Chapter 692

Chapter 692: Everything the Truth Keeper Saw

Ted Riel wrapped himself in a thick blanket and sat in the small cabin at the research station. Someone handed him a cup of hot tea that was still almost too hot to hold. He cupped it in both hands, looked up, and said: “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome!” Alice answered very seriously, then began to curiously study this Truth Keeper who had just been pulled out of the sea. After quite a while, she turned her head toward Duncan and said: “Captain, Mr. Ted doesn’t look like he’s in a very good mood!”

“I fell into the sea – twice!” Ted lifted his head to look at Duncan standing to the side. Halfway through speaking, he shivered without thinking. The physical cold did not matter to a Saint; that shiver felt more like he had been soaked in the chill of fate itself. “The first time I fell out of Subspace. The second time, a pigeon threw me out!”

He shivered again, then turned and glared with deep resentment at the fat White Dove strutting across the floor with its chest puffed out. The bird scraped its beak on the floor, tilted its head so that one eye looked out the window and the other fixed on Ted, then flapped its wings: “What are you staring at?”

“You must have offended AI,” Duncan’s calm voice came from the side. “It usually doesn’t throw passengers into the sea.”

“Is it impossible that you’re just a cruel pigeon by nature?” Ted glared, looking very upset. “When it threw me down, it even mocked me. Everyone here heard it…”

“That’s impossible. AI is a peace dove,” Duncan quickly waved his hand and pointed at AI wandering around. “Look, it’s white.”

Ted stared, unable to follow Duncan’s line at all. He had never even heard what a peace dove was.

However, Duncan was already used to no one getting the jokes he blurted out. He just waved it off carelessly: “I guess you didn’t cooperate much when AI brought you here.”

“…Fine, I admit it,” Ted thought for a moment and sighed helplessly. “But you can’t blame me. I don’t even know this pigeon of yours. Even if that flame looked familiar, when a skeletal monster bird suddenly flew out and swept me into a dark and strange space, of course my first reaction was to feel threatened. It was inevitable that I would fight back a little…”

Lucretia, who had stayed quiet at the side, suddenly cut in: “And then you lost to the pigeon and got thrown into the sea.”

Ted Riel said: “…Can we stop talking about the pigeon?”

“Fair point,” Duncan nodded and sat down on the chair next to Ted. “Then we’ll end the pigeon topic here. Next, let’s talk about Subspace.”

“Uh…” Ted grumbled in his throat, his face turning very odd. But the string of unbelievable events had clearly toughened his nerves. He quickly let out a resigned, calm breath and looked around.

The academy staff stationed here slipped out of the room almost in a flash and closed the door. In a few seconds, only Duncan, Alice, and Lucretia were left with him.

“I’ve already told Captain Lawrence everything I could remember,” Ted breathed out a little once the unrelated people were gone. He spoke while he tried to recall: “Subspace left a long-lasting chaos of shadows in my mind. Some of my memories became blurry. I can only remember scattered fragments that don’t connect, like those silent, huge, and strange ‘things’ I saw. You should already know that part…”

“Yes. Lawrence reported the situation to me, but some things have to be talked through face to face to be clear,” Duncan said casually. “For example, the exact shapes of those things you saw. Lawrence’s retelling just can’t compare to hearing it from you directly…”

As he spoke, he casually pulled a drawing from the table beside him.

Those were some sketches Duncan had drawn himself after receiving Lawrence’s report and before AI brought Ted back.

Ted took the sheet Duncan handed him with curiosity. The moment he saw what was drawn on it, his eyes opened a little wider.

The drawing did not show anything horrifying or bizarre. It was only the outlines of doors and windows, some pillars with elegant, complex lines, and some curved ironwork patterns.

However, the “style” and “feeling” they gave off, to Ted, were no less shocking than seeing those gigantic horrors in Subspace again.

He hesitated and looked up. Duncan was calmly watching him, fixing him with that almost divine gaze.

“Is it this style?” Duncan asked softly.

