The speed of the Brilliant Star gradually decreased, and finally cautiously stopped on the surface of the sea hundreds of meters away from the translucent "cliff" that emitted a shimmering light.

However, the distance of hundreds of meters was so insignificant compared to the scale of the behemoth, and visually, Luni still felt as if the Bright Star had been pasted in front of the "cliff", and the magnificent geometry like a mountain in front of her was almost crushing the momentum, if it were an ordinary person standing here...... I'm afraid I've been suffocating for a long time.

“…… It's spectacular," the clockwork puppet couldn't help but sigh with his head tilted, "and it's beautiful." ”

It was indeed magnificent and beautiful, and if its weirdness was ignored, it could even be regarded as a magnificent spectacle, enough to inspire a good artist in his life, or to make a poet compose countless poems for this spectacle.

It resembles an angular mountain carved from pale golden amber, or an extraordinarily regular geometric ice floe, which floats in the water with a mist of light and a thin mist around its surface, outlining a dreamlike atmosphere.

And by all indications, it was indeed a "dream" - it had no substance, and although it did exist there, it seemed to be a shadow of a huge scale.

"Mistress," Luni couldn't help but look back, "what do you think this is?" ”

“…… I don't know, I just know that it fell from the sky. Lucrecia confessed her ignorance, recalling the first time the Bright Star tracked it down - the day before, in the last hours of the day, the Bright Star had observed a large, hazy luminous object suddenly falling from the sky, tearing through the clouds and disappearing into the depths of the border seas, and she and her ship had been tracking it ever since.

But apart from the obvious fact that she "fell from the sky", she knew nothing about this phantom extraterrestrial visitor.

Lucrecia looked closely at the base of the massive geometry and confirmed something else:

This thing is very light, very, very light, it floats on the surface of the sea, and the bottom half only sinks a little bit into the water, but it is the little sign of sinking into the water, which shows that this thing that looks like a "phantom" also has a little mass, not a simple shadow.

A little quality means that it can be bound by real matter...... With the power of the Bright Star, maybe even be able to tow this thing away?

Is it possible to drag it back to the borders of the civilized world and organize a real team of professionals to study it? The Explorers' Guild should be happy to help......

But if this is the case, how can it be done in practice? How do you drag a huge, piercing phantom? Or is it ...... Deep within this luminous geometry lies the core of an entity, and the core structure is the source of its mass?

Lucrecia's mind raced as Lucrea's voice rang out beside her, "Shall we probe its interior?" ”

"Proceed with caution first." Lucrecia said, raising her hand and biting her finger, a drop of blood oozing from her fingertip, and then slowly drifting forward, and suddenly "popping" when she was halfway there, turning into an exaggerated cloud of smoke.

The smoke cleared, and another "Lucrethea" appeared in the cab - but only a ghostly apparition, dressed in a long white and broken dress, with a dull and eerie face, and a translucent texture, floating in the air gloomily.

Lucrecia nodded to the apparition, which turned around without saying a word, and flew towards the "mountain" a few hundred meters away.

Lunee watched with some nervousness, watching the ghostly apparition quickly cross the misty sea and disappear silently into the mountain.

Nothing happened.

"Mistress?" Luni looked back at her master, "What's inside?" ”

"Light and heat, warm, but not scorching, bright, but not dazzling...... There is no wind or waves inside, and the sea below seems to be calmer than 'outside'," Lucretia said slowly as she carefully sensed the message from the phantom clone, "Now it seems that at least the shallow area of the 'mountain' is safe, and I am speeding up to move inward. ”

Luni nodded, although she was just a clockwork puppet, she had a "soul" that was closer to a human than any of the crew members on the ship, and the tension could not help but rise at this moment, she reached behind her back and turned her clockwork key twice, using this method to relieve the slight tremors caused by the tension of the various parts in her body, and then waited for a long time before she suddenly saw the mistress's expression change.

Lucrecia frowned slightly, looking up ahead.

"I'm in the deepest depths," said the "sea witch," "and there's a core. ”

"Core? What kind? ”

"It's a huge stone ball," Lucrecia said with a strange expression, "or at least a material that looks like stone, grayish-white, with many regular grooves on the surface, about ten meters in diameter, suspended above the sea......"

