"There! There it is! A young man with brown half-long hair and a pirate-style turban shouted as he pointed to an island not far away.

He was standing on the edge of the deck of a three-masted galleon, the rolling waves engulfing most of his voice.

A middle-aged man with a black blindfold in one eye reached out to hold the side of the boat, frowned, and muttered to himself in surprise and suspicion:

"I don't think there are islands like this in this waterway......"

It's not once or twice that their ship has come and gone to this waterway.

The young man who had just shouted responded excitedly:

"This shows that usually it is hidden, and it only appears at certain moments.

"There must be treasure on such an island!

"Captain, in the words of that eccentric monk, our chance has come!"

He speaks the Rune language, and "chance" is a patchwork of two words.

"That monk is full of words we don't understand, just listen to his words." The middle-aged man wearing a one-eyepatch raised his hand and touched his short pale yellow hair, which was slightly messy, "And I often tell you that treasure often comes with danger. ”

As he spoke, he pointed to his right eye, which was blocked by an eyepatch:

"That's tuition."

The young man in the pirate turban said sincerely:

"But, captain, isn't that what we're going out for? For the treasure! ”

They are a group of treasure hunters from different places, and of course, they also occasionally work part-time pirates, borrowing something to eat, drink, and use from passing merchant ships, after all, ideals cannot replace bread.

The captain was silent for a while and said:

"Wait for four or five people to go up to the island to have a look, and the others will be ready to sail at any time."

The young man's eyes lit up:

"Agreed? Captain, you agreed! ”

The captain said "heh":

"Wimmer, if it weren't for the lack of other options, no one of my age would continue to be treasure hunters."

He looked to be in his thirties, but his blue eyes were slightly vicissitudes.

"Okay." Wimmer raised his hands, "Listen to you." ”

He immediately became excited:

"Then I'll call Old Cotton!"

Old Cuton is the ship's first mate, believes in the "god of knowledge and wisdom", and knows many languages, and if you don't take him with you, it is likely that you will find treasures and throw them away as garbage.

More importantly, the strength of the old Ketton is also very strong.

By the time the ship docked and arrived at the pier, which seemed to have been abandoned for a long time, an expedition team of four people had assembled by the gangway.

They were Captain Gray, First Officer Cotton, Boatswain Palve, and Senior Sailor Wimer.

"No one ......," Parvi said to herself, looking into the distance, rather regretfully.

Today's weather in the Tempest Sea was good, and the visibility under the blue was extremely high, and the small harbor was in full view in front of her eyes.

It was so silent that it seemed like years had passed.

"There are talents who are even more terrifying!" Wimmer answered.

Such a hidden island means more if it is still inhabited.

Parvi wears a white shirt and brown bib wide-legged pants, a pair of beautiful light blue eyes and a slightly neutral countenance.

She glared at Wimmer:

"You want to stay and clean the deck?"

Wimmer shrugged his shoulders and closed his mouth.

As a woman, able to be a boatswain and manage a large number of unruly crewmembers, Parvi would never have said anything threatening.

At this time, Captain Gray, who had been looking around, gave an order:

"Ashore!"

He then admonished:

"When I first explore, don't touch anything, just watch and listen."

"No problem!" Wimmer was the first to burst out of the boat and run down the gangway to the dock.

Halfway through the run, he jumped up excitedly and glided to the ground like a big bird.

The resulting sound reverberated in all directions, interspersed with a slight echo.

Behind him, Gray, Old Cotton, and Parvey descended in turn, all cautious.

"If you are so reckless and self-determined, like an uneducated wild dog, I will tie you up and hang you to the stern of the boat to fish for sharks!" Parvi walked quickly over to Wimmer and gave a warning in a suppressed voice.

Wimer nodded solemnly, then muttered:

"Big sister, with your character, you should join the Storm Church instead of believing in the 'Goddess of the Night'......"

Parvi didn't speak, and as she glanced around, she followed Captain Gray and First Mate Kerton Sr. as they walked along.

The port was not large, with only a lighthouse, two improvised docks, five warehouses, and several buildings that served as hotels, restaurants, bars, and police stations, and it didn't take long for the four of them to walk around.

Except for no one, everything seems to be working fine here.

Wimmer looked at the table in the house facing the street through a fairly clear glass window, and did not speak for a long time.

With his character, his expression became a little dignified at this time.

Inside the house, on the dining table, there was a cup with a brown-black liquid and two pieces of moldy toast.

Next to them were several neatly folded newspapers.

It looked like the host was about to have breakfast and suddenly had to rush out of the house in a hurry and didn't even have time to open the newspaper.

