Chapter 831: Chapter 828: The Ultimate and The Original

The Brilliant Starship gently adjusted its angle near the coast, and the luminous wheels on either side of the hull began to emit a low moan as it started to accelerate, slowly sailing into the boundless mist, faster and faster, further and further, until it completely vanished from Duncan’s gaze.

Duncan stood for a long time on the prow of the Homeloss, gazing into the thick fog where the silhouette had disappeared. Even when it was no longer visible, he continued to look in that direction for quite some time before finally withdrawing his gaze, to see a Gothic doll in a magnificent, deep purple dress standing by his side.

The doll was also looking into the distance, and almost simultaneously withdrew her gaze as well.

Meanwhile, the plump white pigeon perched on Alice’s shoulder, cocked its head and stared intently at its owner with its mung bean eyes.

Homeloss was now quiet. Without Sherry and Nina’s playful bickering, without Morris’s habit of gazing out at the sea or brooding in thought, without Fenna always sitting on a barrel carving amulets, and without Agatha’s mysterious disappearing and reappearing acts–on such a spacious and empty deck, only the captain and the doll stood together.

And, of course, that abstract and gluttonous fat pigeon.

“They’ve all left, huh…” After a while, Alice murmured softly.

Duncan wasn’t immediately sure if Miss Doll’s remark was a sigh of emotion or a statement of fact she had just realized.

When everyone else had left, she had stayed without giving it any thought, with a natural and logical demeanor. Duncan never gave her any specific orders, and she didn’t ask any questions, as if from the very start she knew she would stay; she even treated staying on Homeloss as something obvious and inevitable–this made Duncan curious.

“When others left, you didn’t ask me if you could stay,” he looked into the eyes of Miss Doll, “Did you not even give it a thought?”

Alice smiled, seemingly without a microsecond of hesitation, “Of course I’m staying!”

She responded so simply, and besides this answer, there seemed to be no other reason in her mind–or rather, she didn’t think that this matter required any reason.

Duncan watched her steadily and then suddenly smiled, shaking his head and gesturing around, “Look, it seems like it has become just like it was at the beginning again.”

Alice looked around curiously and quickly caught on, “Right, it’s just you and me again on this ship… ah, and the pigeon, and the first officer.”

Ai Yi, perched on the doll’s shoulder, tilted his head and suddenly started flapping his wings vigorously while emitting a noisy and sharp female voice: “Initializing settings, initializing settings!”

Duncan looked deeply at the pigeon, a fragment of his hometown, and spoke softly and thoughtfully: “…Yes, initializing settings. Time to proceed to the next step.”

As he spoke, he turned around and without looking back, waved to Alice, “Let’s go, Alice, it’s time to fulfill the promise to Gomona.”

“Aye! Yes, captain!” “Aye, aye, captain!”

…

The mist drifted around softly, like a thin yet endlessly overlapping curtain, gradually enclosing on the scale of the entire world. The blurred shadow in the direction of the ship’s stern shifted from clear to vague, ultimately disappearing completely into the endless fog–The Brilliant Starship was about to reach the boundary of the “Islands Sea Area.” From this location, Homeloss, which was left next to the “Temple Island,” was wholly out of sight.

Lukrecia stood with others on the highest deck of the Brilliant Starship, and no one was willing to withdraw their gaze from the fog that no longer bore a trace of the familiar silhouette.

“…At first, I thought I was going to be ‘cursed’ to stay on that ship for a lifetime,” Sherry murmured softly, “I was scared to death back then…”

Not far away, a piece of clothesline was tied between a railing and a flagpole, where a wet little doll, Niru, was hung on the clothesline, passing through the sleeves of her arms, swinging back and forth. This little one with an incomplete mind seemed to sense the change in mood too, and she looked at the silent others with some unease and then at her mistress with a hint of worry, whispering, “Mistress… unhappy?”

Lukrecia turned to look at the swaying little doll and a gentle smile appeared on her face: “No, just thinking.”

“Thinking!” Niru immediately echoed, unsure whether she was asking a question or habitually repeating the last two syllables of what others said.

Lukrecia didn’t mind and continued to speak to herself, “Yes, thinking–thinking about what to do next. In the future, you will think like this too, your mind will grow, just like your sister–both of you possess a ‘heart’ I meticulously crafted.”

Niru stared blankly for a moment while hanging on the clothesline, then began to happily swing: “A heart!”

It was at this moment that a sailor broke the silence: “We are nearing the border of the physical sea–Ms. Lukrecia, if we go further, we’ll fall into the disordered time stream, it’s time to enter the next leg of our journey.”

