Chapter 45 History
Chapter 45 History
It was a marvelous feeling.
Duncan could clearly sense what was going on in the distance – he could feel the Lost Country drifting in the vast expanse of the sea, the living ghost ship was constantly blazing a course on the charts under the control of a goat’s head, there was a cursed mannequin with a not-so-sturdy head milling about the cabin, familiarizing himself with the ship’s surroundings as if on a quest, and deep, dark The dark sea is slowly undulating around, and there are countless strange things hidden in the sea.
However, in his other line of sight, he himself was sitting in an antique store in the lower city district of the city-state of Prand, the sounds of people and cars on the street reached his ears, instead, it set off the quietness of the store more and more, and a human girl named Nina was sitting across from him, eating the cheapest cake in the lower city district in small bites.
He was Captain Duncan, the master of the Lost Country, the mobile scourge of heaven on the infinite sea – and he was sitting like an ordinary man, eating his breakfast in the calm depths of the city.
I don’t know if it was an illusion or not, but he felt that a part of him that was always hanging, always restless, was settling down a little bit; it could have been the nerves that had been tightened up for so long on the Ghost Ship, or it could have been something else, but he felt that it was never a bad thing.
Seemingly noticing the sight coming from the side, Nina, who was eating her cake, suddenly looked up, and she glanced at Duncan curiously, “Uncle Duncan, aren’t you going to eat?”
Duncan glanced at the food on the other party’s plate, “Is it enough for you?”
“Enough, it’s not good to eat too many sweets.”
“Hmm.”
Duncan nodded, picking up the cake and taking a bite, taking in the richness of the flavors he hadn’t tasted in a long time, feeling the crude sweetness slowly melting away in his mouth – and then, clearly sensing the body begin to process the food it had eaten.
His mind settled a little, knowing that the situation was as he had expected.
This body was “better” than the one he had temporarily occupied the first time – its “parts” were intact, it hadn’t been dead for long, and his own soul had taken over and almost seamlessly restarted the vitality of the body. It was completely different from the previous open-minded corpse.
He was breathing now, there was blood flow, and his heart was beating – although it seemed to be beating a little slower, it should still be in the realm of normal.
There shouldn’t be any need to worry about the carcass rotting, and it also saves the reckoning of soaking up preservatives, and in this way, it’s also much less likely to be exposed in front of ordinary people.
There was one thing Duncan still wasn’t so sure about though.
He knew that this body of his was supposed to be diseased – in the memories he’d gotten from devouring it, the negative impression of being riddled with a dull disease outweighed all the others, and the spirits and painkillers he’d found in the cupboard earlier had been a testament to that.
He didn’t know exactly what kind of illness this body had been suffering from before, as things in terms of the time of onset and triggers seemed to be memories from a long time ago that had long been blurred, but one thing was clear: at this moment, he didn’t feel anything wrong with this body, except for the feeling of weakness that an ordinary human constitution brought to him.
Disease disappeared? Because of the spirit world walking, this body had healed itself? Or was it because the soul projected over was ultimately limited in perception, so that he actually couldn’t feel any problems with his body, and the health of this body was actually still deteriorating?
Duncan pondered while eating his meal without moving, then suddenly glanced at Nina who was eating across from himself, “Don’t you have to go to school today?”
Nina lives in the lower city, the economic conditions can’t be said to be good, but the city-state of Plainland has obviously developed to the point where basic education is more popular, she is now attending a school jointly run by the church and the city hall, majoring in steam organs – this kind of school can be seen as a kind of ” Vocational high school”, mainly for the purpose of sending skilled steam artisans to factories and churches.
Half of Nina’s tuition was paid for by her uncle, and the other half was subsidized by the city hall.
For a city-state developing into the industrial age, even an official subsidy to train craftsmen in this field was quite a worthwhile thing to do – and there was no denying that this very purposeful school also solved the problem of literacy for the commoners at least.
Nina was a good learner, and as far as her uncle could remember, the girl had relatively good grades in all her classes.
“I don’t have any more classes this morning,” Nina nodded, “only two history classes in the afternoon. Also this afternoon I have to go and talk to Mrs. White about not staying in the dormitory for a few days ……”
Duncan suddenly stopped what he was doing and he gave Nina a very serious look as he asked, “Don’t you think staying here to take care of someone like me would delay things a lot? You could have stayed at the school for a long time, that might have been more helpful to your studies.” Nina froze, looking at her ‘Uncle Duncan’ in a bit of a daze, and then suddenly became angry, “You shouldn’t talk like that! You’re just sick, just honestly take your medicine as the doctor suggested – mom and dad entrusted you to me ……”
“It was your mom and dad who entrusted you to me,” Duncan corrected thoughtfully, speaking as he used the memories in his head to organize his words, “You were six years old then.”
