Ashes Of Deep Sea-Chapter 260 - 264 Captain’s Warning
Chapter 260: Chapter 264 Captain’s Warning
To be fair, Fenna had hardly ever been afraid of anything in her life, but Captain Duncan Ebnomal…seemed to always bring her various “unexpected situations.”
The room sealed by the Dreamscape, the boundless dark sea outside the window, the eerie luminous body hanging in the sky, under the silent night sky, someone knocked on the door.
Fenna almost instinctively wanted to summon her greatsword in the Dreamscape and leap to cleave towards the direction of the door—fortunately, she controlled this impulse at the last second.
“Thud, thud, thud.”
The knocking still came, unhurried, with full patience and politeness.
Fenna took several deep breaths, not sure what expression she should show, so she could only keep her face taut, trying to make her tone sound normal, “Come in.”
...
With a click, the handle turned, the heavy, dark wooden door was pushed open from the outside, and an exceedingly tall and imposing figure appeared in front of Fenna and stepped into the room.
And behind this figure was pure darkness, as if the edge of the Dreamscape—beyond the edge, there was the “nothingness” where no entities existed.
Duncan stepped into the room and greeted Fenna with a friendly smile, “Good afternoon, Fenna—I knocked this time.”
Fenna silently watched the Ghost Ship captain walk into the room, watched him go to the liquor cabinet on his own, take out a bottle and two glasses, and watched him unhurriedly come to the table and sit down on the chair.
“Won’t you come sit?” Duncan raised his eyebrows and glanced at the young Judge standing near the window, motioning towards the empty space opposite him at the table, “You don’t look very happy.”
Fenna hesitated for a moment, then finally approached Duncan with a strange look on her face, cautiously sitting down while eyeing him pouring the drinks. After a while, she sighed, “Don’t you think this is even scarier now?”
“Is that so?” Duncan looked at Fenna in surprise, then looked around at the Dreamscape he had taken a while to arrange, at the cozy everyday decorations and the friendly glass in his hand, and frowned uncertainly, “Then next time I’ll try a brighter hue…”
“I don’t think it’s about the hue…” Fenna felt her eyebrows twitch but then seemed to think of something and let out an exasperated sigh, “Alright, at least I think I really felt your ‘good intentions’… They’re a bit frightening, but I can somewhat confirm their sincerity now.”
Duncan pushed a glass of wine towards her, “Seems like a good thing.”
“Thank you,” Fenna took the glass, hesitantly looking at the clear golden-red liquid inside. She deliberated for a long time before setting it aside for the moment, then lifted her eyes to look at the captain opposite her, “This is another Dreamscape—is it a room on the Homeloss?”
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“It has some basis, but it’s not entirely so. I arranged it according to personal preference,” Duncan said calmly, “Actually, I’m not very good at weaving Dreamscapes. I prefer to enter dreamscapes that already exist, but you were restless in your sleep, with fractured and chaotic dreams, so I prepared a place for you to rest well.”
Fenna didn’t care about the last part of Duncan’s words. She just turned her head to look out the window and asked her biggest question, “That glowing thing in the sky outside…what is it? Also your ‘personal preference’?”
Duncan fell silent for a moment, his gaze looking out the window, silent in the moonlight for a long before he sighed and shook his head, “Sort of—I don’t really like the too pale and cold glows of the Creation of the World; they’re not soft enough, and they make one feel soaked in malice. As for what you see now…you can call it ‘moon.'”
“‘Moon’…” Fenna awkwardly repeated this strange word that seemed to be transliterated directly from an unknown language, “It’s quite a mouthful.”
“Are you interested in it?” Duncan looked at Fenna with a smile that was not quite a smile, “Then I could tell you the story behind this name…”
But before he could finish speaking, Fenna’s entire body jolted, “No! Thank you!”
“…Alright, it’s always like this,” Duncan shrugged, not caring much, “Actually, it’s some of the most mundane things, with nothing to do with Subspace.”
“Sorry, I believe you are friendly, but…just think of me as a coward,” Fenna said awkwardly. After so many encounters and a series of events, her wariness and defensive attitude towards the Ghost Ship captain had subtly changed quite a bit. Regardless, from a logical and rational standpoint, she also didn’t dare to casually accept “knowledge” from this returnee of Subspace, “Let’s talk about something else, why are you looking for me?”
“Two things,” Duncan looked into Fenna’s eyes, “First, thank you for taking care of Tyrion these past couple of days; it seems he has been quite content in Prand.”
“Captain Tyrion?” Fenna’s heart stirred, suddenly realizing something, “Have you been paying attention to this all along…?”
