Chapter 742

Chapter 742: revelation

The Sun moved slowly, at a speed almost impossible for the naked eye to see, sinking very, very slowly toward the line of the sea. Brilliant golden-red light spilled over the Boundless Sea. This magnificent yet eerie, drawn-out dusk still did not end.

For the first time in history, dusk had become something terrifying. More and more people had realized that once this slow sunset finally ended, what waited afterward would be even more frightening: the veil of night, whose end no one could predict.

Dante Wayne stood on the terrace outside his City Hall office, frowning as he looked at the streets washed in afterglow. The close-packed rooftops of Pland’s Upper City shone with a dizzying brilliance in the setting sun. This familiar view had once been his pride as Governor, but as the sunset dragged on and on, that pride slowly turned into a heavy pressure.

But he knew that compared with other “ordinary” and “normal” city-states, Pland was already in very good shape.

The flames left behind by the “ghost captain” gave this city the safest veil of night on the Boundless Sea. Even after the Sun set, there should not be any large-scale supernatural incursions here. The Long Night would bring the city heavy pressure, but at least it would not involve those Inhuman Things growing in the dark. All he had to worry about was law and order under the Long Night, the lives of the residents, stockpiled supplies, and things like adjusting production.

Elsewhere, things were not so simple.

In northern Cold Harbor, the city government had already declared a state of emergency. Constable units and Guardian units hurried through streets and alleys repairing Sanctuary Worlds and stockpiling Holy Oil. In Morka, the Truth Academy had activated every Steam Walker stored in the Cathedral arsenal and stationed them at gasworks, pump rooms, and steam hubs across the city. In the southwestern seas, several city-states had announced new “veil of night bans.” Residents in outer districts were to be moved temporarily to the nearest Cathedral shelter, inner districts would be sealed off, and huge bonfires would be lit the moment the Sun dropped and would burn until this night ended…

All stockpiled materials were being counted and moved. In the seventy-two hours before the Sun went down, every city-state was gathering its strength to face the coming veil of night.

If it could end at all.

Footsteps sounded behind him. A young official from the government office came into the room. Through the open sliding door, he saw Dante Wayne on the terrace. He coughed lightly twice and said: “Governor, the people in charge of the steam hubs, power plants, and mining facilities are already waiting for you in the conference room. Would you like to…”

Dante nodded and waved his hand lightly: “I know. Go on ahead. Wait for me a few minutes.”

The footsteps left the room. Dante let out a quiet breath. As he loosened his tense expression, he also tried to sort out his thoughts.

He turned around, walked past his wide curved desk, and reached for a file.

His gaze stopped on a photo frame at the edge of the desk.

In the frame, two figures stood side by side. One was his younger self. Beside him stood a tall, silver-haired maiden with a faint smile on her face. They stood beside a flowerbed, with bright sunlight falling behind them.

This was the only photo of Dante Wayne, already buried in work, and Vanna, who had entered a Church school early for training. After this photo, they never seemed to have such a carefree afternoon again.

“I wonder how things are going for Vanna…”

A few memories surfaced. Dante missed the warm sunlight that had faded into memory. Then he looked past the frame and found the file he needed. He tucked it under his arm and hurried toward the office door.

Vanna woke with a start from a chain of messy, shattered, bizarre dreams. Soft sounds of waves still echoed around her. Outside the porthole, the crash of breaking waves against the hull rose and fell, easing her unsettled mood.

She no longer remembered what had happened in the dream. She only remembered that the suddenly twisting, tearing things had cast some kind of indelible shadows in her eyes. The memories of the dream faded, but a lonely, desolate, ruined “atmosphere” seemed to have long shrouded her mind. Even now it still felt faintly cold.

Vanna sat up on the bunk and looked toward the window not far away. The glow of the setting sun still spread across the sea. She did not know when the Vanished had left its Spirit Realm state, but now it was sailing on the sea in the Mortal Realm. In the distance she could see the silhouette of the Radiant Star. That oddly shaped Magic warship was cutting through the waves at full speed alongside the Vanished.

As for the Tide, the Rest, and the other Church warships, they had already left. After the fleet passed beyond the border Veil, the Vanished and the Radiant Star had parted ways with the Church ships, each going on to deal with its own matters.

Vanna let out a soft breath, then took several deep breaths. The slightly salty air drifted into her nose, and the soft, layered sound of the waves still echoed in her mind.

