Chapter 703

Chapter 703: Dolls Have Their Own Ways to Have Fun

This was a secret stretch of sea that did not appear on any official enchanted sea chart. It also lay far from any legal route.

The lights of the civilized world could no longer reach this sea, where a thin mist lay over the water. No deep-sea captain in their right mind would set foot here of their own will.

Ahead, the great wall of fog that encircled the entire world—the Veil—already stood in their path. And even though sunlight still shone on the sea, anyone sailing here would feel no comfort from that sunlight at all.

People had given this chilling place a name: the Border.

A ship that was almost torn to pieces, a ship that by any normal judgment should have sunk to the bottom long ago, was slowly sailing through the thin mist. It moved like a silent ghost toward the distant “fog wall” that rose like a sheer cliff.

ghostly green flame rose like silent phantoms, burning all around the broken ship. The half-transparent spirit form fire forced the ship, which should have been split into fragments, to stay together.

Half of its hull had been ripped open, leaving a terrifying gap. The huge and complex machinery inside lay exposed like the organs of some great beast, bathed in ghostly green flame. That eerie ghostfire spread outward from the hull, flowing and spreading across the nearby sea. Wherever the flames flowed, the thin mist that filled the area slowly thinned and drifted away.

A column of flame surged up, and Duncan’s figure appeared on the deck—half-transparent, in his spirit form.

Using the artificial beacon he had left on this ship, he had come here again. But this time, he did not teleport his whole “true body” here like last time. He only projected a phantom. Most of his attention still rested on the Vanished.

Since the fleets from all sides had not yet linked up, he wanted to come over first and check the situation here.

The towering fog wall finally stood before his eyes.

Duncan walked across the deck, stepped over the torn cracks left by the great explosion, and passed twisted, curled metal wreckage. He came to the bow and silently gazed at the magnificent “absolute view” ahead.

Before him stood a “wall” that reached from earth to sky. The thick fog had grown so dense it was almost solid, linking the heavens and the sea, standing in his field of vision like the end of the world.

From the top of the Veil, mighty streams of cloud poured down like waterfalls. They fell in silence onto the sea and turned into drifting mist, spreading across the entire border sea.

Before this grand barrier, the great ship he now stood on—built by cultists—seemed tiny. The Vanished would also be tiny. Even the Cathedral arks would be as small as dust.

“So this is the world’s end…” Duncan stood quietly at the bow and murmured as if to himself: “I finally see it with my own eyes.”

He remembered the “Border Collapse” he had witnessed not long after first arriving in this world, remembered how the wall of fog had suddenly collapsed in the middle of a normal sea. Back then, he had thought that scene as grand and awe-inspiring as anything he could imagine. Its crushing pressure still remained fresh in his heart even now.

But after truly standing here and seeing with his own eyes the endless Veil of the real border, he realized how small that “collapse” inside the Sanctuary World truly had been.

…But would this boundless, magnificent, true Border also have a day when it “collapsed”?

Duncan turned this thought over in his mind—a thought that would fill anyone else with fear and dread. He watched the distant scene for a while longer, then raised his hand and lightly waved through the air.

Flames coiled around his fingertips, tracing out an oval outline in the air. Inside the outline, a mirror-like surface appeared. A second later, Agatha’s figure surfaced in that mirror: “I am here.”

“What changes are there in the Spirit Realm here?” Duncan asked casually.

“Wait a moment. I’ll go down and look,” Agatha said. In the mirror, she nodded, and then her figure faded away.

Duncan waited patiently. After a short while, Agatha appeared again in the mirror—her hair now a bit messy.

“The Spirit Realm is darker and more chaotic here. Shapeless Shadows sweep across the sea. Compared to ‘inside the civilized world’, those Shadows feel far less friendly,” Agatha reported while smoothing her hair. She paused, then added: “…Very unfriendly, actually. Almost violent.”

“You got beaten up?” Duncan frowned, sounding a little worried.

“I beat up everything that came close,” Agatha said, rolling her shoulders. She looked almost cheerful.

After putting down the heavy memories of the Gatekeeper and spending more time on the Vanished, she had grown used to the crew’s… gang-like mood. “They weren’t hard to deal with, just stranger in shape. Also…”

“Also?”

“There is also a ‘Veil’ in the Spirit Realm,” Agatha said. She raised a hand and pointed toward the great wall of the Veil in the distance. “It stands there like a dark reflection of this Veil, and it looks… even more dangerous and strange. Many shapeless forms rise and shift inside that black Veil. I don’t have a good feeling about it.”