After that, he never returned.

In this case, if there is only one case, it is normal, after all, accidents are inevitable, but the whole port is a similar scene, it is inevitable that people will stand on their heads and think about it.

In that instant, all the inhabitants of the area, nay, all living creatures, seemed to evaporate.

"They haven't been gone for long...... Captain Gray's slightly hoarse voice broke the silence that had filled the group.

Parvi subconsciously answered:

"Indeed, if this port had been abandoned for a long time, that food wouldn't just be moldy."

It seems as if only a few days or weeks have passed since the strange incident that took place in the port.

Old Ketton withdrew his gaze from the side of the street, nodded lightly, and said:

"That's what the plants here say."

The first mate had obvious wrinkles at the corners of his mouth, his hair was mottled with a little natural curls, he was dressed in a white robe, and he had brass-framed glasses on the bridge of his nose.

"Huh?" Wimmer didn't react for a moment.

He then looked at the place where Old Cuton had just looked, and quickly understood why the other man had said that.

There weren't many weeds in the harbor, and there were a few plain or showy mushrooms growing here and there on the wooden buildings, which seemed to have existed in the first place.

Clearly, nature hasn't had enough time to invade the area.

Seeing that Wimmer showed a look of sudden realization, Old Cutton no longer explained, turned his head to look at Captain Gray, and said solemnly:

"I'm worried that something might happen if I'm here for a long time."

"What accident? Are we going to ...... out of thin air, too" Wimmer had not finished speaking, and a wheat-colored palm had an extra palm on his mouth.

The palm pushed against his head, pinning him against the wall.

"There's no next time!" Parvi glared at Wimmer and said in a deep voice.

Wimmer nodded with difficulty, indicating that he understood.

When Parvey let go, he muttered quietly:

"It's not like you, big sister, you didn't hit the back of my head against the wall......"

Parvi "hehe":

"I'm afraid that the movement will be too loud, and I will 'wake up' the weirdness hidden here."

Captain Gray didn't care about the interaction between the two, took out the silver-white pocket watch, snapped the lid open, and took a look:

"In a quarter of an hour, we'll be back on board.

"If everything is in order, I'm going to do a second expedition tomorrow."

"Good!" Wimmer was the first to agree.

The four of them maintained a good battle formation, bypassing the buildings in front of them and walking towards the edge of the harbor.

There is a smudged steam train parked here, with two rails that stretch deep into the island.

Parallel to the railroad tracks is a road made of concrete.

This is exactly the same scenario imagined by Gray and others, after all, the port is responsible for loading and unloading goods and passengers, and needs convenient transportation to connect other towns and cities.

To their surprise and bewilderment, the length of the railroad track was only one or two hundred meters, and at the end of it stood a town that was not too small.

Even at the edge of the harbor, the four of them could see the situation there with the naked eye.

"This ......," Wimmer couldn't put into words how he felt, and could only curse in a low voice, "If I were the owner of this island, I would have tied up the bastard who proposed such a repair and hung it to the stern of the boat to fish for sharks!" ”

In their experience of having been to multiple ports, this layout is simply unusual:

The town a hundred meters away should either be a little closer and connect with this side to form a port city, or it should be a few kilometers away, self-contained, like now!

"There may be some deeper intentions." Old Cutton frowned and said, "This may have something to do with the weird things in the local area. ”

After he finished speaking, no one responded for a while.

After a few seconds, Wimmer looked at the town not far away and said:

"Captain, do you want to go over and have a look?"

Captain Gray nodded:

"Yes, twelve minutes to go."

They immediately walked down the concrete road to the small town.

On both sides of the road, weeds and mushrooms are everywhere, and the more you get to your destination, the more so.

It didn't take long for four treasure hunters to reach the edge of town.

There stood a wooden sign with a word written in Rune:

"Utopia"

"It's called utopia." Wimmer muttered to himself as he turned his gaze to Old Keton.

Old Ketton shook his head slowly, indicating that he had not heard of it.

The same goes for Parvi and Captain Gray.

They surveyed the inside at the edge of the town, and confirmed that the streets were also empty, so quiet that even the wind seemed to be able to pass through.

Step by step, the four of them saw the "Iris Hotel", the "Utopia Telegraph Office", and many buildings, but without exception, the interior scenes of these buildings all showed the state of the owner leaving in a hurry and never returning:

There were still cups of water, half-washed clothes that were now dry, cutlery that had been laid out, musical instruments that had not been put away, books that had been turned over for the most part, carriages parked on the side of the road without horses...... These things are all restoring the appearance of the town before the strange situation happened.

