Chapter 719 – Falling into the Profound
Chapter 719: Falling into the Profound
In the valley in the hinterland of Sacred Earth Island, Vanna, who was leading the team to set up camp at the entrance of the tunnel, received a message from the cave, and her eyes widened in dismay, “Shirley and Dog are gone?”
“Technically, they were ‘transferred’ somewhere by some sort of temporal mechanism in the cavern,” Duncan’s voice sounded in Vanna’s mind, “Did you observe any changes on the surface? ”
“No, everything is normal on the surface, Amber just led a search deeper into the valley and found nothing but a few empty huts and some human remains swallowed up by the island,” Vanna replied instantly, “The island is calm now… …”
In the underground cavern, Duncan nodded softly after hearing Vanna’s report from the surface, before his gaze fell on Maurice and Alice, who were on the sidelines.
“Everything is normal on the surface, the Holy Land Island did not experience ‘activation’, it seems that the situation encountered by Shirley and Dog is not the same as what happened to that group of Annihilationists.”
“Where the hell did they go?” Alice had an anxious look on her face, “Didn’t you say that you could still feel the ‘imprint’ of the two of them? Are they alright now?”
“Still alive, but in a place I can’t locate, I suspect ……”
Duncan stopped abruptly in mid-sentence, not rushing to any conclusions, but he clearly had a suspicion in his mind – after a brief moment of silence, he had raised his head and looked thoughtfully into the depths of the cave.
In the dim darkness, there stood a huge thing vaguely.
Every time he blinked, a huge prism surrounded by many cables and tubes would emerge there, and lights flickered on the surface of the prism, as if it were emitting a wordless invitation.
He came there, causing the flames to dispel the darkness – and in the light brought by the spirit fire, a magnificent gate stood silent, as if set directly into the rock walls on either side.
In the open space around the gate, many tools scattered in haste could be seen, and some human structures that had melted to the point where it was difficult to discern the details, as if swallowed up by the dirt and rock, were embedded in the ground and walls around them, and looked hideous and horrifying.
Undoubtedly, this was the “final chamber” mentioned by Shirley, the final excavation site deep underground in the Holy Land Island, the place where those Annihilationists finally “woke up” the whole island.
Duncan came to the gate, through the light of the fire quickly observed its structure – the dark stone door is closed, its surface is rough and uneven, as if there was once a clump of vines covering the doorway, but now it has become the gate of the chaotic pits and patterns, but in the chaotic pits and patterns that can hardly be seen to see the regularity and logic, Duncan vaguely recognized the “final chamber”. Duncan yet vaguely recognized something.
It was the unfamiliar writing he had seen in the Hall, the symbols he had seen in the vision of the crash of the New Hope.
He frowned slightly, but before he could read the hidden message in those lines, Alice, who was following him, broke the silence with a whisper, “Pilot One …… intervention interface?”
Duncan snapped his head around to look at the mannequin that was raising its head to observe the door, “You read the message on this door?”
Alice, however, frowned and slowly shook her head, “I didn’t see any message on the door …… I just had this thought pop into my head ……”
Duncan stared into Alice’s eyes as his thoughts raced, he withdrew his gaze and turned to the door – after a few seconds of hesitation and thought, he placed his hand on the door and closed his eyes slightly while concentrating.
Ghostly green flames spread from his fingertips and flickered back over the door.
And in his other vision, in a dark and distant strange dimension, a little bit of firelight, as if suddenly blown by the wind, swayed and flickered slightly in the depths of the darkness.
In that faintly wavering cluster of firelight, Duncan heard Shirley’s voice – a little clearer than it had been a moment before, but still separated by a thick curtain.
She was scared, she was cold, she had just lost something very important – she was cautiously building a shell of self-protection, and something unsuspecting …… was gathering around her.
Duncan’s eyes snapped open.
“Lucy.” He mentally called out to the Witch, who was standing by on the Radiant Star.
Lucrecia’s voice came immediately, “Do you need me?”
“Bring that ‘saint’ over here, I found the ‘connection point’, now I need to open a door and go to the Profound Deep Sea to pick up someone.”
“Understood.”
The voice in his head faded, while Duncan slowly raised his right hand – an extraordinarily bright, even so bright that it was a bit blinding, fire was gradually taking shape in the center of his hand.
He pressed the flame against the dark, dreary stone door and watched it gradually seep into the door, into the strange, dark dimension behind it, before the flame disappeared completely and he whispered to it, “…… Shirley, don’t be afraid.”
……
It was dark, it was cold, his body was as heavy as lead, and a strange tingling sensation spread from his arm, all the way up to his shoulder, and then half of his body, and the tingling gradually transformed into numbness, as if this body no longer belonged to him, as if his own flesh and blood had unconsciously transformed into something he couldn’t understand, couldn’t control.