Duncan frowned slightly as he listened.

“So the plan of ‘diving’ beneath the Eternal Veil from Spirit Realm depth won’t work,” he said thoughtfully. “It seems this ‘border’ surrounds the whole world on all levels. There is no safe shortcut…”

“That is more or less what we expected,” Agatha nodded. “If our world is a ‘Sanctuary World’, then the walls of this Sanctuary World must be tight enough. Only then can we have a safe place to live in the chaos after worlds collide.”

She paused to think, then went on: “In the World Model Mr. Morris has been refining, the Veil at the border should block both the Mortal Realm and the Spirit Realm. It may even reach down into the Abyssal Deep and the Deep Sea.

“And it doesn’t just seal us off in space. From the point of view of time, there should also be something like an ‘Eternal Veil’ to make sure the entire Sanctuary World is complete…”

“A border in the dimension of time…” Duncan said. “In Vision 004, that Gravekeeper also spoke to me about it.” He shook his head. “Mr. Morris must have taken his revelation from there too.”

“Yes. He has been trying to build a World Model that can explain the whole Boundless Sea, even the whole age of the Deep Sea,” Agatha said gently, with a hint of respect in her voice. “The truths we recently found deep in the Nameless One’s dream, and the information you just brought back from the Nameless King’s tomb, have helped him make great progress lately.

“He has started trying to explain the world we live in using both time and space. He is the only scholar I know who has reached this step.”

“Strictly speaking, he is the only scholar who has reached this step and is still alive,” Duncan said with feeling. “Recently his research has been causing… extra commotion on the ship. It’s the same when Nina reads.”

“Scholars always end up wrestling with the knowledge they study,” Agatha said, clearly used to this. “Miss Nina’s situation is much better now. She has learned to stay calm when things jump out of her books…

“That might be related to the time she accidentally burned the design drawing she had spent three days and three nights working on.”

Hearing this, the corner of Duncan’s mouth twitched.

Even though he had lived in this world for quite some time now, every time he heard about such bizarre events, he still could not help wanting to complain.

But in any case, the noise Nina and Morris caused while wrestling with knowledge was still better than the two Dolls on the ship playing their “head-swapping game” right now.

In the captain’s cabin of the Vanished, Duncan blinked and looked up helplessly as he spoke with Lucretia about what they had learned of the Border.

A figure in a black-and-white maid dress staggered into the cabin. The large clockwork key on her back turned with a constant clicking sound. When she saw Duncan in the room, a slow smile spread across her face: “Cap… tain… what… are we hav… having for din… ner?”

Duncan held it in for two seconds before he finally could not stand it: “Alice, why is your head on Lunie’s body?”

Alice’s face showed sudden surprise: “Ah, how… did you… find… find out?”

“I’m not blind! And I’m not stupid!” Duncan slapped a hand to his forehead. Right after that, he heard heavy thumping sounds outside the captain’s cabin, as if someone was walking into the wall again and again.

He rose from behind the enchanted sea chart table, walked to the doorway, and saw Alice’s body outside—now wearing Lunie’s head—banging into the wall over and over. As the body walked, Lunie’s head kept calling out: “You hit it, you hit it—move a bit left… hey, left, you got it backwards! On your side that’s right! Ah, you hit it again… more to the left—ah, crash—Old Master?”

Duncan stared with a blank face at Lunie’s head, which had frozen in shock. A moment later, Lucretia also stepped out behind him, her expression just as stiff.

The two of them stood there together, faces wooden, watching the Lunie+Alice combined body. They watched as Alice’s body kept walking forward and bumped straight into the door frame with another thud.

“Stop walking!” Lunie’s head shouted quickly. “Old Master and Mistress are out here!”

Right after she shouted that, she unconsciously moved her own body inside the cabin toward the door as well, and there was a loud thump from behind them.

Duncan lowered his head and saw a silver-haired head roll to his feet. Alice blinked up at him with innocent eyes: “Cap… tain… save… save… save me…”

At the same time, the Lunie+Alice combination body outside also stepped into thin air, missed its footing, and fell over beside the hem of Lucretia’s dress. Lunie’s head bounced off the body, hit the floor with a thud, and rolled while crying out in a panic: “Mistress! I fell off too!!”

For a moment, the scene was beyond any words.

Duncan’s mind spun for a long time as he tried to sort out the positions of these two Dolls. At last he could not hold back anymore and shouted in unison with Lucretia: “You two switch back!”