Chapter 641

Chapter 641: .

Through the last thin link she still had with the paper boat, Lucretia did her best to steer it toward the Vanished as it flew over the forest.

The Vanished also noticed the little boat swaying in the air and about to crash. It suddenly sped up. In its spirit form state, the huge hull moved as lightly as a gust of wind and, in almost an instant, it reached the space beneath Lucretia and the others.

The torn paper boat hit the deck like a cloud in a runaway state after several dangerous shifts in direction, finally crashing down in a crooked line.

Shirley and Dog tumbled out of the boat, rolled across the deck several times, and only then managed to stop. A tall figure appeared in front of them. Duncan bent down, grabbed the dizzy Shirley, and hauled her to her feet, then reached out and caught Nina as she rolled over as well.

Shirley still seemed dazed. After she stood up, she shook her head hard. Only then did her eyes slowly focus again. She looked around and finally relaxed fully: “We are actually still alive… I thought I was dead for sure this time…”

“Uncle Duncan!” Nina cheered happily and threw herself into Duncan’s arms.

Duncan smiled, patted Nina’s hair, hugged her lightly, then looked up into the distance.

Morris stood steady on the deck. One hand rested on the Gatekeeper’s cane, and in his other hand he held a delicate mechanical device that looked like a gyroscope. He watched them with a slight smile. Lucretia drifted down lightly from a nearby mast. When the paper boat was about to hit the deck, she had left it a moment early.

Then she had gotten caught on the mast.

“Looks like you are all in pretty good shape,” Duncan said with a smile and gave them a nod. “But honestly, flying toward a burning sky in an Origami Skiff is a bit risky.”

Lucretia, who was walking over, showed an awkward look at once: “This spell definitely has room for improvement…”

Nina quickly tugged on Duncan’s arm and pointed up at the glowing curtain that seemed to divide the two worlds: “Uncle, look up there…”

Duncan nodded lightly: “I have already seen it.”

A brilliant curtain of light, as if cast from pure sunlight, covered the sky between the two worlds, hanging like a low shell over the desert continent of yellow sand.

The Vanished kept rising. It had now reached the highest point above the forest. The shining sunlight barrier almost brushed the tip of the ship’s tallest mast. Faint ripples spread out from that mast tip over the barrier, looking gentle and harmless.

“Vanna may be trapped on the other side,” Morris said as he walked over, his face grave. “This barrier is made from the power of the Creeping Sun Wheel. Whoever built it is aiming at that ‘Sun’ Vanna told us about. We just crashed into this barrier a moment ago.”

Duncan nodded: “I know. This barrier is trying to keep me out.”

“So what do we do now?” Nina raised her head curiously. “Can we just smash our way in?”

Duncan gave her a helpless look: “You have been led astray by Shirley. A girl should not have her head full of smashing into things. Do not always think of such rough methods.”

As he spoke, he lifted his head to look at the vast, majestic sunlight Veil floating above the Vanished.

The next second, a light creaking came from deep inside the ship. Then the ghost ship, burning with fierce spirit flame, suddenly lifted higher and charged straight toward the rolling sea of light.

Gravity Inversion happened. At the instant the flip came, the Vanished rolled hard within the curtain of light to adjust to the change in gravity after crossing the boundary between the two worlds.

When Shirley once again dragged herself up from the deck in a daze, she saw that the Vanished was sailing on the surface of the hot, heaving curtain of light. Under the light lay the hazy desert land. Above her head, hanging upside down, were the familiar forest and the wrecked Atlantis.

The sunlight Veil that separated the two worlds reacted almost at once, just as it had when the paper boat drew near earlier. The blazing sunlight turned into surging flames in the blink of an eye and poured in wave after wave toward the uninvited ship sailing on its surface. The flames rose like mountains, roaring and boiling as they rushed in.

But every tongue of light and flame that neared the Vanished was tinted with a soft green almost at once, turning into gentle spirit flame that circled the ship.

In the next second, these ghost-green flames began to spread over the barrier like growing corruption, covering more and more of it and moving faster and faster.

The barrier that had seemed so grand and splendid was being burned through and melted at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Nina’s eyes went wide as she watched the golden curtain beyond the rail turn into a sea of spreading green flame in almost an instant. She let out a soft sound of awe: “Ooh…”

Duncan did not speak. He simply let his gaze rest on the “borderline” between the two worlds, and a thoughtful look slowly appeared on his face.

