Chapter 714

Chapter 714: .

As they went deeper into the interior of Sanctum Isle, the surroundings grew quieter and quieter. The wind no longer sounded. No birds chirped, and no streams murmured. A strange silence gathered in the mist and hung over the team.

Yet this extreme quiet only made everyone more uneasy. When all the sounds that should have belonged to nature faded away, the idea that “this island is alive” began to take over, out of control. Shirley kept feeling as if eyes were resting on her from within the fog. It felt as if the island itself was watching and judging the uninvited guests who had broken into this place. Even the mist that slowly drifted around the group seemed to take on the taste of a “watcher”.

The team still moved forward, heading toward the “dig site” that had appeared in Shirley’s mind.

After they left the Harbor district, a not-so-wide path led toward the center of the isle. It seemed to be a road the cultists had opened up long ago. It lay between two pitch-black rock walls. There were no signs along the way. At the base of the rock walls on both sides of the path, they sometimes saw black stones that looked like clusters of crystals.

Duncan’s gaze was drawn to those black “stone clusters”. These clusters were not rare on the island. On the cliffs on the west side of the isle, stones like these, even larger in scale, “grew” almost everywhere. They looked like some strange “plant” that had pushed its way out of the ground and rock face. It made people very curious how they had formed.

Even with Morris’s learning, he could not explain these stone clusters from a simple geological angle. But since the whole island was, as Shirley said, “alive”, it did not seem strange for such odd things to appear here.

Maybe these twisted stones really had “grown” from the island, like some kind of secretion from Elder Gods.

Under Amber’s command, several marines in the squad carefully collected samples from those clusters. They also scraped a lot of dark, powdery material from the nearby rock walls. They stored these Sanctum Isle samples with great care in metal tubes that had received a divine blessing, and several specific people in the team each carried some.

All along the way, they kept doing the same sort of thing. They worked together smoothly and seemed very practiced. It almost did not slow the team’s progress at all. It was clear this was not their first time doing it.

“Any Boundary Samples might come in handy. Some of them have incredible practical properties. Some can help us uncover the secrets of the world and deepen our understanding of supernatural power,” Amber explained to Duncan. “Many people think the Boundary is a place where there is nothing, that it holds nothing but fog and seawater. But actually… shapes from the Mortal Realm often appear in the mist, and every year we have to handle almost double-digit ‘entity incidents’…”

She paused for a moment, then added: “Lady Lucretia should know this very well. She often works with the Church in the field of boundary exploration…”

“I’ve heard her mention it,” Duncan nodded calmly. “She said this is the main source of income for the Radiant Star when it operates in the Boundary. Truth Academy is the most generous buyer when it comes to Boundary Samples. Flamebearer is always the slowest payer. The Deep Sea Church has a good reputation in these deals, but its ‘receiving’ standards are very strict. Sometimes their whole review and registration process ends up even slower than Flamebearer.”

Amber looked a little embarrassed: “…Not every Church is as rich as Truth Academy. They can buy a dozen city-states just on the licensing of their steam-core reactor boiler technology, while we still have to think about our yearly budget.”

Duncan said: “…That is a very Mortal Realm kind of reason.”

“Do you feel… like it’s colder than before?” Shirley suddenly broke the silence. She hugged her arms, rubbing them as she muttered: “I keep feeling wind blowing over. My arms are almost frozen stiff…”

“Cold?” Vanna frowned at that. “I don’t really feel it… but the fog is thicker than before. The road ahead is getting harder to see… hmm?”

Vanna suddenly stopped. Her gaze locked onto Shirley’s arm: “Shirley, the chain on your arm…”

Shirley froze for a second. She lifted her arm, confused: “Huh? What about the chain?”

The rattling of iron links echoed in the mist. The pitch-black Barbed Chain connected her arm to Dog’s cervical spine, just like always.

Vanna’s brows knitted tight. She stared hard at the black chain on Shirley’s arm, then shook her head a little, unsure: “…It’s back to normal again… but just now, for a moment, I thought I saw the chain on your arm broken.”

“What?!” Shirley’s eyes went wide at once. Even her voice sounded flustered. “Hey… don’t scare me! Did you really see that?!”

As she spoke, she quickly lifted her arm and yanked the chain, dragging Dog right in front of her. She held his huge skull close: “Dog, did you feel anything?”

