Chapter 726

Chapter 726: Shirley & Dog

On the shattered floating island under the frozen starlight, Dog and Shirley walked to the edge of the land and sat down, staring into space.

A pitch-black chain extended from Shirley’s arm, which was covered in black bone plates, and linked to the back of Dog’s neck. Their two minds flowed quietly along the connection formed by the chain, blending together, sharing reason and humanity—just as they had for the past twelve years.

They had a lot they wanted to talk about. In that short yet terrifying time after the chain broke, this pair of “partners” who had relied on each other for twelve years had faced things they had never imagined. Even Shirley, who hated thinking the most, now found herself reflecting on life.

Of course, they also had to think seriously about how to adapt to this new relationship—“guardian dog” and “contracted human”, a setup that would blow everyone’s mind if the world ever heard about it…

Duncan did not disturb them. Instead, he took Alice a little farther from the edge of the floating island and, while he waited, looked around to study the strange environment of the Abyssal Deep.

It was very quiet all around. On the wasteland under the dim starry sky, he saw no sign of life.

Many Abyssal demons had gathered here before, but to avoid another beating they had all fled long ago. Now only a barren plain full of strange black rocks remained, along with some jagged, rising and falling shadows in the distance.

If he had not known he was in the Abyssal Deep, Duncan would have thought the scene before him belonged on a barren alien world. The land around him looked like the surface of a dead planet, and the frozen starry sky above gave off a bleak, heavy feeling. It was not a pleasant environment at all.

And if he remembered that the only “animals” here were countless savage demons, and that their daily life was to gnaw on each other, gnaw on rocks, and be gnawed on by their own kind, then this place was even farther from anything that could be called “livable”.

“…I’m starting to think the Four Gods Church’s plan isn’t reliable,” Duncan said casually. “I mean the plan about settling in the Abyssal Deep. In a hellhole like this, even if humans really managed to survive, they’d be twisted beyond recognition. A ‘civilization’ that is no longer human at all—can that still be called human civilization? I really doubt it.”

Alice thought for a moment, half understanding, half not.

But she did not seem bothered by the environment at all. She even adapted to it very well. She was still wandering around in high spirits. The bare plain and the dim light did nothing to affect this doll’s good mood. She ran over to pick up a strangely shaped rock and happily held it out to Duncan: “Captain! Look, look, a rock!”

Duncan pulled his thoughts back at once and looked at the rock Alice had picked up with a serious, grave expression: “What is special about this rock?”

“From the side, doesn’t it look a lot like Goathead?” The doll girl burst into a smile, her face full of pride. “I saw it at a glance!”

Duncan: “…”

While he was still stunned, Alice ran off again. She dug around among the jagged rocks nearby, brought back a handful of things, and showed them to Duncan in delight: “And these! Don’t they look like tree branches?”

Duncan looked at the twigs in Alice’s hands. They had seen a lot of these along the way. They looked like thin branches of some kind of shrub, growing from cracks in the rocks. Their surface carried grayish-white lines, yet they only had bare stems and no leaves at all. Their shape was very strange.

At first glance, anyone would instinctively think they were a kind of plant unique to the Abyssal Deep.

But Alice casually snapped one of the twigs and pointed at the broken end: “Look, this thing is stone too.”

Duncan frowned slightly and took the broken twig from Alice, curiously examining the cross section. The thing seemed very brittle. The break was neat and sharp and had the same texture as the black and gray stones on the ground around them. But when Duncan held it up under the starlight and looked more closely, he saw tiny glimmers faintly reflecting from the break, as if fine metallic dust or fibers were mixed inside it.

Then he raised his head and looked toward the wide space in the distance under the dim starry sky. Large and small broken islands floated in this dimension. Some were almost as big as the greatest city-states on the Boundless Sea, while others were only large rocks. But no matter how big an “island” was, they all had one thing in common in their structure:

The lower half of every floating island was a regular “disk”. At the bottom of each disk he could see many clustered downward-pointing shapes like stone stalagmites turned upside down. Massive structures of unclear shape linked those hanging spires together, as if forming the “base” that supported each floating island.

Duncan frowned a little. He could not help but think of the “mirror world island” he had seen once on the seabed near Frostholm. That black mirror world island, which floated in the Abyssal Deep, also looked as barren and raw as these broken floating islands. The whole island had been covered with the same kind of “black stone” material, with that faint metallic feel.

Clearly, they were made of the same kind of thing.

If those Black Mud Homunculi shaped like humans were the “Rough Husks” of people, then that barren, dark mirror world on the seabed near Frostholm had been the “Rough Husk” of a city-state. And here in the Abyssal Deep… it seemed to be packed full of “Rough Husks” of city-states.