He was still recalling what he had seen in that moment when the Gravity Inversion happened.

The direction of gravity had changed in an instant. There was no “balance point” of zero gravity between the two worlds. As he approached the border, he had not felt gravity weaken bit by bit and then change direction. There was no gradual process.

This showed even more clearly that the “collision” of the two worlds was not a simple physical process, not just two celestial bodies touching each other on a physical level. They were already this close, yet the gravity of the two lands still stayed completely separate and independent, as if they were…

Incompatible.

At the same time that this “incompatible” state appeared, strange corruption had shown up in both the forest world and the desert world. Everything twisted. Unnamable things grew out of the shadows. Atlantis had started to collapse and burn on its own even before the upside-down desert drew near. It all felt like…

A kind of mental corruption on the level of entire worlds.

Two worlds that could not read each other, could not make sense of each other, and could not be made to fit together were twisting at the same time as they drew close.

Duncan lifted his head and looked at Atlantis, now hanging upside down in the sky and falling apart in the flames. The World Tree there was already unrecognizable. In its collapse, the elves’ home world was slowly showing a state of complete corruption, dissolving and breaking apart in chaos and dark.

The elves’ unique racial nature had shaped this strange dimension called the Nameless One’s Dream. Atlantis was trapped here in an eternal nightmare, and what he saw now was the deepest part of that nightmare.

This moment was before the Deep Sea era opened. The Great Annihilation was happening.

The true nature of the Great Annihilation… was the collision of two worlds.

Duncan suddenly frowned.

Two worlds? Was it really only two worlds?

He suddenly thought of the “warrior” who had turned into living metal, and of the world of swords and magic that had crumbled at dusk. He thought of the Moon over his home, of the endless mist outside his apartment door, of the many conflicting records still kept in the city-states, of the countless strange legends written in the books of the Age of Darkness, of those ancient civilizations that could never be proved real, of those relics that did not belong to any known civilization, and of the strong corruption carried by those relics.

Some relics were like poison to this world just by existing. Simply placing them somewhere would twist and corrupt everything around them.

And there were other things that were not even allowed to appear in the Mortal Realm. There was no way to contain or make them harmless. Destroying them at once was the only safe way to deal with them. People spoke of them in fear and called them… “Blasphemous Archetypes”.

Duncan stood quietly on the deck of the Vanished, in the narrow gap between two worlds that were destroying each other. Faced with Universal Extinction and Doomsday, he finally saw the truth of the Great Annihilation.

Lucretia suddenly felt something.

It was as if an invisible wind was stirring over the deck, and a heavy, suffocating pressure was forming at her side.

She turned quickly toward the source of that weight.

A blaze of starlight stood quietly not far from her. The starlight outlined a hazy human shape. It seemed to stand right in front of her, yet at the same time it felt as if it stood at an infinite distance. It did not look very tall, but it gave a sense of endless size, as if she could never truly see its edges.

Lucretia remembered that she had seen this starlight before. It had been not long ago, when she met her Father again for the first time. In one dangerous instant, in a fleeting glimpse, she had seen a bit of the “truth” behind Father’s shell.

But this time was different.

All the rules of light and her normal sight seemed to fail before that starlight. Lucretia was shocked to find her vision bending inside it. Strange “rules” she could not understand were forming within the light. She tried to look away, but found she could not.

Her gaze seemed to have become part of the starlight.

Then, in the next second, just when she thought her mind would be completely swallowed and made one with that giant starlight, all the light faded.

A broad hand covered her eyes.

Lucretia froze for a moment before she realized what it was. It was Father’s hand.

She grabbed the hand in a daze, gently pushed it away, and looked toward the place where the blazing starlight had been.

The starlight had crumpled back into Duncan’s form.

“Do not be afraid,” she heard Father say to her softly. “I am still here.”

“What just happened?” Lucretia blinked. Only after she heard Duncan’s voice did she finally relax. But the “burn” left by that starlight still felt deeply branded in her mind. “Just now, you…”

“Nothing,” Duncan said in a low voice. “I just suddenly understood some things.”