Chapter 581 – Touching the Edge
Chapter 581 Touching the Edge
Sara Mayer didn’t care about his breakfast now.
The former legendary explorer who had experienced countless strange and bizarre situations on the infinite sea, faced the heavy challenges of corruption and death, and pioneered a city-state at the end of the storm showed a rare expression of uneasiness, his brow furrowing in his seat while a long-lost shadow of uneasiness was spreading in his mind.
He was familiar with this sense of unease – it was the warning that his intuition sent to himself when eerie dangers of immense proportions, too great for the human intellect to comprehend and combat, drew near.
He did not doubt Lucrecia’s narrative.
For it was not the first time that he had dealt with the “Witch of the Sea” – although countless ocean captains and frontier explorers had regarded the Witch as one of the shadows of the infinite sea, and had scorned her eccentricity and her dangerous power, Sara Meir knew very well that the “Witch of the Sea” was a woman of the sea, and that she was a woman of the sea, a woman of the sea. Though countless ocean captains and frontier explorers regarded the witch as one of the shadows of the infinite sea and feared her eccentric temper and dangerous powers, Sara Mayer knew that the Witch of the Sea was on the side of the mortals.
After a long silence in the dining room, Sara Meir finally ended his musings and looked up, “So far, no one has reported anything strange last night – neither the local elf inhabitants nor the foreign travelers have noticed the dream you mentioned.”
“According to what my father saw, the abnormalities that appeared in the neighborhoods were very obvious and large in scale, and if there were indeed parts of the city that were still in a normal state, then it would be impossible for the residents of those ‘normal’ parts of the city to fail to notice the abnormalities in the neighboring neighborhoods, so the only explanation for this is that, last night …… the entire Lightwind Harbor had been dreaming.”
Lucrecia’s last sentence made Sara Meier feel an unspeakable chill, but reason still made him subconsciously think about the logical incongruity of it all: “You mentioned that the city buildings in the real world had been covered and even parasitized by ‘eroding entities’ spreading out from the dream world, with huge plants running through the buildings and pavements? This didn’t leave a trace?”
“No trace was left, and the real world returned to its original state before the sun rose.”
Sara Meier listened, frowning tightly in silence, as if lost in thought once more.
“What has occurred to you?” Lucrecia asked curiously from the sidelines.
“…… Perhaps I should send someone to check the gas meters and meter readings throughout the city, as well as the operation of the factories during the night,” Sara Meir said as she pondered, “The city-state is not static during the night, there are many round-the-clock functions that ensure the city’s operation, such as the three main pillars of gas, electricity and steam, which in turn have their counterparts in nighttime monitoring and inspectors ……
“So this begs the question: where did these men go when that dream came to pass? And what was the state of the machines they were supposed to be operating? There are also the Vigil Scholars of the colleges, many of whom are required to periodically record the status of their work ……”
Sara Meier said, pausing to think for a moment before continuing, “There’s also the need to find a way to determine just how far this anomaly covers, whether it’s confined to the main island of Lightwind Harbor, or whether it’s spreading to the patrol fleet offshore, or even over to the ‘Falling Objects’ side of things ……”
As he spoke, this consul stood up from behind the table and walked around the dining table, stopping from time to time to think intently.
He seemed to have completely forgotten that there was a “Witch of the Sea” on the scene.
Lucrecia, on the other hand, was not surprised by this, knowing that the consul, before becoming the ruler of the city-state, had first of all been an outstanding adventurer (though not as much as her father), and an outstanding adventurer knew how to deal with all kinds of extraordinary visions.
There was no doubt about the consul’s ability if Lightwind Harbor was able to prosper in the closest place to the border sea.
What my father had entrusted to me was done – Lucrecia stood up without disturbing Mr. Consul, who was already lost in thought, her gaze swept over the table in front of her, and she carried away a bottle of unopened spiced wine in her hand, before her figure thudded into a flurry of colorful pieces of paper, swirling across the roof and disappearing into the room.
It was only after another moment that Sara Meier suddenly reacted, turning around while speaking in a panic, “Ah, sorry, I got carried away, Ms. Lucrecia, would you like to stay and have some ……”
He froze and looked across the table at the already empty chair, as well as at the place where he had placed his own collection of good wine just a moment ago – which was now empty as well.
“…… Again?!”
……
“A change in the number of barrels?” Inside the captain’s room, after hearing the situation that Alice hurriedly ran to report to himself, Duncan couldn’t help but confirm it again in surprise.
“Yes, yes!” Alice nodded her head repeatedly, “I counted it several times! Definitely didn’t count wrong! And there’s definitely no misremembering either, I moved all those barrels there myself.”
Alice certainly wouldn’t lie, as for getting the number wrong …… she shouldn’t be so bad as to make a mistake on such a simple matter.