“Yes, I have been paying attention to this matter,” Duncan said with a tone of contemplation, “He has been wandering in the north for many years, picked up some pirate habits, and usually only has a bunch of Undead sailors for company, so his social habits are extremely unhealthy. Plus, with that old Frost affair, one can’t help but worry about his mental state—to avoid becoming a reclusive, grumpy cynic, he needs a bit of healthy and orderly human interaction…”
Duncan was basically making this up off the top of his head, solely to further solidify his image of “regaining human sanity,” to facilitate dealings with Fenna and the “civilization of order” behind her. However, Fenna didn’t take this as fabrication. The Judge listened blankly as this Ghost Ship captain rambled on like an old father, and after quite some time, she managed to artlessly say, “You…care quite a bit about him…”
Duncan stated seriously, “It’s the first step to maintain family harmony for family members to care for each other.”
“…But you almost blew the Sea Mist to smithereens.” Fenna cautiously reminded him.
Duncan still spoke in earnest, “Appropriate education and guidance is the second step.”
Fenna, “…”
Weird, discordant, full of strangeness, Fenna increasingly felt there was an indescribable eeriness in the communication with Captain Duncan. Oddly enough, in this bizarre and alien conversation, she really began to feel… the Ghost Ship captain “came to life.”
She couldn’t help but shake her head, pushing the sudden thought aside, “What about the second thing you mentioned?”
“The second thing,” Duncan’s expression tightened slightly with seriousness, “is about the sun—have you noticed any changes in it?”
Outside the window, the sound of the waves somehow began to die down, turning into a distant murmur, and the breeze that blew into the room grew faint.
When Fenna heard him mention “the sun,” her eyes subtly changed, “Are you referring to the sunrise that was delayed by fifteen minutes, or…”
“There’s a gap in the runic ring around it,” said Duncan, “judging by your expression, you must have noticed too.”
Fenna was silent for a couple of seconds before nodding slightly, “It’s hard not to notice—even though it’s a gap hard to detect with the naked eye, for thousands of years, vigilant eyes have been observing anomaly 001’s movements. The Deep Sea Church detected this unsettling situation immediately.”
“The guardians are ever vigilant… My impression of you has improved a bit,” said Duncan before suddenly asking, “What do you make of it?”
“…It depends on the response from the Storm Cathedral,” Fenna stated in a matter-of-fact tone, “here in Praland, we can only report our observations. We are not a research facility, and can’t think of any way to intervene in the running of anomaly 001.”
She pondered for a moment before shaking her head with some uncertainty, “Perhaps even the Storm Cathedral won’t give a clear response. Anomaly 001… its operation affects the whole world, and its abnormalities alarm more than just one Deep Sea Church.”
Speaking thus, Fenna seemed to suddenly realize something and looked up at Duncan, “Are you suddenly discussing this with me because you know something? Do you know what’s wrong with anomaly 001?”
Duncan didn’t reply immediately.
His mind involuntarily recalled the brief, strange dream he had had.
In the dreamscape, massive bodies of light fell like meteor showers, the world gradually enveloped in darkness until the sky was left with only a terrifying void, resembling a gaping hole or a dying eyeball.
At that time, he hadn’t grasped anything from that dream. But now, he felt as if he had caught a glimpse of a premonition from it.
“I can’t be certain myself, Fenna,” he finally broke the silence, calmly looking into her eyes, “but I think this is just the beginning.”
A chill slowly spread down her back; Fenna felt she was seeing something extremely unsettling in his eyes, “Just a beginning?”
“I don’t have enough evidence yet, but I guess anomaly 001 might actually have a ‘lifespan’,” said Duncan seriously, “What the Ancient Crete Kingdom left for future generations was not eternal shelter, but just temporary peace. The sun above us… is probably about to stop working.
“As for when that evidence will come…”
Duncan paused, then said slowly,
“Perhaps huge chunks will fall from the sky, signaling the countdown ticker.
“It’s more likely that the first chunk has already fallen, just outside the field of vision of the civilized world.”
A shiver and unease spread at the pit of her stomach. Fenna’s gaze dropped, concealing all movement in her eyes while her hand slowly picked up the wine glass next to her, and she subconsciously brought it to her lips, seemingly trying to steady her nerves with alcohol.
She took a sip, furrowed her brow slightly, and looked up at Duncan, “It’s tasteless…”
“Of course, it’s tasteless,” Duncan smiled, raising his glass slightly to Fenna, “Because you’re about to wake up.”
Fenna’s eyes snapped open.
She was still seated in the moving steam carriage, with the spires and main structure of the cathedral coming into view.
She gasped slightly, hearing the voice of a subordinate from ahead, “Ah, you’re awake. Good timing, we’re almost at the cathedral.”
