Chapter 6

Chapter 6: The Missing “Cargo”.

The assembly bell rang. After the sharp peal of the bell came the messy, panicked footsteps of the sailors, while Lawrence stayed in the bridge with the second mate and the priest, Mr. Ron, who still had not caught his breath.

The old captain looked out at the sea through the window. The White Oak was still at Spirit Realm depth. Fog coiled over the sea outside the rail, and the water was still black as ink. But the storm had stopped, and the terrifying Vanished had disappeared. It gave a person the illusion that the storm, and even the collapse of the Mortal Realm border, had all been brought by that ghost ship, and now all the disasters had gone away from the White Oak along with that ship.

Lawrence thought of the terrible legends about the Vanished and Captain Duncan Abnomar. He thought of the fleet swallowed by the Mortal Realm border more than a century ago, and of the ships that had sunk into the Abyssal Deep Sea, after encounters with the Vanished. Suddenly he felt that this was not impossible at all.

But no matter what, the Vanished had left, and the surrounding waters had briefly returned to calm. Although they were still at dangerous Spirit Realm depth, at least he and his crew had a chance to catch their breath.

Next, Lawrence had to find out exactly what the Vanished had taken from the White Oak, or what it had left on board.

And he had to find out as soon as possible.

As long as there were hidden dangers, he did not dare to let the ship surface into the Mortal Realm. Certain things brought out from the Spirit Realm could cause terrible corruption in the Mortal Realm. But if they stayed too long at Spirit Realm depth, he and his crew would still suffer irreversible effects.

Listening to the noise coming from the deck, Lawrence suddenly lifted his head from his thoughts. He looked at the priest, who was sitting before the censer and whose face looked a little better, and asked with a very serious expression: “Mr. Ron, how stable are we now?”

The priest coughed twice, then took a small, finely made spirit compass from his robe. Its surface was engraved with many symbols of the sea and holy signs. With a snap, he pressed open the metal lid. The pointer on the spirit compass began to spin wildly, then finally stopped and settled in one place.

“We are staying on the surface layer of the Spirit Realm, a bit closer to the Mortal Realm. The influence from the depth of the Abyssal Deep is very weak…” The priest watched the pointer on the spirit compass and suddenly looked a little puzzled. “Strange… we are completely stable here. With the sacred relic shut down, there is almost no tendency to sink any further… cough, cough…”

“Maybe that one ‘hit’ from the Vanished knocked us onto a safe route instead,” Lawrence said with a wry smile, shaking his head as he tried to use a cold joke to lighten the mood. “I heard there are subtle balance points in the Spirit Realm that let things from the Mortal Realm avoid the pull of the deep layers…”

“Captain, that joke was far too cold,” the priest said, coughing twice again. Although he had caught his breath, his condition was still far from good. “Cough… in any case, what happened today must be reported to the Church. The appearance of the Vanished is never a small matter. For the past decades there have always been reports of encounters with the Vanished, but afterward they were all proved to be just the crew’s nonsense, or group hallucinations caused by Visions going into a runaway state. But today we truly saw it with our own eyes… Goddess above, once you return to Pland, you had better be ready for a long time without sailing again.”

“I understand. Neither the Church nor the city-state authority will allow a ship that has just suffered a Visions disaster to go back to sea. It is for everyone’s safety. And I have more than the Church to report to: the city-state, the Explorer Association… sigh, and my terrible wife…” Captain Lawrence pressed a hand to his forehead, let out a long sigh, then waved his hand. “Enough about that. You need to rest now. Until we return to port, this ship will need the Goddess’s blessing.”

The priest nodded lightly, and very soon, the first mate, who had only just left, returned to the bridge.

“There is no one missing and no one extra on board,” the first mate reported at once before the captain could even ask. “I personally checked the sailors assembled on deck and went to the boiler room to check the artificers who stayed there. They could all accurately recite the name of the God they worship. They are alive, no doubt about it.”

“Not a single person missing?” Lawrence widened his eyes. This should have been good news, but he could not believe the report. “What about the Holy beacons?”

“The sacred relic is normal too,” the first mate answered at once. “The navigator is preparing incense and oils, waiting for your order to restart the sacred relic.”

