Chapter 613

Chapter 613: The Ship and the First Mate

At the edge of the enchanted sea chart table, the silent, pitch-black wooden carving of Goathead was quietly gazing at Duncan. Compared to the other Goathead’s noisiness, this wordless stare was even more uncomfortable.

Duncan finally could not ignore that gaze anymore. He had to raise his head from his thoughts and ask: “Why are you staring at me like that?”

“I thought you would go ‘take the helm’ again, like last time,” Goathead said slowly. “That feeling… was very strange.”

Duncan raised his eyebrows and sounded a bit surprised. “You want me to take the helm again?”

“I do not know. I only felt that it was incredible.” Goathead thought for a moment, and some uncertainty entered his tone. “I can sense this ‘ship’, and I can understand each of its parts, but I do not know how to talk to it. It feels like an old friend of mine, but I have forgotten its affairs, so it ignores me. Yet last time, when you went to the aft deck and held that wheel… I seemed to hear its voice.”

“Oh? You heard its ‘voice’? What kind of voice was it?”

Duncan showed a curious expression at once. Last time he had left in a hurry and had not had time to hear this Goathead talk about any of this. Now that Goathead brought it up, he at once realized he had overlooked this question. When he took the helm, the Goathead in the Mortal Realm had awakened in shock. So what about this Goathead on the dream side? How had it reacted then?

Goathead fell silent for a moment, as if searching his memories. After nearly half a minute he slowly spoke: “Rather than a voice, it was more like some ‘things’ that appeared directly in my memory. It seemed to be calling me, reminding me not to forget the pact with the ‘captain’, reminding me not to abandon my post… I also saw some images, saw…”

He suddenly stopped, as if that half-asleep state was affecting his thoughts and keeping him from finding words to describe what he remembered. It also looked like he had fallen again into that same pause in thought and had forgotten the topic at hand.

Duncan had to remind him from the side: “What did you see? Was it an image of this ship?”

“Oh, right, it was this ship. But I do not think I was on the ship…”

“You were not on the ship?”

“I was in a very dark place. Empty… everywhere was empty and hazy. A shadow drifted over. It was this ship’s shadow, but it looked like it would soon fade away. Then a vague voice talked with me. I cannot remember what that voice said, but the master of that voice took something from me. After that, the shadow turned solid…”

Goathead spoke in a tone like sleep-talking, slow and disjointed. His words often jumped and broke without logic, like a chaotic dream that showed its bizarre, flickering scenes without any polish.

Goathead paused for another ten seconds or so before adding the last sentence: “…So I became a part of the shadow. That seems to have been a very, very long time ago, but this ship still seems to remember… Strange. Is it that it remembers, or that I remember?”

Goathead seemed to sink back into confusion. As he muttered, his voice grew lower and lower until it turned into a whisper that could not be heard at all. After a brief time of thought, Duncan’s expression slowly changed. Sitting behind the chart table, his face grew serious.

Goathead’s description was jumbled, with many missing and blurred details. But that did not mean it had no useful information. From those words, Duncan could fully deduce and connect many things.

What Goathead had described seemed to be the scene from a hundred years ago, when the Vanished and the real Captain Duncan Abnomar had taken him away from Subspace.

On the other side, in the Mortal Realm, Duncan had once tried in a roundabout way to ask the other Goathead about this. But that one had always given vague answers, as if it had already forgotten what had happened a century ago. Now it seemed that the information had stayed in the memory of this Goathead in the dream. Or, according to this Goathead’s own words, was it the Vanished that remembered it?

Duncan gave a subtle look at the Goathead that had fallen silent again, then raised his head to glance around the captain’s cabin.

This place was Goathead’s dream, and in the usual sense a dream was the dreamer’s “subconscious projection”.

But just now, Duncan had suddenly realized something.

This ship might not be only Goathead’s dream. The Vanished was alive as well.

The century-long symbiotic pact had bound Goathead and the Vanished tightly together. This bond showed not only in their physical structure but also in spirit. The latter was a living ship. Many “objects” on the ship seemed to have only the most basic life, but as a whole, as the Vanished, its “consciousness” might be far more complex and complete than he had imagined.

Complete enough to take part in this dream in a way beyond imagining.

Duncan slowly placed his hand on the enchanted sea chart table in front of him. He gazed at it for a long time, as if he were looking through the table at the entire Vanished. He thought about the information hidden in Goathead’s description just now, his fingers unconsciously rubbing the rough tabletop.

