Chapter 693 – What the Secret Keeper Saw
Chapter 693 – What the Secret Keeper Saw
With a thick blanket wrapped around him, Ted Riel sat in the hut of the research station as someone handed him a cup of hot tea that was still a little scalding, he held the cup and looked up to say, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome!” Alice responded seriously, and then began to curiously look at this “Secret Keeper” who had just been fished out of the sea, and only after a while did she turn her head to Duncan next to her and say, “Captain, Mr. Tate doesn’t look as if he’s in a very good mood!”
“I fell into the sea – twice!” Ted looked up at Duncan, who was standing beside him, and subconsciously shivered in the middle of his sentence – physical cold wasn’t a problem for an acolyte, his shivering was rather more like a dip in the chill of fate, “The first time I fell out of subspace, and the second time I was thrown out by a pigeon! ”
He shivered again and turned his head to glare with resentment at the fat white pigeon that was pacing the floor with its chest out, the latter grinding its beak shell on the floor and cocking its head with one eye looking out the window and one eye landing on Ted and flapping its wings, “What are you looking at?”
“You must have offended Aye,” came Duncan’s voice with a subdued calmness, “He doesn’t usually throw his passengers overboard.”
“Couldn’t it be that you pigeons are cruel by nature?” Ted glared, looking rather indignant, “It was taunting when it threw me overboard, everyone here heard it ……”
“That mustn’t be possible, Aye is a dove of peace,” Duncan immediately waved his hand and pointed to Aye who was skulking around, “Look at you, it’s white.”
Ted sniffed and froze, not keeping up with Duncan – he hadn’t even heard what a dove of peace meant ……
But Duncan was already used to this situation where no one could pick up on the stems he blurted out, and he just waved his hand in disinterest, “I bet you weren’t very cooperative when Aey brought you here.”
“…… Okay, I’ll admit it,” Ted thought for a moment and sighed helplessly, “but I can’t be blamed for that – it’s not like I know you pigeon, even though The flames looked familiar, but suddenly a skeletal, monstrous bird flew out and swept me off into a dark, eerie space, and of course my first reaction was to feel threatened, and some resistance was inevitable ……”
Lucrecia, who had never spoken next to her, suddenly popped up, “And then you didn’t fight the pigeon and got thrown into the sea by it.”
Ted Ryer: “…… Can we stop discussing pigeons?”
“Fair enough,” Duncan nodded, smoothly taking a seat in the chair next to Ted, “So that’s enough about pigeons, let’s discuss subspace next.”
“Eh ……,” Ted grunted in his throat, an oddly strange expression on his face, but presumably his nerves had been greatly sharpened by the succession of unthinkable experiences that had taken place, and he soon exhaled coldly (and admittedly) and glanced up at the surrounding area.
The Academy staff stationed here left the room almost flash-like instantly and closed the door – within seconds, Duncan, Alice and Lucrecia were the only ones left in the place besides him.
“I have told that Captain Lawrence all I can recall of my experiences,” Ted Riel said with a slight sigh of relief as he recalled them after all the extraneous persons had left, “Subspace has left a long shadow of chaos in my mind, and part of my memories have become blurred as a result , I can only remember those disconnected fragments, such as the silent, large and strange ‘things’ I had witnessed, this part you should already know ……”
“Yes, Lawrence briefed me, but there are some things that must be communicated in person to be clearer,” Duncan said casually, “such as the specific forms of those things you witnessed …… Lawrence relayed is ultimately not as good as hearing it from you in person ……”
As he spoke, he casually drew a picture from a nearby table.
Those were some sketches that Duncan had drawn down with his own hands after receiving Lawrence’s report of the situation, and before Tad Reel was brought back by Aye.
Ted Riel curiously took the paper handed over by Duncan, and after seeing what was depicted there, his eyes widened slightly in an instant.
What was depicted on the paper was not something frightening or bizarre – it was just the outlines of some windows and doors, some pillars with elegant and complicated lines, and some curved ironwork patterns.
But the “style” and “feel” of them were no less frightening to Ted Ryer than the sight of the giants of subspace again.
He looked up hesitantly and saw Duncan staring calmly into his eyes.
“Is that the style?” Duncan asked softly.
