Chapter 672

Chapter 672: Ted Riel’s Visit.

Lucretia brought that creepy stuffed rabbit doll over to Duncan. She sat down on the sofa beside him, while Rabby carefully shuffled over to the side of the sofa and plopped onto the floor with a soft “thump”.

“I already sent that Saint to the containment room on the Radiant Star. There are sealing facilities there made specifically to deal with corrupted things from the border and the Spirit Realm. He will slowly recover there until he can meet your needs for the ritual.

“The surviving sacrificial victims have been placed in the city’s relief center. I have spoken with Sara Mell. Lightwind Harbor will take good care of them and try to send them back home if possible… Some of them have lost their sanity and their memories. They cannot even say where their homes are, so a psychiatrist will step in later to help.

“As you ordered, I left the artificial beacon on that ship. You should now be able to sense the ship’s condition through the beacon…

“In addition, I checked all the supplies on that ship that are still usable. There are many. We can bring them back later when we have the chance—consider it a generous haul of spoils. After all, a self-sailing ghost ship has no use for fuel or spare mechanical parts…”

Lucretia reported everything to Duncan point by point. She was clear and organized, and all her arrangements were proper.

Clearly, she was very familiar with this kind of cleanup work.

“Mm.” Duncan nodded in satisfaction and did not hold back his praise: “You did very well.”

But Lucretia parted her lips and suddenly looked a little hesitant.

Duncan noticed it and asked: “Is there anything else?”

“…I told Brother what happened here. He asked whether we needed a fleet,” Lucretia said. “Considering that the Annihilators’ ‘nest’ might be a sea fortress that has been running for centuries or even longer, and that it lies in the border fog, we may need a real ‘offensive’ next. He said that if necessary, he can send the Sea Mist fleet over.”

“That is not necessary,” Duncan thought for a moment, then still shook his head. “At least not for now. We still do not know what that nest looks like. If we expand our operation too soon, it might backfire… We should first scout out the situation in the fog.”

“Alright.” Lucretia nodded.

At that moment, a presence that suddenly appeared outside the house interrupted the conversation in the living room.

Lucretia frowned and looked toward the entryway. Almost at the same second, the doorbell rang from that direction.

Lunie, who had been standing in the corner of the living room on standby, immediately got up and walked to the front door. Lucretia quickly instructed: “No newspapers, no insurance, no lottery tickets, no community surveys. If they say they are raising money for the neighborhood, send them away at once. There was a notice last month. That bunch are all scammers—I really don’t get how anyone still dares to come here…”

“Mistress.” Before Lucretia finished, Lunie was already back in the living room. “It is His Excellency the Truth Keeper.”

“…Uh?” Lucretia blurted.

In the moment she froze, a helpless voice already came from the doorway: “I know Miss Witch never likes people dropping by, but the situation really is special this time—there is an invitation from the Four Gods Church I need to deliver to your father.”

Along with that tired and helpless voice, Ted Riel stepped into the living room. The Truth Keeper looked the same as always. The air around him carried the aura of someone who had worked overtime for a whole month without a single day off.

“Under normal circumstances, no one would dare come near your witch’s manor. Taran Ael’s lumbar spine flared up today and he cannot get out of bed, so I had to come in person.”

As he finished speaking, Ted Riel noticed Duncan sitting on the sofa and immediately showed a slight smile: “Good day, Captain.”

“Taran Ael can finally lie down for a few days,” Lucretia said casually after hearing Ted’s news. “I even think that’s a good thing.”

“Not for me. I lost three sola on it,” Ted Riel said with some regret. “A few colleagues at the academy and I placed bets on which part of Taran’s body would fail first this time, and I lost badly… For the record, I bet on hemorrhoids.”

Lucretia’s expression turned a bit odd. “You people are really bored…”

Ted Riel shrugged. “But I guessed right several times before.”

Morris, who had been sitting on the sofa, now stood up and greeted the Truth Keeper: “Ted, have you recovered?”

“It was just a bit of indigestion—it did not affect me as much as those papers the brats rushed out overnight,” Ted Riel waved a hand. Then his gaze stopped on Morris without him realizing it. He looked Morris over for several seconds, puzzled and a little stunned, before finally speaking with a strange expression: “We met in a hurry last time, so I did not have time to look carefully. Morris, your…”

He suddenly stopped. After a brief hesitation, he seemed to understand something and let out a quiet breath.

