Chapter 59: Chapter 59 This door leads to Homeloss
Duncan and Alice stood at the top of the stairs leading to the bottom of the ship, witnessing a bizarre and horrifying spectacle—the bottom of the Homeloss was in a state of disarray and fragmentation, and beyond the shattered cabins was evidently a kind of void suffused with an endless, dim, twilight glow.
Was this the true “structure of the ship’s bottom” of the Homeloss? Then what was that thing outside the fragmented cabins?
Could such a sight exist beneath the sea level of the Endless Sea?
Duncan cautiously took two steps forward and entered the fragmented cabins. He stepped onto the largest piece of wooden debris and looked back in the direction he had come from.
That “final door” still stood silently in its place, fixed on a floating plank, with a dark staircase behind it that slanted upward—however, around the door, there were no walls that should have been there, only emptiness.
The door was solitary, floating in this space.
Duncan carefully walked around to the back of the door and found nothing; through the open doorway, he could directly see the opposite, broken cabins.
“Captain…” Alice’s voice came through, tense. The automaton looked around fearfully before her gaze finally settled on Duncan, “This… This is normal, right?”
Duncan actually felt even less certain than the automaton, after all, the latter could blindly trust the captain for a moment, but where could he, as that “captain,” find such confidence now? However, seeing Alice’s anxious demeanor, and recalling the “crew rules” that the goat-headed had mentioned, Duncan still forcefully controlled his unease and maintained his usual stern and composed appearance.
“Don’t worry,” he said flatly, “the Homeloss is a ship beyond your imagination.”
“Indeed, it’s beyond imagination…” Alice remarked in awe. Duncan’s composed demeanor seemed to reassure her a little, and she began to curiously examine the broken ship structures as well as the chaotic light and shadows outside, “Captain, outside… it doesn’t seem like there’s water, does it?”
Duncan thought for a moment, then curiously asked Alice, “Do you think this is below the surface of the Endless Sea?”
Alice was startled, “Ah? Why do you ask me?”
Duncan looked indifferent, “Because you have the experience.”
“It was still you who threw…” Alice blurted out involuntarily but quickly swallowed her words, then sincerely answered, “I don’t think so… The sea is surely filled with water, even if the Endless Sea is off, below the surface there would certainly be water. But outside here, it looks like… like…”
“A void filled with chaotic streams of light,” Duncan shook his head and slowly walked forward. He came to the edge of the wooden debris under his feet, looked down at the flowing light and shadows outside the cabin, “The bottom of the Homeloss… isn’t inside the Endless Sea.”
Alice was puzzled, “Ah? Then where is this?”
Duncan did not speak, appearing enigmatic—actually because he didn’t know either.
But he still had a vague guess: perhaps, was this ship actually navigating simultaneously in several different dimensions? On the surface, the Homeloss appeared to be sailing on the Endless Sea of the real world, but in reality, different parts of the ship belonged to completely different dimensions!?
This also explained why the deeper into the Homeloss one went, the more eerie and gloomy the cabins seemed to be—perhaps the eeriness and gloominess were not inherent to the cabins themselves…
Then if this dim and chaotic space outside the cabin is not the Endless Sea, what could it be? It didn’t look like the Spirit Realm, nor did it resemble the dark space seen during the Transition through the Spirit Realm… Could it be something “deeper”? More profound? Subspace?
With numerous guesses and hypotheses swirling in his mind, Duncan slowly drew out the pirate sword from his waist, then held up the lantern with one hand, and the Longsword with the other, cautiously probing towards the edge of the fragment beneath him. He was very careful. Although the gaps between these fragments looked like one could jump over them with a single step, he did not rashly stride across but chose to test with the Longsword first.
Who knew if something would suddenly emerge from these cracks, swallowing anyone who dared to cross recklessly.
The next second, he widened his eyes in surprise.
He saw the tip of the Longsword disappear, and on the edge of the fragment opposite the crack, a piece of the sword’s tip emerged abruptly.
Duncan frowned, tested in different directions, and similar phenomena occurred again.
He finally began to understand slowly.
