Deep Sea Embers

Chapter 239 Tracking of the Brilliant Star

In three hours, the sun will rise from the distant sea level, and the relatively safe and stable day will replace the uneasy night-if the sun does rise normally.

Duncan glanced at the mechanical clock hanging not far away, the hands on it were beating slowly.

"Are you going to wait for the sunrise?" The voice of the goat's head came suddenly, "There are still three hours."

"...Waiting for three hours is not as interesting as sitting here and looking at a basically pale sea chart." Duncan shook his head, got up and stretched his shoulders, and then walked slowly towards the bedroom. "I'll go back and rest for a while. , if I haven't come out before sunrise, you can call me directly."

"We are happy to help."

Duncan nodded, pushed the door back to the bedroom, threw the piece of paper depicting the mysterious emblem on the table, and walked to the bed not far away.

His body basically doesn't need to rest much, but every once in a while, he still takes a nap before dawn-not to relieve any fatigue, but simply to "get up and greet the sunrise".

This can allow him to maintain a sense of "alive" on the Lost Home, so that he will not gradually lose his humanity on this ghost ship-although he does not know if there is any hidden danger in this regard, but he is aware of it. After the state of the Lost Home was not as stable as he imagined, he has been consciously maintaining this habit of "maintaining a human way of life on board".

Duncan lay down like this, closed his eyes, listened to the whispers of the wind and waves from the sea, and felt the slight shaking of the big ship under his body, and controlled himself to relax little by little.

……

On the Brilliant Star, in the captain's dormitory decorated with a feminine atmosphere, Lucrezia, who was wearing a silk nightgown, suddenly sat up from the bed.

Her hair was a bit messy, and she looked a little tired and irritable. When she got up, she was holding a huge rabbit doll that was half the height of a person, with a funny shape and a hint of weirdness.

The doll is made of pink and blue fabric, with scars running across its face, and a strange blood-like red color on its jagged mouth. The moment Lucrezia got up, the rabbit doll He moved slightly, then turned his head slightly, looked at his hostess with button-stitched eyes, a little girl's voice came from his cotton-filled body: "Miss, I thought you fell asleep successfully..."

Lucrezia glanced at the clock next to her, and her tone was a little bored: "Let's count it as a few minutes of sleep, and then I was awakened by a strange dream... What time is it now?"

"Two hours before sunrise," the rabbit doll said while jumping from the hostess' arms to the ground. After pouring out a small glass of fine wine from the captain's collection, he held it to Lucrezia, "You can still sleep for a while—this will help you calm down."

Lucrezia took the glass and drank it down, but she still stood up: "No need, lying down will only increase your irritability... Clean up."

"Yes, mistress."

The rabbit doll with the voice of a little girl answered crisply, took the wine glass handed over by the hostess and put it away, and then began to bounce around to make the bed, looking familiar.

At the same time, Lucrezia snapped her fingers casually, and the lights in the room came on. She exhaled slowly, walked to the dressing table, and tapped on the mirror with her fingernails. one of the drawers—the drawer swung open.

A toy sailor carved out of wood jumped out. The sailor was wearing a navy uniform from the classical era and held a small command knife in his hand. He first bowed to Lucrezia, and then stood on the top of the drawer Wielding his command knife, he gave shrill commands.

A large group of toy soldiers ran out of the drawer. First, the whole team quickly rolled their names, and then ran to the side to pick up combs, hand mirrors, water glasses, and toothbrushes, and quickly and flexibly ran to Lucrezia or On the back of the seat behind him, he began to wash up for the hostess in the morning.

Lucrezia sat listlessly in front of the dressing table, letting the dolls toss around, and she herself was fighting against the exhausted pressure caused by a night of insomnia and cranky thinking, while thinking about something related to the Lost Country After a while, she took a deep breath and forced her mind to recover.

And at this moment, a tiny ray of golden light suddenly spilled in from the gap in the curtain not far away, reflecting the vision of the "Sea Witch".

Lucrezia didn't react at first when she saw the ray of light, but after only two or three seconds, her eyes froze suddenly, and then she suddenly raised her eyes to look at the mechanical clock next to her.

One hour to sunrise.

This is not the time for the sun to rise!
She stood up suddenly.

The toy sailors were confused for a while, and then they packed up their things and reorganized their formation with ease. The rabbit doll who had already made the bed noticed the movement of the hostess, and ran over bouncingly: "Miss, the sky outside It seems to be bright!"

"It's not daylight now," said Lucrezia quickly, walking quickly to the window. "Where are we now?"

