Chapter 548: Lucy’s “Home”.
Chapter 548: Lucy’s “Home”
Crown Street, in this neighborhood located at the edge of the uptown area of Light Wind Harbor, there was a mansion that was always haunted with mysterious colors located in its deepest part – 99 Crown Street.
This is a three-storey spire building with distinctive colors of the northern city-state, very different from the common elf-style houses in Light Wind Harbor, it has a dark-colored roof and contrasting white walls, and also has high windows with complicated patterns and solemn lines, and in front and back of the mansion there are spacious gardens rarely seen in the city-state, and in the gardens there are all kinds of strange flowers, plants, and shrubs planted that almost no one can name.
Many people knew about the existence of this mansion, but almost no one knew the details of this mansion, because its owner seldom showed up, usually only a few silent servants to take care of the garden and the house, and at night, when the lights inside the mansion were on, there would be some weird and horrible-looking shadows appearing in those lights-… -(man)
Some insisted that they had seen the servants who tended the house during the day shed their human skins at night and become creaking puppets and tin men walking back and forth through the house, some claimed that they had been attracted by inexplicable whispers as they passed by the mansion, and that they had somehow ended up somewhere else by the time they awoke, and some even claimed to have witnessed the flowers and plants in the front yard of the house turn black the moment the sun went down. The moment the sun set, it turned into black thorns, enveloping the entire first floor of the mansion like a cage.
There are countless strange rumors that extend from this, and in the most outrageous rumors, good people claim that the house actually holds the spirit of a lady, and that the power of the curse spreads out from the basement of the mansion, transforming the original servants here – turning them into unconscious, memoryless tin men and Puppets.
But all of this eventually proved to be nothing more than the bizarre paranoia of nervous passersby – and the city-states of the Boundless Sea have always been full of similar rumors and myths.
The night brings with it a nervousness of mutation and contamination, and it is inevitable that many people, in their over-vigilance, will mistake the windy caves and strange noises coming from the empty houses for nests of darkness and filth, and it is inevitable that the city’s guards will deal with many reports of transcendence every day, and there will be some of these nervous “false alarms” –In general, as long as this tension does not cross the border of “mental pollution”, there will be no problem.
After all, mere nervousness isn’t enough to actually “create” something in the darkness, and it’s better for the public to be vigilant than to be unresponsive after a transcendental infestation has actually occurred.
As for the real owner of the mansion ……
The “Witch of the Sea” has long been used to the fearful stares and horrible rumors surrounding her, and to a certain extent, some of the rumors surrounding 99 Crown Street have been spread by her on her own initiative.
“I need a place to rest my head in the city-state, after all, being out at sea all the time can be nerve wracking, and I’m no exception to that rule,” returning to her “home” in Lightwind Harbor, Lucrecia went to the window and looked out the rather quiet doorway. “But then again, I don’t like dealing with people – it’s hard to find places in the city-state that are truly undisturbed, and even the most isolated neighborhoods are crowded with people, so I might as well make a little bit of a scary noise to save anyone from poking around my door out of curiosity.”
“Why don’t you consider taking a cue from Tirion?” Duncan was curiously surveying the furnishings in the large house and said casually after hearing Lucrecia’s words, “He found a deserted island in the no-man’s-land of the Coldwinter Sea to serve as a Sea Mist Fleet base, and he won’t have to worry about being disturbed for a century ……”
Lucrecia inclined her head, “And then you bumped into him while he was secretly watching a striptease at home?”
Duncan instantly coughed dryly, “Ahem, don’t say that about your brother – next time say it to his face.”
Lucrecia: “……”
The witch lady’s eyes visibly twitched at the corners of her eyes – she wasn’t sure if she liked her father’s current personality, but she knew she clearly needed a little more time to get used to it.
Soon enough, though, she straightened her expression, “I can’t learn from him. Taking over an island means building and managing countless facilities, as well as commanding a fleet of ships and maintaining an entire system from logistics to external communication, and I don’t have the brains for that – it would take up a lot of time I’d spend on research, and you know that just keeping the Brilliant Star in operation already uses up all of my energy. ”
Footsteps came from the side, and a servant in a two-tone black and white uniform with a tray in his hands holding a heated towel with a refreshing drink to relieve the fatigue of the journey approached – the servant bent slightly in salute to Lucrecia and Duncan, a stiff corpse-like smile on his face, and from within him came the sound of clockwork and gears in operation ticking sounds.
