Chapter 262 – Mysterious Symbol
Chapter 262 – The Mysterious Symbol
Duncan appeared on the stairs just as Nina was about to run to the second floor to say hello.
He heard the commotion coming from downstairs.
“Mr. Duncan,” Maurice said as he came to the front of the stairs and looked up at the “Captain” who was casting his eyes downward, “I found the symbol you showed me in a document about the ancient kingdom of Crete …… is at least very similar.”
Duncan noticed the slight bloodshot look under Maurice’s eyes and slightly puffy eyelids, it was obvious that the old scholar had worked hard to find this information, but there was a glint of excitement in his eyes and his spirits seemed unusually uplifted – the kind of look that only comes when you’ve immersed yourself in your research and finally come up with something.
Duncan glanced downstairs at Nina and Alice and the others and nodded slightly, “You guys watch the store.”
He then looked to Maurice, “Come upstairs and say your piece.”
The old gentleman stepped up the stairs with the large book clutched in his hand, the ancient wood-paneled steps creaking as he followed Duncan to the master bedroom on the second floor – his first time in the place.
By the standards of a Subspace Shade’s residence, the bedroom was a bit plain, but considering Mr. Duncan’s particular “hobby” of “playing a mortal”, the plain room seemed quite normal.
Maurice carefully controlled his movements to satisfy his curiosity and not to do any unnecessary snooping, while Duncan pulled two chairs from the side and gestured for the old man to place the large book on the desk by the window.
“Tell me about your discovery,” Duncan said after sitting down, “What exactly does that symbol represent?”
“I have no clue as to its significance …… for the moment, I have only found one of its most probable sources,” said Maurice, as he settled down, and opened the valuable-looking document to a page with a bookmark clipped to it. “Did you notice the location? It appears here.”
Duncan frowned slightly as he saw that the page was a drawing, a rather fine hand-drawn illustration of what must have been part of some large building, what looked like the main entrance to a palace, and the symbol with its hexagonal borders and broken crosses appeared in relief above the main entrance in the center of the whole picture.
As for the content of that relief …… it seems to be just some patterns that can’t see the meaning.
As Maurice had just said when he was downstairs, this symbol was in a very inconspicuous place – it was just a small decorative part of an illustration, occupying less than one tenth of the whole picture, and was not specially labeled.
It’s hard to believe that Maurice could have found this book and such a corner of it out of reams of literature.
“I hazily retained some impression that I should have seen a glance of it a long, long time ago, and thanks to the blessing of the God of Wisdom, this ‘impression’ still works until today, allowing me to find this ‘gadget,’ “The illustration is a facsimile, the original of which originally appeared in a document on the study of the architectural remains of the ancient kingdom of Crete, that document is not currently in Planders, but I’m sure some of my academic friends should be able to be of some assistance ……
“Of course, even without the original manuscript, what is recorded in this book is very useful, it mentions that this hand-drawn illustration depicts a lost relic that was once located in the border seas, that was located on an unnamed deserted island which mysteriously disappeared in a thick fog around 223 years of the New City State Calendar, and that before it completely disappeared, several expeditions managed to land on the island and test the relic’s The form and age of the ruins, confirming that it should be a product of the ancient kingdom of Crete period, judging from the surface ornamentation and reliefs of the building, the entire facility should be some kind of large-scale architecture of both academic and religious significance ……”
Morris said while pointing his finger at the written notation on the page adjacent to the illustration, and between the slightly yellowed pages, one could see the annotations that the old scholar had written in the early years of his life.
“This kind of relief with hard, deep lines and a large number of lozenge-shaped elements in the pattern are the architectural characteristics of the ancient kingdom of Crete, who favored an architectural style with heavy lines and a sense of power, and the main part of their palace buildings were mostly in the shape of various rectangular or pyramidal shapes, and this building perfectly matches these characteristics… …”
While listening to old Mr. Morris’s interpretation, Duncan’s gaze slowly swept over the drawings and words, his attention fell back on the hexagonal pattern in the center of the main entrance relief in the picture, his brow slightly frowning, “There is no targeted interpretation about this symbol.”
