Chapter 303 Structural confusion

Chapter 303 – Structural Confusion
The Obsidian’s deck section was limited in size and clear at a glance, the group quickly completed their search of the entire deck area and did not find anything suspicious.

Aside from the fact that the areas that should have been damp and waterlogged were now paradoxically dry, the Obsidian’s deck looked no different from an ordinary hulk – badly rusted, uneven, and chipped in many places, but overall not to the point of complete collapse.

And after examining the deck area, Duncan decided to enter the ship’s hold and take a look around.

They soon found a door leading into the cabin.

It was a rusty iron door set into a white wall, the handle of which was badly decayed, and the lock had long since been scrapped in the seawater immersion; the whole door was securely fastened shut, and obviously could not be opened by conventional means.

Morris went up and checked the state of the gate, then gave up the idea of opening the door normally, and turned his head to the others and said, “We may have to use some violent means.”

“I’ll do it,” Vanna volunteered without waiting for the others to say anything, “and the others back off a bit to keep the debris from hurting anyone.”

Shelly and Alice and the others immediately obeyed and withdrew a good distance away; Duncan didn’t move much out of place, just a couple of steps to the side to prevent his clothes from getting dirty, and watched Vanna’s movements curiously – he saw the strong woman come up to the big iron door that had completely rusted shut and… …casually knocked on the door panel.

Only a short buzzing sound was heard, and a large hole crumbled right in the middle of the door, the solid, heavy steel turning into countless crumbs and splattering in all directions, with smoke and dust filling the opening.

Vanna then reached out and ripped a few times at the side of the big hole, and like tearing paper, tore those remaining steel plates from the door frame cleanly, and casually threw them to the side.

Shirley and Dog looked at this scene dumbfounded, holding their breath for half a day before breaking the silence in unison, “…… Crap, this is fucking human?”

Vanna, of course, heard Shirley and Dog’s voices and turned her head and smiled, “I usually stick to working out.”

The corners of Sherry’s mouth visibly twitched as she muttered in a small voice, “This doesn’t have anything to do with working out anymore does it ……”

Duncan was also quite impressed with Vanna’s simple and brutal solution, but he had seen the feats of the beautiful strong woman who had killed her way through the city-state, and didn’t really have any additional reaction, except to look up at the smoke-filled gate, “What’s going on in there?”

Vanna waved her hand, and when the dust settled a bit she probed inside, an odd expression on her face.

After a few seconds she backed away and turned to Duncan, “It’s …… still a door in there.”

“Still a door?” Duncan froze for a moment and took three or two steps over to take a look for himself, and sure enough, he saw another rusty door standing right in front of him – only a few meters away from the one outside.

Yet the space between the two doors was neither a corridor, nor a foyer, nor some sort of security partition designed specifically for the purpose – it was just an empty place, with no fixtures or furnishings in sight, and no additional windows, just bare walls and a ceiling that somehow looked crooked.

“…… I’m not sure if this is the normal structure of the Obsidian,” Morris came over to take a look as well, shaking his head, “I’ve only previously known of the ship, not seen it in person.”

Duncan frowned slightly and quickly nodded to Vanna, “Open that door.”

Vanna immediately stepped forward and shattered the second door inside in accordance with the law, then poked her head in for another look inside and turned back with a dismayed expression, “It’s …… still a door in there.”

“And?!” This time even Shirley was surprised, she couldn’t care less about any safety distance, holding Dog and came over, “I go …… there really is ah?!”

Inside the second door was a third door, and it was the exact same structure, the exact same weird “compartment”.

If only the second door had appeared, it could still be explained by the Obsidian’s special design, but now there was a “third door” that had no function at all, and which had a bizarre feel to it… …It’s hard to use the phrase “the ship’s design concept was ahead of its time” as an excuse.

“The structure of this ship is not right,” Duncan looked back at the previous two doors, his expression became slightly serious, “it should not have this kind of design even if it is not normal. …… Vanna, open this door too. ”

“Good.” Without hesitation, Vanna stepped forward and slammed her fist into that third door, but this time she only made a large hole and stopped, not continuing to clean the remaining steel plates on the doorframe – because through that large hole, she could already see inside the door.

“The ship …… long,” she said the title with some discomfort, her expression becoming even more odd than it had been a moment ago, “is a wall inside.”

