Chapter 612

Chapter 612: the Sun That Could Not Be Taken Away

Vanna felt that her brain was not keeping up.

She was not unfamiliar with this feeling. Back in her student days, she felt this way every time she listened to Mr. Morris’s lectures. But once she reached puberty and successfully let her muscles take over most of the work from her brain, she had not felt this in many years.

Now, that familiar feeling came back again.

She stared at the “glowing little ball” in the giant’s hand and blinked several times. Only then did she understand, on a rational and literal level, his words and the thing in his palm. But the emotional part of her was still stunned. This was… the Sun this world once had?

“Do you want to touch it?” The giant looked at Vanna’s stiff expression, smiled in a friendly way, and held the “Sun” in his hand a little closer to her. “It is not hot anymore.”

Vanna felt that this line was eerily strange in a way she had never heard before, but she did not know how to respond.

After a few seconds of hesitation, she reached out almost against her own will. With a feeling she could not explain, she curiously touched the glowing little ball in the giant’s hand.

It was only the size of a fist, a human fist. In the giant’s hand it looked like a delicate little bead. On its surface, tiny and intricate structures seemed to be moving. Fine streams of light surged there. Bright and dark regions alternated. From time to time hair-thin rays rose from it and then fell back to the surface.

It felt only a little warm, like water slightly hotter than body temperature.

Vanna felt a bit dazed. She thought of the Sun she was familiar with. Every day it rose from the sea horizon, bearing its brilliant double rune rings. It brought light and warmth to the whole world. It was an enormous “sacred miracle”, an ancient and magnificent “Vision”.

At the same time, she also remembered that the captain had said the Sun had another form, one even more splendid and vast. Not long ago, the captain had started trying to teach his followers some knowledge that came from Subspace. Among that knowledge were the concepts of stars and the universe.

To be honest, Vanna had not really understood the captain’s teachings. Even Mr. Morris and Miss Lucretia seemed not to fully understand them. But there was at least one thing Vanna did understand. No matter what form the Sun took, it should not be a fist-sized little ball.

That warm “little Sun” left her hand.

The giant sat on the edge of the large pit. He placed the “Sun” in his palm, rested his hand on his leg, and lowered his eyes, as if sunk in memory and thought. After a long time, he finally spoke in a low voice: “They were full of wisdom. They were good at using all sorts of methods to explain how the world worked. They were born weak, but they could rely on ‘science’ to fight things far stronger than themselves. I always thought, if they were still here, if they had developed to today, perhaps they could explain what is going on with this ‘Sun’…

“But by the time it fell, the world was already quiet. The last person had already turned into that tower. Those clever minds and all their bold ideas had vanished from this world. And I still do not understand this thing.”

Vanna stayed silent for quite a while, but she was not only silent. She was telling the captain what was happening here.

She told the captain that she might have found the “Sun” those cultists had mentioned at their gathering.

It was in the hand of this giant who called himself a deity, and it looked as if it really could be “taken away”. One hand was enough.

The giant did not seem to care about Vanna’s silence or about her mental communication with some unknown existence. Memory wrapped this lonely former god. He gazed for a long time at the little “star” in his hand, the one that had once shone on this world and on his mortal subjects. After a long while, he spoke again, almost to himself: “I have always been thinking. Thinking about what exactly destroyed this place. It did not happen in an instant, traveler. It had a long process.”

“A process?” Vanna immediately caught that word.

The giant nodded and spoke from within his memories: “At first, there were abnormal phenomena that could not be explained by any knowledge we had. The clouds would suddenly vanish and then suddenly appear again. Flashes with no clear cause formed in the air. The weather went wrong. Plants stopped growing normally.

“Then the abnormal phenomena began to spread to deeper and more unsettling fields, to what you might call the deep layers. Gravity began to shift. In many places, the flow of the Time-Stream broke and skipped.

“During this process, we saw that red light grow stronger and stronger. It was like a crack. It spread in from beyond the sky and seemed to hang fixed above us, covering our world and twisting the starlight in the distance. Some kind of… ‘distorting’ corruption spread through the world, and no one could do anything about it.

“The Archive was founded at that time.”