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The areas that seemed to be cracks were actually still continuous in space! The seemingly fragmented structure of the ship’s hull was in fact still intact!
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He stood up straight and looked around at those cracks and the light and shadows flowing outside the cracks, gaining an understanding in his heart: these “broken” scenes were merely an optical result, which had not affected the spatial continuity. The body of Homeloss had not cracked here, but for some reason, the “images” from outside the hull appeared inside the ship.
But what was the reason for this? Was it a spatial overlap? Or was it a faulty projection from a higher dimension to a lower one?
Duncan subconsciously summoned all the reliable and unreliable knowledge in his mind, trying to explain the bizarre phenomena here, while Alice next to him looked at the captain with a puzzled face as he made strange moves near the edge of the cracks, now shining a lantern everywhere and then poking around with a Longsword. After watching for a long time, she finally couldn’t help but speak, “Captain, are you performing some kind of special pacifying ritual to… pacify the cabin?”
Duncan turned his back to Alice and silently sheathed his Longsword, stiffly replied, “…Yes.”
“Oh! How impressive!” Alice’s eyes lit up immediately, “So do you need to perform a pacifying ritual for every single piece here?”
“…That’s enough,” Duncan said, keeping his face stern and his scalp hard, and quickly diverted her attention before the overly curious doll could speak again, “Let’s move forward.”
As he spoke, he stepped forward cautiously, holding the lantern—the moment he stepped out, he tensed every muscle and nerve in his body, ready for any accident that might occur while crossing the crack, but nothing happened.
Just like the test with the Longsword earlier, he “skipped” the process of crossing the crack and proceeded directly to the fragment on the opposite side, as if walking in a normal ship cabin.
Alice looked amazedly at the captain walking in front, moving with apparent disregard for the cracks beneath his feet, and followed suit, but she became nervous while crossing the crack and eventually couldn’t resist the urge to hurry forward with a jump…
And then naturally she bumped headfirst into Duncan ahead of her.
Duncan felt a sudden gust of wind behind him, followed by something hitting his back solidly, causing him to instinctively turn around with a swift motion of his hand—
The next second, he looked expressionlessly at the headless doll scurrying around behind him, while Alice’s head rolled several meters away, stuttering, “Sorry… sorry… sor…”
“Stay put, I’ll pick it up for you,” Duncan sighed and, while internally questioning why he brought this useless doll down, quickly caught up with Alice’s head, which had rolled away, and picked it up with ease. “Have you considered putting a screw in your neck…”
Alice’s head, though, seemed not to hear the latter part of Duncan’s gibes; her eyes suddenly widened, looking in a certain direction, “There… there’s… there’s a…”
Duncan frowned and turned his head towards the direction Alice’s head was frantically indicating with her eyes.
A pitch-black wooden door stood silently on the fragment at the end.
A door… there was actually another door, indeed another door!
When he saw the hint on the door at the top of the stairs earlier, Duncan had thought there might be this classic situation, yet when he now saw an additional door in this “hull space,” he still couldn’t help but be startled!
By this time, Alice’s body had also stumbled over. Duncan handed her head back to her while looking at the door, “Was there such a door over there just now?”
Alice “popped” her head back onto her neck, moving her cervical spine while taking a glance in that direction, “It doesn’t seem so, it appeared after we came over.”
Duncan hummed noncommittally and cautiously approached the door with the lantern in hand.
In fact, in this eerie cabin, he already didn’t need the illumination of the lantern. The chaotic, dim light seeping in from the outside of the cracks was dismal but sufficient to maintain the most basic brightness of the entire space. Nevertheless, he continued to hold the lantern—this was necessary caution.
Although Goat Head had not mentioned anything about this, Duncan had decided that as long as he was below the waterline in the cabins, he would never extinguish this lantern.
The newly appeared door looked unremarkable, a pitch-black panel that did not differ much from the “last door” at the end of the staircase, nor from most of the doors used in the cabins of Homeloss in style and material.
Duncan looked up and, above the doorframe of this door, he saw a line of letters as if they were cast in bronze:
“This door leads to Homeloss”.
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