Deep Sea Embers.

Chapter 593 Stone
After standing in front of this "room" completely composed of chaotic lines and blocks of color for a long time, Duncan turned his head slightly and observed the reaction of the goat head on the table with the corner of his eye.

From the perspective of the "goat head", he should be able to see the scene in the room now - he wanted to know how the goat head would react after seeing this weird and confusing room.

But it didn't react at all. It just stared calmly in Duncan's direction with its dark, emotionless eyes, like a real piece of wood when it didn't make a sound.

Duncan turned around, and after a brief hesitation, he finally took steps towards the strange room made of jumbled lines.

At the same time, he was also prepared to forcibly ignite the flames, wake up Silendis, and escape from this "dream" if things went wrong.

But the worst-case scenario did not happen.

He stepped through the door, and a layer of translucent ripples like water vaguely rippled throughout the chaotic room. 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. Impact.

Duncan stepped deeper into the room, and at the same time closed the door behind him - the disturbing silent gaze of the weird "goat head" was finally blocked by the door.

Messy colored lines extended under his feet, surrounded by vaguely resembling furniture outlined by the lines. Duncan carefully observed everything in the room, feeling that the surroundings were filled with an extremely weird atmosphere. After a moment, his eyes Finally landed in the corner of the "room".

Several translucent colored lines tremble there, connecting to each other to form a geometric outline. The center of the trembling outline seems to be filled with a layer of calm water, faintly reflecting the surrounding scene.

Duncan walked up to the geometric outline, stretched out his hand and gently brushed the calm "water surface", and wisps of green flames spread on the surface. After a while, the scene reflected on the surface became clear. ——It turned into a mirror.

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 at the chaotic and strange place outside the mirror in astonishment.

"This...is this what's going on behind that door?!"

Duncan nodded slightly: "Yes, this is the situation inside the door - the 'deepest' here."

"This place looks... so weird," Agatha frowned, "How could this be?"

Duncan seemed to have figured out something. He said calmly: "Because on the Lost Home in the real world, the goat head never dared to peek into the captain's dormitory. It didn't know what the room looked like."

At least, it didn't know what was going on in this room after the "Captain" moved into it - this was the part that Duncan didn't say in his heart.

Agatha instantly understood the meaning of Duncan's words.

"You mean... this 'Lost Home' was really 'created' by a goat head in the real world?" She said quickly, "It turned the shadow of the Lost Home into this ship sailing in darkness and fog. but it cannot restore those parts of the ship that it does not understand..."

Speaking of this, Agatha suddenly frowned and couldn't help but shake her head: "But in the real world, the goat head shows that it knows nothing about these, and how does it do all this..."

"Maybe it really knows nothing," Duncan said calmly, while his eyes slowly scanned the surroundings, "I now have a bold guess: this ship may be a dream of it."

"Its dream?!" Agatha was stunned when she heard this, and then she remembered something, with a look of confusion on her face, "But it clearly said that it never dreams, or even rests, and I have seen it myself. ——The first mate is always awake, including the last time the Nameless One’s dream appeared, and it has been steering the ship, as usual.”

"Because it doesn't know that it is dreaming at all, or even that it can dream, or even..." Duncan suddenly paused when he said this, and a bolder idea than before came to his mind uncontrollably. He hesitated for a few seconds, Then he spoke softly as if talking to himself, "Perhaps our 'first mate' has never woken up."

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

Duncan spoke again after a moment of silence: "Well, now there is only one last question left."

Agatha repeated subconsciously: "Last question?"

Duncan raised his head and looked at the door standing in the middle of a mess of lines. His eyes seemed to be through the door, staring at the "goat head" on the table outside. After a long time, he said to himself: "Saslokar is dead. He died a long, long time ago..."

……

Night fell in the desert - very, very suddenly, the surrounding area darkened. The passive skylight that originally filled the sky faded away as if it had been absorbed by something. The quiet night covered the entire sand sea, as well as the people in the sand sea. Vast ruins.

Now, all that is left in the sky is the huge and disturbing dark red "crack". The crack is like blood and the edge is like fog. It covers the sky and exudes a huge sense of pressure.