“…… Unfortunately, this document is only a general introduction and does not involve a detailed interpretation of the various details of the ruins,” Maurice shook his head, “But again, this is an unavoidable situation –The ancient kingdom of Crete was 10,000 years ago, its remains are few and far between, and most of them have been severely damaged, so it should be difficult to find a document that focuses on a particular pattern on a gate, when all the information has been lost or ‘contaminated’. An article doing research on a particular pattern on a particular gate ……”
“Academic or religious facilities, emblems on entrances ……” Duncan rubbed his chin thoughtfully, “a group of ‘ascetics’ ten thousand years from now. Why would they be carrying around an amulet from the time of the ancient kingdom of Crete?”
He turned his head and looked at Maurice, “Do you think it’s possible for there to be a ‘Cretan Legacy’ that has been passed down for ten thousand years?” “…… Someone said that a rigorous scholar shouldn’t blindly deny any possibility, even if its probability is minuscule, but from my personal point of view, I don’t think it’s really possible.”
Morris said cautiously while pondering.
“A group similar to ascetics, whose numbers are probably extremely small, whose activities are extremely secretive, who have experienced the great chaos after the collapse of the ancient kingdom, who have experienced the age of strife, who have experienced the old city-state wars, who have inherited their legacy for an entire ten thousand years, with neither a broken generation in between, nor have they ever been discovered by anyone……. If this possibility is all holds true, I’m more inclined to believe that they are a secret society that was founded only in recent times, and because they stumbled upon some ancient documents or similar relics, they took some symbol from the Cretan period and used it as their own mark – this is a little more likely.”
Duncan gave a noncommittal hmmm as he listened to the older man’s thoughts, his gaze sweeping over the written materials again.
There were passages on the materials that were clearly quoted from the original manuscripts of the document, recounting the few words left by the group of explorers from over a thousand years ago:
“…… It stood in the center of the island, the main building and the surrounding outbuildings occupying almost the entire island, as if that island was made especially for this building ……
“…… The main material of the building appeared to be stone, but it was tougher than stone and pale in color, and the soldier tried to chisel one of the wall bricks with an ice pick, and it took a great deal of effort before he succeeded …… The ice pick and the wall bricks struck with an exaggerated Fire light, the wall brick breaks with a silver gray texture.
“There are several other small islands near the island, all barren, sparsely vegetated, even bugs are rare …… No buildings remain, perhaps there was once one, but it was too small and has been swallowed up by time ……
“…… On the evening of the third day, the dinghy cruised around the island and found that a collapsed spot that had been above the water had been submerged at some point, yet there was no sign of a rising tide …… The waters nearby began to fog up, and the priest had a bad feeling of foreboding, and after consecrating and seeking revelation from Bartok, the god of death, he advised us to move away from the island at once.”
Duncan looked directly to the end of this quotation and saw the author of the document record thus:
“On the seventh day after the withdrawal of that exploring party, the fog lifted and another party arrived in the vicinity of the sea and could no longer find the unnamed island.”
Duncan could not help but feel some regret in his heart.
“Just swallowed up by the fog ah ……” he sighed softly, “sounds like the result of a collapsed border.”
“It looks like it – but back then there wasn’t very sophisticated technology for the Holy Emblem Waymarker, nor were there sufficiently accurate means of observation, and several anomalies, including the border collapse and ‘fog engulfment’ phenomena, could easily be confused. ”
“Fog Eating Phenomenon …… ” Duncan found the corresponding knowledge in his mind after a little recollection – he had been supplementing his general knowledge in this area through books all this while. “If it is indeed the Fog Eaters phenomenon, then there is still a chance that the island could briefly reappear in the world in a similarly dense fog at a later date, but by the looks of it, there are no records of this passed down.”
“Indeed, but it’s also possible that the relevant information was scattered.”
Duncan hmmmed, while his fingers brushed involuntarily over the illustration, over the tiny broken cross markings.
“I don’t suppose there’s any possibility of the copyist ‘freehanding’ this illustration ……?” He asked, suddenly uneasy.
“I don’t think so,” replied Maurice at once; “this is very scrupulous documentation, and the illustrators of the illustrations and the compilers of the original documents are scholarly authorities who have made a name for themselves by their rigor, and who, in leaving behind them, would rather leave ambiguities as they are for posterity than to lack of evidence to make any ‘additional adjustments’ without authorization, or, even if they did, they would certainly make a special note in the Remarks to indicate the corresponding circumstances.”
“Is it real and testable ……”
Duncan grunted softly in thought.
(End of chapter)