Chapter 669

Chapter 669: The Captain and the Doll

Back in the familiar Mortal Realm, back aboard the familiar Vanished, with Goathead’s familiar rambling in his ears—Duncan felt his heart grow steadier bit by bit. The exhaustion and tangled thoughts brought by that “roar” in Subspace also quieted a great deal.

He let out a soft breath and walked toward the chart table. Goathead seemed not to have noticed the trace of tiredness on the captain’s face. It had clearly enjoyed talking to its heart’s content for quite a while, and now it sounded rather excited as it began to boast: “Captain! Your loyal—well, everything after that can be left out—has made great progress! I had a very good talk with this head. We just talked our way from food on the Boundless Sea to poetry and song, and from poetry and song…”

Duncan glanced down at this noisy First Mate: “Did it answer you?”

Goathead paused, suddenly less sure of itself: “Well… not yet…”

But right after, it became full of confidence again: “But I think I’m almost there. With such open-hearted conversation, even a stone would start to talk. I think this head will soon be moved by my sincere words. Maybe in a little while it will greet you, Captain, and…”

“Save it,” Duncan cut off Goathead at last, helpless. “That head will not answer you—most of it is still in Subspace.”

Goathead let out a sharp little “crack,” like words had suddenly slammed on the brakes in its throat. It stared blankly for two seconds before finally reacting: “Did you say Subspace?”

“Didn’t you notice?” Duncan lifted a hand and pointed at the captain’s door. “I was resting in the bedroom, yet I came back out through the cabin door. While you were having your ‘open-hearted’ talk with your other head, I had already gone into Subspace and come back once.”

Goathead’s skull wobbled and began to tremble.

“Don’t shake like that. As you can see, nothing bad happened,” Duncan said offhandedly as he sat down beside the chart table. His gaze fell on the other, pitch-black “Goathead” on the tabletop. “The Dream-Skull didn’t answer you because its main body is in Subspace. I had a… limited talk with it there. As I saw it, things were just as I had guessed before: it doesn’t have a complete mind and memory like you.”

Goathead finally caught up. It had never imagined that, in the short time the captain had gone back to his room for a ‘nap,’ he had already made another trip into Subspace. The news he now brought back from ‘over there’ was even more shocking. Goathead turned its neck and looked at the head on the table. Only after a long time did it squeeze out a question: “Then… what did it say to you?”

As soon as it spoke, it seemed to regret it, and hurried to add: “Ah, if it is the kind of ‘knowledge’ that is not very safe, then forget it. My curiosity is really not that…”

“It knows some things about ‘Duncan Abnomar,’ about as much as you do. To a degree, you should share the same ‘initial memories.’ But that part is not something we should talk about on this ship. It is enough that we understand each other,” Duncan waved his hand with a calm face. “You know what I mean.”

Goathead’s mouth snapped shut at once.

Of course it knew what the captain was talking about.

But that topic must never be brought up aboard the Vanished—this ship would be sunk by that “truth.” Without “Captain Duncan” as an anchor, it would fall back into Subspace once more.

This was the “unspoken agreement” that had formed between them after a period of sailing together, built through many hints and careful cooperation on both sides.

The captain’s cabin grew quiet. Duncan sat in his chair and rested, slowly gathering his strength again. The Dream-Skull lay motionless on the table. Its empty eye sockets stared at nothing. Goathead seemed to be deep in thought as well. No one knew what this “First Mate” was thinking about. Only after a long time did it suddenly raise its head: “Aside from that, you also…”

“The Pale giant King,” Duncan said. “The creator mentioned in The Blasphemous Tome, the one from the first Long Night. Its corpse has fused with the creation wreckage from that Long Night… but I can’t say more than that. It could be harmful.”

Goathead stiffened for a moment, then slowly lowered its head: “All right. I won’t ask.”

Duncan answered with a quiet “mm.” He did not speak again, but sank into memory and thought.

Even though he knew idle thinking could not give him any useful conclusion right now, he could not stop his mind from turning to those “fragments” that had poured into his head, and to the voice that had spoken to him in that roar.

Even broken as they were, he could still draw a lot from those words—

They were a race that had almost cracked the Truth of all things.

A civilization that already stood at the peak of time and space.

They called themselves “humans”—yet they were clearly very different from the “humans” Zhou Ming knew in the year 2022.

They had walked the path of civilization for too long, and had almost reached the end of the Truth.

Yet they also met their end on the day of the Great Annihilation. Unlike other destroyed peoples in other worlds, they might have been the only civilization with the power and chance to observe the Great Annihilation in full and prepare for it.