“Are you trying to use this chance to tell me something?” he asked in his heart.

But he received no response.

Perhaps the Vanished’s “consciousness” was in a state he could not understand. It might have already responded, but no one could understand it.

Duncan thought about what Goathead had just said.

Goathead had said he once drifted in a dark, hollow place where everything around was empty and chaotic. That fit the traits of Subspace very well. He had also said the Vanished appeared before him, looking like a phantom that was about to vanish. Was that the state the Vanished had been in when it first met Goathead?

About to fade away. That meant that when the Vanished had first fallen into Subspace, its state had actually been very bad, so bad that it had already lost its body. In a sense, the ship had already been erased by Subspace at that time. Only a vague voice remained, Duncan Abnomar’s voice.

Then the master of that voice had taken something from Goathead, and only then had the Vanished’s phantom gained a body again. That “something” was the key.

Duncan’s eyes suddenly grew grave. Right after that, he remembered the first thing Goathead had said. The Vanished had reminded him not to forget the “pact” with the captain.

There was a pact, a pact between Goathead and Duncan Abnomar.

What was in that pact? When they met in Subspace a hundred years ago, what agreement had they made?

Duncan Abnomar had taken some “thing” from Goathead in order to reshape the Vanished’s body. The Vanished had taken Goathead out of Subspace and brought him into the stable Mortal Realm dimension.

Those should all have been part of the pact.

But what came after?

Duncan Abnomar had not lived until now. He had already vanished. Inside this powerful body now was a soul named Zhou Ming.

And the Goathead in the Mortal Realm plainly knew long ago that the “captain” had changed.

But it still faithfully carried out the duties of the first mate.

Was that also part of the pact?

The Goathead in the Mortal Realm had said he did not remember his experiences in Subspace. Then did he still remember this pact? Or had he also forgotten the pact, while some kind of “restriction” was still at work, forcing him to keep fulfilling the agreement?

Thoughts spun quickly in Duncan’s mind. After a moment, he suddenly stood up.

The Goathead on the table did not react at all. It did not turn its gaze to follow Duncan’s movement as it had before.

It still seemed sunk in that half-asleep, dazed state. The earlier remembering and thinking had already gone beyond some kind of “thinking threshold” for it.

Duncan did not bother with Goathead. He knew it would recover after a while. Right now, he had more important things to do.

He left the captain’s cabin and stepped onto the stairs leading to the aft deck. Following the familiar route, he reached the steering platform where the wheel was set.

With the experience from last time and with this round of preparation, Duncan did not hesitate anymore. He stepped forward quickly and gripped the heavy wheel tightly.

The next second, under the captain’s hands on the wheel, the whole ship suddenly came alive.

A familiar scene appeared again before his eyes. The huge ghost ship was waking quickly. From all over the ship came the sounds of things coming to life. The rigging tightened. The sails billowed. Ropes and winches gave off creaking noises. At almost the same moment, that vast “root tunnel”, like some passage large enough to hold a giant ship, appeared in front of the Vanished and rushed toward it like a huge whirlpool.

Countless branches, roots, and phantasmal lights drifting in the mist filled Duncan’s sight and surrounded the path ahead of the Vanished. Those warm streams of light climbed onto the deck once more and wandered aimlessly around the steering platform.

“Saslokar, is that you?”

A slightly childish voice reached Duncan’s ears. The streams of light circled around him, as if searching for something, yet also as if they were simply sleepwalking.

“…Saslokar will not be coming.”

Even though he knew the present Atlantis could not hear his voice, Duncan still answered seriously. Then he ignored the phantom lights wandering near him and put all his attention on the ship beneath his feet.

The Vanished was sailing through the darkness, moving quickly inside that huge root system tunnel. Now and then, branch-like splits appeared in the tunnel. Yet the ship seemed to know the route by itself. It did not need the captain to steer. It chose its own course.

Duncan only needed to hold the wheel.

That let him put more of his focus into sensing.

If things were really as he thought, if this ship was both Goathead’s dream and the Vanished’s dream, then somewhere on this ship there had to be parts that were not quite the same as the Vanished that now existed in the Mortal Realm.

Those would be the subconscious reshaping the dream, the replay of memories.

They were things the Vanished was trying to show him.