take shape.

Duncan stared at that clump of gathering and scattering shadows for a few seconds, then suddenly realized what it was and spoke softly: “Agatha?”

As soon as he spoke, the shifting shadow on the glass quickly gathered and, within a few seconds, turned into a clear image—Agatha’s figure appeared in the window.

“Ah, you finally noticed me,” Agatha let out a long breath as soon as she formed on the glass. “I’ve been calling from the seams between the shadows, trying to get your attention, but it was really hard to find a proper mirror nearby…”

“How are you here?” Duncan looked at the figure in the glass in surprise. Then something occurred to him. “Wait, did you come through the Vanished’s…”

“Yes. After nightfall, I stayed in the Vanished’s reflection. It might sound risky, but I did it,” Agatha said with a nod. “As the reflection shifted, I came here and met up with you. It seems my guess was right: when the veil of night descends, the Vanished’s missing ‘shadow’ turns into this ‘other Vanished’ you see here. We still don’t know the principle behind it, but we finally found a link between the two Vanisheds.”

Duncan’s brows drew tighter as he listened. He stayed silent, which made Agatha a bit uneasy. “…Did I act on my own when I shouldn’t have?”

“You really should have talked with me first, but that’s not what I’m thinking about now,” Duncan said, waving a hand. “You stayed on the ‘reflection’ side, so did you see how this transformation happened? Did the Vanished show any clear… ‘signs’ at the time?”

Agatha shook her head. “There was no process.”

“No process?”

“Everything changed in an instant, with no process at all,” Agatha repeated. “One second, I was still in the Vanished’s reflection, watching and waiting for any possible change in the mirror world world. In the next instant, the ‘atmosphere’ in the mirror world world changed. I could feel it… the Vanished’s shadow turned into something I didn’t recognize. My mirror-leaping was suppressed. I could no longer sense the boundary between the Spirit Realm and the Mortal Realm, and I couldn’t return to the normal mirrors in the Mortal Realm. It was like… the whole world had become strangely thick and sticky, and it was slowly solidifying…”

Duncan listened closely to Agatha’s description, then slowly turned his head and looked toward the stern deck.

That was where the captain’s cabin stood, and where the “other Goathead” stayed.

“Can you move freely now?” Duncan asked suddenly.

“It seems that I’m no longer affected,” Agatha said at once, with a hint of disbelief in her tone. “After you noticed me, that strange pressure vanished all of a sudden.”

“Good,” Duncan nodded. “Then come along—we’re going to visit that ‘First Mate’ whose state is not quite right.”