Chapter 61

Chapter 61: Unstable Voyage

Duncan took Alice back to the upper deck of the Vanished. The cold World’s Wound still hung high in the veil of night.

Duncan had thought he had been exploring inside the ship for a very long time, even wondering if an entire night had passed. But looking now at the deep veil of night, it seemed he had only been down below for a few hours.

Yet the bizarre Anomalies he had seen in just those few hours were already more than enough to leave a deep impression.

He still remembered the cabin where light and shadow were in Inversion, and that door at the bottom of the ship. Especially that door. What exactly was behind it?

The consecrated lantern in Duncan’s hand was already out. He and the doll walked slowly toward the captain’s cabin, neither of them saying much. The doll seemed to already be running through recipes in her head, while Duncan’s attention fell on the structures around the deck.

He compared what he remembered, confirming that the dim, ruined cabin beyond the door really was a part of the Vanished. The two had exactly the same style, and there was a faint continuity in their structure.

And now, thinking back, he kept feeling that there had been something else at the very deepest part of that ruined cabin, hidden in the darkness.

That was a “hidden area” of the Vanished, an area unknown even to its own captain, something Duncan could not sense or detect at all.

Did Goathead know about that door? Did it know what lay beyond it?

Should he ask it?

They reached the captain’s cabin, but Duncan’s thoughts were still in turmoil. He went in with Alice and saw Goathead still resting quietly on the chart table, its hollow black eyes turning toward the door at the sound.

Duncan turned to hang up the consecrated lantern, and behind him he heard Alice already greeting Goathead with some excitement: “Mr. Goathead! I went to the bilge with the captain! The bottom of this ship is amazing! The very lowest cabins are all broken apart—and there’s a very strange door!”

Duncan instantly stopped worrying about how to bring up the subject with Goathead. He had almost forgotten that he had a curious, clueless doll with him. Alice’s chatter had already opened the conversation for him, hadn’t it?

He did his best not to laugh out loud. While he pretended to calmly tidy the room, he pricked up his ears to listen to his two “crew members” talking. Goathead’s voice sounded, not at all surprised: “I knew you’d be amazed! Miss Alice, now you see what a great ship the Vanished is, don’t you? It can sail in different dimensions at the same time, all while staying safe!”

As Duncan listened, his heart stirred.

Things were indeed as he had guessed. The strange scene outside the cracks in the hull at the bottom of the ship… it was because that place no longer belonged to the time and space of the Boundless Sea!

At the same time he was doing fast calculations in his heart. The curious Alice was fascinated by the strange scenes in the lower decks of the Vanished. She did not dare to ask too many questions of him as “captain”, so she preferred to quiz the talkative Goathead. But if he kept standing here eavesdropping, it would look suspicious, and might even make Goathead turn the topic toward him—if it told Alice, “Ask the captain,” he would have no way to answer…

Thinking of this, he immediately made up his mind. He straightened his expression, returned to his usual seriousness, and said calmly: “You two talk here. I’m going to walk outside for a bit. Goathead, Alice is one of the crew now. As long as it’s nothing too secret about this ship, you can tell her.”

As soon as Alice heard that, a happy smile spread across her face. Goathead answered at once, all eagerness: “Of course, Captain. Your loyal—well, you know the rest—has always treated new members warmly…”

Duncan pushed the door open and left the captain’s cabin.

But the second he stepped out, he focused his mind again. Using the close link between himself and the Vanished, he carefully watched what was happening inside the captain’s cabin.

Once he focused his mind on one place, the vague sense he had of the ship turned into clear, real-time surveillance. Everything in the captain’s cabin showed up sharply in Duncan’s mind. He “saw” Alice drag over a stool and sit across from Goathead, excitedly talking about her exploration of the lower decks of the Vanished and describing all the strange sights in the bilge.

She seemed to have completely forgotten about making a late-night snack for the captain—but Duncan did not mind at all.

He appreciated the doll’s godlike assist at this key moment much more.

Under the veil of night, AI suddenly flapped her wings and fluttered up to a nearby mast, as if to stand guard. Duncan walked slowly forward like a captain making a normal patrol of the deck, while in his mind the conversation in the captain’s cabin came through clearly.

Alice had already brought up that strange door with Goathead. The doll’s voice sounded nervous: “…That door looked kind of scary. The captain wouldn’t even let me get close to it…”

“Of course you can’t get close. That door isn’t something you can touch. Even I can’t touch it—and don’t give me that look, I know I don’t have hands or feet. When I say ‘touch’, I mean in another sense… contact, control, understanding, peeking. Do you understand? In that sense, that door must not be touched. If you touch it, you’re done for, got it?”

Alice seemed startled by Goathead’s unusually serious tone. She hesitated for a second or two before speaking again: “Then… what is that door, really?”

Duncan, pacing on the deck, focused his mind at once. But he heard Goathead fall silent. After a long moment, it spoke in a low voice without answering directly: “You really didn’t touch that door, right?”

“I didn’t!” Alice answered quickly. But then she hesitated and went on, less sure: “But… but the captain went up to look. He looked through the crack, and he poked at something on the other side with his sword…”

As soon as Alice finished, Duncan suddenly felt the whole ship shudder. Then all the main sails and side sails let out a low wail in the wind, and all the masts and ropes creaked in response—and right now all of that was under Goathead’s control!

He looked up in surprise at the swaying masts and rigging, as if he could feel the panic of the one controlling them through their movement. In his mind came a shout from the captain’s cabin, Goathead’s voice: “What did you say?! You said a crack? That door was open a crack?”

“Y-yeah…” Alice sounded frightened. “The door was only pulled to. There was a crack, about… about as wide as a finger…”

“The captain looked through the crack? And then? He also stabbed through with his sword… Did anything happen to him then? When he led you away, did he seem hesitant or dazed?”

“No,” Alice answered at once. “The captain just looked very serious, then he took me back pretty quickly. On the way he seemed to be thinking about something, but he wasn’t dazed at all. Ah, he even talked with me about cooking. I’m going to the kitchen in a bit…”

“Forget the kitchen for now! Do you know what is behind that door?”

“Ah… what is behind that door?” Alice sounded lost and afraid. She had never seen Goathead so serious and urgent before. It felt to her like the ship was about to sink.

Goathead’s tone suddenly dropped very low. It spoke slowly: “Behind that door is Subspace.”

Duncan, walking on the deck, stopped in his tracks.

Behind that door was Subspace?

He was stunned. The huge wave rising in his heart almost disrupted his monitoring of the captain’s cabin. Then another thought came to him—

The shattered bilge, the dim, chaotic turbulence of light and shadow outside the cracks there—the Vanished was sailing through different dimensions at the same time, and whatever lay outside the bilge was clearly a time and space different from the Mortal Realm. And in the bilge there was a door, and on the other side of that door was Subspace…

Could it be that the lower half of the Vanished was actually sailing inside Subspace?!

And from what Goathead said, this way of sailing did not sound stable. The bilge not only needed the captain to calm it often, but that door was also supposed to stay tightly shut. Now there was a crack… what did that mean? Did it mean that the “sealing” of the bilge had failed? Or that something from Subspace was trying to enter the Vanished?

He remembered how he had tried to close that door before leaving the bilge. No matter how hard he pushed, the door had stayed fixed with that crack open, as solid as if it had merged with space itself.

He had not thought much of it at the time. But now, remembering it, a strange idea rose in his mind.

Maybe… when he had tried to close that door, something on the other side had been bracing against it, stopping him from shutting that passage…