She suddenly frowned, as if sensing something, and quickly turned to look at a corner of the room.

Gentle seawater rose inside the cabin. She did not know when it had already surrounded her on all sides. Illusory waves sounded at her ears. At the moment Vanna turned her head, that gently rising seawater seemed to expand countless times at once, and the whole room expanded with it.

At the far end of the room, which had suddenly become hard to tell real from unreal, Vanna saw a vast shadow. Some huge… biological structure floated at the end of the slowly rolling waves.

A part of that living structure stretched toward her and condensed a figure above the sea surface: a woman in a long dress black as the abyssal sea, her true face hidden by a veil.

Her divine gaze rested on Vanna. In the pair of eyes with strange diamond-shaped pupils seemed to surge countless thoughts and feelings that could not be directly expressed. Under that gaze, Vanna suddenly felt a nameless sense of closeness and… a stirring deep inside.

She reacted at once. Her whole body went tense as she bowed her head deeply: “My Lord…”

“We do not have much time, child,” the figure said softly. With her words came layered noise strong enough to tear an ordinary person’s mind apart and throw them into a runaway state. Her thoughts echoed directly in Vanna’s mind. “…Our link with the mortal world will strengthen one last time…”

An irresistible dizziness rose from deep inside her. Vanna instantly realized she was being corrupted—corrupted by the very goddess she worshipped with all her heart. The goddess’s voice, her thoughts, and the vision she was sending were all filled with a chaos unlike anything Vanna had ever felt before.

But Vanna still forced her mind to steady. At the edge of her vision, she saw a wisp of gentle, ghostly green flame rising and burning, pulling her thoughts back into balance.

“…What do you need me to do?” She tried not to look straight at the vast shadow behind the Storm Goddess. Fighting to stay conscious, she spoke again: “What can I do?”

“…Gather those fallen stars… let them protect you once more… go and tell the Flame Usurper that we wish to… talk with him… we will find…”

The layered sound of the waves slowly turned into some kind of unbearable, piercing shriek. The gentle rising seawater seemed to grow foul. A deep cold seeped into her bones and slowly drowned her whole body. Vanna barely picked out the last words from the noise echoing in her ears. Her head felt as if it would split, and she had no strength left to think about what those words meant. In her blurring vision, she saw the distant waters and the huge shadow silently collapse.

“You saw Gamona’s revelation?” Duncan’s eyes widened slightly. He looked at Vanna, who had suddenly rushed into the captain’s cabin. Then he noticed how bad she looked. He stood at once and took her by the arm: “Sit here first. Catch your breath and talk slowly.”

“Thank you… Captain.” Vanna was almost forced down into the chair by Duncan. The lingering stabbing pain and dizziness in her head made even thinking hard, but after seeing the captain, that state quickly eased, and her thoughts began to flow again. “I met her apparition directly and heard her voice… the goddess is in very bad shape. Those noises… they felt like facing those dark Outer Gods head-on.”

She took a few breaths and then told him everything she had just gone through.

After listening to Vanna’s report, Duncan frowned at once, and his expression slowly grew heavy.

“Go collect those fallen stars…” he muttered softly. As he spoke, he could not help recalling the “advice” he had once heard from a tentacle extended from the Abyssal Lord in the depths of the courtyard at Alice’s manor—

“Keep the fragments of the fallen ?#&**. When everything becomes impossible to save, use them to extend the life of each Node city as much as you can. Stay alive. Survival is the First Directive.”

Clearly, Vanna soon thought of the same thing.

“…Does the goddess mean those glowing fragments of glowing orb that broke off from the Sun’s rune ring belt?” She lifted her head and looked into Duncan’s eyes. “She means those glowing orbs can protect the city-states in the days ahead?”

“From our experience in Lightwind Harbor, the power of those glowing orbs is weaker than the Sun itself, but within a certain range they can still shield the World’s Wound and calm the veil of night,” Duncan said, nodding slowly. “Now the second fragment of glowing orb has fallen at Frostholm, and with the revelation you just received, it’s not hard to connect the dots.”

As he spoke, he looked up toward the window.

The slowly sinking Sun still hung above the distant sea. The broken rune rings cast magnificent patterns of light and shadow on the waves.

The revelation Gamona had given Vanna was not hard to understand. What truly bothered him was another meaning behind that revelation.

“…This is only the beginning,” he said softly. “It looks like the Sun’s disintegration is going to speed up. The real large-scale collapse and fall… is still to come.”

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