“You and Tirian have your own areas of expertise,” Duncan said to Lucrecia as he took a drink from the tray and gave the “manservant” a curious look that looked like a real person, but one look at him and he would have recognized the inhumanity and the psychological horror. “He said to Lucrecia casually, “Before I saw you again, I had heard many rumors about you, and the rumor was that your siblings had a cold relationship, and were even close to opposing each other, but now it seems to be really off the mark.”
“After all, …… the split of the Lost Country Fleet was a big event a century ago, and what happened after that big event is not something that the average person can inquire about, all they know is that the Radiant Star and the Sea Mist went their separate ways, almost running to the two ends of the civilized world, which can’t help but make them brainstorm a …… a bunch of big drama.”
Lucrecia said, shaking her head with a complicated expression.
“After you …… left, my brother and I briefly met a few times, when the Lost Country had completely disappeared into the real world, but we could feel that you were still …… ‘alive’ ‘.”
She looked out the window, as if talking to herself, whispering those past events that outsiders had no way of knowing. “Near the border, at nightfall, on the shipping lanes you once explored, with a slight relaxation of the spirit, we would ‘hear’ your voice, that irrational, hissing roar full of malice and destructive desire, again and again, from the depths of the world, as if struggling upward to tear down reality The Barrier Between the World and Subspace ……
“On several occasions, we even saw you and the Lost Country in the dimness at the turn of day and night – the ship uplifted out of the darkness, closing in on us like the end of days, and wherever it passed, there was death.
“Yet later we realized that we alone could see that scene; it existed only in our vision, in our thoughts.
“And then later, my brother summarized some patterns, and he realized that it was the very existence of ‘us’ that attracted your ‘gaze’, and the closer Tirian and I got, the stronger that attraction became Did you know that …… It’s like a lamp, two lamps together will emit a brighter light, and Tirian and I are the ‘lighthouse’ for you to return to the real world from subspace ……
“And so we parted, further and further apart, Tirian going to the northern border, and me sailing all the way to the south – and when half a world separated us, we finally stopped seeing your visions, and when we got a little farther away . . then we finally stopped hearing your roar.”
Lucrecia exhaled softly, as if a weight had fallen, a sentence held for a century, a breath a century late.
Duncan listened quietly, but did not know what to say – he knew that this “witch” is actually remembering and discussing another person, he did not need to be burdened by her story, and did not need to have any regrets and apologies, but somehow. But somehow, it was hard for him to remain indifferent, and even his heart couldn’t restrain the emergence of “feelings” that he didn’t know whether they belonged to him or not, so after a long period of silence, he could only sigh softly: “I’ve worked hard for you guys.”
“Actually …… it’s okay,” Lucrecia smiled, gently shaking her head, “In the first ten years, we missed you so much that when we heard those voices and saw those visions, we would have unrealistic thoughts, thinking that if you really followed the ‘lights’, we would have a lot of trouble,” he said. you had actually followed the ‘lights’ back to the real world, maybe everything would still be okay.
“And in the ten years that followed, as the number of horrific disasters caused by the Lost Country’s frequent proximity to the real world increased day by day, we became afraid, and with some mindset that we didn’t know if it could be considered a ‘sense of duty,’ my brother and I began to look for a way to truly and completely banish you.
“After a few more years …… our ‘banishment’ seemed to begin to work, and as the fear faded, nostalgia couldn’t help but rise to the surface, and my brother would occasionally bring up the old days, and we were very careful not to mention you or the Lost Country’s by name, but couldn’t help discussing those great routes, and memorable voyages ……
“And in the last thirty or forty years, all that could be discussed has been discussed, and we have finally drifted away from mentioning the Lost Country, and everything seems to have passed, even to the extent that in most of the official documents of the city-states and in the sailing experiences of the captains, the Lost Country has become a ‘historical term,’ a legendary story – and along with that, the world’s fear of the Sea Mist and the Radiant Star seemed to have subsided quite a bit.
“And then, you appeared – the White Oak escaped from the storm and brought the terrible news to the city-state of Prand …… Did you know? Tirian didn’t sleep for three whole days after receiving the news.”
She laughed suddenly, as if she hadn’t laughed so easily in a century.
At the tips of her hair, the silver-white hairpiece with the shapes of waves and feathers swayed with her smile, glowing with a warm light.
Duncan sighed softly.
Just as he was about to say something, however, a scream suddenly came from the direction of the living room, interrupting the conversation between him and Lucrecia.
It sounded like Nina’s voice.
Duncan and Lucrecia quickly exchanged glances, turned around, and ran towards the living room.
Just as they were halfway there, they heard Nina’s voice full of shock and exasperation-
“Them! Why! To be on the muffins! Putting stinky beans-“
(end of chapter)