Chapter 239 – Tracking of the Bright Stars
Chapter 239 – Tracking of the Bright Star Ship
In three hours, the sun would rise from the distant sea level, and the relative safety and stability of day would replace the disturbing night – if the sun actually rose properly.
Duncan glanced at the mechanical clock hanging a short distance away beside him, the hands on it beating unsteadily.
“Do you intend to wait for sunrise?” Goathead’s voice snapped, “It’s still three hours away.”
“…… Withering waiting for three hours is less fun than sitting here looking at what is basically a pale chart,” Duncan shook his head, getting up and moving his shoulders before slowly making his way towards the bedroom, “I’m going to go back and rest for a while. If I’m not out by sunrise, you can just call me.”
“Gladly at your service.”
Duncan nodded and pushed his way back into the bedroom, casually tossing the piece of paper depicting the mysterious emblematic pattern on the table and walking towards the bed not far away.
He basically didn’t need much rest in this body, but every once in a while he would still take a nap before dawn arrived – not to relieve any sense of exhaustion, but simply to ‘get up and greet the sunrise’.
This allowed him to maintain a sense of “living” on the Lost Country, and prevented him from losing his humanity on this ghost ship – although he didn’t know if there were any hidden dangers in this regard, he had been taking a nap after realizing that the state of the Lost Country was not as stable as he had imagined. Although he didn’t know if there were any hidden problems, after realizing that the state of the Lost Country wasn’t as stable as he thought it was, he had been consciously maintaining this habit of “maintaining a human way of life on the ship”.
Duncan just lay down, closed his eyes, listened to the wind and waves whispering in his ears, and felt the gentle rocking of the ship underneath him, and controlled himself to relax a little.
……
On the Radiant Star, in the captain’s bedchamber, which was decorated in a rather feminine atmosphere, Lucrecia, who was wearing a silk nightgown, suddenly sat up from the bed.
Her hair was a bit disheveled, and her expression carried a bit of fatigue and annoyance, and when she got up, she was also holding a huge rabbit doll that was half a person tall, with a comical and vaguely bizarre shape.
The doll, pieced together from pink and blue fabric, with a face bearing horizontal scars and a jagged mouth painted with the eerie bright red color of blood, moved slightly the moment Lucrecia rose, then turned its head slightly, button studded eyes looking up at its Mistress, a little girl’s voice coming from its cotton-filled body: “Mistress, I thought you managed to fall asleep ……”
Lucrecia glanced at the clock next to her, her tone slightly annoyed, “Let’s just say I slept for a couple minutes before I was awakened by a strange dream …… What time is it now?”
“Two hours before sunrise,” the rabbit doll said as it jumped from its mistress’s arms to the floor, it hopped over to a nearby cabinet, opened the door with its floppy looking plush paws, took out the captain’s wine collection, poured a small glass and held it out to Lucrecia, “You can still sleep You can still sleep for a while – this will help calm your spirits.”
Lucrecia took the glass and drank it down in one go, but stood up, “No need, lying down will only add to the irritation …… clean up.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
The rabbit doll with a little girl’s voice answered crisply, and took the glass of wine handed over by her mistress and put it away, and then began to hop around again to make up the beds, appearing to be light on her feet.
Lucrecia, meanwhile, casually snapped her fingers, and the lights in the room came on as she slowly exhaled and shuffled her feet over to the dresser, probing her hand and tapping her fingernail on one of the drawers under the mirror – which then opened in response.
A toy sailor carved out of wood jumped out of it, dressed in the naval uniform of the classical era and holding a small command knife in his hand; he first bowed and saluted Lucrecia before standing on top of the drawer and waving his command knife around, barking out shrill commands.
A large group of toy soldiers then ran out of the drawer, first to form up quickly for roll-call, and then to the side to take up combs and hand-mirrors with cups of water and toothbrushes, and running in quick and nimble lines to Lucrecia or to the back of the seat behind her, began the morning wash for their mistress.
Lucrecia sat listlessly in front of the dresser, letting the dolls toss and turn beside her while she herself fought off the exhausting stress from a night of sleeplessness as well as rambling thoughts, all the while mulling over things related to the Lost Country, and it was a while before she took a deep breath and forced her mind to come back to its senses.
At that moment, a ray of golden light suddenly poured in through a gap in the curtains not far away, reflecting into the vision of the “Witch of the Sea”.
Lucrecia saw that ray of light, at first there was no reaction, but after only two or three seconds, her eyes suddenly stared, and then she violently raised her eyes to the mechanical clock next to her.
There was still an hour until sunrise.
This was not the moment for the sun to rise!
She suddenly stood up.
The toy sailors were briefly confused for a moment, then gingerly reorganized their formation as they gathered their things, while the rabbit dolls, who had already finished making their beds, noticed Mistress’s movement and came hopping over, “Mistress, it looks like it’s getting light outside!”
