Chapter 615

Chapter 615: Shattered Secrets

Looking at the keel that stretched forward into the dark, Duncan felt he could already be sure of its origin, and of the “deal” that had taken place deep in Subspace a century ago.

But he kept feeling that he had missed something. He felt this was not what the Vanished wanted to tell him—at least, not all of it.

He lifted the consecrated lantern higher. The flame lit by the spirit flame grew a little brighter. Its gentle glow lit the area around them and made the details on the keel’s surface stand out more clearly. The firelight also shone on the empty regions beyond the keel and spread through the dark mist.

Shapes seemed to flicker in the mist, as if many things were hiding there.

Agatha’s shadow followed. She rose up in the mist and stood dimly at his side. “This… spine, could it come from the great demon god Saslokar of elven legend?”

“The chance is very high,” Duncan nodded slightly. “And I fear only a being on the level of a deity could have a spine like this.”

“Goathead…” Agatha hesitated. Her thoughts seemed tangled, and it took her a long time to find the right words. “I mean all the Goatheads. The one on the Vanished, the one in this dreamscape, the ones in the hands of those cultists, and the ‘Goatheads’ that may still be unknown. What do you think their relationship is with Saslokar?”

She paused, then went on: “That muddled Goathead said that Saslokar died a long time ago, and that it was not Saslokar. But now it seems that ‘they’ all have a close link with the ‘primordial dream’ of the elves. Now we have even found this ‘keel’ at the bottom of the Vanished… You no longer remember how you got this keel in Subspace back then, do you?”

Of course, Agatha did not know that the Duncan now was not the Vanished’s original “captain”. She naturally believed that the one who had made an agreement and signed a contract with Goathead in Subspace a hundred years ago was Duncan. He often said that he had lost many memories while he was regaining his humanity. So she took it for granted that this keel was also one of the memories Duncan had lost.

Duncan did not answer her directly. He only nodded lightly, then thought for a few seconds before speaking in a thoughtful tone: “Perhaps all the Goatheads are parts of Saslokar.”

Agatha was stunned for a moment, but soon understood. “So Miss Lucretia was right to call those ‘Goatheads’ in the hands of the Annihilators ‘Elder God fragments’… And these Elder God fragments are all in different states and cannot understand themselves. Some still remember things related to Saslokar or Atlantis, and some seem to have completely lost thought and reason…”

Duncan stayed silent and just stared at the massive spine before him, lost in thought. After a long time he suddenly spoke. “Let us be bolder with our guess. ‘Goathead’ may be only one form that an Elder God fragment can take. The spine in front of us is clearly another form of ‘Elder God fragment’. And there may well be other forms of Elder God fragments: a tree, a person, a stone, a corpse… all of them could be parts left behind by Saslokar.

“After all, in the old myths of the elves, Saslokar had countless forms. That can also explain why Goathead, which seems to be an Elder God fragment, is small enough to sit on a chart table, while this spine, which is also a ‘fragment’, can support the entire Vanished.”

Duncan spoke of the possibility he had thought of in a calm voice. But the picture it painted was chilling. Even Agatha, who had once been a Gatekeeper, felt a cold shiver when she tried to imagine the state of that great demon god.

She could not help but speak. “What kind of power… could turn a ‘deity’ into this? Into this… torn-apart state?”

She had only spoken without thinking and did not expect any answer from the captain.

Yet after a brief silence, Duncan did speak. He spoke slowly, as if talking to himself—

“…But the second Blueprint also failed. And so, in the second Long Night of the Genesis Protocol, the King of Dreams was torn apart. Part of Him drifted along the border of the Mortal Realm…”

Agatha froze at once. Her shadow quivered a little in the light, and its edges looked a bit blurred. Soon she remembered where those lines came from. “That is written in the Blasphemous Tome…”

Duncan nodded slightly. “Yes. It is the ‘creation myth’ of the Annihilators, the story from before the age of the Deep Sea began. The King of Dreams used His divine authority to create the world, yet in the Long Night He was torn into pieces.”

“Saslokar is one of the lost Elder Kings!” Agatha understood. “This ‘great demon god’ from the ancient legends of the elves is the ‘King of Dreams’ who tried to remake the world in the second Long Night?!”

