Chapter 257 – The Swift Bell Rings
Chapter 257 The Swift Bell Rings
Back in the room Tirian ordered his men to leave, however his mood did not calm down with the quietness of the room.
The long talk with his “father” still lingers in his mind, and the memories of the Subterranean Abyss program seem to haunt him as if uncontrollable, and every now and then he flashes in front of his eyes those fragments that have been half a century in the past – rough diving equipment, the sea cliffs are always cold and rainy, the silent platform guards, the priests, and the people of the Abyss. The silent platform guards, the priests’ muffled prayers in the rainy night, the brightly lit but always eerie coastal laboratories, and the Frost Queen’s gaze that always looked out over the sea, burying all secrets.
Tirion shook his head, for some reason, he suddenly thought of that doll who called herself “Alice” – the anomaly 099 that had completely broken free from the seal and was moving freely in the human world.
A “controlled” anomaly, a human-like human doll that can think and communicate, and even has its own likes and dislikes …….
She is so much like the Frost Queen, but she is definitely not the Queen herself – although her existence and the process of appearing in the world do make it easy for people to associate her with some kind of “return” of the Queen, Tirion can feel that the doll does not have Rey Nobbs inside of it! …… didn’t have the slightest bit of Rae Nora’s will.
If you have to say, Tirion felt that the “Alice” was more like a …… “replica” whose appearance was extremely reproduced, but whose interior was completely distorted.
Just like those “No. 3 submersibles” that surfaced one after another.
Tirion’s eyes suddenly changed slightly, and he felt a slight chill due to the association that surfaced in his mind.
He sat down in his room and poured himself a glass of wine, relying on the power of alcohol to rewarm his cold thoughts and calm his restless mind. After a while, he felt a little better, and then he raised his head to look at the exquisite suitcase that lay next to his bed.
After a slight hesitation, he brought the case to the table and opened the lid, activating the intricate lenses and the crystal located in the center of the lens set.
The crystal ball brightened up and a large number of flickering points of light emerged from it, emitting a distracting noise.
It took a while before he could see Lucrecia’s silhouette looming in the center of those flickering points of light, as well as the other’s vague voice, and then it took another two or three minutes for the voice and the image to barely become clear, and for his sister’s voice to reach his ears, “Can you hear me?”
“It’s clear now,” Tirian nodded, “Why is the interference on your end even greater than before …… What’s that around you? Sunlight? It looks a little weird ……”
He noticed what appeared to be a pale golden glow floating in the background behind Lucrecia, it looked like a brilliant evening sunset spilling into the room through the window, yet the texture of the glow was far warmer and brighter than an evening sunset, and the distribution and diffusion of the glow gave it a plausible resemblance to sunlight, which was a cause for concern.
Tirion knew his sister moved about the borders from time to time, and that place was often a place of strange and strange phenomena, many times dangerous, though Lucrecia always managed to turn the danger around – he just still couldn’t help but be a little concerned.
“Ah, I picked up something somewhat strange at the border, but it’s been carefully examined and is not harmful,” Lucrecia replied rather blandly, “It could have fallen from the sky, and it projects a very wide range of glowing light… …I’m using the Radiant Star to tow the thing back for study.”
Tirian subconsciously frowned, “You’re always picking up strange things at the borders, did you forget about the last time you were dragged directly into the depths of the spirit world by a cloud of humanoid smoke?”
“I’ll be careful, I’ve always been very careful–it’s just that there are occasional accidents, adventures, accidents are unavoidable,” Lucrecia waved her hand, and right after that, as if she had suddenly realized something, she stared intently at Tirion’s face. “Brother, what happened to your face and head?”
“…… fell.”
“But it looks like a violent beating of the walls with your head,” Lucrecia frowned slightly, “You can’t fall like that without a two-hundred-meter boost of acceleration and a determined headbutt impact – you were attacked. ”
Tirian’s expression stiffened for a moment before he shook his head helplessly, “Sometimes I wish you weren’t so smart.”
“Who attacked you?” Lucrecia, however, didn’t care about Tirian’s interruption, her expression was extraordinarily serious, “You’re in the city-state of Prand, where there are no enemies of yours, and the authorities of the city-state wouldn’t just sit back and watch their ‘guests’ being attacked …… Ah, you just now didn’t admit that you were attacked and said that you fell ……”
Lucrecia said, suddenly stopped, she seemed to have thought of something, the expression on her face suddenly changed, immediately afterward, her eyes flickered as she observed the vicinity of the crystal ball.
