Chapter 683

Chapter 683: Extinguished Again

By now, everyone who stayed here finally had a deeper understanding of the Master of the Vanished—at least from the goal of “knowing more and talking better”, they had achieved half of it.

Sadly, the mood turned awkward right after this “better understanding”.

A strange silence sat over the hall. The Popes, including Helena, seemed unsure whether they should keep the topic going. Vanna and Morris still looked a bit tense. Shirley was calming the uneasy Dog. Nina, on the other hand, looked at Duncan with some curiosity—the sudden starlight had not affected her at all.

Lucretia looked at everyone in the hall with a half smile. For some reason there was even a bit of gloating in that smile.

Only Alice—the doll Miss—still kept her usual vacant, faraway look, lost in her own world. She had already been spacing out for some time. Back when Rune started using the idea of “sets” to explain the world, she had switched off her brain. After quite a while, she suddenly seemed to react, looking around in surprise and confusion: “It’s over? Are we getting ready for dinner?”

This out-of-sync line from the doll Miss finally broke the awkward silence. Banster lifted his head, his gaze landing on Duncan. After several seconds he could not hold back: “…What exactly was that just now?”

As soon as he finished speaking, Frem, who stood closest to him, instantly took several steps to the side.

“…I was only asking,” Banster glanced at Helena and Rune, who had also stepped aside, and shook his head helplessly.

“I have many secrets on me, some of which even I do not really understand,” Duncan said, not minding at all. He only shook his head helplessly, then looked at Rune on the opposite side, his expression serious. “But I am very grateful for the ideas you and Morris just raised… your line of thought helped me clear up a bit of confusion.”

“…Then I hope next time you clear up some confusion you can give us a warning first,” Rune said, a bit helpless. “Though I know that sounds a bit unreasonable.”

Duncan laughed: “…I will do my best.”

This dangerous topic finally ended, but the thoughts stirred up by Rune’s “set model” still lingered in many hearts. Duncan went back to his seat and touched his pocket. His fingers brushed the folded sheet of paper again—

Primordial Ashes, the “intersection” of world rules, the conflict between what could and could not fit together, the viewpoint of an observer inside a subset, and…

He drew his hand out of his pocket and let out a soft breath.

Lucretia could not help looking at Duncan.

A groundless feeling of dread suddenly rose up, making her heart pound a few times. She looked toward her Father on instinct, yet she felt that in that very instant, in the moment her gaze turned over, Father had… already not been there.

He had gone somewhere very, very far away, so far he was no longer in this world. In that brief moment… Lucretia felt again what she had felt a century ago, when she watched the Vanished enter the thick fog at the border.

But it was only a short illusion. When she blinked again, Duncan was still sitting there as before, as if he had never moved at all.

“So then, what other questions do you have?” Duncan raised his head and looked at Helena, Rune, and the others who had also just sat back down on the other side of the table.

Alice scratched her hair and sat back down next to Duncan: “Oh, so it isn’t over yet.”

Across from them, Rune gave Alice a subtle look, then slightly gathered his thoughts. But just as he was about to say something, he suddenly stopped.

He frowned a little, as if he were tilting his head to listen to a voice from far away through a Listening Rite. Seeing this, Helena reacted at once: “Is there news coming in?”

“Psychic Communication from Lightwind Harbor. Ted Lier is contacting me,” Rune looked up, his face already turning grave. “He says the research facility set up near that ‘glowing geometric body’ suddenly received some signals being released from inside the glowing orb…”

As he spoke, his gaze fell on Lucretia.

“They are exactly the same as the signal the Radiant Star picked up when the Sun went out last time.”

Lucretia stood up at once.

It was now dusk—the Sun had not yet completely set.

Vision 001 was slowly sinking toward the sea surface. The two brilliant glowing rune rings had about one-third of their shape touching the distant ocean. sunlight built a magnificent sunset between sea and sky, and the glow scattered a fine layer of gold over the whole sea.

In another direction, in the offshore waters of Lightwind Harbor, the huge glowing geometric body still floated quietly on the sea surface. Another patch of pale golden “sunlight” spread out evenly from the geometric figure over the surrounding sea, with it at the center. It built a unique view of “two different kinds of sunlight crossing and weaving between sea and sky”.