Lawrence listened, torn between shock and doubt, and could not help muttering softly again: “Did he really spare this ship?”

“Good luck smiled on us, Captain,” the first mate said, spreading his hands. “We did not lose anything. Maybe that terrifying ghost captain was just passing by. He might have only crashed into us by accident.”

“Do you believe that yourself?” Lawrence glared at his first mate. “If good luck really smiled on us, we would never have run into…”

He had only spoken halfway when hurried footsteps suddenly sounded outside the door. A moment later, someone pushed the bridge door open. The boatswain appeared before Lawrence, dripping with sweat. The tall man’s face was full of fear.

“Captain! Anomaly 099 is gone!”

The bridge fell silent at once. Everyone stared at one another. But for some reason, after a brief moment of shock, Lawrence suddenly felt as if a weight had lifted from his heart.

Good. After an encounter with the Vanished, the ship had finally shown that something was wrong. That, at least, felt right.

But he quickly controlled his expression. As he walked toward the door, he hurriedly told the first mate to take the wheel, and ordered the boatswain to lead the way.

Hurried footsteps echoed through the corridors of the White Oak. Soon, guided by the boatswain, Lawrence reached the deepest part of the steamship.

A special compartment appeared before his eyes.

The door of this compartment was covered in dense occult studies symbols. The heavy, pitch-black door looked as if it had been cast from a single block of black iron. The mysterious symbols stretched from the edge of the doorframe all the way out into the corridor, faintly forming some kind of closed cage meant to bind whatever was stored in the room.

Lawrence glanced at the door and confirmed that neither it nor the surrounding symbols showed any sign of damage. Then he looked up. The “sacred relic room” that held the Holy beacon was directly above the sealed vault. That beacon was the key to keeping the ship from the influence of the deep layers, and it also served as the second safeguard that maintained the sealed vault. Even while shut down, it should still have kept the vault’s barrier intact.

Yet with both layers of protection intact, the contents of the sealed vault, the most critical cargo the White Oak was escorting on this voyage, Anomaly 099 – the Doll, the “spirit coffin” – had disappeared.

Lawrence took a deep breath, stepped forward, opened the sealed vault’s door, and pushed the heavy slab wide.

Inside the sealed vault, the lights were bright. The gas lamps hanging from the four pillars lit the center of the room with almost no shadows. But the “cargo” that should have been placed there had vanished without a trace. Only a few crisscrossing chains were left, along with some gray-white ash scattered on the floor around them.

The boatswain’s voice came from behind Lawrence: “According to the containment rules for Anomaly 099, the lights in this room must stay on, and every two hours a crew member comes in to tighten the chains around the spirit coffin and scatter bone ash on the floor. But when that… ghost ship appeared, everything turned chaotic. The sailor on duty did not come in on time. He was about seven minutes late, and when he arrived, he found that Anomaly 099 was gone…”

“Being only seven minutes late would not push that thing into a runaway state,” Lawrence said, frowning and shaking his head. “At most the containment would weaken and act up. In the worst case, the coffin would be running around inside this room. The layers of seals here and the restraint from the Holy beacon are not for show. Right now, the problem is that it has disappeared. The cargo has left this ship. That has nothing to do with that sailor.”

The boatswain looked a little nervous. “Then you mean…”

“It must have been the Vanished,” Lawrence said in a deep voice. “That ‘captain’ took Anomaly 099 away…”

He paused for a moment and let out a soft sigh. “Maybe we should feel lucky. The Vanished only ever takes what it wants. That captain came for Anomaly 099, not for our lives.”

The boatswain looked at his captain’s face, then at the empty sealed vault. After a long time, he finally asked hesitantly: “Then… we have lost such an important piece of cargo. How are we going to explain it to the city-state authority…”

Lawrence glanced at the boatswain and slapped his shoulder hard.

“The Vanished counts as a calamity. We have maritime insurance.”

“…Will the insurance company pay for that?”

“If they do not pay, we will have the Explorer Association put out a new bounty on the Vanished…”

“Captain, are you not being a bit anxi…”

“Shut up.”