"It's still going according to the route scheduled last night," the rabbit doll said quickly, "it's already approaching the position where the 'big guy' fell from the previous observation!"

The moment the rabbit doll's voice fell, Lucrezia had already pulled open the thick curtains, and then pushed open the windows reinforced with fine metal grids.

There is a layer of thin and hazy fog floating on the sea outside the window, which is the most common scenery in the border area, and in the depths of that thin and hazy fog, a large-scale, vaguely diffused pale golden shimmer is It is floating quietly on the sea surface, and it is temporarily impossible to judge how far it is from the Bright Star.

A luminous behemoth floating on the sea.

Lucrezia stared at that direction, then took a deep breath, her body suddenly turned into a pile of flying colored papers—the colored papers swept out the window, flew across the deck, passed through the stairs, and flew to the Located in the cab on the upper middle deck.

In the cockpit, the wind-up puppet Luni wearing a maid costume is steering the helm. She immediately sensed the approach of the hostess, and she let go of the steering wheel when the colored paper flew into the circle. The next second, Lucrezia The figure has already condensed from the colored paper, and reached out to take over the rudder.

"Mistress, I just wanted to send someone to call you," Lu Ni said, stepping aside. "The golden light suddenly appeared from the fog. Judging from the direction, it should be the 'falling object' we were tracking."

"Raise to full speed, all crew members are on standby, and the stern part is ready to sneak into the spirit world at any time," Lucrecia said quickly, "Are there enough spiritual dust and witch oil reserves?"

Luni responded quickly: "The reserves are sufficient, and your order has been conveyed."

Lucrezia nodded, and immediately after, under the command of the captain, the Bright Star fully came to life.

A large number of wind-up sailors, golems, and ceramic soldiers rushed to their respective jobs, and the special paddle wheel structures on both sides of the hull also began to rotate at an accelerated speed. The engine device that seemed to be behind the times gradually released more power than modern propeller engines. The power quickly increased the speed of the whole ship, and in the second half of the ship, the ghostly "original hull" became more illusory and blurred, and there were dark hair-like stripes gradually extending from the stern to the The surrounding sea area spread out, and from a distance, it seemed as if a dark wake extended from the rear of the Brilliant Star.

Under Lucrezia's personal control, the whole ship actually presents a posture where magic and machinery coexist, beauty, elegance, horror and ugliness are mixed together!
And as the speed of the Bright Star further increased, the huge golden luminous body floating between the mist and the sea finally appeared more and more clearly in Lucrezia's eyes.

What is presented at the same time is its increasingly large real scale.

Even Luni, the clockwork puppet, gradually opened her eyes wide, and couldn't help exclaiming in a low voice: "My God... Mistress, what is that?"

Lucrezia didn't speak, but just stared at the front, staring at the huge golden phantom that gradually emerged from the mist, which was already like a small mountain peak.

It is so large that it is almost impossible to judge its complete outline from a single point of view, and it is so majestic and perfect that it does not seem like anything human beings can build.

A huge and complex golden geometric body quietly floats on the sea surface, emitting a soft and breathtaking light golden shimmer all over its body. Its height is almost three times higher than the highest flagpole of the Bright Star, and on both sides are Extending out like a city wall, its upper part is slightly tilted outward, like a terrifying cliff, and there are no extra trivial protrusions on its appearance, and every part looks natural.

And as the distance got closer, Lucrezia and Luni began to observe more details of the behemoth.

"It seems to be translucent?" Doll Luni lay curiously in front of the open viewing window, "Looks... like a piece of glowing stained glass?"

"...No, it seems that it's not just as simple as being transparent..." Lucrezia shook her head, her eyes were staring ahead without blinking, as if she could see something inconsistent with the edge of the huge glowing geometry. At this moment, a small black dot suddenly flew out of the nearby fog and entered her field of vision.

It was a seabird—even in the boundless sea, even in this border full of strange phenomena, there are still such things.

Rather, it is precisely because they do not possess complex intelligence like humans that these "wild animals" live better than those brave and powerful explorers in the weird border waters.

Lucrezia's eyes were attracted by the seabird, and she noticed that the poor guy seemed to be confused by the golden light on the sea, and rushed straight to the shimmering "mountain" in a panic. ".

However, in the next second, the expected tragic crash did not happen—the bird flew directly into the slightly sloping "cliff".

A moment later, out of the corner of Lucrezia's eye, she saw the bird fly out the other direction again, seemingly intact.

Lu Ni also saw this scene, and the clockwork puppet muttered in surprise: "...is that a phantom?"

(End of this chapter)