“No…” Dog was rattled too by Vanna’s words. “She must have seen it wrong…”

But Vanna still kept her brows furrowed. She knew very well that what she had caught in that brief daze was hard to believe, but her Inquisitor training pushed her into full alert almost at once: “Shirley, Dog, you really didn’t feel anything strange?”

Shirley and Dog answered in unison: “Nothing at all.”

“Let me take a look.” Duncan strode over, grabbed the black chain between Shirley and Dog, and lifted it up to examine it closely.

Shirley watched nervously from the side. Only after a long time did she finally gather the courage to ask: “Is… is there anything wrong with it?”

A wisp of ghostly green flame flowed over Duncan’s fingertips. It seeped between the links like water. After a while, he shook his head lightly: “I can’t see anything.”

“What would happen if the chain broke?” Even Alice finally realized how serious this was and asked in a tense voice.

“I don’t know… If the chains binding those Annihilators and contracted demons broke, they usually just died on the spot. Neither the people nor the demons could survive. But my situation with Dog is different…” Shirley spoke in a rush, clearly frightened. “Besides, under normal circumstances this chain can’t break. It’s really tough… how could it possibly break…”

Duncan suddenly reached out and patted Shirley on the shoulder.

Shirley flinched and looked up at him, uneasy.

“Go back to the ship,” Duncan said to her.

Seeing her confusion, Duncan went on: “Something feels off. To be cautious, I think you should return to the Vanished. You shouldn’t keep going deeper into this island.”

Shirley finally understood. She hesitated a little, then nodded. But right then, Dog suddenly stepped forward. For once, he did not obey the captain’s order: “No, Captain. I think… Shirley and I should stay with you on the island.”

Duncan frowned slightly: “Why?”

Dog hesitated for a moment, then spoke as if he had made up his mind: “First, going back to the Vanished right now might not be safer than staying by your side.”

Duncan did not speak, only signaled for Dog to go on with his eyes.

“Second… I’m afraid that even if we leave Sanctum Isle now, it might not help,” Dog said after choosing his words. “I don’t think Miss Vanna ‘saw it wrong’. And in an environment like this, even if she really did see something wrong, we still have to treat it as real… Something might truly be wrong. Just now in the plaza, Shirley was clearly affected by Sanctum Isle. She saw many things she should not have seen…

“In my experience, simply leaving the scene after something like that does not solve the problem. Instead, after a period of time, it often breaks out into a bigger, uncontrollable mess. corruption follows you like a shadow and grows when you run from it, and the way to truly solve it usually lies only at the source.”

Shirley understood what Dog meant. She nervously glanced at the foggy road ahead: “You mean… we still have to keep going in?”

“We must go forward. If we don’t figure out what is happening on this island, and we don’t figure out what is wrong with the chain between you and me, I won’t be at ease,” Dog said in a low voice. “And… like I just said, going back to the Vanished now might not be safe either.”

Shirley opened her mouth, as if she still wanted to say something. But then she suddenly heard Dog’s voice pass through the symbiotic pact chain and sound directly in her mind—

“Shirley, stay by the captain’s side. Trust my judgment. It’s safer with him, even if it means going with him into Subspace.”

Shirley turned her head and saw Dog quietly watching her. In his hollow skull eye sockets, the blood-red glow flickered.

Dog seemed to have sensed something coming.

As a demon from the Abyssal Deep, Dog sometimes had vague, hard-to-explain premonitions.

Dog usually could not explain clearly to others what those premonitions meant, but Shirley had always believed his judgment without question.

So she slowly nodded: “Alright, then let’s keep going deeper.”

“Are you sure?” Duncan looked at Shirley very seriously. “If we go deeper, there may be more things we can’t predict.”

[Yes. The danger in the environment was relative. The safety by the captain’s side was absolute.]

For some reason, that sentence suddenly flashed through Shirley’s mind. It was not Dog’s voice through their mental link. It felt more like a judgment that had appeared from her own thoughts.

She blinked, then nodded again: “I’m sure. I feel like I’m still in good shape.”

“…Alright.” Once Duncan confirmed how firm she was, he withdrew his gaze. Then he stretched out his hand and pressed it on the head of the girl who was too thin and short from childhood malnutrition. He spoke very seriously: “Stay near me. Don’t fall behind.”

“Okay!”