Chapter 38 Dialogue

Duncan casually walked to the edge of the White Oak's deck, peering down at the sea below.

Both the White Oak and the Vanishing were now out of the spirit realm, resting on the calm, azure surface of the normal sea. The waters around the White Oak were as clear as glass, while the Black Oak, shrouded in mist and darkness, was reflected in the water like a shadow. Faint lights flickered within the dim, hazy image of the ship.

After a long silence, Duncan retracted his gaze from the sea, a hint of emotion in his voice. "An interesting phenomenon, Lawrence. You've experienced an incredible adventure."

"Indeed... incredible," Lawrence replied, standing respectfully and cautiously beside him. "I've made my living on these seas for decades and have seen many bizarre things, but this experience with Frostholm far surpasses anything before. But no matter what, I brought Martha back. All the adventures were worth it."

"Your wife, Martha—what exactly is her state now? And how did these two ships, controlled by the two of you, establish a connection?"

"She and her Black Oak are now equivalent to the White Oak's shadow," Lawrence answered honestly. "As you can see, she's on that reflected ship. But when the situation requires, the Black Oak can also enter the real world in phantom form and sail alongside the White Oak, or the two ships can invert their light and shadow. In that case, we can navigate deep within the spirit realm, avoiding obstacles in the real world—we did it once when passing through the Frostholm war zone, and it worked well."

"These were all told to you by your wife? I mean, these... techniques."

"Yes," Lawrence nodded. "Martha wandered in the mirror space beneath the Frostholm sea for more than a decade. She knows many things. In the previous operation, she was our guide."

Duncan was silent for a moment, just quietly watching the reflection below. After a long time, he suddenly broke the silence. "Can I talk to her alone?"

Lawrence paused, a look of surprise on his face, followed by nervousness and hesitation. "This... may I ask..."

"Don't worry, I just need to understand every one of my subordinates. The Black Oak is indeed a bit strange, but on this sea, no ship is stranger than the Vanishing. I have a high tolerance in this regard—provided that the Black Oak has no secrets."

Lawrence finally breathed a sigh of relief. Although still hesitant, he nodded. "Okay, I'll arrange it and tell Martha."

Duncan nodded slightly, then glanced at a spot not far away.

Alice and "Sailor" were squatting on the deck, enthusiastically poking at a small bug they had caught somewhere with small wooden sticks, discussing whether the bug had a soul.

Alice thought not, because she couldn't see the lines on the bug. "Sailor" insisted that it did, because he had heard that Bartok's garden also had bugs. He even thought there would be "little guardians" as big as bugs, specifically responsible for taking the souls of mosquitoes that died in the mortal world in the summer to the resting place, to bite those buried in June and July...

... Both "people" were stunned by each other's arguments. It was like watching two imbeciles.

Even a single glance felt like a contamination of the mind.

Duncan silently watched the undisturbed scene on the deck. Lawrence also watched silently. After a long time, Duncan shook his head. "Let them play."

"... I think so too. It's better than continuing to hang on the flagpole and wail like ghosts."

Soon, Lawrence ordered the preparation of a room on the White Oak where no one would disturb them, and a huge mirror was set up in the room.

After the irrelevant personnel left, Duncan turned around and quietly stared at the mirror, which was as tall as a person. "I want to talk to you," he said to the mirror.

The next second, the mirror surface turned pitch black, as if a thick, ink-like fluid suddenly covered the entire surface, and a fluctuating shadow gradually formed an outline in the depths of the darkness.

A woman wearing a white shirt, brown vest, and trousers walked out of the fluctuating shadows.

"I heard from Lawrence that you want to talk to me alone," the woman responded calmly, looking at Duncan. "It seems... you noticed."

"There are too many impurities. The repeatedly overlapping shadows obscure the details that don't belong to the Black Oak, but that's not enough to hide it from my flames," Duncan said slowly, then reached out and grabbed a chair from the side. He sat down, looking at the figure in the mirror—and the vast darkness behind that figure, tangled like some kind of phantom curtain. "How much of it is 'Martha'?"

"... Less than one-thousandth."

"One-thousandth, a very small number," Duncan stared at the other party, and that vast, chaotic "mixture" calmly met his gaze. "Even so, you still call yourself Martha, and it seems... you really have a 'self-identity' with this identity."

"Because 'Martha' is the only complete personality among them," the "female adventurer" in the mirror replied. "Without the support of a personality, memories are just pale books. Flipping through them is not enough to form a 'self'. The vast and muddled memories have been reorganized countless times in blind disorder. Finally, I think 'Martha' is the only 'representative' who can manage all of this—I need to become Martha, Martha needs to exist."