“I actually had this thought long ago, since Their Divine Authorities are so close,” Duncan said. “But for a long time, the ancient legends of the elves lacked any proof. Saslokar, as a faith element unique to the elven race, has many legends and sacred miracles that go against the records and facts from the other city-states on the Boundless Sea.

“There is also another important point. The elves have the most complete myth system and history of all the races. Yet in their own records, there is never any mention of ‘the King of Dreams trying to reshape the world in the second Long Night’. There is no description of this great demon god being torn apart at the end of the Long Night, not even in doubtful unofficial stories.

“These contradictions kept me from daring to treat the ‘great demon god Saslokar’ in elven legend and the ‘King of Dreams’ from the second Long Night as the same deity. Not until now… when I have seen with my own eyes the fragments left behind by this torn-apart Elder God.”

Perhaps because she was lost in shock and thought, Agatha stayed silent for a long time. Duncan walked forward slowly. Holding the consecrated lantern, he carefully stepped onto one of the joints of the “Elder God’s spine”, then bent down and touched its rough, weathered bone with his hand. It felt as if it had been battered by countless ages, yet it was still tough and reliable.

This spine had brought the Vanished, which had sunk deep into Subspace and was almost completely swallowed and erased by it, back into the Mortal Realm. It had given the ship a new body and carried it for a full century.

His movement suddenly stopped.

A question he had never thought of before, one that had been overlooked for a long time, pushed into his mind and would not be held back. Now that he had seen this “keel” made from an Elder God’s spine and understood in a clearer and more direct way what shocking structure lay at the bottom of a giant ship, Duncan finally thought of this question—

What had the original Vanished used as its keel?!

He straightened up in a rush and looked around at the vast dark space.

The frame of the hull bottom, held up by the keel and ribs, was half lost in endless mist. In the distance he could faintly see broken hull planks and the support structures of the upper levels.

This structure built on an Elder God’s spine was huge and complex. It inspired awe.

But this was not the original Vanished. Not all of it.

The first Vanished had long since been swallowed by Subspace. When Goathead saw it, the ship was already nothing but a faint phantom and the obsession of Duncan Abnomar himself.

The “Vanished” that Duncan knew now was the result of that phantom being made solid again. Its original keel had been replaced with the spine of an Elder God, and only then could it perform the “sacred miracle” of sailing back from Subspace.

Then what about this ship’s original keel?

Duncan was not an expert in shipbuilding. But after living in this world for so long, he had learned many basic facts about ships. He knew how sailing warships had been built a hundred years ago. He knew that only a single piece of wood that had been carefully picked and was extremely tough could bear the burden of the “keel”. The strength and size of that timber set the limit on the maximum size of every sailing warship.

Yet the Vanished was far beyond that size—not just a bit bigger, but twice as big.

The Vanished was the largest sailing ship this world had ever seen. No larger sailing ship had appeared after it. From the structure here in the bilge, the keel part of the Vanished had not used any riveting or splicing techniques either.

Duncan slowly frowned.

The keel was the most basic part of a ship. The way it was built directly decided the rest of the ship’s structure. So this “Elder God’s spine” before him should only have replaced the Vanished’s original keel, and not changed its basic structure on a large scale. That meant the Vanished should have used a single, whole keel, just like the other sailing warships of that time.

But there could not be trees that big in any city-state.

Even if there were, the strength of the wood itself had a limit. At the scale of the Vanished, it would far exceed what a traditional wooden keel could carry.

Unless from the very start this ship’s keel had not been ordinary wood, but some kind of… far more unbelievable material.

Over the past century, the Vanished had been one of the greatest taboos on the Boundless Sea. Many things related to it had become topics people did not dare mention. Although the ship had been built in the city-state of Pland, almost no one would talk in public about how it had been built back then.

But now Duncan could imagine that more than a hundred years ago, when work had just begun on this astonishing exploration ship, it must have been a major event.

Fog flowed slowly on all sides. The pale green light from the consecrated lantern soaked softly into the mist, as if outlining many vague shapes.

Duncan looked at the mist coiling around them and not fading. His brows slowly relaxed.

“So this is what you wanted to tell me…”