Chapter 636

Chapter 636: Sailing in the Elder Gods’ Nightmare

The Vanished began to accelerate toward Atlantis. It charged ahead through waves that rose higher and higher, and into the terrible howls and storms rolling from the direction of that giant tree. Wrapped in blazing fire, the ghost ship started its assault.

Atlantis seemed to notice this sudden change. Its instinctive resistance to the Dream Invasion immediately stirred. Towering waves roared across the sea. The water influenced by the giant tree turned into sky-high walls, as if covered in fangs and blades, crashing down toward the bow of the Vanished with crushing force. In the scream of the waves, countless hazy figures appeared in the storm. They looked like an ancient army, mixed with warped visions of birds and beasts twisted beyond recognition. They surged through the gaps between the waves like a collapsing mountain, rushing at the burning ghost ship in the gale.

However, the Vanished did not avoid the oncoming storm at all. Its sails billowed even more, and its speed increased.

ghostly green flames burst from every seam of the decks, every cabin window, and every gunport on the ship, as if they meant to set the entire sea on fire. That living blaze skimmed over the ocean and crashed straight into the storm made of nightmare phantoms.

The towering waves burned, steam rolled up and opened huge gaps, and the blades hidden in the wind and spray were swallowed by an invisible power. They vanished with the next gust, turning into harmless mist. The phantoms in the storm turned into true illusions in the fire.

They passed harmlessly through the hull of the Vanished. The spirit form fire did not harm them, and they could not touch the Vanished. Only in the ship’s trailing wake of fire did these phantoms slowly pause, as if waking from a long dream. Silently, they faded away on the wind.

After that, the Vanished sailed into a greater storm, with more phantoms and nightmares closer to the true essence of Atlantis.

Just as a person could never tell when a dream truly began, after an instant too small for any sense to notice, the world outside the Vanished fell into murky darkness. The Boundless Sea was gone. The sky was gone. Even the “sunlight” that had spread from the distant sea had disappeared without anyone knowing when it left.

Around them, only storm-visions kept rolling in the dark, along with huge “tunnels” that appeared and vanished inside the storm, woven from countless vines and roots. The Vanished raced forward through one of these unspeakable tunnels.

After another instant too small to notice, sound vanished as well.

The world outside the Vanished became silent.

Yet the storm-phantoms were still there. They just churned in silence, which made them even more eerie and terrifying than before.

The Vanished sailed on through the tangled plant structures. The entire ship seemed to float in a void. Far ahead, in that void, only the vast shadow of Atlantis remained.

It looked like the last solid thing left in the world, as if after the world had collapsed and all things had fallen into silence, it was the one, final tree.

Or perhaps the very first tree.

Rune felt a little better. After they passed that unnoticeable “Dreamwalking moment”, or perhaps after the ship itself had gone through some kind of “change”, he found that the constant calling in his mind suddenly weakened. He felt his thoughts slowly becoming stable again. He could even hear the beating of his heart in his chest.

He lowered his head and saw that his body really was recovering bit by bit.

Looking out the window, he could see that enormous tree stretching for thousands of miles through the darkness.

Even though they were still trapped in this dangerous, terrifying “dream of the Elder Gods”, and even though he knew Atlantis was still trying to “protect”—or rather, to kill—every elf in the world, the old man still could not help but mutter under his breath: “…So beautiful…”

A voice answered from nearby: “Yes, very beautiful…”

Rune turned toward the sound and saw that the strange Goathead on the chart table was staring out the window with a sigh. Pale green flame flowed and rose through its wooden body, and a tongue of fire gathered beneath it like a blurred, twisted spine, running along the table and linking it to the deck below.

“At the beginning, I planted her in the dark—just like this,” the eerie wooden Goathead went on softly. It seemed lost in memory, carefully picking up the pieces buried deep in its mind. “Back then she was not this big… she was just a little sapling, crooked and bent, even a bit… ugly.

“At that time, I did not know what she would become, or what she ought to become. She shaped herself. All I did was let her grow, and keep growing.