"So, you are a hybrid. You mixed far more things than you told Lawrence. A significant portion of the minds that fell into that sea over the past fifty years have flowed into your 'body', or in other words... did you devour those minds?"

"Devour... that's a very aggressive way of putting it, but I don't think so. I've never devoured anything, and I'm not interested in souls. It's the vast power deep within that mirror space that's devouring everything, and those 'memories' that make up me are just the remnants left after being crushed by that vast power. Small tributaries will converge together, like dust gathering into a ball. I don't exist before those fragments, but rather those fragments condensed into me—Martha, just a ghost awakened from the fragments, belatedly taking on the role of a collector."

"Remnants left after being crushed..." Duncan frowned. "Why wasn't Martha crushed?"

"Because Lawrence came to this sea," the female adventurer in the mirror smiled slightly. "He is favored by you, so Martha is also favored by you."

Duncan didn't speak, falling into a long period of thought. After a long time, he broke the silence thoughtfully. "The world in the mirror is discontinuous..."

"Yes, the world in the mirror is discontinuous. Space is discontinuous, and time is also discontinuous—the ending is born before the beginning. You created Martha, and Martha is now answering your questions."

Duncan breathed a sigh of relief.

"A vast mixture of data... this can explain why you know so many things," he brought the topic back. "Not only because you wandered in that mirror space for a long enough time, but also because you contain enough 'memories'... then back to the initial topic, is less than one-thousandth of 'Martha' really enough to support your stable personality and allow you to maintain your current self-awareness forever? Will there be a day when your 'collector' personality will be submerged in that vast sea of memories, will you forget your name and become a chaotic, vast, and dangerous wraith?"

The female adventurer raised her eyes, and in her calm expression, she seemed to have mustered great courage. "Like you once were?"

"No, I went further than you at the beginning. The sub-space is a deeper and darker place than the mirror world—therefore, I was also more dangerous than you at the time," Duncan did not mind the other party's bold statement, but maintained his usual peaceful tone. "So, I know better how much harm an out-of-control wraith can cause—even if this wraith is a little 'safer' than I was."

The female adventurer in the mirror fell silent for a moment.

After a long time, she suddenly opened her mouth. "Do you think I can be considered 'Martha' now?"

Duncan thought for a few seconds.

For this vast and mixed hybrid, Martha was only one-thousandth of it, but for the personality that identified itself as "Martha", what was contained in this hybrid was one hundred percent of her.

Who exactly this vast hybrid "was", and what state its future personality would be in, seemed to be completely in a "pending" state—there was a probability of going out of control, but its current personality and self-awareness undoubtedly existed.

Duncan hesitated for a moment, but at the moment when this hesitation arose, a scene that seemed real and illusory suddenly appeared in his mind—

The sea breeze was gentle, the waves were calm.

He stood on the water surface, and the blue waves spread out under his feet.

Fish leaped out of the water in the bright sunlight, swimming and surrounding him leisurely in the surrounding air. He lowered his head and looked at his feet.

The gently rippling water surface looked clear and transparent, but its depths seemed to be shrouded in mist, making it difficult to distinguish reality from illusion and difficult to see through.

New things leaped out of the water, swimming around him. They were fish.

Duncan suddenly woke up and looked at the mirror in front of him.

The shadows in the mirror swelled and squirmed, as if waiting for an answer.

"... Ms. Martha," after a long time, Duncan finally broke the silence, "welcome to the Vanishing Fleet."

The mass of darkness filled with chaos and disorder, completely lacking any tangible outline, suddenly contracted and once again transformed into the female adventurer wearing a white shirt, brown vest, and trousers.

The miscellaneous shadows behind her had calmed down.

At the same time, on the deck of the White Oak, Lawrence, who was watching over the Alice doll and the "Sailor" mummy poking at the bug like a temporary guardian, also lowered his head in confusion to look at his body.

Those uncontrollable rising and spreading green flames were rapidly converging, and his body, which had been passively maintaining a ghostly form for the past three days, was also rapidly recovering. And in his perception, those "ghostly fires" that would be activated for inexplicable reasons from time to time seemed to have truly gained peace for the first time, and become a controllable part of his body.

It seemed that some "stimulus source" that caused the spirit fire to be frequently and passively activated had suddenly disappeared. "... Under control?"

Lawrence blinked and murmured to himself in confusion.