After standing for a long time in front of the "room", which was entirely a jumble of lines and patches of color, Duncan turned his head slightly, and observed the reaction of the goat's head on the table out of the corner of his eye.

From the goat's head's point of view, he should be able to see the room by now—he wondered how the goat's head would react when he saw the strange and chaotic room.

But it didn't react, it just kept its dark eyes calmly in Duncan's direction without any emotion, like a real piece of wood when it wasn't making a sound.

Duncan turned around, and after a brief hesitation, he finally took a step towards the eerie room of the stray lines of the pile.

At the same time, he is also ready to forcibly ignite the flames if the situation is not right, wake up Sirantis and get out of this "dream".

But the worst scenario was not to be achieved.

He stepped through the door, and a translucent ripple of water rippled through the entire chaotic room, and then there was no other reaction, the room itself did not collapse, and he himself did not seem to be affected by the chaotic colors and lines.

Duncan stepped deeper into the room, closing the door behind him—the unsettling silent gaze of the eerie "goathead" was finally blocked out.

Surrounded by stumbling colored lines and scribbling of semblance of furniture, Duncan cautiously observed everything in the room, feeling the strange atmosphere around him, and after a moment, his gaze finally fell on the corner of the room.

Several translucent colored lines vibrate there, connecting to form a geometric silhouette, and the center of the outline that quivers at the edges seems to be filled with a layer of calm water, faintly reflecting the surrounding scene.

Duncan walked over to the geometric silhouette and stretched out his hand to gently brush the calm "water", and wisps of dark green flames spread across the plane, and after a few moments, the reflection of the surface became clear—it turned into a mirror.

In the next second, a shadow floated in the center of the mirror, and Agatha's figure quietly emerged from it.

The lady in the mirror looked in amazement at this strange place outside the mirror.

"This ...... That's what's going on behind that door?! ”

Duncan nodded slightly, "That's right, that's what's going on inside the door - the 'deepest' here." ”

"It looks ...... here So weird," Agatha frowned, "how can this be?" ”

Duncan seemed to have figured out something, and he said lightly: "Because on the real-world Lost Country, the goathead never dared to peek into the captain's bedroom, and it didn't know what it was like in this room. ”

At least, it didn't know what had happened to the "Captain" in this room—something Duncan hadn't said in his mind.

Agatha instantly understood the meaning of Duncan's words.

"You mean...... Was this 'Lost Country' really 'created' by a real-world goat's head? "It turns the shadow of the Lost into a ship that sails through darkness and fog, but it can't restore the parts of the ship that it doesn't understand......"

Speaking of this, Agatha suddenly frowned, and couldn't help but shake her head: "But in the real world, the goathead acts like he doesn't know anything about this, and how does it do all this......"

"Maybe it really doesn't know anything," Duncan said calmly, his gaze slowly sweeping around, "I have a bold conjecture now: this ship may be a dream of it." ”

"Its dreams?!" Agatha was stunned for a moment, then remembered something, and a puzzled look appeared on her face, "But it clearly says that it never dreams, and it never rests, and I have seen it myself—the first mate is always awake, including the last time the Nameless Dream appeared, and it has been at the helm, as usual." ”

"Because it doesn't even know it's dreaming, and doesn't even know it's dreaming, or even ......," Duncan said at this sudden pause, and an idea even bolder than the one before came to his mind irrepressibly, and he hesitated for a few seconds before he spoke softly as if talking to himself, "Perhaps, our 'first mate' never woke up." ”

After realizing the meaning of the captain's words, Agatha's eyes slowly widened.

Duncan spoke again after a moment of silence: "Well, now there's only one last question. ”

Agatha subconsciously repeated: "The last question? ”

Duncan looked up at the door that stood in the middle of a mess of lines, and his eyes seemed to look through the door, at the "goat's head" on the table outside, and only after a long time did he say to himself: "Sassoca is dead, died a long, long time ago......"

……

Night fell in the desert - very, very suddenly, and the surroundings became dark, and the passive light that had filled the sky faded as if it had been absorbed by something, and the silence of the night covered the entire sea of sand and the vast ruins in the sea of sand.

Now, all that remained in the sky was that large, unsettling dark red "rift", the rift was like blood, the edges were like mist, it covered the sky, and exuded a huge sense of coercion.

Even a judge as strong-willed as Vana subconsciously avoided looking up at the "scar of the world".