“But now I’m seventeen,” Nina puckered her face and stabbed her fork hard on the last small piece of cake, “You’re not even close to being as good at taking care of yourself as I am – if I did move out, it wouldn’t take you three days to make your room a in three days if I did move out. In fact you could have asked me to help with the store, or at least clean it, the windows are so dirty you can hardly see ……”
Duncan listened helplessly to the girl’s rambling “sermon”, not realizing that his casual “test” would bring such a reaction from the other side.
Slowly, however, he couldn’t help but smile.
He felt a kind of temperature from this girl called “Nina”…… a kind of as if bathed in the sun, warm temperature.
“Well, I’m just saying,” he shook his head, stirring the last bit of soup in the bowl as he said, “This afternoon is history class …… How’s your history class going these days?”
“Uncle Duncan are you really okay?” Nina’s eyes widened in surprise, “You’ve never …… been okay before, at least not in the last two years never asking me about my school stuff.”
Duncan opened his mouth and was just about to say something when the girl in front of him spoke on her own, “We’ve been talking about Ancient History lately, and old Mr. Maurice was telling us about the aftermath of the Great Annihilation……. Honestly, it’s kinda interesting, Ancient History sounds a lot of parts of it are just like a story, and far more modern and contemporary history is interesting.”
Duncan thought about it with a serious face, “Sounds like you’ve learned well? Let me quiz you then, what are the concepts associated with the Great Annihilation?”
Today’s Uncle Duncan was strange, it was hard to say what was strange, but it was just different than usual.
But Nina didn’t think too much about it – the simple girl was more happy at the moment that Uncle Duncan had finally hit his stride and seemed to be in a good mood than her uncle’s slightly strange words and actions.
She was glad that Uncle Duncan was asking questions about exactly what she had just mastered.
So with a smug smile, she began to tell Duncan what she had just learned:
“The Great Annihilation occurred about ten thousand years ago – although for unknown reasons, minorities with more unique cultural legacies like the Elves, Sanguinians, and Giplos record inconsistent times in their own calendars, overall, the archaeological community recognizes the Great Annihilation as occurring about end of the Order Era 10,000 years ago ……”
Duncan listened with a calm face.
Mind full of question marks.
Elves? Sanguinians? Gypsies? What is this? So there’s more than just humans on land? And elves …… is this the same concept as the “elves” in my own understanding? Is there an elven city-state in the Boundless Sea living in the age of steam industry?
His mind could not help but float out of some picture style very strange picture, Nina’s voice is still coming from the opposite side:
“…… There are some discrepancies in the accounts of the Great Annihilation by various city-states, but the more common part is that the Order Era before the Great Annihilation was an era that was far more prosperous, stable and safe than today’s, and there were extremely vast continents at that time, with oceans that were far less vast than today’s, and there was no so-called ‘the’ oceans and ‘the’ land. There was no such thing as the end of the so-called ‘border of reality’ on the land. ……
“The era after the Great Annihilation was called the ‘Deep Sea Era’, and the Deep Sea Era has continued to this day, and there is still no sign of its end. The most notable feature of the Deep Sea Era is that the boundless sea covers almost the entire world, while the land is only left with less than 10% of the old era, and all of them are divided into large and small islands or ‘foreign realms in the fog’, and nowadays, many city-states are built on the more stable islands, and all kinds of ocean-going ships become the means of communication between the islands, and the means of communication with each other.
“In the early days of the Deep Sea Era, the remnants of the old world suffered a heavy blow, and the old civilization was almost completely destroyed. The ‘Ancient Kingdom of Crete’ that first rose from the ruins is the earliest civilization of the Deep Sea Era that can be verified to this day, and even though it lasted less than a hundred years, it left behind a large number of legacies that had a profound impact on future generations. Although this ancient kingdom lasted for less than a hundred years, it left behind a great deal of legacies that had a profound impact on future generations, including the most primitive and crude ways of categorizing the many anomalies and anomalies of the Deep Sea Era, as well as a great deal of valuable experience in maintaining survival in the Deep Sea Era ……”
(End of chapter)