“Nothing. You look quite energetic.”

“Really? I also feel that my condition is very good now. My daughter is a psychiatrist, and she also thinks my mindset is very healthy.” Morris smiled. His eyes behind the blessed monocle were as bright as ever, and his smile carried a gentle, scholarly warmth.

Only Saints and Scholars with exceptionally strong Spiritual Insight could sense, from his smile, his gaze, and his voice, the almost unnoticeable madness and noise that had long drifted away from human reason.

Ted Riel took his eyes off Morris and looked at Duncan.

Many, many years ago, he and this man, the greatest explorer in history, had been friends.

For an elf, forming a friendship with humans was something that required great caution and a lot of mental preparation.

But back then, Ted Riel could never have imagined that all his mental preparation had gone in the wrong direction—he should not have been worrying about saying farewell to short-lived humans, but about meeting again with an immortal subspace shadow.

Fortunately, the light of humanity still shone within this shadow—though that light was filled with truths he did not dare to peer into and echoed with noise he did not dare to hear.

“I was just discussing matters of the Four Gods Church with Morris,” Duncan took the initiative to speak. “I knew there would be a gathering, but I did not expect the official notice to arrive so quickly.”

Ted Riel fell silent for a moment. He took a finely sealed letter, stamped with wax, from his coat, set it on the coffee table, and pushed it toward Duncan.

“I am not sure whether you care about something like an ‘invitation letter’, but the Academy Ark told me to give this to you,” he said. “It already bears the signatures of the Four Gods’ popes. You can see it as the Four Gods Church’s first official and formal gesture of goodwill toward the Vanished Fleet.”

Duncan’s gaze fell on the beautifully sealed letter. He reached out, opened it, and took out the special “invitation” inside.

On the stiff card, neat handwriting stated that the Four Gods Church would hold a “special closed meeting”, and it extended an invitation to “the master of the Vanished Fleet”, “Captain Duncan the great explorer”. The content itself was nothing remarkable. Only the four shining signatures at the end of the invitation strongly drew Duncan’s eyes.

They were as dazzling as arcs of electricity burning in the dark—Rahm, Tarrigan, Gamona, Bartok.

Duncan calmly looked at those names and actually did not feel surprised at all.

“It says here the meeting will be held tomorrow—that soon?” He put away the invitation and spoke casually.

“Yes. At least judging from Your Eminence Rune’s attitude, the sooner this gathering is held, the better,” Ted Riel nodded. “Before noon tomorrow, the Four Gods Church’s fleets will arrive one after another near Lightwind Harbor. All the Pilgrimage Arks will appear—that will be a grand event.”

At this, Duncan paused in surprise. Beside him, Morris let out an involuntary gasp: “Ah? You mean the gathering will be held in the Mortal Realm, and the four popes will gather here?”

“Yes. At first I also thought it would be a ‘meeting’ held through Psychic Resonance, like the gatherings the popes and Saints held in the past. I did not expect the meeting to take place in the Mortal Realm, much less that it would be… tomorrow.”

“For such an important ‘closed meeting’, this is almost the same as having no preparation at all, and the Pilgrimage Arks themselves need time to sail…” Duncan seemed to have thought of something. “So the most reasonable answer is that the four Pilgrimage Arks had already been moving to the southern border beforehand. Even before the Lightwind Harbor incident, the Four Gods Church might already have planned a gathering. What happened in Lightwind Harbor just gave them an unexpected chance to hold it here and set it for tomorrow?”

“It seems so.”

“…Has something happened recently? Is it related to the Church’s frequent activities in the border seas these days, and those fleets being gathered near the Eternal Veil?”

“I know about the situations you just mentioned, but I do not know the inside story.”

Duncan was a bit surprised. “Even you, the Truth Keeper, do not know about these things?”

“I truly do not know,” Ted Riel shook his head. “The Truth Keeper, the Inquisitors, the Gatekeepers, and the Firekeepers may all be the city’s highest Church representatives in name, but what we handle is only city affairs. The four Pilgrimage Arks actually operate independently of the entire Church system. The four popes command those arks directly. All the ‘secrets’ are sealed within the ark fleets and do not interact with the cities or with how the Church runs between cities—especially… the more dangerous secrets.”

He raised his head and looked into Duncan’s eyes very seriously.

“It is a necessary safety measure.”