Even though they still could not stop the Great Annihilation from coming, it seemed they had found some way to preserve one complete… “seed” at the moment of Universal Extinction.

Duncan turned his head and calmly set his gaze on the oval antique mirror hanging on the nearby wall, on the figure reflected within.

Now he finally knew why there was no red light that stood for the destruction of all things in “his own memories”—because the Great Annihilation had not taken place in the era he knew.

The Great Annihilation lay in a far-off future.

But compared to these possible “truths,” an even bigger question filled his heart.

Why did there have to be a “Zhou Ming”?

He sat behind the table and thought, thought for a very long time. At last, he forced himself to put all the worries in his head aside for the moment and walked to the door.

“I’m going to walk on deck.”

He said this to Goathead, then pushed the door open and left the captain’s cabin.

The deck was wide and quiet. The pale glow of the World’s Wound shone on the distant sea. The water was calm. Now and then small waves slapped the hull, but the sound was soft, not noisy at all.

Duncan walked slowly along the edge of the deck with no goal in mind. He no longer thought about those distant questions that were doomed to have no answer. It was as if he walked only to empty his head, only to feel the night wind.

He kept walking until he saw a slender figure appear not far ahead, and then he stopped.

Alice was sitting on a big barrel near the rail—that was her favorite barrel. She rocked her body gently on it as she looked out at the sea. Her lower legs swung back and forth, and she seemed to be humming some odd tune under her breath.

Duncan listened for a while and then realized that it was the sailor’s minor-key tune Goathead sometimes hummed. Goathead’s pitch was not very true to begin with, and now, after being “improved” by Alice, the tune had grown so crooked that probably only a handful of people on the whole Boundless Sea could still recognize it.

Yet in Alice’s humming, it still sounded pleasant.

The doll finally noticed Duncan approaching. She stopped at once, jumped happily down from the barrel, and called: “Captain!”

“Mm.” Duncan’s mouth curved in a small smile. “I came out for a walk.”

Alice blinked, then suddenly looked very seriously into Duncan’s eyes.

“You look a bit tired. Do you have something on your mind? Is there another big problem you have to deal with?”

The doll’s sharpness took him by surprise, and he froze for a moment. Soon he smiled and shook his head: “It’s nothing. I just happened to be thinking about something. Why are you still not asleep this late? Do you have something on your mind too?”

“No,” Alice answered with a bright grin. “I’m just a bit happy, so I can’t sleep.”

“Happy?”

Alice jumped into an excited explanation at once: “I sent all the ‘spoils’ to the kitchen! They’re very useful—the ‘friends’ in the kitchen didn’t seem very happy at first, but after I explained, they accepted those ‘new friends’…

“I also checked the meat we salted before. It’s in great shape! This time not even a single barrel spoiled. In about a month we can use it for cooking…

“I pickled some cucumbers too. Nina taught me. She said pickles go with smoked meat patties, and they’re much better than the way Goathead taught me…

“I also found a big bunch of never-used pencils in the storage room at the stern of the second deck. I don’t know who put them there. I’m going to use them for drawing. Lunie is really good at drawing. She said she can teach me, but we have to wait until she has time…”

The doll went on like this, talking happily about all kinds of small things, things so tiny they hardly counted as “good news” at all. Yet she truly found great joy in these little matters. Each one made her excited—and now she was doing her best to pull out that joy and share it, hoping to make the captain a bit happier too.

Even though she had no idea what the captain usually worried about or thought about.

Duncan did not interrupt her. He only listened quietly, and he listened for a long time, until a real smile returned to the depths of his eyes.

Alice finally stopped, blinking in the night as she looked at Duncan with simple, bright happiness.

“Alice, have you ever thought about your own ‘birth’?” Duncan asked after a moment. “Have you ever wondered why you came into being, and why you think? Why you are ‘Alice,’ and what ‘Alice’s’ future will be? Have you ever thought about questions like that?”

“No!” Alice answered without even a second of hesitation. Questions that could keep philosophers busy for a whole lifetime were, to her, simple to the extreme—she never thought about them. “Never!”

But as soon as she said it, she seemed to feel that her answer sounded a bit careless. She hesitated and added: “Is that a bad answer? Does it make me seem a bit silly? Do you usually think about these things, Captain?”

Duncan looked at the doll, half amused, half helpless.

Then he laughed and slowly shook his head: “You answered very well.”

Alice did not understand why.

Duncan did not explain. He simply reached out and gently pressed his hand over the doll’s hair.

“If you want to draw, I can teach you.”

“Captain, you know how to draw?”

“A little. A very long time ago… Do you want to learn?”

“Yes!”