Chapter 183: Chapter 187: The End of the Sermon
The subspace believer who had just awakened fell into an inexplicable frenzy upon realizing they were aboard the Homeloss, raising their hands and shouting unintelligible words in a fervor that sent Alice backing away in fear—thankfully, she caught her head just in time to keep it from falling off.
“This local specialty is terrifying!” Miss Puppet’s eyes were wide open as she tucked herself behind Duncan, “What’s wrong with him?”
Duncan had no idea—he hadn’t even finished asking his question!
Then, the other two Doomsday Preachers woke up, and upon understanding their situation, they too fell into the same ecstatic state as the first, crazily chanting about the “Ark of Promise” and “the gates of Subspace.” Regardless of what Duncan and Alice said, they were beyond communication.
By this point, Duncan had an inkling of why these Doomsday Preachers were so ecstatic—
They were fanatics chasing after subspace, and Homeloss was a Ghost Ship returned from subspace. Could it be that in the eyes of these madmen… Homeloss was considered some kind of divine “miracle”?
Were they fanatical Believers witnessing a miracle?
But this fervor seemed a bit too excessive.
The three Heretics huddled together, crying, laughing, and shouting, praising the greatness of subspace while calling upon the Homeloss. Occasionally, they would even emit sounds uncanny for a human throat, their trembling howls as if truly originating from the roars of subspace. In the end, they all knelt together and began to kiss the deck of the Homeloss!
This final spectacle provoked the previously spectating Alice. Miss Puppet’s eyes blazed as she grabbed a mop nearby and whacked it down on a Heretic’s head, “My freshly washed deck!”
Before Alice’s words fell, two buckets and several mop handles scampered over, beating the fervent Believers without mercy—the uncontrollable shouts of the fanatics, the reprimands from Alice, and the clamor of colliding buckets and mops suddenly mixed together, turning the usually quiet Homeloss into a noisy commotion.
Duncan stood by, astonished, the spectacle of the “Cursed Puppet and her lackeys beating up the intruders” leaving him deeply shocked. His first thought was curiosity about when the puppet became so close with things on the deck, and his second was to step forward and stop this farce, “Stop!”
The buckets and mops instantly halted, while Alice couldn’t resist whipping a Doomsday Preacher with the mop once more before kicking him. She then stomped away, grumbling, “My freshly washed deck, and they lick it all over…”
“Although I do find their actions somewhat disgusting, there’s no need for this…” Duncan looked helplessly at the puppet, then turned to address the Heretics who had just been beaten up, “Have you calmed down yet?”
The Doomsday Preachers lay on the ground, but despite the past beating, they showed no signs of faltering or fear, still eerily spirited with a haunting smile on their faces. Their seemingly frail and lean bodies endured the pain with astonishing tolerance, almost as if they had abandoned the normal human sense of pain.
Upon hearing Duncan’s words, one of the preachers slowly turned his head. He stared into Duncan’s eyes, and after a long moment, his chaotic eyes finally focused. Then, producing a chilling laugh, he said, “Ha, haha… The gatekeeper of the promised land, the ghost at the helm, the navigator of the Ark! I can see…I can see your heart! How sad…you were granted this bliss, yet you reject His gift… You were worthy of entering the promised land, yet you refuse it! You…fool!”
Duncan frowned slightly.
Alice immediately leaned in from behind, “Captain, shall I beat him up again?”
The nearby buckets and mops also hopped over, swaying behind Alice.
Like lackeys, and the lackeys of those lackeys.
“Just be quiet over there for a bit,” Duncan motioned with his hand, staring at the Doomsday Preacher who was still giving him a strange laugh, his expression unchanged, “It seems you know a lot about me, this ‘Ghost Ship Captain.’”
“Subspace whispers your name… whispers of your foolish refusal…” The heretic grinned, blood from the beating dripping down from the corner of his mouth, writhing like a living thing upon his chin as if they were tentacles, “You had the blissful qualification, why then did you flee… Do you not know that Subspace is the eternal and ultimate destination for everything? You had already reached the end… why did you turn back from that endpoint?!”
Duncan merely watched the cultist—uncertain whether he had gone mad or was simply caught in fanaticism—with an unreadable face but inwardly unsettled.
These fervent followers of Subspace indeed had something about them; their deranged beliefs not only granted them bizarre powers but also seemed to have truly unveiled to them some secrets about Subspace—what this man before him was saying… a part of it might actually be true.
Captain Duncan escaping from Subspace? Rejecting Subspace’s blessings?
Could it be that after Homeloss had fallen into Subspace back then, the real “Captain Duncan” hadn’t completely succumbed to madness as rumors claimed? Homeloss’s return journey from Subspace… was it, in fact, a successful flight? Did “Captain Duncan” still possess some rationality at that time?
When, then, did he become utterly mad? And when did he die?
Duncan suddenly recalled the goat-headed being’s attitude when facing Subspace—wary, resistant, even faintly panicked.
This seemed to provide indirect confirmation of the Doomsday Preacher’s words, a confirmation of that escape.
Afterward, the Doomsday Preacher fell back into his demented state, muttering to himself incomprehensibly, breaking out into fits of joyous laughter, or smacking his own body, while his two companions remained unconscious throughout, lost in unsettling mental confusion.
These followers of Subspace were even more insane than the Sun Cultists Duncan had encountered, further removed from the rationality of the real world—they seemed to be perpetually in a state of mental instability, their thoughts drifting between reality and Subspace, unable to think or communicate normally unless someone was talking to them or they were on a specific mission.
Was it because of Subspace’s influence? Or had they deliberately destroyed their own sanity as a means to embrace Subspace more fully?
What puzzled Duncan even more was—how did such mad, strange heretics, whose appearance had even altered, manage to move about within the City-State?
These lunatics, just walking down the main street, would hardly go unnoticed, probably getting surrounded and gunned down by the security’s steam-powered walkers within five paces!
After a while, seeing that the Doomsday Preachers showed no signs of coming to their senses, Duncan was forced to take the initiative again, “Why did you attack Sherry?”
The three heretics reacted, one of them lifting his head in his dazed state, swaying to and fro, “Attack? Attack who?”
“The thing you just did,” Duncan’s voice was cold and stern, his demeanor like still water, “You attacked a girl with an Abyssal Hound—why attack her?”
“Attack… oh, attack…” The dazed cultist suddenly grinned widely and began shouting, “We were merely putting everything back on track, allowing the right history to descend smoothly! Holes, flaws, a minor hidden danger… must eliminate the hidden dangers… She was supposed to die in the right history, she should not have lived! With her alive… flaws keep appearing…”
“The right history?” Hearing the heretic’s mad gibberish, Duncan’s gaze subtly changed, he caught on to key information, reacting instantly, “There are problems with the history line of Prand? You did it?!”
“Problems? No problems, no problems… We are just setting everything on the right course!” The frenzied cultist tilted his face, his eyes alight with the fervor of a martyr, “This world should all return to the right track! That doomed fate has been delayed for so many years, everyone has defied the grace of Subspace, defied the fate that was meant to occur! We are correcting history to the right trajectory!”
“Correcting history to the right trajectory!” The other two Doomsday Preachers, as if infected, also started shouting praises fervently, one of them even stood up after shouting, hands raised high as if declaring some truth, “Only by going back on track, after total extinction can there be a rebirth! Subspace will devour everything and Subspace will also Reshape everything! The fire is extinguished, embers hard to rekindle… Only by lighting a second bonfire can the world survive through that grace!”