“It’s not time for dawn,” Lucrecia said quickly, while walking briskly towards the window, “Where are we now?” “Still following the course we set last night,” the rabbit doll said quickly, “We’re close to where we observed the ‘big guy’ fall!”
The moment the rabbit doll’s words fell, Lucrecia had already pulled back the thick curtains, and then pushed open the window reinforced with a fine metal mesh.
Outside the window, there was a thin layer of hazy fog floating on the surface of the sea, which was the most common scenery in the border area, and in the depths of that thin layer of hazy fog, a very large-scale, blurred and spreading light golden shimmer was quietly floating on the surface of the sea, and for the time being, it was impossible to tell how far it was from the Brilliant Star.
A floating, glowing huge thing on the surface of the sea.
Lucrecia stared dead on in that direction, then took a deep breath, and her body steeply transformed into a pile of flying colorful pieces of paper – which swept and blew out of the window, flew across the deck, through the staircase, and flew into the pilothouse that was located in the middle of the upper deck.
Inside the cockpit, the clockwork magic puppet Luni in maid’s clothing was at the helm, she was the first to notice her mistress approaching, and had already loosened the rudder wheel when the colorful pieces of paper flew into the hover, and in the next second, Lucrecia’s figure had already coalesced out of the colorful paper, and reached out to take over the ship’s rudder.
“Mistress, I was just about to send for you,” Luni said as she stepped back, “when that golden light suddenly appeared out of the fog, and by the orientation it would have been the ‘falling object’ we were tracking. ”
“Up to full speed, all hands on deck, aft section ready to dive into the spirit world at any time,” Lucrecia said quickly, “Are there sufficient reserves of psychic dust and witch oil?”
Luni responded quickly, “Fully stocked, your orders have been communicated.”
Lucrecia nodded, and immediately afterward, the Radiant Star fully awoke at the Captain’s command.
A large number of clockwork sailors, magical puppets and ceramic soldiers rushed to their respective posts, the special bright wheel structure on both sides of the hull also began to accelerate the rotation, the seemingly outdated engine device gradually released more power than the modern propeller engine, so that the speed of the entire ship rapidly increased, and in the back half of the hull, the ghostly “primitive hull In the rear part of the hull, the ghostly “original hull” became more illusory and blurred, and there were black hair-like stripes gradually spreading from the stern to the surrounding sea, and from afar, it seemed as if a black tail wave was extended behind the Bright Star.
Under Lucrecia’s personal control, the entire ship showed the coexistence of magic and machinery, a mixture of beautiful elegance and horrible ugliness!
As the Bright Star’s speed further increased, the huge golden colored luminous body floating between the mist and the sea surface finally became clearer and clearer in Lucrecia’s eyes.
Along with it, there was also its increasingly massive true size.
Even the hairline magic puppet Luni gradually widened her eyes and couldn’t help but let out a low exclamation of surprise: “Oh my god …… Mistress, what is that thing?”
Lucrecia didn’t say anything, but only stared dead ahead, staring at the huge golden shadow that was gradually emerging clearly from the mist, already resembling a small mountain peak.
It was so large that it was almost impossible to judge its complete outline from a single viewpoint, and it was so majestically perfect that it didn’t even seem like something that a human could build.
A huge and complex golden geometry quietly floating on the sea surface, the whole body is emitting a soft and moving light golden shimmer, its height is almost more than the highest flagpole of the Bright Star more than three times, the two sides of the extended out as if the city walls, its upper part of the slightly sloping outward, like a thrilling cliff, and its appearance can not be seen in any excess of the trivial bumps, every part of the seemingly Everywhere looks natural.
As they got closer, Lucrecia and Luni began to be able to observe more details of the huge object.
“It seems to be translucent?” The doll Luni curiously plopped down in front of the open viewing window, “It looks …… like a piece of glowing stained glass?”
“…… No, it seems like it’s more than just transparent ……” Lucrecia, on the other hand, shook her head, her eyes unblinking as she stared ahead, seeming to see from the edges of the massive glowing geometry Seeing something out of place, and just then, a small black dot suddenly flew out of the nearby mist and into her field of vision.
It was a seabird – even on the infinite sea, even on this border full of bizarre phenomena, there was still the existence of such things.
Rather, it was precisely because they did not possess the complex intelligence of humans that these “wild animals” lived better than the brave and powerful explorers in the bizarre border waters.
Lucrecia’s eyes were drawn to the seabird, and she noticed that the poor creature seemed to be confused by the golden light on the surface, and in a panic, rushed straight towards the shimmering “mountain”.
The next moment, however, the expected crash didn’t happen – the bird flew straight in, into the slightly sloping “cliff”.
A little while later, out of the corner of Lucrecia’s eye, she saw the bird fly out again from the other direction, seemingly unharmed.
Luni also saw this scene, and the clockwork puppet muttered in surprise, “…… Is that a phantom?”
(End of chapter)