But the giants of their peers seem to have long since adapted to all this.

At the edge of the ruins of the city, they found a corner that was not afraid of the wind and sand, which had once been part of a stately building, but now only a few dark walls of molten and twisted were left, and the giant picked up many gray-white stones from the nearby ruins, piled them up in a corner of the sheltered place, and then picked up two of them, and beat them very patiently.

The dark silence of the desert and the scars of the dark red oppressive world seemed to no longer exist for him, and all that seemed to be left in his eyes was the striking stones, and the sound of "da, da, da" echoed monotonously in the night, and spread far and wide.

Vanna sat under the sheltered wall, watching the giant's actions curiously, and after a long time, she couldn't help but speak, "What are you doing?" ”

"Ignite the fire," said the giant faintly, "here, the night will be cold. ”

“…… But those are just stones," Vana said with a puzzled tone as she looked at the gray-white stones the giant had gathered, "...... Are they stones that can be burned? ”

"It's an ordinary stone," the giant didn't look back, "there's nothing else here but sand, only stone." ”

Vanna opened her mouth: "That ......"

Before she could finish her sentence, she was interrupted by a sudden leap of sparks—small sparks burst out from between the stones struck by the giant's hand, and landed among the pale piles of stone on the ground, and then the sparks turned into flames, and bright flames rose from the rocks and grew stronger.

Vana watched the scene in incomprehension.

"Fire, and stones, they are the most important things," the giant watched silently at the flame burning in the rocks, as if to say to Vanna, and as if to himself, "the flame that ignited was the eyes that opened in the night, and the stones were broken far better than the fangs and claws, and when they set the branches on fire and struck the stones against each other, the unthinkable happened......"

The giant turned his head and lowered his gaze: "Traveler, you know what? The history of civilization began with fire and stone. ”

Vana listened to the giant's words as if she didn't understand, and nodded slowly.

Her cultural lessons weren't very good, but she wasn't so good that she couldn't understand the meaning of the giant's words, she just didn't understand...... Why did the giant suddenly say this to himself?

Does this have anything to do with "stones can ignite"?

But the giant apparently had no further explanation, and he soon returned to his "work" - he dug his hand into the stone pile, as if he did not care about the burning of the flames, he took a blackened stone from the fire, knocked off one of its corners, and then the giant took the great staff that had been placed aside, and began to carve something on the surface of the staff patiently using the sharp corners of the stone.

Due to the hard texture of the staff and the fragile corners of the stones, the carving of the giants was slow and slow, often requiring many times to leave a notched mark on the staff, and the stone had to be re-hammered frequently to create a new "carving knife".

On the surface of the huge staff, there were dense nicks...... That's how those nicks were carved?!

Even after watching it for a moment, Vana realized that it was almost a difficult, desperingly slow job, and she couldn't imagine how long it took the giant and how much patience it took to leave the countless nicks on the huge cane—something she thought she wouldn't be able to do even if she had an endless lifespan!

Yet the giant only carved in silence and patience, using the only tool he could find in this dead world, a stone that had been scorched by fire.

Vanna finally couldn't help but break the silence: "...... What are you doing? ”

"Record," said the giant slowly, "record what I still remember, record what has happened in this world. ”

He stopped, placed the staff in front of Vanna, and raised his hand to point to the end of the staff, where there was a string of fine symbols.

"Here, they learned to use fire."

The giant whispered, with a hint of pride in his voice.

Vanna looked in the direction of the giant's finger and could see the fine symbols—only now, she could see the details.

Simple lines outline two small human figures, standing in front of an abstract drawing of a fire, holding their hands high, as if they are jumping for joy and worshipping the fire.

For some reason, Vana suddenly felt a heavy force pressing on her heart, and she subconsciously looked up along the cane, looking at the dense symbols—she soon realized that they were not all pictograms, and along the cane upwards, those pictograms gradually became abstract and unfamiliar words, and the words gradually evolved, gradually into various forms, some into letters, and some still retained the structure of pictures......

Her gaze finally rested on a small blank space at the end of the cane, where the campfire crackled and the light of the fire reflected and jumped.

Vanna looked up slowly, her gaze moving along the rough beaten stones and wizened arms, eventually landing on the giant's face.

The wrinkled face was calmly staring at the fire beside it, motionless, like another stone.

(End of chapter)