Chapter 480: “People”
Chapter 480 “People”
Accompanied by a low rumble coming from the pressurized water tank, the submersible crossed over the inverted world of decay and continued to dive down towards the even more unknown and terrifying sea abyss.
The jungle of tentacles dangling from the bottom of the Citadel and the huge pale eye completely disappeared into the searchlight’s column of light, and the empty, dark body of water refilled the porthole beyond, with only the occasional glimmering of stars from the depths of the darkness (which were reflective bubbles or floaters) reminding Duncan that he was in a submersible navigating through seawater, not floating in empty, unattached cosmic space.
But he was struck by some strange associations – what was the difference between empty cosmic space and the dark depths of the ocean filled with billions of tons of water, if only from the point of view of “the unknown and the horrors that lie beyond”?
As the steam core drove the propulsion unit, a low noise came from the mechanical compartment, and a series of pressure gauges at the console occasionally hissed to indicate the current operation of the submersible, Duncan slowed his descent to avoid damaging the hull with the drastic pressure changes, and then turned his head to look at the Gatekeeper, who stood beside him without uttering a single word.
“Agatha, what are you thinking?”
“I’m wondering …… if the pioneers who carried out the Subterranean Abyss program in the first place, if they actually saw the ones we saw,” Agatha spoke hesitantly, “the truth of what lies beneath the city-state, the unnamable corpses, the corpses heading toward the deep sea drooping tentacles and eyeballs …… Before the whole scheme got out of hand, in one dive after another, was there really no one who, out of curiosity – or even out of recklessness – looked back ‘up there’ ‘?”
Duncan didn’t say anything for a while, but his mind recalled all those secrets about the subterranean plan that he had heard from Tirian back then.
Even the Frost General, once trusted by the Queen, did not seem to know what the Subterranean Plan looked like in its entirety – was it true that no one had ever discovered the truth of what lay beneath the city-state? Or is …… this overly terrifying truth buried just like the secrets in the boiling gold mine shafts?
“Perhaps, someone did look back, but what they saw was not destined to be recorded,” Duncan said softly after several seconds of silence, “You are the protector of the City State, you know better than I what this truth means.”
“…… Many people would go mad,” Agatha said slowly, “Even without being affected by the forces in the Deep, just one horrible truth is enough to trigger widespread nightmares and panic — Subsequently, the nightmares and panics would materialize and could have an unforeseen connection to the ‘real’ beneath the city-state, and in the most horrific cases …… ‘it’ might come to life.”
“Mortals live in a sea of darkness strewn with horrors, where even the footholds beneath their feet are built on twisted and grotesque corpses, and where slowness and blindness are the only grace that beings receive, which keeps the vast majority of ordinary people away from those maddening truths – and for the most part, as long as the truth remains undetected , it will never enter our reality, but the point is that there will always be a ‘small percentage of cases’.”
“…… You’re going to publish our findings?”
“At least for the time being, I won’t tell any ordinary people this overly shocking news, because the vast majority of them don’t need to be disturbed by it in their peaceful and ordinary lives, but there is a saying you should have heard before – ‘you know it exists, and it’s already a part of earthly destiny’. a link’.”
“The second of the laws of anomalies and visions,” said Agatha, nodding her head, “where it is known, it shall not be erased. The truth of what lies beneath the city-state has come before our eyes, and the link in destiny has been established, and sooner or later we will have to deal with it again.”
Duncan nodded softly and said nothing more.
Just then, a strange, sudden, low thumping sound suddenly sounded in the submersible, interrupting his and Agatha’s thoughts.
The sound sounded …… as if something was banging on the shell of the submersible from the outside.
Agatha was instantly startled by the sound, and she jerked her head up in her dismay, “Did you hear something? It seems as if someone is banging on the outside ……”
Duncan was also startled by the sudden sound, but he soon glanced at the few gauges in front of the console and spoke in a hushed voice while his brow furrowed slightly, “That would be water pressure – the massive pressure of the seawater is slightly distorting the submarine’s shell. No need to worry, it’s normal and within design values.”
Agatha seemed a little more reassured, though still looked a little nervous.
Diving in the dark depths of the sea was an unprecedented experience, and even as a Gatekeeper with great power, she couldn’t help but feel a sense of powerlessness and nervousness floating in her mind that was unimaginable on the peaceful surface.
In this place far away from the civilized world, the blessings of the gods have declined, and the power of the individual has become insignificant, the cold laws of physics and the unknown destiny between the construction of a narrower and narrower “crevice”, in the crevice is to survive, outside the crevice is the bones of the corpse is not existed, in the middle of this can rely on … … …only a shell made of steel.