"I always feel like something is missing......" Wimmer whispered at the sight of the Municipal Square.

Parvi glanced at him:

"There's one less person!"

"No, no, no, I know." Wiccin shook his head genuinely.

His eyes lit up:

"I know what's missing!"

"What?" Captain Gray and First Mate Kerton Sr. spoke in unison.

Wimmer laughed:

"Less money, less banknotes, less gold!"

He straightened his back and further explained:

"Although we haven't entered the house and done a detailed search, according to my experience, even if you just look outside, you should be able to find a little bit of it, but not at all!"

"Maybe it's just that the people here are not very wealthy and don't have the habit of throwing money around." Parvi disagreed.

This was not a big deal, and the four quickly diverted their attention and, after entering the town square, set their sights on the tallest building in the area.

It was a black-roofed church.

Mushrooms grew tenaciously in the cracks of the masonry of the church, which were either simple and rustic, or colorful, connected to each other, showing a sense of presence in front of more green vines and plants.

"It feels like it's been deserted for longer." Parvey paused for a moment and said, "Judging from the architectural style, this looks like a church of the goddess, and the people here also believe in the goddess?" ”

She was quite strange about this.

The inhabitants of such a strange town on a hidden island still seem to believe in the "goddess of the night......

Old Ketton stared at it for a few seconds and said:

"It's like."

He quickly added:

"The closer you go to the square, the closer you get to the church, the longer it will be abandoned."

Whether it is the weeds on the road, or the greenery and all kinds of mushrooms on the surface of the buildings, the more you get to the center of the town, the more you go, and the church seems to be covered with a colorful coat of green with many holes.

After a moment of silence, Parvi suggested:

"Go to the church, as long as the goddess is still looking at the earth, there will be no serious problems there."

Captain Gray and First Mate Kerton Sr. did not object, but the former reiterated the rules of the expedition:

"When I entered the church, I still only saw with my eyes and listened with my ears, and I didn't do anything else."

"No problem." Wimmer walked to the church on the side of the square.

This left Parvi in a hurry to draw a circle on her chest and simply say a word asking for the goddess's protection.

Because there was not much time left, the four of them accelerated their progress and quickly arrived at the door of the church.

They didn't rush to push the door in, and each "looked" around in their own way.

"It's quiet." Captain Gray summed it up.

The other three followed suit and said they didn't find any problems.

The doors of the black church were hidden, and after Wimmer exerted his hands, they slowly opened.

A light suddenly lit up under Captain Gray's black eyepatch, helping him see clearly.

There were no tables or chairs in the hall, and it was flanked by lighted windows, and the top was dark red.

Tick, tick, tick, drops of viscous, yellowish liquid fell from the sky, raining down on the ground, giving the impression that the dome was badly damaged and in torrential rain.

Before Gray could speak, he saw the viscous and disgusting liquid turn into puddles.

The puddles tumbled endlessly, and many bubbles bubbled.

The bubbles burst open, and out of them came deformed babies with wet skin and yellowish dirt.

As the babies grow rapidly, they drip more viscous yellow fluid, creating more puddles and rolling more bubbles......

"Wow! Wow! Wow!"

"They" all began to cry.

Just seeing this scene, Gray's eyes flowed blood, and the blindfold turned dark red, as if he was moved to tears for the birth of life.

His mind went blank, and he felt that every part of his body was pregnant with new life.

The sharp pain woke him up, and he instinctively took a step back.

Gray's scene was back to normal, still empty church halls, wide, unmaintained windows, tall and majestic domes, no amount of viscous liquid raining down, countless deformed babies and puddles everywhere.

"Whew, whew......" Gray gasped.

In the next second, he turned his body and shouted as he ran:

"Run!"

Pedal Pedal Ped Gray sprinted out of the town square.

He didn't care about the lives of Parvi, Old Kroton and Wymer.

In the current situation, he can remember to remind his teammates that he is already a responsible captain.

Pedal Pedal Ped

Gray didn't dare to stop at all, relying on his amazing physical fitness, and with his blurred vision, he ran all the way out of that strange town, ran back to the humble port, and ran to his own ship.

Old Crotton, Parvey, and Wimmer also rushed back in a dozen seconds.

"Sail!" Gray gave the order.

It wasn't until the ship set sail that Gray had the bother to examine his injuries, he raised his hand and touched his eyes, and instantly felt the wetness.

But when he put his hand in front of him, he saw that it was not blood, but simple tears.

He was running wildly, crying all the time.

Gray's brow furrowed, shocked and suspicious.

Soon, he confirmed that he was not injured, not at all.

"What do you all see?" He looked sideways at Old Cutton and the others.

