Chapter 65

Chapter 65: Guillotine.

The captain’s cabin of the White Oak had been turned into a temporary Sanctum.

The smell of incense drifted through the room. charm amulets painted with Storm Runes hung on every door and window. priests had also placed bronze Boundary Stele in the four corners of the room and tied strips of cloth soaked in Holy Oil to the tops of the stele. Last of all, a copy of the Storm Canon from the great Cathedral was brought into the room to serve as the “pillar” of the Sanctum.

Only after all these arrangements were complete did Captain Lawrence and Inquisitor Vanna enter the cabin together.

“I hope you do not mind this ‘remodeling’ of your room,” Vanna said calmly. She kept the reserve and proper manners that suited a high-ranking Cleric. “It is all for safety.”

“Of course. All for safety. Right now, safety is exactly what I lack the most,” Captain Lawrence nodded in full understanding at once. He looked around at all the holy objects in the room and felt himself relax a little. “With all these here, ordinary twisted things of corruption would probably die just from stepping inside and taking one look…”

“You can feel at ease talking with me about the Vanished in here,” Vanna nodded. “Start from the very beginning. Where did you see that ship, and how did it appear?”

Captain Lawrence took a breath and began to calmly retell the most terrifying day in his memory: “It was like this…”

Captain Lawrence spoke in great detail. In front of a professional Inquisitor, he even told her exactly what he had eaten for breakfast that day and the exact time the sailors had started their meal. For the parts he truly could not recall, he turned to the captain’s log and the sailors’ journals for that day.

Experienced captains all knew one thing. Before many Anomaly events fully appeared, there were often signs that seemed ordinary. At the time, people might find it hard to see the links between these things. But later, professionals looking back could find clues in those daily details and draw lessons to warn others.

Every captain on the Boundless Sea kept a log of the voyage. At the same time, reading one’s own log was, besides reading Church classics, the only safe “reading” on the Boundless Sea.

When Vanna finished listening to this shocking account, her bold brows had slowly drawn together.

The situation was more serious than she had thought, and also stranger than she had thought.

She had first believed that when Captain Lawrence said “we ran into it,” he meant only a brief encounter, or at most that they had brushed past that ghost ship. In that case, the terrifying captain of the Vanished might have only taken the cargo and left the crew unharmed. She had never expected that it had actually been a direct collision.

The whole White Oak had crashed right into the hull of the Vanished. The whole ship, from top to bottom, had been swept over once by that green ghostly flame.

According to Captain Lawrence, at that time the White Oak had even started to transform into the Vanished. He had clearly seen his own body shifting into a spirit form state.

The Holy beacons on the ship had been shut down. The sacred relic in the hold had not reacted. The defensive materials added into the hull had done nothing. The priests could barely protect themselves. The whole ship had sunk deep into the Spirit Realm and could not send any call for help to the outside. It was fair to say that, at that moment, the White Oak had already become that captain’s prey. There had been no chance for any “lucky escape.”

The only reason Captain Lawrence could still stand here now was that the Vanished had given up this prize without hesitation.

“Inquisitor,” after he finally finished his story, Captain Lawrence could not help speaking when he saw that Vanna stayed silent for a long time. “What do you think the Vanished was trying to do back then? Did it really only want Anomaly 099?”

Vanna looked at him: “Was that not what you always thought?”

“I… I did always think that, but now I am no longer sure,” Lawrence sighed. “Especially after you just said that ghost captain recently stretched his power into the city-state of Pland… I keep feeling it cannot be that simple.”

“No one can guess what that ghost captain is thinking,” Vanna shook her head. “All we can do now is carry out the most thorough checks on the White Oak to keep it from bringing in any ‘intruder.’ You and your crew members will also have to suffer some hardship. Before the investigation is over, you may not meet with anyone except Church priests… including family visitors.”

Captain Lawrence lowered his head: “I understand.”

He paused for a moment, then added: “Then… about the theft of Anomaly 099…”

Vanna knew what the captain was worried about.

The strange, terrifying Visions on the sea hung over civilization as a threat. But before thinking about such distant, great dangers, this captain was first a normal man who had to feed his family. Losing Anomaly 099 was a burden too heavy to place on an ordinary person.

“Do not worry. The Church will report this matter to the city-state authority and the Explorer Association,” she said in a calm voice. “The appearance of the Vanished counts as force majeure. The loss of Anomaly 099 is not your fault. Even if a Cathedral ship had been in charge of the escort that day, the result would likely have been the same.”

The expression on Captain Lawrence’s face clearly relaxed a little.

Yet there was one thing Vanna did not say aloud. In the end, Anomalies always walked the line between sealing and a runaway state. Every year, new Anomalies lost control. City-state residents died under the influence of strange things again and again. For hundreds and thousands of years, the Church had fought these Anomalies in their runaway state. In this long, huge balance of terror, the loss of a single Anomaly was not impossible to imagine, even if its number was under one hundred.