Ted Riel opened his mouth and lowered his head again to stare dead at the series of architectural localizations depicted on the sheet of paper for a long time before speaking in a hushed voice, “…… Yes, it was a huge building in the darkness, like a palace or an overly complex and massive mansion, which hangs upside down above my head, its spires reminiscent of those gloomy black towers of the northern city-states, its windows and doors slender and towering, the outside of each window covered and sealed by a dark substance that seemed like thorns ……”
He paused for a moment to reminisce and compose himself, and then continued to speak, “That entire building maintains its reticence in the darkness, like a beast that has been dead for many years, but at certain moments …… I have seen hazy flashes of light appearing in some of its windows, as if there were still people moving about within it, and that is when the The whole building seems to come to life ……”
Duncan listened silently to Ted Reel’s description, looking gravely at the windows, columns and decorative patterns he had traced on the paper. That was the thing in Alice’s public house – even though what Ted Rill had seen was only the external structure of the building, stylistically, the two were clearly unified.
What Ted Riel saw was indeed the Alice Public House.
The Alice Public House located in subspace.
But Duncan clearly remembers, in the Alice public house in the depth of the “hostess bedchamber” was Rae Nora “take away”, there left a huge hole, he looked out from the hole, but can only see infinite darkness, and can not see the subspace that kind of Iconic chaotic light flow and huge entity shadow …… Otherwise, he should have realized that the public house is located in subspace.
Why is this?
Is it because what Ted saw in subspace was only a “projection” of Alice’s mansion? Or is it that …… when he last looked out from the large hollow inside the public house …… there was something that “blocked” his gaze?
Duncan’s brow was furrowed in thought for a long time, while Ted finally couldn’t help but speak up after several minutes, “What is it that I’m seeing? You look familiar with it?”
“Familiar, I’ve been there often,” Duncan nodded gently, “but don’t pry into the details – for the sake of your physical and mental health.”
“…… Well, it was subspace after all,” Ted responded instantly, but immediately followed by a slightly odd expression on his face, “Rahm Pius, I can’t believe I’m actually discussing subspace with you …… I went there and came back alive, and to this day I find it a bit surreal.”
“It’s a little late for you to start feeling all that,” Duncan waved his hand and spoke up immediately after, “You also mentioned that the huge mansion hanging upside down had changed before your eyes into some sort of structure that looked like a giant ship?”
“The truth is …… I’m not at all sure exactly what that thing was,” Ted Riel hesitated, eventually choosing to speak cautiously, “The experience in subspace was like traveling through layers and layers of visions, my reason and cognition seemed to be split between two dimensions operating independently, I saw many things and they tended to change into something else …… ‘like’ in an instant, and only part of those changes were actually happening, the other part was like my mind was spontaneously reorganizing the incomprehensible information to reorganize.”
Duncan thought for a moment and brought another piece of white paper and pencil to Ted Riel, “Whether or not that was a hallucination, can you still draw a picture of what the mansion looked like when it ‘changed instantly’ now?”
Ted Riel hesitated and took the paper and pencil, “…… I’ll try.”
This Truth Keeper of Secrets came to the table draped in a blanket and began to amble around sketching the hazy visions he had seen in subspace.
Duncan stood aside, watching with a serious and patient expression.
Some messy abstract lines gradually emerged on the paper under Ted Riel’s pen.
However, Lucrecia, who was curiously watching from the side, gradually frowned: “Is this the …… ‘giant ship’ you were talking about?”
She only saw a lot of haphazardly connected lines, as if some kind of abstract geometry like “fragments” pieced together into a roughly long shuttle-shaped structure, or some kind of asymmetrical “cylinder”, and that was really far from what she recognized as a “ship”. ship” as she knew it.
But in the next moment, she noticed Duncan’s expression grow a little more serious at the sight of those “abstract patterns”.
Father saw something in the strange abstract lines!
Has he seen this before?
Lucrecia’s mind instantly became puzzled, but before she could ask, Ted Ryer had already put down the pencil in his hand.
“I know it doesn’t look like a ‘ship,’ but the moment I saw it, it came into my mind that it would be some kind of a ‘ship,'” Ted Riel looked up and addressed Lucrecia said, “I can’t tell how it happened, it was as if some kind of ‘perception’ was imprinted directly into my mind, or some kind of ‘revelation’ …… “
Duncan, however, was still staring dead at the messy lines Ted had drawn on the paper, when he suddenly looked up and asked, “…… finished?”
Ted Reel nodded, “Finished drawing.”
Duncan frowned with a strangely serious expression, “That’s all? Only this part?”
Ted Riel finally realized something from Duncan’s attitude, he hesitated slightly, “What I see is …… only this part, what’s wrong?”
Duncan was silent for a few seconds before suddenly stepping forward and pointing his finger at the pattern on the paper, “I’m not sure …… but theoretically, what you’ve drawn could be only a third of its structure!”
(End of chapter)