Lukrecia nodded slightly, her gaze shifting sideways.

In the slowly flowing fog, a blurry female silhouette stood there, nodding back at Lukrecia.

“Now it’s all on you and the sailors, Ms. Agatha.”

“No need to be polite, it’s all by the captain’s orders.” Agatha’s somewhat ethereal voice came from the air, followed by her phantom gradually dissipating into the mist.

Then, a strange and deep roaring suddenly arose from the depths of the Brilliant Starship, starting from beneath everyone’s feet–as if some colossal beast was awakening in the lower deck, surfacing from the sea, the roaring and vibrations gradually enveloping the entire ship. The Homeloss’s reflection, taken away by Agatha, also began to appear in this material dimension!

The massive phantom descended swiftly, reversing out of the shadow realm, rapidly surfacing from the still sea around, which was as smooth as a mirror, and with an unstoppable momentum, it merged swiftly with the Brilliant Starship.

Sherry’s eyes widened as she watched the surrounding deck begin to burn vigorously; the false, ghostly green flames inch by inch devouring all parts of the ship, the towering smokestack transformed into a dark-colored mast, the floating steam and smoke became the Spiritual Body’s sails, and the wooden deck extended in her vision, with a lofty wheelhouse and the dark, gloomy steering wheel at the end of the deck.

For a moment, she even felt like she was back on the Homeloss.

But this illusion was merely momentary; after all, a phantom is just a phantom, and at a close distance, she could swiftly distinguish many details that should belong to the Brilliant Starship.

However, this level of “Projection Fusion” was already enough for anomaly 077 to fulfill his duty as the “Homeloss’s helmsman”.

The withered and hunched mummy solemnly adjusted the sailor uniform on his body, then nodded to Lucrecia and stepped toward the towering wheelhouse in the phantom blaze not far away. He walked up the projected stairs to the platform and grasped the dark, heavy steering wheel–hollow howls and echoes seemed to come from deep within the phantom, eventually turning into cheers of return.

“Return–voyage!” The sailor forcefully turned the steering wheel in his hands, shouting out loud in his signature hoarse voice, “We’re heading home!”

…

Distant howls seemed to travel from the edge of the Endless Sea; Duncan, who was walking through the ruins of the “Pilgrimage Path,” stopped in his tracks and looked back in the direction from where the faint noise seemed to originate.

Alice walking beside him also stopped and looked curiously, “What’s the matter?”

Duncan turned back and said softly, “…They’ve set sail for home, all is well.”

“Is that so? That’s great,” Alice smiled happily, “I wonder how it’s going over there with Prand…”

“Prand… is still okay for now.”

Duncan said slowly, sensing that distant and vague “signal” crossing time and space.

He could still sense the situation with Prand, whose “incarnation” remained in the antique shop, still following the instructions he had given, but he could clearly feel that this connection was growing increasingly unstable.

This wasn’t due to environmental influences, nor was it related to the “distant distance” of the “World’s End”… it was an inevitable change as the part of “Zhou Ming” that was a “Reverse Singularity” continued to grow and awaken over time.

The fragile Shelter can’t bear the direct observation of the Reverse Singularity; a gaze that exceeds the Endless Sea would annihilate the Endless Sea in that mere 0.002 seconds of attention.

This was also why he had to let Nina, Maurice, and others return to the Endless Sea to act as his “eyes”–because he was soon going to lose the capability to observe the Endless Sea himself.

After a moment of sensing, Duncan began to carefully control the connection between himself and those distant avatars. He felt the degree of “awakening” within his own essence, and once again reduced the activity level of his avatars–now, he had already shut off the avatar’s sense of taste and smell and blocked the perception of heat, cold, and pain, blocking all those fragile and complex sensations that belong to “human.”

These sensations were once very important to him. The perceptions of heat, cold, the keenness to pain, and the preciousness of fatigue and sleep, all helped him maintain his cognitive baseline as a “human” for a long time, but now, he had to turn them off one by one to extend his observation of the Endless Sea as much as possible.

He wished to at least hold on until Nina returned home safely.

“Captain?”

A worried voice came from beside him; Duncan turned his head to see the doll looking anxiously in this direction, cautiously shaking his sleeve.

“Are you alright?” Alice asked concernedly, “You don’t look very good.”

Duncan’s expression slowly softened.

Even without the “information” conveyed by those avatars, he could still sustain his human side.

“It’s alright,” he said softly, “Let’s go. They have already set off, and we still have a long journey ahead of us.”