After a slight pause, Duncan rose from behind the sailing table, “Show me over there.”
Alice responded without hesitation, “Yes!”
The goat’s head on the edge of the nautical table moved and it turned its head in Duncan’s direction with a slight hesitation in its tone, “Captain, then I ……”
“You stay at the helm,” Duncan said immediately, then he paused and added, “Don’t worry about anything else, like I said earlier, leave it to me.”
“Aye, Captain.”
With Alice leading the way, Duncan soon arrived at the place where the kippers were stored.
Of course, the place had long since returned to its normal state, with twelve barrels lined up neatly against the wall, looking no more and no less. Duncan, however, still had a serious expression on his face as he swept his gaze across the entire cabin.
Wherever his gaze reached, wisps of ethereal green flames rose and fell in the air like phantoms, traveling silently between the cracks in the floor and walls, and the entire room seemed to be shrouded in a layer of phantasmal mist interwoven with the flames of the spirits, switching between the spirit world and reality.
He was checking to see if there were any “traces” left in the room, and if anything that didn’t belong to the Lost Country had entered the room.
Alice’s report didn’t sound like a big deal, and a barrel not on the “list” of things to see on a ghost ship full of strange and strange things obviously wasn’t worth the trouble, but Duncan wasn’t the least bit relaxed and careless.
But Duncan had no intention of relaxing. For on the boundless seas, even the smallest anomaly had to be faced with caution – especially on the Lost Country, and especially at a time like this.
Duncan had already smelled a hint of something wrong from last night’s events, and today’s exchange with Goathead and Agatha’s report had made him more and more aware of one thing–
The ship, the state of it seemed a little off.
It was not out of his control, but Duncan always felt that there were some unfamiliar and unknown “details” on the ship.
Either some hidden secrets of the Lost Country are gradually unveiled to himself, or some parts of the ship are really getting out of his control as the “captain”.
Under the spreading psychic flame, Duncan felt his connection with the Lost Country growing, and every detail of the ship began to be mapped into his mind – the decks, the masts, the sails, the intricate winches and cables, the cabins below decks, and the murky chaos of the immersed sea.
It was not the first time he had done this, and he was certainly no stranger to the sensation, and after quickly completing the acclimatization of his senses, he allowed them to become one with the ship and continue to spread into the depths of the Lost Country.
There was nothing out of the ordinary in the compartment the galley was in, and all was normal in the nearby compartments and deeper.
Wisps of light infiltrated the depths of the Lost Country, flowing like some sort of signaling stream throughout the ship, and they eventually converged on the captain’s cabin, where they came together in a prominent “focal point”.
That was the location of the goat’s head, the control center of the ship at the moment.
Duncan’s “sight” lingered on that focal point for a long time.
Everything seemed to be in order.
Duncan slowly withdrew his “sight” – but he left a little flame in the deepest part of the darkness.
At the same time, in the process of withdrawing his gaze from the ship, he kept leaving “embers” behind, letting them linger in various parts of the Lost Country.
Alice watched the captain with some concern, and after a long time, she saw Duncan’s gaze move, so she hurriedly went up to him, “Captain, Captain, how is it? Did you find anything?”
“There’s nothing out of the ordinary on the ship – don’t worry,” Duncan slowly broke into a small smile and reached out to press Alice’s hair, “It’s probably some spatial dislocation or misalignment of light or something like that ‘ glitches’, I’ll take care of it.”
Alice didn’t actually understand, but still nodded her head in a half-comprehension, “Ah …… oh.”
Duncan, on the other hand, after briefly relieving Ms. Doll cast his gaze not far to the side.
On a pillar two meters away, there hung an oil lamp with a glass shade, and now the surface of its shade was quietly emerging as shadows and fog intertwined into light, and Agatha’s figure then appeared in that layer of glass.
“Keep an eye on your reflection in the spirit world,” Duncan nodded to her, “If anything ‘crosses the line’, don’t take liberties with it, let me know at the first opportunity and I’ll be right back. ”
Agatha bowed her head, “I understand, Captain.”
Alice’s eyes darted between Duncan and Agatha, looking around a few times before she finally couldn’t help but break the silence, “So are we still going to the city?”
“The effects of the Dream of the Nameless One are spreading through Lightwind Harbor, and I suspect that we’ll still have to look for clues in the city-state first to solve the problem,” Duncan nodded, “And there are still a lot of questions I’d like to verify in the city-state. …… Do you want to stay on the ship? Or with me?”
Alice thought for a moment, then looked back at her familiar ‘friends’ in the kitchen, and after a brief moment of hesitation, she turned her head and smiled brightly.
“To the city-state together!”
(End of chapter)