Chapter 663

Chapter 663: Alice’s Spoils

“You saw the shadow of the Vanished?!” Duncan did not hide his surprise at all.

“Yes,” Lucretia looked at Duncan and nodded in a tone that was a little hard to read. “After I had been lost in the fog for three days, I saw a silhouette that looked very, very much like the Vanished sail past in the distant mist. Wherever it passed, the thick fog seemed to thin for a short time and show the look of a normal sea. I… hesitated for a long time, but I had no other choice then, so I gathered my courage and sailed toward that silhouette. But just as the Radiant Star was about to come close, it suddenly vanished… and then I returned to normal waters.”

After Lucretia spoke, she looked at Duncan with a strange gaze for several seconds before adding: “That was in 1862. You had already fallen into Subspace for sixty-two years.”

Duncan was silent for a moment. He turned quietly to look at the distant sea to hide the change in his eyes and said calmly: “I do not remember that.”

“I know,” Lucretia nodded. “So I have always doubted whether what I saw was really the Vanished, or only a hallucination from exhaustion. Or perhaps… it was also some kind of special phenomenon of the border.

“That was my first and only time crossing the six mile limit. After that I never went in that deep again, and I never saw such a phantom again.”

Duncan said nothing. His thoughts rose and fell inside him.

From Lucretia’s account, he finally understood for the first time just how strange and dangerous that endless mist called the border of civilization, the Eternal Veil, really was. At the same time, countless guesses, and curiosity, rose in him about the unbelievable things that appeared in that mist.

It was clear that entering that mist carried huge risk. Even someone like Lucretia, a seasoned border scholar and explorer, had almost been lost forever in the Veil even with full preparations. And even in the relatively safe six mile Calm Zone, all kinds of strange and deadly entities and phenomena could claim an explorer’s life at any moment.

But those strange and dangerous entities were exactly what drew Duncan’s attention.

The shadow that seemed to be the remnant after the crash of the New Hope was only one of them. In that mist within six miles of the border, how many other remnants like the New Hope were there? Were they all the core residues left after different worlds were wiped out? What mechanism had left those residues behind until now? Those entities circled the whole Boundless Sea inside the mist. Then what lay outside that ring? What remnants were there?

Vaguely, Duncan had a feeling that these entities, which felt strangely hollow in Lucretia’s senses, might help him understand the deepest crisis of this world, and might even help him find a way out of the underlying corruption of all things…

A gaze from his side pulled Duncan out of his thoughts. He looked up and saw Lucretia standing quietly nearby, watching him. Her complicated eyes seemed to hold a faint worry.

“…You are going there again, are you not?”

Lucretia asked in a low voice.

“…This ship is sailing toward the border,” Duncan said, patting the handrail beside him. “Those Annihilators have a hideout in the border mist. One way or another, I will deal with it.”

“I do not mean this time. Those cultists will not hide very deep. Wiping out their lair may be easy for you. I mean after that,” Lucretia said as her gaze fell on Duncan’s eyes. “After you clear out that lair, your attention will turn to the mist, will it not? You will go to investigate the entities and manifestations I described to you, and even… go beyond the six mile mark.”

Her gaze brought a bit of pressure. For the first time, Duncan felt that the gaze of this Sea Witch was a little hard to face. But after a short silence, he still nodded: “If the situation calls for it, I will go.”

Lucretia pressed her lips together.

But she did not try to talk him out of it or stand in his way. She only spoke suddenly after a long silence: “Take me with you this time. My experience can help you.”

Duncan was a little surprised. He looked at the witch for a few seconds before he spoke softly: “…What if the end of the mist is Subspace?”

“Then I will need your experience.”

Duncan did not answer at once. He turned and silently gazed at the distant sea for quite a while before letting out a slight breath. “We will talk about it later. I do have this idea, but it is not yet time to go deep into the mist. At the very least, before that I must first destroy the cultists’ lair hidden on the border and make contact with the Four Gods Church.”

Lucretia nodded lightly.

Just then, the sound of footsteps and a strange clatter of metal came from not far away, cutting off their talk.