The “sunlight” coming out of that glowing geometric body was warm and calm, looking no different from any other time.

Yet, according to the records of high-sensitivity instruments, certain specific spectra in that “sunlight” were now “vibrating” in a very complex pattern, periodically sending out wave signals that were hard to understand.

Duncan and the others went to the aft deck and looked, through the crisscrossing sunset glow, at the huge glowing geometric body near Lightwind Harbor.

Frem looked at Rune and spoke in a deep voice: “Is the signal still going?”

“It is still going. The signal has a cycle of twelve seconds. It repeats three times, then pauses for thirty seconds before appearing again,” Rune nodded. “Ted Lier has already reached the research station. He is monitoring the equipment there himself…”

“The cycle and repeating pattern are the same as last time.”

Lucretia said this quickly while raising her head to glance at the nearby sea. Her Radiant Star was quietly docked beside the Vanished, and at this moment a special structure on top of the ship’s bridge was slowly rotating—

A pod shaped like a mechanical flower bud was turning one side of itself toward the distant sea. The covers at the front of the pod opened, and the precise optical lens hidden inside gleamed in the sunlight.

“I am ordering the servants left on the ship to open the optical lens on the Radiant Star,” Lucretia watched the movement of her flagship while explaining to Duncan beside her. “Back when the Sun went out, I was the first one to notice the strange light signal. Only after that did Lightwind Harbor build similar devices and install them at the research facility… In theory, if the station can see the signal, we should be able to see it from here too.”

“The distance doesn’t affect it?” Nina asked in surprise.

“Light does weaken and it can be disturbed, but at this distance it is still fine—the real question now is what this strange signal means,” Lucretia said, brow furrowed, her tone worried. “Last time the signal appeared after the Sun went out. But this time the signal appeared while the Sun still looks fine…”

“Let us move closer to Lightwind Harbor first and make sure nothing goes wrong with the city-state,” Duncan said. As his words fell, the Vanished had already begun to turn its bow and slowly pick up speed toward Lightwind Harbor.

Beside it, the Radiant Star received Lucretia’s orders after a slight delay and reacted the same way.

Rune watched with some surprise the nimble movements of the Radiant Star, and the “test pod” above the bridge making “synchronized responses” as the hull changed its angle. He could not help sighing: “What a clever design… Lady Lucretia, did you build all this yourself?”

“I spent a hundred years designing a ‘vanguard exploration ship’ that could carry out border missions in any situation. There are many parts of this ship I am proud of,” Lucretia said lightly. “But you still have the mood to analyze the engineering on the Radiant Star right now?”

“We do not have anything else to do anyway,” Rune shrugged, looking not nervous at all. “If anything, I am a bit excited. A strange phenomenon has appeared, and it is in a field I have never touched. If we can really crack the secret of the signals coming from that glowing geometric body, we may get a real chance to understand what is going on with the ‘Sun’ above our heads. That is a good thing.”

Lucretia did not answer. She had already moved most of her focus to the Radiant Star, to the “servants” left on the ship.

All those servants were made by her own hand. Each servant held a fragment of her soul inside. Every servant, even the whole ship, was like an extension of her body.

She carefully gave orders and set all the complex and precise observation devices on the Radiant Star into motion.

“…The signal is stronger than what I saw last time,” she suddenly raised her head and looked toward the pale golden sunlight spread over the sea. “The situation does not seem quite the same as before…”

Duncan looked in another direction—toward the Sun, Vision 001, which was slowly sinking and already had a third of its structure below the sea surface.

“Last time the Sun went out…” Shirley’s nervous voice came from the side. She looked quite uneasy. “At least this time, no matter what, the Sun does not seem to have changed yet…”

She only got halfway through her sentence.

A low humming sound suddenly seemed to ring in the bottom of everyone’s hearts.

A strange feeling of unease cut off all conversation.

The distant sky suddenly darkened.

Shirley’s face went blank as she lifted her head and looked toward the darkening sky.

A dark, chaotic sphere like a hollow, and two ring-shaped “bright rims” like red-hot steel, hung there, motionless at the edge of the sky.

The Sun had gone out again.

“…Crap.”