Ted opened his mouth, then lowered his head again and stared hard at the partial building structures on the paper. After a long time, he spoke in a low voice: “Yes. It was a huge building in the dark. It looked like a palace, or maybe a mansion made too vast and complex. It hung upside down above my head. Its spires made me think of those gloomy black towers in the northern city-states. Its doors and windows were long and tall. Outside every window, some dark material like thorns covered and blocked it…”

He stopped, thought for a moment, then continued: “The whole building stayed silent in the darkness, like a giant beast that had been dead for many years. But at some moments, I saw faint flashes in some of its windows, as if someone was still moving around inside it. At those times, the whole building felt as if it was about to come back to life…”

Duncan listened quietly to Ted’s description. His expression grew serious as he looked at the windows, pillars, and decorative patterns he had drawn on the paper.

Those were the things in Alice’s mansion. Although Ted had only seen the outside structure of the building, the style was clearly the same.

What Ted had seen was indeed Alice’s mansion.

Alice’s mansion that lay in Subspace.

But Duncan clearly remembered that after the “Mistress’s bedroom” in the depths of Alice’s mansion had been “taken away” by Ray Nora, a huge hollow was left there. When he looked outward from that hollow, he could only see endless darkness. He did not see the signature chaotic light currents and the huge entity shadows of Subspace. Otherwise, he would have realized long ago that the mansion was in Subspace.

Why was that?

Was it because what Ted saw in Subspace was only a “projection” of Alice’s mansion? Or was it that, when Duncan had looked out from the Great Hollow inside the mansion last time, something had “blocked” his sight?

Duncan frowned and sank into a long silence. After holding back for several minutes, Ted finally could not stand it and asked: “What exactly did I see? You seem very familiar with it.”

“Very familiar. I go there often,” Duncan nodded lightly. “But don’t ask about the details. It’s for your mental and physical health.”

“…All right. It is Subspace after all,” Ted reacted at once. Then his expression turned strange again. “Rahm bless me, I never thought I would actually be talking with you about Subspace. I went there and came back alive. Even now it still doesn’t feel real.”

“It’s a bit late to start feeling emotional about that now,” Duncan waved his hand. Then he went on: “You also mentioned that the huge upside-down mansion changed before your eyes and turned into something like a giant ship?”

“In fact… I’m not even sure what that thing really was,” Ted hesitated, then chose his words carefully. “Being in Subspace felt like moving through layers and layers of illusions. My reason and my understanding seemed split into two dimensions, working on their own. I saw many things, and they often turned into something else in an instant. Only some of those changes actually happened. The others felt like my own mind was rearranging information it couldn’t understand.”

Duncan thought for a moment, then pushed another blank sheet of paper and a pencil in front of Ted: “Whether it was an illusion or not, can you still draw how the mansion looked at the moment it changed?”

Ted hesitated, then took the paper and pencil: “…I can try.”

This Truth Keeper wrapped the blanket around himself and went to the table. He bent over and began to sketch the hazy visions he had seen in Subspace.

Duncan stood to the side, watching with a serious and patient expression.

Under Ted’s hand, messy and abstract lines slowly appeared on the paper.

However, Lucretia, who was watching curiously, slowly frowned: “This is the ‘giant ship’ you mentioned?”

She saw only many lines randomly linked together, like “fragments” of some abstract geometric body, pieced into a rough spindle shape or some uneven “cylinder”. It was very different from any “ship” she knew.

But the next second, she noticed Duncan’s expression growing more and more serious as he looked at those “abstract patterns”.

Father had seen something in those strange abstract lines!

He had seen this thing before?!

Questions flashed through Lucretia’s mind, but before she could ask, Ted had already put down the pencil.

“I know this doesn’t look like a ‘ship’, but the moment I saw it, my mind just felt that it had to be some kind of ‘ship’,” Ted looked up at Lucretia. “I can’t explain it. It was like some kind of ‘knowledge’ was stamped straight into my thoughts, or some kind of ‘revelation’…”

But Duncan kept staring hard at the messy lines Ted had drawn. Then he suddenly looked up and asked: “…Is it finished?”

Ted nodded: “It’s finished.”

Duncan frowned, his face strangely serious: “Is this all? Only this part?”

Ted finally sensed something from Duncan’s attitude. He hesitated: “This was all I saw… only this part. Is something wrong?”

Duncan stayed silent for a few seconds, then stepped forward and pointed at the drawing: “I’m not sure… but in theory, what you’ve drawn might be only one third of its full structure!”