Duncan looked toward the sound and saw Alice strolling over in high spirits. The doll miss held a big wooden box in one arm, and in her other hand she carried a large bundle of kitchen knives, spatulas, and iron spoons she had scavenged from who knew where. She had strung them together with wire, and she walked over as happily and boldly as if she were bringing back spoils of war, making clanking noises all along the deck.

“Captain!” The silly doll came right up to Duncan, lifted the long string of “treasures” in her hand, and shook them in the air. “Look! I have my own spoils too!”

Duncan was still caught in the serious talk he had just had with Lucretia, and this excited, silly beauty shattered all his thoughts at once. He stared blankly at the string of things in Alice’s hand for quite a while before he finally reacted: “…You looted the kitchen?”

“Yes, yes,” Alice nodded again and again in small motions, her face full of pride. “Goathead said that after we take an enemy ship, we must raid the treasury at once and get enough spoils before it sinks. I just followed those toy soldiers and crawled all over the ship, and finally found the kitchen…”

She paused to think back and then said with some feeling: “This ship really is not very good. The things on it do not seem very smart. When I was collecting spoils, the things in the kitchen did not even fight back. I was all ready to have a battle with this kitchen knife…”

Lucretia stared in shock at the doll’s chatter, while Duncan, after a short silence, finally could not help speaking: “…Alice.”

“Ah?”

“Not everyone has to fight the kitchenware when they cook…”

“I know. The kitchens in the city-states do not hit people. But this is a ship, is it not?”

“…And not every ship has barrels, mops, and pots and pans that hit people.”

Alice opened her eyes wide in surprise.

Two seconds later, the doll let out a cry: “That is so amazing?”

Duncan: “…”

Just then, Lucretia noticed the strange wooden box Alice was holding in her other arm. “And what is this? Also your spoils?”

“Yes,” Alice answered at once and nodded again and again. “I found it in a strange cabin. There was only this wooden box in such a big room, and several iron chains were wrapped around the box. I pulled off most of the chains, but the lock on the box was very strange. No matter how much strength I used, I could not open it. I do not even know what is inside, so I just took the whole box…”

As she spoke, she handed the big wooden box in her arms to Duncan. “Will you take a look?”

While Alice was still talking, a strange sense of intuition had already risen in Duncan’s heart. He took the heavy wooden box from her. Its surface was black and covered with many complex patterns. His gaze slid to the lock, yet he saw only an ordinary looking iron lock, the kind even the clumsiest thief could open with a bit of wire. But this very lock had stopped the very strong doll.

Duncan knew how strong Alice was. She could swing a coffin lid and row a coffin across the sea at the speed of an assault boat, and she could tear apart iron chains meant to bind the box just by force. Duncan could even picture this silly girl rushing into the cabin and ripping those chains off with brute strength, yet left helpless in front of the last shabby little lock on the box.

It seemed that this box was exactly what he had been looking for.

Lucretia came closer and quickly recognized what was going on with the iron lock Alice could not open by force. “Anomaly 132-Lock,” she said. “It needs a special key to open it. The key is a spoken passphrase known only to the one who locked it. After it is locked, it becomes indestructible, and it makes the container it locks indestructible as well, even if that is only a paper box. This anomaly is one of the few harmless anomalies. Its number is not high, but it has a special use. It can help seal dangerous items. In 1876, it was stolen from a transport ship during a pirate attack… I did not expect it to fall into the hands of these cultists.”

After she finished sharing the information about this iron lock, Lucretia thought for a moment and then said, not very sure: “The cultist who last performed the locking is already dead, and the key phrase has been lost. But I can try other ways to solve the puzzle of this lock. Even though it is ‘indestructible’, I have heard that it has a loophole…”

A soft click suddenly sounded, cutting off the rest of the witch’s words.

Lucretia stared in shock at the wooden box in Duncan’s hands.

The lock had opened on its own.

“It seems it does not want to let you try,” Duncan said with a smile to Lucretia. “Or perhaps it knows that if your attempt did not work, then it would be my turn to ‘try’ it myself.”

Lucretia froze for a moment. “…That is reasonable. My thinking was limited.”

Duncan shook his head with a smile, then set the big wooden box on the deck, took off the opened padlock, and carefully lifted the lid.

A black wooden carving of Goathead lay quietly inside the box.