Ashes Of Deep Sea

Chapter 252: Chapter 256 The Rapid Bell Rings

Upon returning to his room, Tirian ordered his men to disperse, yet his mood did not settle with the quietness of the room.

The long conversation with “Father” still lingered in his mind, recollections of the Abyss Project twining uncontrollably around his heart. Flashes of scenes half a century old occasionally crossed his vision—rugged diving equipment, cliffs always drenched in continuous cold rain, silent platform guards, priests muttering prayers in the rainy night, the brightly lit yet eerie coastal laboratory, and the Frost Queen’s gaze, which always overlooked the sea, harboring all secrets.

Tirian shook his head, unsure why, but he suddenly thought of the puppet who called herself “Alice”—Aberration 099, completely released from the seal, moving freely in the human world.

A “controlled” aberration, a puppet that could think and communicate like a human, even exhibiting its own emotions…

She bore such a striking resemblance to the Frost Queen, yet she was certainly not the Queen herself—although her existence and current activity readily evoked the notion of some kind of “return” of the Queen, Tirian could feel that within the puppet… there was not the slightest bit of Lei Nora’s will.

If he had to say, Tirian felt that “Alice” was more like a… replication that was externally perfected, but inwardly completely distorted.

Much like the “Number 3 Diving Apparatuses” that kept surfacing one after another.

Tirian’s expression suddenly shifted slightly, feeling a chill due to the associations that arose in his mind.

He sat in his room, poured himself a strong drink, and relied on the strength of alcohol to reheat his icy thoughts and soothe his restless heart. After a good while, he felt a bit better, then lifted his head to look at the exquisite case beside the bed.

After a slight hesitation, he placed the case on the table, opened the lid, and activated the complex lenses and the crystal at the center of the lens assembly.

The crystal ball brightened, revealing a multitude of twinkling points of light, with disconcerting noise emanating from it.

It took a good while before he could finally discern, amidst those twinkling points, the vague figure of Lucresia and her blurry voice—after another two to three minutes, the voice and image became reluctantly clear. His sister’s voice reached his ears, “Can you hear me?”

“Now it’s clear,” Tirian nodded, “the interference over there is even worse than before… What is around you? Is that sunlight? It looks a little odd…”

He noticed faint golden light shimmering behind Lucresia, reminiscent of brilliant twilight streaming through a window into a room. However, the texture of that light was much warmer and brighter than twilight, and its distribution and diffusion created an almost-but-not-quite-sun-like impression that was of particular concern.

Tirian knew his sister often operated on the fringe where strange phenomena frequently occurred—often dangerous, though Lucresia always managed to turn peril into safety. Nonetheless, he couldn’t help feeling worried.

“Ah, I picked up something strange on the border, but I’ve thoroughly checked it, and it’s not dangerous,” Lucresia answered nonchalantly, “The thing might have fallen from the sky, projecting a vast expanse of radiance… I’m using the Brilliant Starship to drag it back for research.”

Tirian frowned unconsciously, “You’re always picking up odd things on the border. Have you forgotten last time you were dragged into the depths of the Spirit Realm by a mass of humanoid smoke?”

“I’ll be careful, I’m always careful—it’s just that accidents happen sometimes. With adventures, accidents are inevitable,” Lucresia waved her hand, then as if she suddenly noticed something, she stared intently at Tirian’s face, “Brother, what happened to your face and head?”

“…I took a fall.”

“But it looks like you fiercely rammed your head into a wall,” Lucresia frowned slightly, “It would take a two-hundred-meter sprint and a determined head-butt to end up like that—you were attacked.”

Tirian’s expression stiffened for a moment before he reluctantly shook his head, “Sometimes I really wish you weren’t so clever.”

“Who attacked you?” Lucresia ignored Tirian’s attempt to divert the subject, her expression especially serious, “You’re in the Plunder City-State, and you have no enemies there. The City-State authorities wouldn’t stand by and watch a ‘guest’ get attacked… Ah, just now you were denying an attack, saying you took a fall…”

“`

Lucresia spoke, suddenly stopping. It seemed that something had crossed her mind, her expression changing dramatically, before she began to watch the Crystal Ball with flickering eyes.

Tirian knew right away what was going on by the look on her face, shaking his head before she could even speak, “No need to be nervous, he’s not here.”