The “quagmire” around her had gradually subsided at some point, but an even stronger sense of malice and crisis continued to rise from all around her, and Shirley hid in the depths of a pile of “bushes” that seemed to be chaotically intertwined like fragments of skeletons, huddled her body and did not move at all.
There were chaotic and crazy hissing and murmuring from far away, invisible hunters are roaming in the darkness, looking for the uninvited guests who trespassed into this place, the hunter’s scent is slowly approaching this place, and it’s only a matter of time before the “prey” is discovered.
But this time, there is not a single Hound of the Dead to protect him. Shirley clutched her twisted arms harder and made herself shrink deeper into the bushes, she had already “smelled” the scent of the place and figured out where she was.
This is the deep, deep sea, Dog’s “home”.
It’s a demon’s lair.
The faint sound of “plop, plop, plop” in her ears and the throbbing sensation in her chest snapped Sherry out of her stupor, and she stared down at the two hearts she was holding in her arms.
“Daddy …… Mommy ……”
She muttered in a small voice, just as she had when she was little and didn’t want to go to sleep, nestled in her bed and whispering to “them”-
“I’m a little scared …… I want to hug you all ……”
The two hearts still beat just as slowly, the plopping sound so real – they had both been beating inside a spectral demon for the past many years, and through the thick bones and chaotic soot, the sound of their beats had never reached Sherry’s ears so clearly.
Shirley gripped her arms slightly harder, but felt something strange about the sensations coming from them.
She lowered her head and saw a pair of arms covered in thin bone armor, blade-like structures extending from the elbow joints, slowly stretching as if they were living things, and then she saw her chest – a lurid hollow, hollowed out with rising black soot of skeletal remains, a broken, dark-red organ pulsing hard in the midst of the soot and bone. It was growing weaker with every second.
The broken organ was called the “heart” in the human body.
“…… So my heart was bitten through by Dog back then. …… No wonder it’s so cold. ……”
Shirley whispered, adjusting her posture slightly in the bushes, she saw her legs gradually covered with a layer of hideous black bone fragments, while the soot, which represented the profound pollution, kept coming out from the bone fragments and escaping into the air.
She felt increasingly sleepy.
Would she herself die in the mold of a Phantom Demon? Or had she already been a Profound Demon in human clothing twelve years ago, when Dog had fused with her?
The fleeting thought inexplicably surfaced in Sherry’s mind, but soon even that dissipated into the growing sleepiness.
She didn’t want to think about it, nor would she.
She does not understand these, these too “philosophical” difficult …… for her very difficult.
She was more concerned with water, food, fuel to keep warm, and clothes for the winter.
The hissing and murmuring came closer, the predators of the darkness were approaching the edge of the land, rising and shrinking forms casting darker shadows in the darkness, and cold touches that seemed to be a step ahead of Shirley’s skin.
But her body was already slowly lolling down – and the two beating hearts could no longer rouse her from the intense sleepiness that was slowly making its last beats in her fractured chest, once gnawed by demons.
There was a warm light emerging from the darkness, as if a warm sun was shining on her face, and Shirley squinted her eyes slightly and exhaled softly in a cozy, relaxed manner.
It was a warm winter afternoon.
The sunlight was streaming through the windows and spilling onto the peeling and faded wood sills, the kettle on the stove was hissing merrily, Mom was busy in the kitchen, the aroma of baking cookies wafted into the living room, Dad didn’t have to go to work today, he was crouched down next to the dining room table, trying to fix the table that was always squeaking, and there was the crisp ringing of the mailman’s bell from the street as he rode his bike through the intersection, and the sound of a horse and buggy pressed against the gravel driveway.
Shirley was dozing on the couch, soon to fall asleep.
Then Daddy would come over and he would pick himself up, to be taken to his bed in the bedroom, and Mommy would come out of the kitchen and knock Daddy on the head with a long-handled ladle – for rubbing his dirty hands on his daughter’s dress ……
Shirley lay back on the couch, a small smile slowly appearing on her face, just like that afternoon many years ago, when she rolled over gently, her arms falling from the backrest of the couch to herself, and curled up on her chest again.
She felt a heart that had stopped beating.
All the warmth instantly collapsed, darkness and coldness like an avalanche pierced through the warmth of the afternoon sun, she stared in the darkness, but when the fear came, she saw the figure crouching next to the dining table, which should have disappeared together with the “collapse”, slowly stood up and walked slowly towards her.
The figure was transforming in flames, scorching everything in the darkness.
“Yukari, don’t be afraid.”
(End of chapter)