Tirian knew what was going on as soon as he saw this expression on her face, and shook his head before he could speak, “No need to be nervous, he’s not here.” “Really …… he hit it?” Lucrecia’s eyes widened in shock, “Wait, didn’t we say he wasn’t in the city-state? And why would he ……”
“It’s true that he’s not there, it’s one of his subordinates nowadays,” Tirian rubbed his forehead somewhat depressedly, “Don’t worry, we didn’t have a conflict, this injury …… is just some small accident, he wanted to talk to me about some things, and I was overly wary.”
“‘Ministry’?!” Lucrecia was taken aback, and instinctively wanted to ask how strong a subordinate that was, and what kind of weapon was used to beat the “Iron Lieutenant General” into a pig’s head, but then she noticed the second half of Tirion’s sentence, and her eyes changed, “… . what happened when he talked to you again so soon?”
“He’s taken an interest in some of Frost’s old stories,” Tirian said casually, “but you don’t need to worry about that aspect, I’m looking for you to inquire about something else – Anomaly 099, you should know about it, right? ”
“Of course I know, I also know that that thing was hijacked by the Lost Country, this matter was spread all over the Explorers’ Association, and shortly after that, the Church of the Deep sent out a notice that Anomaly 099’s name had changed from ‘Doll Hearse’ to ‘Mannequin ‘ …… Many people have uneasy speculations about this.”
Tirion raised his eyelids and looked into Lucrecia’s eyes with a grave expression, “And do you know why its name changed from ‘Doll Hearse’ to ‘Mannequin’?”
Lucrecia furrowed her pretty brows as she seemed to vaguely react to something.
“I’ve seen her,” Tirian exhaled, not continuing to sell her story, “The ‘mannequin’, she calls herself ‘Alice’, and has been awakened from the Hearse has awakened and is currently serving at her father’s side, and as rumored, the doll looks exactly like the Queen of Frost, but has a …… very surprising personality.”
“This information is also very surprising,” Lucrecia said softly, her eyes seeming to sparkle slightly under the inexplicable golden glow, “You mean that father …… ‘released’ from the hearse by ‘released’ Abnormality 099, allowing that dangerous Abnormality to move freely outside, while the latter willingly followed Father? She can even talk to you?”
“It sounds unbelievable, but it’s a thousand times true,” Tirian nodded, “She can talk, think, and have feelings like a human, and even …… I think she has a pretty good relationship with her father, but I’m not sure if it’s is a ‘friendship’ that humans can understand, after all, one of them is a ghost returning from subspace, and the other is an ‘anomaly’ numbered in the hundreds.”
Lucrecia didn’t say anything, and only after a moment of silence did she look up, “So what was it you wanted to ask?”
“About what happened when Anomaly 099 was first discovered, you were there,” Tirian gazed at his sister, “I want to know from you some of the truest facts. As you know, my fleet and I never go near the Frost, we missed the scene back then”
Lucrecia pondered slightly for a few seconds, “Back then …… I did happen to be in the area of the incident, but it wasn’t the Radiant Star that initially salvaged the anomaly 099, it was an offshore fishing vessel named the ‘Chalvin’ Strictly speaking, by the time I received the distress signal from the Chalvin and found the fishing vessel that was drifting out of control, it was already the second scene, so I’m not really sure exactly what the scene was like when Anomaly 099 was first salvaged – I can only tell you what the scene was like aboard the Chalvin at the time. ”
Lucrecia paused for a moment, recalling a scene she had seen.
“When I found the ship, there were almost no living souls on board, eleven of the twelve occupants, including the captain, had been decapitated – all that was left was a sailor who had been half-crazed with fear, describing to me upside down what they had salvaged from the ‘ Cursed Crate’.
“He said they couldn’t discard the crate because it was alive and moving around the ship, and they couldn’t destroy it because it was so powerful and extraordinarily strong that sailors armed with self-defense weapons couldn’t deal with the thing ……
“You can basically find out all about this part in the public information of the Explorers’ Society, but there is one detail …… not recorded in the information that may be of interest to you.
“In the half hour since Anomaly 099 was first salvaged, the sailors of the Chalwyn had heard a couple of slight clicks and clacks coming from that box, and it sounded …… as if something was molding inside.”
“Slight clicking …… sounds,” Tirion grunted softly with a frown, and then he seemed about to ask something else, but just as he was about to open his mouth, a sudden, slightly urgent chime from the window interrupted what he was about to say.
He looked up in surprise to hear the bells ringing clearly and sharply in the darkening sky, and after a few moments of careful discernment, he muttered to himself with uncertainty, “Not twilight bells …… sounds like ‘swift bells.’ ”
“Swift Bell ……” came Lucrecia’s voice from the crystal ball, “I heard seven short chimes, and if I remember correctly, this is the bell that represents the ‘Mausoleum of the Unknown King’ ‘ summoning bell?!”
(End of chapter)