Chapter 691

Chapter 691.

Ted followed the movement and sat down beside anomaly 077.

“Really not going to have some?” anomaly 077 grinned and shook the beer bottle again, then pointed at a corner nearby. “I’ve got another bottle there. This kind of internal-only good stuff is hard to find again once you miss it. As far as I know, Lightwind Harbor doesn’t have this. Try it. If you’re still soaked in the chill of Subspace, the alcohol might help.”

“Since you know so much about Saints, you should know alcohol does nothing for me,” Ted gave the mummified corpse a glance, then turned his eyes away and shook his head. “There’s something I’m very curious about.”

Anomaly 077 shrugged: “Ask. I might not answer.”

“…How does an ‘anomaly’ like you, one with a complete mind, see this world?” Ted asked very seriously. Then, maybe thinking the question sounded a bit abrupt, he thought for a moment and added, “I’ve dealt with many people and read many wise thinkers’ writings about the world. I understand the mortal point of view. But when I look at you, I suddenly want to know how a rational anomaly like you sees the world…”

“Ah, such a philosophical question right away. As expected of a Truth Keeper,” anomaly 077 clicked his tongue. “But haven’t you met Miss Alice? Why didn’t you ask her?”

Ted went quiet for a moment: “…I feel she has no opinion about the world.”

“…Ah, then it seems you really did meet Miss Alice,” the Sailor laughed happily and took another gulp of beer. While the liquid trickled down onto the deck, he leaned his head back. “You’re asking for my opinion? I think this world might as well be destroyed.”

Ted frowned without thinking.

“That’s your question, Mr. Truth Keeper,” the Sailor said. Noticing the change in Ted’s expression, he glanced over, then turned his eyes back to the sky. “And don’t you think so? The Sun has already gone out twice. City-state-level disasters keep happening. Blasphemous and banished things keep waking and returning.

“In my eyes, this world is full of cracks, shadows, hollows, and a kind of noise like something dying… You people, noble and stubborn – I’m not being sarcastic – you spend your days thinking about nothing but patching this world back together. But use that scholar’s mind of yours and think it through… can it still be fixed?”

Ted frowned but did not answer. He had not expected such an answer from a question asked out of casual curiosity. The attitude of the Sailor surprised him even more. These answers were not coming off the top of his head. They sounded like conclusions he had reached after watching and thinking about the world for a very long time.

Anomaly 077 did not care about Ted’s silence.

“This world is finished, Mr. Truth Keeper. As a Sailor, I can smell a coming storm better than you. Compared to a few hundred years ago, now the world is riddled with cracks. It’s like an old house that has broken open in countless places. At the next widening of those holes, the howling wind will destroy this already-crumbling place.

“All your patching means nothing. Once the keystone collapses, painting the walls or pasting newspapers over the holes only gives the people inside a brief, fake sense of peace.

“Now listen, Mr. Truth Keeper. Raise your ears and really listen…”

The Sailor leaned closer. Right in front of Ted, he put a hand next to his own ear in a listening pose, a half-smile on his face.

“Do you hear it? That hollow, sharp noise… That is the wind blowing from Subspace… It passes through all those gaps big and small and vibrates in a range ordinary people cannot hear. I’ve always heard it.

“Now, you can too.”

A faint noise echoed all around, yet it also seemed to ring directly in his head. It was low and weak, but impossible to ignore.

Ted’s eyes opened a little wider. He stared at the Sailor with a heavy, pressuring gaze.

“Relax, Mr. Truth Keeper. This is how it is when you deal with Subspace. Once you get a little on you, it sticks for life,” the Sailor did not seem bothered at all by the look Ted gave him. He shifted to a more comfortable position and slouched deeper into the pile of rope. “You somehow managed to escape from that place, and I won’t bother guessing what kind of ‘sacred miracle’ kept you alive. But clearly, Subspace still left a tiny mark on you.

“Compared to all those poor souls who went mad and turned into monsters after one accidental glimpse of Subspace, this little side effect is already very lucky.”

“…This is also something a Sailor is supposed to understand?”

“Of course.” The mummified corpse nodded as if it were obvious, not caring whether anyone believed him.

Ted: “…”

The Sailor did not care what Ted thought. The frightening mummified corpse only shifted again, sinking even more lazily into the ropes. He shook the bottle in his hand and muttered, “Try to see it this way. The world is just like this. Whether you take it hard or take it easy, you still have to live the day. If you have wine in your hand, you should drink it while you can. If you can drift one more day, then drift one more day.

“I can’t go back to sleep now. If I could, I’d definitely sleep straight until Doomsday. But things are pretty good as they are. I’ll just keep my eyes open and wait for the world’s Doomsday to arrive…”

At this point, the Sailor turned his head a little and gave Ted a half-smile.