Even a judge with a strong will like Vanna subconsciously avoids looking up at the "world scar".But fellow giants seem to have adapted to all this.

On the edge of the ruins of the city, they found a corner that was not afraid of wind and sand. It was once part of a solemn building, but now there are only a few molten and twisted dark walls left. The giant picked it up from the nearby ruins. Many gray-white stones came, and he piled them in a corner of the shelter. Then he picked up two of the stones and beat them patiently.

The dark and quiet desert and the dark red and oppressive scars of the world seemed to no longer exist for him. It seemed that only the hammering stones were left in his eyes, and the knocking sounds of "ta, da, da" were monotonous in the night. The sound echoed through the ground and spread far and wide.

Fanna sat under the wall of the shelter, curiously watching the giant's actions. After a long time, she couldn't help but ask: "What are you doing?"

"Take fire," the giant said calmly, "it will be very cold at night here."

"...But those are just stones," Vanna looked at the gray-white stones collected by the giant, her tone full of doubts, "...are they stones that can burn?"

"It's an ordinary stone." The giant didn't look back. "There's nothing else here. Apart from sand, there are only stones."

Fanna opened her mouth: "Then..."

Before she could finish her words, she was interrupted by a cluster of suddenly jumping sparks - tiny sparks shot out from between the stones struck by the giant's hand, and landed among the pale stones on the ground. Immediately afterwards, the sparks melted. As a fire, a bright flame rose from the rock and gradually became stronger.

Vanna looked at this scene incomprehensibly.

"Fire, and stones, they are the most important things." The giant looked at the flames burning in the rocks quietly, as if saying to Vanna, and also to himself, "The igniting flames It was the eyes that opened in the night, and the stones they broke were far better than their fangs and claws. When they set the branches on fire and knocked the stones against each other, something incredible happened..."

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

Vanna listened to the giant's words with some understanding and nodded slowly.

Her cultural class was not very good, but it was not that she could not understand the meaning of the giant's words. She just didn't understand... why the giant suddenly said these to her.

Does this have anything to do with "Stones Can Set Fire"?

But the giant obviously had no intention of further explanation. He quickly returned to his "work" - he put his hand deep into the pile of stones, as if he didn't care about the burning of the fire at all, and took out a piece that had been burned by the fire. The blackened stone was knocked off at a corner, giving it a sharp angle. Then, the giant picked up the huge long staff that he had put aside before, and using the sharp angle of the stone, he began to Patiently carving something on the surface of the staff.

The long stick is hard, but the sharp corners of the stone are fragile and easy to break. Therefore, the giant's carving work is very slow. It often takes many times to leave a not too deep mark on the stick, and it must be re-engraved frequently. Knock stones to create new "graving knives".

The surface of that huge long staff was covered with dense carvings... Is that how those carvings were made? !
Even after just watching for a short while, Fanna realized that this was almost a difficult, hopelessly slow task. She couldn't imagine how long it took the giant and how much patience he had to put in to get the huge cock. The cane left countless carvings - she felt that even if she had an endless lifespan, she might not be able to do such a thing!
But the giant carved silently and patiently, using the only tool he could find in this dead world - fire-scorched stone.

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

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

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

"Here they learned to use fire."

The giant said softly, with a hint of pride in his tone.

Vanna looked in the direction of the giant's fingers and saw the detailed symbols clearly - until now, she could not see their details clearly.

Simple lines outline the outlines of two small human figures. They stand in front of an abstract fire picture, raising their hands high, as if they are cheering and jumping, and they seem to be worshiping the fire.

For some reason, Vanna suddenly felt a heavy force pressing on her heart. She subconsciously looked up along the cane and looked at the dense symbols. Soon, she discovered that they were not all pictograms. With the cane pointing upward, those pictographic pictures gradually turned into abstract and unfamiliar words. The words gradually evolved and gradually took on various forms. Some differentiated into letters, while others still retained the general structure of pictures...

Her eyes finally rested on a small blank space at the end of the cane, where a campfire crackled and the firelight reflected and danced.

Vanna slowly raised her head, her eyes moving along the rough stones and skinny arms, and finally landed on the giant's face.

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

(End of this chapter)