Chapter 823: Chapter 820 “Forgery

Although theoretically, anomaly 077 is not a normal “dead person,” everyone felt it was worth a try–at least they should try.

So, about ten minutes later, a sailor who was slacking off in a corner of the lower deck was startled awake by a torrent of hasty and chaotic footsteps. He opened his eyes to see the captain leading all the crew rushing over. Before he could react, Fenna dashed forward and hoisted the dry corpse up by his collar.

The sailor had never seen such a scene. As he was lifted by Fenna, and felt the intense (yet hopeful) gazes converging on him, he trembled down to his molars, shrinking his neck and trying to hide backward: “I…I was just snoozing for a bit, that shouldn’t violate the crew’s code, right? And even if it does, you all can’t just beat me up for it, can you?”

“Don’t snooze now, you can’t sleep anyway,” Duncan came forward from behind the crowd, sizing up anomaly 077, “We have some serious business for you.”

“Serious business?” The sailor was stunned and then realized that the gazes around him might not be murderous. He straightened up and adjusted his clothes while warily watching Fenna’s next move (still worried that the sturdy beauty might accidentally crush his bones) and asked out of curiosity, “What serious business? Haven’t we just arrived at the node of the god of death? Are we setting sail back already?”

Duncan waved his hand, cutting to the chase: “It’s because we have arrived at the node of the god of death–we now need a dead person to try and awaken the guide here anew.”

The sailor was puzzled and slow to comprehend, so he turned his pleading eyes to A-dog in the far corner: “…What does that mean?”

“Simply put, with the ‘decay’ of the god of death, the death mechanism of the mortal world has vanished, and without the death mechanism, no more dead will arrive in this wilderness. As a result, the gatekeepers and the path of no return that were once meant to guide the dead are now gone,” A-dog didn’t know why he was asked, but still promptly and patiently explained, “The ‘gate’ of the god of death is hidden in a place that can only be reached through a specific ‘guidance ritual’. We now have to figure out a way to awaken the gatekeeper here anew–in simple terms, we need a dead person.”

The sailor blinked, finally getting a rough idea of the situation. After a few seconds of dumbfoundedness, he hesitantly raised his hand and pointed at himself, stating a fact: “I’m not fully dead though… I’ve been trying in that direction. Why don’t you let Ms. Agatha try? She’s much more dead than me, I at least still have some bones and flesh, her soul is even fading…”

“We’ve discussed it, Agatha, Fenna, Sherry, they are not quite right,” Morris sighed, unable to resist giving the mummy in front of him a complicated look, “But then again, you also seem not quite right–although by nature, you are a corpse, there are many like you active in the mortal world now, and these ‘undead’ seem unable to catch the ‘gatekeeper’s’ attention.”

“After all, it’s still unknown whether the ‘gatekeepers’ in the Wilderness of Death even exist anymore,” the sailor shrugged, “Maybe they disappeared along with Bartok’s ‘decay.’ After all, strictly speaking, those ‘gatekeepers’ themselves are a part of the death mechanism…”

With a furrowed brow, Morris fell into thought, while Duncan suddenly noticed a vague shadow on the wall beside him slightly shaking. He asked curiously: “Agatha? Is there a problem?”

“I’m thinking…” Agatha broke the silence, “Maybe through the ritual, we could use the ‘sailor’ as a base to fabricate a dead person. As for whether the ‘gatekeeper’ here still exists, we’ll know then.”

Duncan was baffled: “…You can fabricate that?”

“I was also a ‘gatekeeper’–though on the side of the living world–but in a sense, the gatekeepers of the world of the living correspond to those of the world of the dead, which is also a manifestation of the ‘symmetry’ of the god of death,” Agatha said, “In the… training I used to remember, it included operations to ‘converse’ with the gatekeepers of the world of the dead after the soul leaves the body. Through those ‘conversations’, I learned that ‘the other side’s gatekeepers’ are not that accurate in judging the dead. Sometimes they even linger around the not-yet-deceased, and such ‘mistakes’… can be artificially induced.”

Sherry blinked, then suddenly realized: “Wait, are you allowed to do this? It sounds very unorthodox to me!”

“Of course, it’s not allowed. It’s heretical,” Agatha shrugged nonchalantly, “Deceiving the messengers of the lord, desecrating the order of life and death, it might even be used to induce death–normally, this would warrant a death sentence.”

As soon as Sherry heard this, she quickly interjected: “Hey, I was wondering, does being sentenced to death for you death priests mean a promotion or unemployment…”

With a raised hand, Duncan pushed Sherry behind him, also interrupting her morbid question (although he had asked the same), and then looked up at Agatha: “Is it alright?”