Maybe these were the raw “blanks” the Abyssal Lord had used during the third Long Night. Or, to put it another way… were they the “half-finished products” of the many islands on the Boundless Sea?

If all of these were half-finished… then it was clear that when the Abyssal Lord had first built the Sanctuary World, He had planned something far grander: more islands, more city-states, wider living spaces, richer resources. It was even possible that, in the original plan, the Boundless Sea was meant to be many times larger than the world people knew today.

But now these “half-finished products” only floated quietly in this cage-like space, letting the years pass, forgotten by both the mortal world and the gods. Only the dull, chaotic Abyssal demons fought here day after day, keeping up a meaningless cycle and “balance” of matter.

Suddenly, footsteps came from the side and pulled Duncan out of his thoughts.

He looked up toward the sound and saw two tall figures walking over. One was Shirley, still in her Abyssal demon form. The other was Dog, whose mind had completely recovered.

“Looks like you’re done talking.” Duncan took the initiative to walk forward, breaking the silence first.

“Thank you for giving us time,” Dog lowered his head and said politely. “I hope we didn’t delay anything.”

“We still have a lot to do—but we’re not in such a hurry that we can’t spare ten minutes,” Duncan said casually, while he watched Shirley’s and Dog’s faces. (He mainly watched Shirley’s, since it was hard to read any expression on Dog’s bony skull.) “You both seem to be in good shape. Have you talked about what to do from now on? I mean your new contract relationship… this unheard-of case where a demon summoned a contracted human.”

Even as he said it, Duncan himself felt that the words sounded strange. But Shirley and Dog seemed very calm when they heard him. Dog even shook his head carelessly: “That’s not a big deal. Shirley and I both feel it doesn’t change much for us…”

Alice’s eyes went wide in surprise: “No change at all?”

“Yeah,” Dog said, utterly at ease. “Shirley has always been the one charging around with her head down, and I’ve always been the one holding the chain so she doesn’t cause trouble. How did the captain put it… oh, ‘the dog walking the person’. We’ve lived like that for more than ten years. Isn’t it still the same now?”

Duncan and Alice looked at each other. After a few seconds, they spoke in unison: “That… does make sense…”

Listening at the side, Shirley drooped her head so low it almost fell into her chest. She muttered in embarrassment: “Can we not talk about this… I’m not that reckless…”

Duncan felt that this young lady’s words had no force at all. From the day she first swung Dog on his chain and threw him out to beat people, she had never again been able to clear her name of being “reckless”…

But after this little interruption, he did feel a bit more at ease. It really seemed that Shirley and Dog did not care much about this “small matter” of the contract changing, and that spared him a lot of needless worry.

Shirley lowered her head and glanced at Dog, who was linked to her. She gently shook her arm, making the chain clatter.

The chain still bound them together, just like always. Whether one was human and the other a demon, whether one shared whose humanity, whose heart beat in whose chest… none of that was very important.

They were “Shirley and Dog”—and they always would be. As long as they stayed together, that was enough.

“Then there’s only one other question left.” After a few seconds of quiet, Duncan cleared his throat and broke the silence. He looked up at Shirley, who now “stood grown up”, almost three meters tall when her skeletal limbs held her up. “In this form… can you still change back?”

“I can,” Shirley nodded right away, but then her expression turned a little hesitant. “After the chain was restored, Dog and I ‘noticed’ a way to take control of my body again, it’s just…”

Duncan looked puzzled: “Just what?”

“There’s a tiny bit of side effect…” Dog muttered at the side.

As soon as he finished speaking, Shirley began to control her new body and transform it back toward a human form—

With a series of cracking sounds as bones reshaped and clouds of smoke rising, her huge body shrank quickly within the haze. In just a few seconds, she returned to a normal human height and size. The frightening black bone plates and spikes all withdrew into her body. Her once-mature face also went back to how she usually looked, except for…

Her eyes, which still glowed with a faint red light.

She looked up at Duncan with those eyes now completely covered by red light and spoke in a helpless tone: “This is a Abyssal demon trait. I can’t get rid of it. Dog can go back to how he looked before—his whole body just shrinks a size. But my eyes won’t change back no matter what I do. One look and you can tell something’s wrong.”

“…Honestly, it’s pretty striking,” Duncan commented in a very objective tone.

Shirley held it in for a long moment, then let out a long sigh: “Whatever… I’ll just keep my eyes closed whenever I go into a city. I can see things even with my eyes closed now anyway.”