Ashes Of Deep Sea

The wooden goat head with its rigid, jet-black face watched Duncan seated behind the navigation desk, its obsidian eyes seemingly flowing with a strange light—though in reality, the thing lacked any capacity to produce expressions. Yet Duncan distinctly read a sense of expectation in that wooden visage.

In fact, this wasn’t the first time the goat head had urged him to “set sail”; every time he came here, the goat head would prompt him once more.

He even felt that the ship itself was constantly pressuring him, compelling him to end this aimless drift at sea and set sail for the proper course at the earliest opportunity.

However, Duncan fell silent. His inherently dignified face was now clouded with shadows, and amidst deep thought and reticence, he became acutely aware of two problems:

Firstly, he was the only person aboard the entire ship, which was insanely huge in size—for a sail-powered vessel, this ship known as “Homeloss” was roughly estimated by Duncan to be between one hundred fifty and two hundred meters long. To maneuver such a massive behemoth, it would take dozens or even hundreds of experienced sailors, so how could he, alone, steer it?

Secondly, setting aside the professional factors mentioned above, there was a critical issue hindering his nautical journey—he didn’t know how to sail.

Duncan felt a bit anxious. He forced himself to imagine what would happen if he consulted with this eerie and noisy goat head on how to pilot the ship, and the thought only increased his anxiety.

Yet the goat head had no inkling of its captain’s thoughts; it simply asked, “Captain, do you have any concerns? If you’re worried about the condition of Homeloss, rest assured, Homeloss is always prepared to sail with you to the world’s end. Or are you worried about setting sail today being inauspicious? I have some knowledge of divination—do you trust any particular method? Astrology, incense, crystals, all are fine. Speaking of crystals, do you remember…”

Duncan strained the muscles in his face, suppressing the impulse to engage in a life-or-death struggle with the wooden goat head before speaking sternly, “I’m going to the deck to survey the situation—stay here in silence.”

“As you wish—but I must remind you, Homeloss has been drifting aimlessly for far too long. You must take command of her as soon as possible, to return this voyage back to its proper course…”

The goat head spoke, and then, accompanied by the sound of wood rubbing, it finally returned to its original posture.

Duncan immediately felt the world settle.

He let out a gentle sigh of relief, the resonance in his head gradually calming, and then picked up the flintlock pistol on the table and rose from the captain’s quarters.

This flintlock pistol, which seemed to have seen many years, was found by him during his explorations on the ship, along with a single-handed sword that currently hung at his waist, and these two items were his assurance of safety while moving about the ship.

Over the last few days of exploration, he spent a long time roughly learning how to use these two items—although, so far, he hadn’t encountered any living beings other than himself on the ship.

Talking “objects” don’t count.

The salty sea breeze hit his face, and with it, Duncan’s slightly irritated mood calmed down. He stepped onto the deck outside the captain’s cabin and subconsciously looked up at the sky.

The dense clouds still veiled the entire sky within sight; no sun, moon, or stars could be seen through the cloud cover, just the murky sky light enveloping the boundless sea.

This scene had persisted for a long time. In fact, ever since Duncan arrived on this ship, he had only seen such a sky—leading him to wonder if normal weather even existed in this world, or if this gloomy, cloud-covered vista was the eternal celestial phenomenon of this sea region?

Duncan turned around. He saw the door to the captain’s quarters standing silently there with a row of letters carved in an unfamiliar alphabet above the lintel. As his gaze focused on those letters, their meaning directly and clearly imprinted itself in his mind:

“The Displaced’s Door.”

“The Displaced’s Door… Homeloss, huh,” Duncan muttered to himself, then added with a touch of self-mockery, “This ship does have a fitting name.”

Then he stepped past the captain’s quarters and took the stairs along the edge of the deck up to the upper deck at the stern. Here was a wooden platform, the most open viewpoint on the entire ship aside from the lookout tower.

A hefty black helm awaited the helmsman’s arrival silently atop the platform.

Duncan furrowed his brow. For some reason, he suddenly felt a sense of urgency and restlessness that seemed to have materialized out of nowhere the moment he laid eyes on the steering wheel.