At this moment from the submarine shell on the “thumping” sound is constantly reminding Agatha: the face of billions of tons of seawater pressure, it is in fact as fragile as paper, so that this layer of shell does not collapse, in addition to the toughness of the steel itself, it is only the delicate balance of its physical structure.
This is a kind of and the face of heresy evil god, the face of the vision of natural disasters are very different horror, this kind of horror …… named “natural law”.
Perhaps out of nervousness, or because the silence inside the submarine and the noise outside made the atmosphere too depressing, Agatha began to look for a topic of conversation after a few seconds of silence, she watched Duncan operate the levers and cranks: “You have a talent for manipulating machines – I would have thought that you would have asked the Tirrian Consul to send someone who knows how to pilot a machine. Consul to send an engineer with him who knew how to drive, but I didn’t realize how skilled you are at handling it.”
“Skillful?” Duncan tilted his head slightly sideways, “But really, I don’t know how to drive at all – at least not until today.”
Agatha: “…… Huh?”
“But neither could anyone else under Tirion, including the engineers who could read the blueprints,” Duncan shrugged and went on, “They could only tell me what the levers were for based on the drawings, but after learning what each one did, their ‘driving level’ was the same as mine actually. No one can drive it, no one has ever driven it, it was built by the consuls of the Frost City-States, it operates very differently than those submersibles from fifty years ago, and the people who actually know how to drive it are dead, that’s just the way it is.”
Agatha’s mouth hung open, as if she suddenly didn’t know what to say.
Duncan on the other hand smiled and shook his head after noticing her reaction, “I have at least two advantages over them though, firstly, I don’t have to worry about safety, even if the situation gets worse, I can return unharmed, and secondly ……” He paused, looking down at the joystick in his hand, and the console in front of him.
There were tiny ethereal green flames traveling between the gears and connecting rods, sacred steam and grease saturated the complex, massive machine, and the glow of spirit fire filled that steam and grease.
The steam core was like a power-surged heart, obeying Duncan’s every command.
Of course, it wasn’t as “obedient” as the Lost Country, and the most this spiritless machine could do was to feed back some rigid and weak sensory signals, but that was more than enough.
“Secondly, these machines are quite obedient in my hands.”
Agatha felt the flow of flames.
The flames filled the steel and oil around her, between the hissing steam and gears, flowing like blood within this soulless, spiritless machine, and like those flames flowing within her, the two vaguely resonated.
This trickle of spiritual fire even made her feel a little safe at the bottom of this deep, dark and cold sea.
She lowered her head slightly, as if she was paying homage to Duncan.
Duncan, however, did not care about Agatha’s reaction; his attention had returned to the piloting task at hand.
After all, even if the Spirit Body Fire allowed him to better perceive the state of this machine, when it came to specific operations, he still had to do it himself.
It couldn’t be helped that he had never driven a ship before when he was pushed onto the bridge of the Lost Country – he had already adapted to this “I don’t know what to do with this thing, but I can only take the bull by the horns” rhythm of life! ……
Just then, there was another knocking sound from outside the hull – “Knock.
“Knock.”
It was short and clear, as if it had hit something, and was vaguely different from the previous “knocking” sound from outside the hull.
Agatha immediately noticed the unusual movement: “Another sound …… is also the shell deformation?”
Duncan, however, suddenly frowned and placed his hand on another lever nearby.
“Not like …… it’s something else.”
He clearly felt that something had actually touched the submarine’s shell, from below.
There was a hum of mechanical operation from inside the submersible, and the searchlight light from the porthole slowly turned its direction in the pitch blackness as the propeller spun and adjusted the submersible’s orientation.
Finally, something appeared in the light outside the porthole.
A person.
A …… thing that looked humanoid.
Agatha “saw” it instantly – the silhouette of a humanoid figure snapped into view, emitting a spiritual shimmer just as she had seen others on the surface.
Only it was slightly dimmer, and paler.
She let out a low, startled cry, “Ah!”
Even Duncan’s eyes widened instantly, and a “Crap” nearly escaped his lips!
Boundless sea nearly a thousand meters deep in the deep sea, Frost city state is directly underneath, the diver’s porthole suddenly floated out of a person, the impact of this scene is almost no less than the tentacles from the forest that we saw at the bottom of the city state before, as well as between the tentacles of the pale large eyeballs!
Immediately after, along with the position adjustment of the submersible and the light sweeping, even more bizarre, horrible, even creepy scene appeared in Duncan and Agatha’s field of vision —
People, densely packed “people”, floating in this deep, dark and cold body of water!
(End of chapter)