But as an Inquisitor, she could not say such things.

“Also…” At this moment, Captain Lawrence broke the silence again, though he sounded a bit hesitant. “I would like to ask… what exactly is so special about Anomaly 099?”

He paused there, then quickly added: “Of course, when I took the escort job I did receive a file, but it mostly covered how to keep Anomaly 099 sealed and how to handle it in the first stage of a runaway state. It did not say anything about where this Anomaly came from or what would happen in a full runaway state… You know, it is an Anomaly numbered under one hundred. The more ordinary people around it know about it, the more likely it is to go into a runaway state. I do understand that rule.

“But now Anomaly 099 has already been taken by the Vanished. By the rules, it should now count as fully in a runaway state, so…”

“I can tell you,” Vanna said with a nod before Captain Lawrence could finish. “Anomaly 099 has already left the control of civilized society. By regulation, its data will be shared with the Adventurer Association and the supernatural teams of the city-states to help capture and reseal it later. You are a member of the Adventurer Association and the last person to come into contact with Anomaly 099, so you should know this information.”

She stopped to think for a moment. Then, as she sorted through what she knew, she spoke slowly: “Anomaly 099, Doll spirit coffin. On the outside, it looks like a fancy wooden box, like a spirit coffin. Inside it is a Doll in a sleeping state. The Doll has silver hair and a purple dress. Her body is similar in size to a human.

“This Anomaly was first found in the northern Frost Sea. The Doll inside looks almost exactly like Ray Nora, the queen of Frostholm who was executed by Rebel decapitation about half a century ago. But there is no clear proof that links the two.

“This Anomaly has no will of its own. It has no mind. But it is very likely that, driven by instinct, it will actively sense the outside world and affect it.

“You should already know the sealing method for Anomaly 099, so I will not repeat that. As for its danger…

“First, the Doll spirit coffin has a ‘settling’ tendency. Once it stays for a long time in one area, it will treat that place as its own territory. After that, it becomes very hard to move it again. It will start to spread its influence in its settled place. At the same time, the strength of the seal will quickly weaken and it will become easier and easier for it to enter a runaway state. This is also a shared trait of quite a few Anomalies. Because of this, Anomaly 099 must be moved and resealed often to keep it from overgrowing.

“Next, when the Doll spirit coffin is in a runaway state, all humanoid beings within a certain range around it will be used as test targets. That includes humans, elves, Senkin, and gyproans. This range can be as short as a hundred meters or as long as nearly a thousand. It will grow with the time Anomaly 099 has ‘settled.’ The exact check standard is still unclear. What we do know is that whoever is chosen as a target will at once lose control of their body like a Puppet on strings. They will then move without knowing it, kneel, and bow in the direction of the Doll spirit coffin, just like city-state citizens bow to their Queen. As soon as this action is complete… the victim is decapitated on the spot.

“This decapitation cannot be dodged, blocked, or resisted. Any blessing on the victim or any armor they wear is useless. The only condition is that ‘the Doll has chosen you.’ Once the victim finishes the action, they will be in a state as if they have already been decapitated. After the decapitation, the Doll will stay quiet for four to six hours. Then it will start looking for the next target, until no one is left alive in range or the spirit coffin is sealed again.

“When the Doll spirit coffin is in a runaway state, it can move. Its speed is very fast and its strength is very great. It will break free from capture in all kinds of shocking ways. The spirit coffin itself is also very tough. So once it goes into a runaway state, its danger grows even further.

“In the several runaway state events of the Doll spirit coffin, only one Saint lived through it. But that Saint happened to have the bloodline of the northern city-state of Frostholm. Because of that, we cannot tell whether it was the Saint’s power that stopped the curse, or whether his bloodline simply met the Doll spirit coffin’s ‘pardon’ condition.”

While he listened to the young Inquisitor’s calm and smooth explanation, Captain Lawrence felt the hair on his body stand up one by one.

His first thought was: the authority’s money was truly not easy to earn!

No wonder the pay for escorting Anomaly 099 was almost five times the pay for escorting normal Anomalies. This kind of deadly power ignored defense and dodging, and it only needed the condition “the Doll has set its eyes on you” to take effect. On an Ocean-Going Vessel where there was no way to run, it was almost a sure thing that once it entered a runaway state, everyone on board would die.

Only the captains in the Explorer Association, who specialized in “extreme survival,” would take on a job like that.

At the same time, he heard Inquisitor Vanna’s voice continue: “Because of such strange and terrible power, when the Church filed Anomaly 099, it gave this ability a special name. The name came from the tool used to execute the Frostholm queen by Rebel decapitation half a century ago:

“Alice Guillotine.”