“It’s alright, because the order of life and death is already gone, and as for the old doctrines and the authority of the lord… who else remembers them besides me?” Agatha’s shadow spoke softly, seemingly with a sad smile, shaking her head in the shifting shadows, “Besides, no one can sentence me to death now.”

Duncan quietly looked at that dim shadow for a moment and nodded softly: “Alright, then let’s get started. What do we need to do?”

“First, we need to leave the Homeloss’s range, as even the gatekeeper’s gaze can hardly penetrate in here,” Agatha immediately said, “Next, we need the sailor’s help. I have to make him into a complete ‘dead person’, but he doesn’t need to do anything himself, just follow my instructions. Lastly… this is for the sailor.”

Her gaze fell on anomaly 077 not far away: “You need to remember, no matter what appears before your eyes, do not follow it–the gatekeeper’s guidance is irresistible to the dead, although you are not a true dead person and have the ability to resist such guidance, it will still be very difficult.”

“Don’t worry about that, I wouldn’t follow them,” anomaly 077 immediately patted his chest with confidence, “Why would I leave when I am doing just fine on Homeloss…”

“What if the crews of Sea Song appear at the end of the path of no return?” Agatha spoke slowly and calmly, “What if you see the captain of Sea Song?”

The scene suddenly quieted down.

Even the sailor himself quieted down. The mummified corpse stood still, but just as Duncan thought he might waver in his hesitation, the mummy instead shook his head with even more resolve.

“I won’t go with her.”

“Are you sure? This is a very serious matter.”

“I’m sure,” the sailor cracked a smile, “The captain told me to deliver a message to the City-State and handed me the navigation route–she wouldn’t want me to go with her, it’s not her.”

“…Alright, then there’s no problem.”

The cold and disordered wind swept across the Wilderness under the night sky, the black and white tall grass undulating in the wind. A paper boat from Homeloss drifted down to the ground beside the ship, the first to jump off was Duncan, stepping onto the solid ground of the Wilderness of Death.

Next to him, the hazy silhouette of Agatha also seemingly weightlessly “floated” down from the ship, landing lightly beside him.

The last to jump off the ship was the sailor–he awkwardly somersaulted onto the ground, and his hips cracked, twisting at a strange angle.

“Tsk… I should have gotten metal joints installed before I set off,” the sailor muttered as he reconnected his dislocated joints and then limped over, “We just need to get to this spot? What do we do next?”

Agatha looked back for a moment, watching the little boat still resting among the wild grass, with only the silhouette of Lucrecia standing silently on it, while the others remained on Homeloss–this was to prevent a repeat of the situation on Ashen Isle.

Then she turned her gaze back, checked around, and pointed to a spot: “It’s simple. Just come over and lie down.”

“Oh.” The sailor complied without further words, immediately cooperating and laying down where Agatha pointed–indifferent to the cold ground, letting the almost waist-high black and white wild grass swallow him up.

“…It really feels like a funeral,” the sailor lay there murmuring, “These grasses around me are like a coffin surrounding all sides.”

Agatha paid no attention to the sailor’s babbling.

After making sure he had lain down properly, she took a light breath and then began to calm her mind, focusing her concentration–moments later, her outline, which had always been fuzzy, as if a mirage in the mist, began to gradually clear up.

An almost imperceptible green flame flickered within her figure, as if briefly illuminating her physical body, turning her from a blurry shadow into a translucent, ghost-like entity, still ethereal, but now sufficiently manifest to perform the upcoming “operation.”

A wand recreated from her memory appeared in her hand at some unknown point.

“…I miss this.”

Agatha looked at the wand in her hand, murmured softly, then began to step around the sailor, slowly dragging the wand across the ground.

Pale flames burned along her trail, rising up, and on the black, white, and gray land, the outline of a triangle slowly took shape.

The sailor lay at the center of the triangle, his tension finally silencing him as he waited for the moment to come.

Agatha then started adding numerous symbolic runes around the triangle, tracing them conscientiously–it had been a long time since she last did this.

“From now on, do not speak, do not look around; the dead do not talk or gawk–you will hear someone calling your name, or see strange lights before your eyes, but those are just illusions, ignore them,” Agatha finally stopped near the sailor’s head, looking down at the mummified corpse lying in the center of the triangle, “In the end, you will see a twilight-like glow, the only ‘color’ in this realm of the dead. At that time, the ‘Gatekeeper’ on this side will have arrived.

“Remember what I told you, do not go with him–leave the rest, let me and the captain negotiate.”