“Walls?!” The corner of Duncan’s eye twitched as he glanced into the large hole and saw the “wall” Vanna had spoken of.

There really was only one wall across from the door, and it was less than half a meter away from the third door – almost next to each other, and the space between the door and the wall made no sense and couldn’t hold anything.

“Why is this ship designed like this?” Nina muttered with a confused look on her face, “There’s only one wall behind the three doors …… What about the cabin? Where do you enter the cabin from?”

Duncan didn’t say anything, he just quietly looked at this oddly structured “overlapping area” with a thoughtful look in his eyes, as if he had thought of something. After a few moments, he nodded to Vanna, “Keep opening the hole.”

Vanna immediately stepped forward, first kicking off the remaining door panels that were in the way of the lower half of the third door, then punching the odd wall – a hole even bigger than before appeared in front of everyone’s eyes with a loud roar.

“It’s a hallway.” Vanna glanced inward and turned her head to the others.

“Great,” Shirley immediately sighed in relief, “finally something normal ……”

“It’s upside down,” Vanna continued without waiting for Shirley’s words to drop, “the ceiling is at your feet and the floor is overhead.”

Sherry: “…… Crap.”

Just as Vanna had said, there was only an up-and-down corridor behind that wall – and like the three duplicate doors before it, there was no normal structure at all in the cabin of this ghost ship!
“This ship is twisted …… “Even a knowledgeable scholar like Morris was a bit bewildered at this point, looking incredulously at the structure of the corridor on the opposite side of the wall and muttering to himself, “What has twisted the Obsidian No. twisted it like this ……”

“For a change of pace,” Duncan interrupted the old scholar instead, “Is this really the Obsidian?”

Maurice jerked his head up and looked at Duncan in shock, “What do you mean ……”

“This is near the Frost, and something terrible has happened under the Frost’s deep waters,” Duncan said casually, glancing at Alice, who was looking around curiously next to him, “Remember what Tirion said back then about ‘Project Subterranean ‘ right?”

“Remember remember remember,” Alice immediately huffed and nodded, “and a whole bunch of submersibles and stuff ……”

“It’s enough to remember all that,” Duncan said while pressing Alice’s head, “Stop clicking, it’s already starting to shake.”

Then he raised his hand and knocked on the wall next to him.

The metal bulkhead made a hollow thumping sound under the knock.

“Normal on the outside, a mess in reality, poor imitations and replicas, mis-stacked interiors – this shouldn’t be the real Obsidian, but it’s too soon to tell if it’s the ‘first’ Obsidian. ”

Alice wasn’t sure how much she understood, but just nodded slowly with a long drawn out “oh-” and a feigned nod, while Vanna next to her quickly responded, “But I remember you saying before that when the Subterranean Project those uplifted submersibles only had the occupants inside them distorted incorrectly during the replication process, the submersibles themselves were correctly replicated, and you speculated at the time that such errors should be limited to humans or organisms ……”

“Yes, confined to humans or organisms – at least it was half a century ago when the Frost Queen was still alive,” Duncan said slowly, “so it’s obviously worse now that the replication is no longer confined to Submarine Three. Twisting, on the other hand, extends to the realm of the inorganic …… Whatever is in the Frost Deep, it has apparently begun to operate again after fifty years of silence, and its effects are far greater in scope and intensity than they were half a century ago.”

Shirley blinked as she listened, everyone on the Lost Country had heard about Project Subterranean from the captain, so anyone who knew how weird and evil the whole thing was made her subconsciously mutter, “I …… I’m starting to get nervous… …”

“To put it another way, the Captain’s investigating this – I don’t think it’s us who should be nervous,” Dog muttered in a low voice as well, “Don’t you scare yourself- -My heart rate’s going up with it.”

Shirley froze, “Dog you have a heart?”

“I’m a demon with a heart!”

“A heart isn’t the same thing as a ‘heart’ – isn’t your cavity empty?”

“…… What if it is, there might be something beating in it.”

“Picking it open?”

“That won’t work.”

Duncan didn’t really care about the mutterings around him that were getting more and more hunted in content, he simply speculated about the ghost ship and focused on the corridor that led to nowhere.

After a brief moment of thought, he took a step toward the large hole that Vanna had blasted out, “Get in there and see what’s going on.”

(End of chapter)