The giant stopped there and looked toward the tall tower again. He seemed unused to talking with people. He would always stop halfway and sink into thought or drift off. But soon he spoke again:

“That long process had a sudden end. When the Archive was destroyed, I felt for a brief moment that some ‘thing’ touched our world. That thing spent a very long time drawing near, and its slow approach caused that long Doomsday. Its final ‘touch’ was the last arrival and the end of the destruction. Yet after so much time, I still have not figured out what that ‘thing’ was.”

“You said you felt some ‘thing’ touching this world?” Vanna could not help widening her eyes. Without noticing it, she was already using a respectful tone when she spoke to the giant. “You really did not ‘see’ what that thing was at all?”

The giant thought seriously for a moment and gave Vanna a small apologetic look. “I am sorry, traveler. I can see you care about this, but what I have said is already all that I know.”

Vanna pressed her lips together. She had to press down the regret in her heart, then let her gaze fall on the “little Sun” in the giant’s hand.

She could not let this thing truly fall into the hands of the Black Sun’s spawn and remnants.

After hesitating again and again, she finally decided to be a bit more honest.

“There are people with bad intentions. They have already set their eyes on the ‘Sun’ in your hand… I do not know if they will find this place, and I do not know how to explain where they come from to you, but…”

She had only spoken halfway when the giant raised his hand again and set the “light ball” before her. “Do you want to take it with you?”

The giant’s tone was gentle, and he wore a smile.

Vanna froze for a moment. When she realized what he meant, she quickly waved her hands. “No, that is not what I meant. You may have misunderstood…”

“It is all right, traveler,” the giant interrupted Vanna again. He still spoke in that steady, friendly tone. “I can feel your goodwill. Also… I do not think you can necessarily take it from my hand.”

Vanna paused slightly. When she saw that the giant was not joking, she finally hesitated and reached out toward the glowing sphere. This time she was not just touching it. She was trying to pick it up.

The warm feeling came again. Vanna felt that she was holding a solid object. But just as she was about to exert force, that feeling suddenly vanished.

The sphere turned into a phantom and passed through her palm.

She stared in confusion at the Sun she could not pick up.

“I do not know when it happened, but it became part of me,” the giant’s voice came from the side. “Perhaps it was the day I picked it up. One phantom picked up another phantom, and they could never be separated again.

“Traveler, you cannot take it away, so it seems those people with bad intentions you spoke of should not be able to take it either.”

The giant stood up from the ground.

He brushed the dust from his robe and carefully tucked the “Sun” away close to his body. Then he bent to pick up that huge Gatekeeper’s cane. “We should go, traveler.”

Vanna asked without thinking: “Where are we going?”

“To walk around the world. There are still many things here. They may not look like much now, but I want to tell you what they once were and their stories.” The giant turned his head and looked at the distant sea of sand. “You can also tell me on the way where those ‘people with bad intentions’ come from. This world has been dead for many years. I have gone too long without speaking with anyone. This is the first time I have heard… news from outsiders.”

He paused and lowered his head to glance at Vanna. “I had almost forgotten what curiosity was. Thank you for reminding me.”

“Aren’t we going down there to take a look?” Vanna pointed at the tall tower in the center of the pit. “I thought…”

“There is nothing left to see there. What you see from here is all there is.” The giant shook his head and had already turned to walk into the distance. “Come. It will be dark again soon. The day and night here always change very quickly, but perhaps we can reach another ruin before dusk. Once, you could look out over the sea from there.”

Listening to the giant’s words, Vanna looked back at the “tower” once more. She said a silent farewell in her heart, then turned and caught up with the giant, who had already walked more than ten meters away.

…

Duncan sat behind the enchanted sea chart table and kept that posture for a long time. After an unknown while, he finally let out a deep breath.

Vanna had found the “Sun”. She had found it in a very… unbelievable state.

But for some reason, after hearing Vanna’s report, he felt nothing beyond the first shock and confusion. Even that surprise faded quickly, leaving only a feeling of “So that is how it is”.

Maybe it was because he had already seen with his own eyes that ten-meter-wide “Moon”. Or maybe it was because he had long ago seen a “solar prominence” that could hop along the deck. After living for so long in this strange, twisted world, his ability to accept things had been fully trained.

Then only one question was left.

Vanna could not take that “Sun” away.

That was a bit worrying.