Wimmer looked at the captain, both eyes red, as if he had just wept.

He said with trepidation:

"I saw fireball after fireball.

"They fell off the roof with a whoosh, and then they all exploded!

"Light, I have light in my eyes, I feel like I'm going to be blind, no, I'm blind! Then, the whole person was like it was going to melt, it hurt, it hurt. ”

Speaking of this, Wimmer exhaled happily:

"It's good that you woke me up at this time, captain."

He raised his hand and rubbed his eyes, and said in confusion and relaxation:

"It's nothing now, it's just that I kept crying at the beginning, and then it got better, like a nightmare."

What he meant was that the dream was very real, and he still had palpitations when he woke up, but after a while, he was completely fine.

Captain Gray nodded, scrutinizing Wimer's eyes.

After confirming that there was really no problem, he looked at the first mate Keton again:

"What about you?"

Old Cutton looked at the coastline and the smaller and smaller harbors, and said in a reminiscent tone:

"At that time, the whole church collapsed, and I fell to the ground along with the surrounding pillars and stone bricks.

"There was no bottom at all, and my head, my flesh, and my skin all fell at different rates, and they started pulling at each other, and it hurt, it hurt......"

At this point, the slightly loose skin and deeper wrinkles on Old Cotton's face trembled, as if he didn't want to remember it anymore.

He exhaled, slowed down for a moment, and then said:

"My whole body was about to be torn apart, and then it was like an invisible hand all around me, pressing my hands, my legs, my head, my skin, my flesh, my bones into the entrails, very hard......

"I wished I was dying soon, but luckily, I woke up in the next second, and I was woken up by you, captain."

Wimmer sighed with a sense of substitution:

"It's even more painful than what happened to me, and if you don't wake up in time, you might see yourself turned into a bloody ball of flesh."

Parvi next to her listened quietly and said quite happily:

"I'm not in much pain.

"I saw a darkness, a darkness that reassured me.

"And then, and then I went to sleep, as if I was back in my bed, until I was woken up by you, Captain."

Captain Gray nodded slowly:

"So what we encountered, or rather, experienced, was different, and there was no trauma left now."

"It's just that there are some signs of stress." Old Cottonton affirmed the captain's statement.

He then expressed his guess:

"Maybe we have hallucinations, or we have hallucinations for some other reason, and because everyone's personality and experience are different, what we see and experience is different."

Before Old Cutton could speak, Parvi blurted out:

"Mushrooms! Could it be those mushrooms? That's the weirdest mushroom out there! ”

"Yes, definitely!" Wimmer paused for a moment and agreed.

It's a well-known thing that eating certain mushrooms can cause you to be poisoned and hallucinate, so in such a strange place, it makes sense that just getting close to a mushroom will be affected.

Captain Gray thought seriously for a while and said:

"It's possible that there was a very faint, sweet smell in the air at that time...... The aroma of certain mushrooms? ”

…………

In the middle of a small town called Utopia, on the surface of the church that was suspected to belong to the Church of the Night, patches of mushrooms suddenly came alive.

They wriggled and frantically spewed out large amounts of spores around them, which had grown into different mushrooms in the air before they could hit the ground, and then continued to produce more spores.

In the cracks of the black masonry, occupied by mushrooms and greenery, pale, small, misshapen palms like babies were violently squeezed out.

Silently, the entire church collapsed, and a bottomless pit appeared in the ground.

The crater spread out in all directions, pulling the buildings and smashing them into slag.

Elsewhere in town, the large number of houses that once stood were long gone, leaving only large patches of stained glass-like traces.

And in the depths of the earth, there was a muffled rumbling sound again and again.

In just a few seconds, the place was completely calm.

One building after another was erected, and the town was quickly restored as if it had a life of its own.

The furnishings in those houses are almost the same as just now, but there are some differences in some details, originally on the left to the right, and should be near from a distance.

…………

Late at night, on board.

Wimmer, who had some sleepless due to the day's events, came to the deck and breathed in the damp sea breeze.

"You haven't slept yet?" He saw Boatswain Parve.

Parvi was still dressed in the same clothes as she was during the day, looking at the undulating dark sea in the distance:

"I was going to sleep, but when I closed my eyes, I suddenly remembered some details."

"What details?" Wimmer asked curiously.

Parvi's face reflected a reddish moonlight and said:

"There's something else under the darkness I saw in the church......"

Without waiting for Wimmer to ask, she said to herself dreamily:

"A lot of bones, children's, babies, some of them are normal, some of them look like monsters, dense, all of them.

"Also, in the depths of the darkness, it seems, as if a crow is hidden."