“Is it really… from him?” Lucresia’s eyes widened with astonishment. “Wait, wasn’t it said that he isn’t in the City-State? And why would he want to…”

“He is indeed not here; it’s one of his current subordinates,” Tirian rubbed his forehead with some distress. “Don’t worry, we haven’t had any conflicts. This injury… it’s just a small accident; he wanted to discuss some matters with me, and I was overly cautious.”

“‘Subordinate’?!” Lucresia startled instinctively, her mind racing to ask how strong a subordinate could be to batter the “Iron Marshal” into a pig’s head with what kind of weapon; but then she noticed the second half of Tirian’s sentence, her eyes shifting, “…he sought you out so quickly for a talk, has something happened?”

“He has taken an interest in some old matters concerning Frost,” Tirian said casually, “but you don’t need to worry about that. I’ve come to you to inquire about something else—Anomaly 099, you should be aware of it, right?”

“Of course I do; I also know that it was taken by the Homeloss. This has spread all over the Explorers’ Association, and not long after that, the Deep Sea Church issued a notice, changing the name of Anomaly 099 from ‘Doll Coffin’ to simply ‘Doll’… Many people have uneasy speculations about this.”

Tirian lifted his eyelids, watching Lucresia’s eyes with a solemn face. “Do you know why its name changed from ‘Doll Coffin’ to ‘Doll’?”

Lucresia furrowed her beautiful brows, seemingly catching on to something vaguely.

“I’ve seen her,” Tirian sighed, not wanting to continue beating around the bush, “that ‘Doll’. She calls herself ‘Alice’, and she has awoken from the coffin. She now serves by father’s side, alike the Frost Queen in appearance as the rumors suggest, but her personality… is quite unexpectedly different.”

“This piece of intelligence is quite unexpected too,” Lucresia whispered, gold light reflecting peculiarly in her eyes as they seemed to glint slightly, “you mean to say, father… ‘freed’ Anomaly 099 from the coffin, allowing that dangerous anomaly to move freely outside, and she is willingly following father? She can even converse with you?”

“It sounds unbelievable, but it is the absolute truth,” Tirian nodded, “She can speak, think, have emotions like a human, and even… I feel that her relationship with my father isn’t too bad, although I’m not certain if it’s a ‘friendship’ that humans can understand, considering one is a spirit returning from Subspace and the other is an ‘anomaly’ with a number below one hundred.”

Lucresia did not respond, and after a moment of silence, she finally raised her head: “What is it that you want to ask?”

“About the situation when Anomaly 099 was first discovered, you were on the scene,” Tirian looked at his sister, “I want to know some true details from you. As you know, my fleet and I never approach Frost; we missed the original scene.”

Lucresia pondered for a few seconds: “Back then… I was indeed in the vicinity of the incident, but it wasn’t the Brilliant Starship that initially salvaged Anomaly 099, it was a coastal fishing vessel named ‘Charvin’. Strictly speaking, when I received the distress signal from Charvin and found that out-of-control drifting fishing vessel, that was already the secondary scene, so I can’t confirm what the original scene looked like right after Anomaly 099 was brought up—I can only tell you what I saw on the Charvin at the time.”

Lucresia paused, recalling the scenes she had witnessed.

“When I found the vessel, there were almost no survivors on board. Out of the twelve crew members, including the captain, eleven had been beheaded—leaving only one sailor half-mad from fright, who described to me in a disjointed manner the ‘Cursed Wooden Box’ they had fished up from the sea.

“He claimed they couldn’t dispose of that box because the box was alive, moving around the ship, and they couldn’t destroy it, for the box was immensely strong and exceptionally durable, and the armed sailors were no match for it…

“You could find most of this information in the public records of the Explorers’ Association, but one detail… not recorded in the data, which you might find interesting.

“During the half-hour after Anomaly 099 was salvaged, the sailors of the Charvin heard a faint cracking sound coming from the box several times. It sounded… as if something inside was taking form.”

“Soft clicking sounds…” Tirian murmured with a frown, then he seemed to want to ask more, but just as he opened his mouth, an urgent series of bell chimes suddenly coming from outside the window interrupted his words.

He looked up in confusion, hearing the unmistakable hurried chimes resonate through the darkening sky. After carefully discerning them for a moment, he mused uncertainly to himself, “That’s not the evening bell… sounds like the ‘Swift Bell’.”

“Swift Bell…” Lucresia’s voice came from the Crystal Ball, “I heard seven short rings; if I’m not mistaken, that’s the bell signal representing ‘The Tomb of the Nameless King’, isn’t it?!”

“`