As she spoke, Lucretia frowned, as if she was giving some order to the ghostly apparition that had entered the depths of the luminous geometry, and then continued: "It can be touched, it's an entity. ”

"It's a physical ......" Luni was stunned for a moment, and her years of experience in getting along with her made her quickly react to the hostess's meaning, "Do you want to...... Drag it back? ”

"The elven scholars of Breeze should be interested in this thing," Lucrecia said calmly, "and the pattern on the surface of the stone ball has obvious regularity and implies a complex geometric structure, I guess...... Someone who is good at math should be able to see something out of it. ”

"So how are we going to 'drag' this thing back?" Luni looked at her mistress with some bewilderment, "With a strong enough rope or chain?" There are spare anchor cables on board, but they may not be long enough - the projection of the luminous body is so large that the distance from here to its core is probably beyond the limit of the anchor cables......"

Lucrecia looked at the glowing "mountain" in silence, and after half a minute, it seemed as if she had made up her mind: "Let's go in and pull it." ”

“…… Are you serious? ”

"My curiosity has come up."

“…… Well, you're serious. ”

……

Duncan slept in the captain's bedroom of the Lost and had a brief and bizarre dream.

It was incredible, his body didn't even need sleep, let alone dreams, and in fact he hadn't had ever dreamed since he came to the ship—there had been some messy and trivial dreams in Plain's body, but never as clear and impressive as this brief strange dream.

In the dream, he saw a meteor, a meteor that suddenly appeared during the day.

He stood on the bow of the Lost Place, and there was a dead silence on the ship, neither the noise of the goat's head in his head, nor the noise of Alice fighting with buckets and mops on the deck, nor even the whole endless sea, no waves, no wind.

The whole world seemed to fall into a dead silence, and in this silence, huge luminous objects fell from the sky—equally silent.

One by one, the luminaries fell, falling on the calm surface of the Infinite Sea, obviously an incomparably large falling object, but it also did not stir up the slightest movement, as if a phantom fell on another phantom, and those luminaries gradually became rain, and finally turned into a terrifying and grotesque meteor shower—countless luminous bodies gradually spread over the entire sea, enveloping the Lost in a ray of light.

However, the sky dimmed little by little with the fall of countless light bodies, and at the end of the dream, the meteor shower gradually stopped, and the sky had become pitch black.

Duncan looked up at the end of the dream and saw only a dark red mottled void in the sky, as if the fire had not been extinguished in the darkness, silently looking down on the earthly world like a dying pupil.

Duncan's eyes opened suddenly, and the deep impression of the absurd and strange dream was still strongly still in his mind.

He was amazed that he could dream on a boat, and even more shocked at the strange sight he had seen in his dream—

Silent worlds, silent meteors, dark and dead skies, and terrifying hollows like pupils looking down on the earth...... Why did he dream of such a strange scene? What does this dream mean?!

Duncan slowly calmed down and sat up from the bed, rubbing his forehead a little irritably.

On this strange and boundless sea, on the Lost Homeland, he couldn't believe that the dream was just a simple dream—something must have affected him, or his "intuition" had a premonition, that would allow him to see that scene in his dream.

In his irritated thoughts, he frowned slightly.

Could it be related to the "world countdown" that I just learned? What does it have to do with the "truth" about the end of the world that the "Captain Duncan" who fell into madness a hundred years ago came into contact with?

Is it because I suddenly learned this information and made associations, or because the residual memories of this body suddenly became restless? Does his own contact with Tiriam and Lucrecia have anything to do with this dream?

Duncan tapped his forehead lightly, and then reached for the wine bottle on the cabinet next to him, ready to use the power of alcohol to calm his mind, but as soon as he reached out, his gaze swept over the wall clock on the wall not far away, and the movement stopped.

The hands on the wall clock were still.

Stand still at the moment when the sunrise is still a minute.

It was dim outside the window, and there was no glow of dawn, but there was no cold glow from the creation of the world.

The oil lamp flame in the bedroom is the only "moving thing" that is still burning calmly, but the light it emits is faintly pale, making the lighting in the whole room look a little weird.

Duncan's gaze swept calmly over all of this, and all the unusual phenomena were in full view.

Something is clearly not right...... Are you still dreaming?

He quickly ruled out the possibility - with consciousness regained, he could tell whether he was dreaming or not.

Duncan frowned, resisting the urge to open the window to take a look outside the ship, and instead got up and walked to the wooden bedroom door.

Let's go to the chart room first and see if the goat's head knows what's going on.

He pushed open the door to the chart room and looked at the nautical table with the charts and goat's head.

The goat's head is not there.

(End of chapter)