“As for you, Mr. Truth Keeper, you still have your own work to do. Now it’s time to go back – back to your post, to keep patching this shaky wreck of a house.

“Even if it doesn’t help, maybe… this world keeps moving forward day after day exactly because of this ‘useless’ holding on. Maybe one day, at the end of all that emptiness, a road suddenly appears. When that happens, every bit of clinging on will have meaning.”

The low, chaotic noise spread through Ted’s mind again. The aftereffects from Subspace made him feel dazed. He felt that something was wrong with his senses, but before he could figure out what, a crackling sound suddenly came from the nearby deck and broke his thoughts.

He followed the sound and saw ghost-green flames rising on the planks. The fire flared up at once and twisted into a rotating doorway of flame, and a skeletal roc wreathed in fire charged out, circling above his head.

Ted froze for a second and had just opened his mouth to speak when his vision blurred. The burning monster bird wrapped around him and dragged him straight into the doorway.

The flaming door went out with a boom. The deck fell quiet again, as if everything just now had been an illusion.

The Sailor leaned in the pile of ropes, holding his bottle and staring blankly. Not far from him, a writhing shadow suddenly appeared in the air.

The shadow quickly grew solid and clear, gaining shape and color. In almost an instant, it became an old man in a worn white robe, his face covered in deep wrinkles.

The old man was thin and slightly hunched, like a traveler who had walked through countless years on a long road. He stood in the pale light of the World’s Wound. The hazy shadows at his feet stretched forward, covering anomaly 077’s body.

After a brief silence, the old man in the ragged robe turned his head. His gaze was deep as he looked toward the direction where Ted had vanished. He muttered softly, “…Emptiness…”

In the next second, his figure simply vanished into the wind, like a wrong fragment of time that had left a ghostly image a moment ago and then disappeared without a trace.

The Sailor shivered, then lifted his head in confusion. He sat up from the pile of rope and, out of habit, raised the bottle to his mouth for another drink. A moment later he frowned. “Why doesn’t this water have any taste…”

Then his eyes finally fell on the bottle in his hand.

“…What the hell!!!”

…

The gray-white stone sphere, its surface covered in crater-like rings, hung quietly above the sea. A small research platform at the “waist” of the stone sphere bathed in soft golden sunlight. Several scholars in short research robes stood tense at the edge of the platform, uneasy and nervous as they watched the figure at the front.

Alice stood there, craning her neck as she leaned close to the stone sphere to study the strange giant object.

Duncan grabbed her head and pushed it back onto her neck: “Quit fooling around – you’ll fall into the sea!”

“Oh, oh…” Alice shrank her neck at once. She held her head in place with both hands and blinked at the stone sphere in front of her. After staring for a long time, she finally said, “I still can’t see anything…”

“After you got close to the stone sphere, you didn’t hear or see any ‘extra information’?” Duncan frowned at the doll. “What about the sunlight around it? After entering the inside of this glowing orb, did you hear or see anything?”

Alice narrowed her eyes and looked around at the golden light floating on the sea, which was like some crystal veil. The glow reflected in her pretty purple eyes and rippled like water.

She stared around like this for quite a while, then turned to Duncan and said, “…No information.”

Duncan looked a bit disappointed: “No information?”

Alice nodded, then carefully checked again what appeared “in front of her eyes” when her divine gaze fell on the golden light. She nodded once more. “Yes, it’s all showing ‘No information’.”

Duncan: “…”

He suddenly realized that when talking to this silly doll, it was necessary to ask one or two follow-up questions. Who could guess the way this doll’s mind worked?!

He had just opened his mouth to keep questioning her when a crackling sound from the air nearby cut him off.

ghostly green flames rose, and a whirling doorway of fire opened in midair.

“AI is back with our guest,” Duncan waved at Alice and turned to face the doorway. But an instant later, his expression shifted. “Wait, the door is off–”

Before he could finish, the fiery door burst open. A familiar figure fell out of it, skimming the edge of the platform and dropping straight into the sea below.

Ted Riel’s short shout came from the middle of it.

The skeletal roc, cloaked in flame, flew out right after. It circled proudly twice in the air, then landed on the platform, stretched its neck to look down, and let out a sharp cry: “See? I can fly!”

Duncan stared, dumbfounded. Alice crept carefully to the edge of the platform and peeked down, then patted her chest in fright. “He really did fall into the sea…”

Duncan slowly turned his head and looked at AI. Then he shifted his gaze toward where Ted had fallen.

…What had that unlucky Truth Keeper done to offend this pigeon?