He had never felt this way in his previous visits here!

As if to respond to the restlessness in his heart, a senseless and chaotic wind suddenly blew across the deck, and the previously calm sea surface instantly churned with waves. Although the squall was not yet strong enough to affect the massive “Homeloss,” Duncan’s alarm bells were ringing. The next second, driven by intuition, he looked in the direction of the bow.

A boundless, barrier-like wall of white fog seemed to appear out of thin air on the sea surface directly in front of the Homeloss, shrouded between the chaotic blur of sky and sea, making his eyes widen in shock!

It was a wall of fog that seemed to wrap around and isolate the whole world, bearing down like an insurmountable cliff connecting heaven and earth. More alarming to Duncan than its heart-stopping scale was its striking resemblance to the boundless haze outside his apartment window that popped into his mind.

The Homeloss was sailing straight for that fog wall!

Duncan didn’t know what that thick fog was, nor what lay beyond it, but he instinctively sensed immense danger. His survival instincts told him that being swallowed by that fog was nothing good!

He subconsciously rushed towards the platform where the ship’s wheel was located—a tremendous sense of helplessness enveloped him: Even if he took the helm, how could he steer such a colossal ship away from the fog wall by himself?

Yet, instinctively, he found himself before the steering wheel. And almost at the same moment, he heard a hoarse and somber voice coming from a copper tube next to the steering wheel that connected to the captain’s cabin, the voice of “Goat Head”—and this time, the tone of that uncanny entity carried a hint of panic:

“Captain, a border collapse has appeared ahead, we are approaching the limit of reality! Please adjust course immediately!”

Hearing Goat Head’s panicky voice, Duncan almost cursed out loud—adjusting course was easier said than done, why didn’t he just conjure a hundred and eighty proficient sailors on the spot to steer this thing!

He then looked up again towards the direction of the mainmast only to see bare masts standing on the deck, which only intensified his despair—even the idea of setting sail was a fantasy since, in fact, the ship didn’t have sails at all; those masts were bare!

In his emotional turmoil, he didn’t even have time to ponder the bizarre terminology that Goat Head had blurted out; his instincts simply drove him to grasp the steering wheel, which seemed to be trembling ever so slightly.

For several days now, this was his first time deliberately placing his hands on the helm of the Homeloss—previous eerie occurrences on the ship and Goat Head’s persistent urging had always made him wary, and he had been resistant to the idea of “taking the helm.” But now, he no longer had the chance to hesitate.

He gripped the wheel tightly, his mind too blank to contemplate how he might control a ghost ship seemingly deserted but for himself.

And then, the transformation happened in the next instant.

A tumultuous roar like a mountain cry and tsunami explosion sounded in Duncan’s mind, as if thousands of cheering people were standing ashore to see off a ship, as if hundreds of sailors were shouting the captain’s name on deck, and among them seemed to be mixed with the melancholy of sea shanties and invisible mighty waves.

A green flame appeared on the edge of his vision. Duncan instinctively looked at his palms and saw a greenish fire suddenly burst from the wheel of the Homeloss, sweeping over with astonishing speed, quickly enveloping his entire body.

In the fierce blaze, his fleshly body suddenly became hollow and unreal, his captain’s uniform tattered as though it had been soaked in the sea for decades or even centuries, and beneath the suddenly spectral-like flesh, Duncan could vaguely see his own bones—his crystal-clear bones leaping with flames, the undying fire flowing within him like water.

However, he felt no pain or heat. In the raging flames, he only felt his awareness spreading outward in all directions.

The fire spread from the helm down, sweeping across the deck and the ship’s side, climbing the mast, the flames weaving into an intricate web, and then breathing upwards from the deck, spreading along the lone masts and intertwining into billowing sails in the blend of sea and mist.

The Homeloss set sail before the swiftly collapsing border of reality.

(Oh my, what a surprise!

PS: A new side story for “Sword of Dawn” has been uploaded, which theoretically should be the last one, so everyone is welcome to check it out~~~)