“Then I learned to imagine more things. More trees. Plants that grew together with the trees, and all kinds of creatures living among them… I placed them all through that darkness. After a while, the darkness faded, and the world began to grow rich and full. Many things… beyond my first imagination started to happen. Overall, it was interesting—much more interesting than an endless, meaningless emptiness.

“So some intelligent beings that grew out of the forest gave me a name. They said I was the ‘creator’.

“But I did not really understand that title. I did not understand much of what they said. They did many strange things that I could not understand either.

“They gathered together to dance. They piled their harvest at the feet of a billy goat carved from roots. They raised great waterwheels on the river and decorated them with bright ribbons. When at last they learned how to fly, they leapt from the branches of Atlantis in huge flying machines and glided over the hills, landing at the edge of Atlantis’s gaze amid cheers…

“They said it was to please the great creator, so the creator would not leave.

“But I did not understand what they were doing. I was not interested in their… performances and gifts at all. I never was.

“But when I saw how happy they were, I thought it was a good thing.”

Rune fell quiet. His eyes slowly opened wider as he stared at the unsettling Goathead on the table, his expression filled with disbelief.

He opened his mouth, but the tangle of feelings in his chest choked off all words. Only a strange sound came from his throat.

A sudden crackling explosion in the captain’s cabin cut off his next move and his next line.

Pale green spirit form fire flared out of thin air. A tall figure took shape in the flames. Duncan stepped out of the fire and looked straight at Goathead: “You remembered everything?”

“Broken, chaotic. Only vague impressions and a few flickering images,” Goathead answered with a soft creak of wood, slowly turning his gaze toward Duncan. “I can feel that many other ‘fragments’ are scattered in other places.”

“Planning to gather them all?” Duncan asked offhandedly.

“…It does not matter,” Goathead said after two seconds of silence. To Duncan’s surprise, he shook his head. “At least it is not something to think about right now.”

“…All right.” Duncan gave Goathead a long, deep look, then turned toward the window. “Get ready to make contact. We are close to the trunk.”

“Will you take the helm yourself?” Goathead asked.

“No,” Duncan shook his head. “If I took the helm, we might never find where Atlantis is hiding. Since you have remembered part of it, you keep steering. I think that part of your ‘memory’ is enough to lead us in the right direction.”

“Understood,” Goathead replied simply.

To be honest, Duncan found this sudden brevity of his a bit hard to get used to.

But he soon pushed that stray thought aside.

The Vanished began to pass through the layered, silent storm phantoms and the tunnels and Veil woven from countless vines and roots. The ghost ship that had wandered many times along the dark edge of the Veil now finally found the correct way forward.

Duncan turned his head and glanced at Rune, the pope.

After a brief, slightly awkward moment of eye contact, he waved to Alice, who was still off in her own thoughts nearby: “Come here and untie the old gentleman…”

“Oh.” Alice answered at once and, a little regretfully, went over to “untie” the elven elder who was still bound to the pillar.

Rune’s mouth twitched slightly. Trying to hide his embarrassment, he spoke in a calm tone: “Actually, I think it is fine. Miss Alice’s methods also have a certain… professionalism to them…”

He had only spoken half his sentence when a violent tremor suddenly swept through the entire ship.

It felt as if the moving Vanished had crashed straight into some invisible giant mass. A shock unlike any before slammed in from the bow, along with a harsh screeching noise that made it seem as if the ship might break apart. The masts shook wildly. The spirit form sails flashed with blinding light as they flickered, and the fire flowing across the deck exploded with a sharp bang.

Duncan reacted the instant the unseen impact hit. He slapped his hand on the chart table before him, using the spirit form flames to steady the whole ship, and shouted quickly: “Tie him back up!”

This time Alice moved faster than ever: “Got it!”

“Wait, you two!” Rune only had time for one shout before Alice had tied him up again, tight and secure. In his poor state, the pope was no match for the living doll aboard the Vanished.

Almost at the same moment, Duncan caught sight of something outside the window, in the dark void around Atlantis.

spirit form flames burst from the Vanished, as if they had “smelled” something. They spread wildly into the darkness. In the overlapping glow of the spreading spirit flame, he saw… shadows even larger than Atlantis itself.