Ashes Of Deep Sea Chapter 729

Chapter 729: Chapter 726 Sherry & A'Gou Chapter 729: Chapter 726 Sherry & A'Gou On the shattered floating islands shrouded in stagnant starlight, Gou and Sherry reached the edge of the earth and sat down to space out.

A pitch-black chain stretched out from Sherry's arm, covered in dark bone fragments, and connected to Gou's cervical spine, as the thoughts of their two minds quietly flowed through the chain's connection, blending and sharing reason and humanity with each other–just as they had for the past twelve years.

They had much to talk about, during the brief yet thrilling moment after the chain broke, this pair of “partners,” who had depended on each other for twelve years, faced many things they had never imagined before, and even Sherry, who was usually the least thoughtful, was having a lot of reflections on life this time.

Of course, they also had to consider how to adapt to the explosive new relationship of “Guardian Dog” and “Contract Human” that would stand out in the whole world…
Duncan didn't disturb them; instead, he, along with Alice, went to a place a little farther away from the boundary of the floating island to investigate the eerie environment of the “Mysterious Deep Sea” while waiting.

The surroundings were very quiet, with no living creatures visible on the desolate plain shrouded by a gloomy starry sky.

This place had once been teeming with Profound Demons, but to avoid a beating, they had now fled clean away, leaving only a wasteland scattered with black strange stones and the jagged silhouettes of something in the distance.

If he hadn't known he was in the “Mysterious Deep Sea”, Duncan would have thought the scene before him resembled a barren alien world–the surface of the planet, dead as a silent star, together with the stagnant starlight above, exuded a desolate and oppressive atmosphere, hardly a pleasant environment.

And if one considered that the only “animals” here were countless frenzied demons, whose daily routines consisted of gnawing on their kind, gnawing on stones, and being gnawed on by their kind, then this place was even less “habitable.”

“…I'm beginning to have doubts about the plan of the Four Spirits Church,” Duncan said offhandedly, “I mean the one about settling in the Mysterious Deep Sea–this damned place, even if humans really survive here, they're bound to be twisted beyond recognition… I wonder if a 'civilization' that's completely non-human can still be called 'human civilization.'”
Alice, beside him, pondered and seemed to half understand.

However, she seemed to have no aversion to the environment here, adapting quite well, and still cheerfully looking around until now, neither the bare wasteland nor the dim environment affecting the good mood of this automaton–she ran to the side, picked up a strangely shaped stone, and happily showed it to Duncan: “Captain! Look, look, a stone!”

Duncan immediately gathered his thoughts and looked at the stone Alice had picked up with a serious and somber expression: “What's so special about this stone?”

“Doesn't it look like a goat's head from the side?” The automaton Miss immediately burst into laughter, a boasting expression on her face, “I noticed it at first glance!”

Duncan: “…”
While he was stunned, Alice ran over to the side again and dug up some stuff from nearby weird rocks, cheerfully presenting them to Duncan: “And these, don't they look like branches?”

Duncan looked at the “branches” Alice was holding in her hand–they had seen plenty of them along the way; they looked like the thin branches of some kind of shrub, growing in rock crevices, with a grayish-white texture on the surface, but they had only the main stem without any leaf structures, and their shape was quite odd.

Anyone seeing them for the first time would probably subconsciously think that they were a kind of “plant” peculiar to the Mysterious Deep Sea.

However, Alice casually snapped off a thin branch and pointed at the broken end of it: “Look, it's also stone.”

Duncan frowned slightly, taking the broken “branch” from Alice, curiously observing the cross-sectional shape–it seemed very brittle, with a neat and sharp end, and exhibited the same texture as the black and gray stones on the surrounding ground, but as Duncan observed it carefully under the starlight, he saw the fractured surface faintly reflecting tiny specks of light as if it were mixed with very fine metal dust or fibers.

He then raised his head and looked towards the vast space shrouded in the gloomy starry sky–large and small broken islands floated in this dimension, some of them almost as large as the biggest City-States on the Endless Sea, while some were just bigger stones, but no matter how big the “island,” there was one common feature:
The lower half of the “floating island” was a neatly shaped “disk,” and at the bottom of the disk, one could see many clusters of stone-like hanging objects, and some huge structures with unclear shapes were connected between them, as if they were the “bases” supporting the floating islands.

Duncan's brow furrowed slightly, and he couldn't help but think of the “Mirror Island” he had seen at the bottom of the Frost Sea–the black mirror island floating in the deep sea also had the same desolate primitive appearance as these broken floating islands here, and both were covered with “black stone” materials of a similar kind, mixed with a slight metallic texture.

Clearly, the two were similar things.

If the human-shaped forms of black mud were “primitive human material,” then the desolate primitive mirror island at the bottom of the Frost Sea was the “primitive City-State,” and here in the Mysterious Deep Sea… it seemed to be filled with the “primitive material of City-States.”

Could these possibly be the “Primitive Material” used by The Saint during the Third Long Night? Or, to put it another way… could these be the “unfinished products” of the many islands floating on the Endless Sea?

If all these were semi-finished products… then clearly The Saint had a grander plan in mind when constructing the “Shelter”–more islands, more City-States, a broader living space, abundant resources, and perhaps… the planned scope of the Endless Sea from the beginning might have been many times wider than what the world now knows.

However, now, these “semi-finished products” merely floated quietly in this space, resembling a prison, letting the years pass by, forgotten by the mortal world and the gods alike. Only the dim-witted Profound Demons were left to fight each other daily in this place, maintaining a day-to-day cycle of meaningless material circulation and “balance”.

Footsteps suddenly came from the side, rousing Duncan from his thoughts.

He lifted his head to follow the sound and saw two tall figures approaching– one was Sherry, who still maintained the form of a Profound Demon, and the other was Dog, whose spirit had fully recovered.

“It looks like you've finished talking,” Duncan took the initiative to walk over, breaking the silence first.

“Thank you for the time,” Dog lowered his head and said very politely, “I hope it didn't cause any delay.”

“We still have lots to do– but there's no rush over these ten or so minutes,” Duncan said offhandedly, while observing the expressions on Sherry and Dog (mainly Sherry's, as it's hard to read any expression on Dog's bony face), “It seems you're both in good spirits– did you discuss what to do in the future? I mean your new contract relationship… about this unprecedented situation of a demon having summoned a contracted human.”

Even as he spoke, Duncan felt a weird sensation in his heart. However, to his surprise, Sherry and Dog across from him appeared exceptionally indifferent to it, with the latter carelessly shaking his head: “That's nothing. Sherry and I both think it doesn't have much impact on us… ”
Alice was startled and her eyes widened upon hearing this: “No impact?”

“Yeah,” Dog said very naturally, “Anyway, it's always been Sherry running around headfirst into things, and I'm in charge of holding the leash at her side to prevent her from causing trouble. What did the captain say again… Oh right, 'dog walking the person.' We've been living like this for over a decade, and now it's no different!”

Upon hearing this, Duncan and Alice exchanged glances, and it took them a few seconds to say in unison: “It does seem that way…”

Listening to this, Sherry almost drooped her head to her chest, muttering awkwardly with her head lowered: “Can we not talk about this… I'm not that reckless…”

Duncan immediately felt that this girl's words were not at all convincing– since the day she swung the chain and threw Dog out to hit someone, her association with “reckless” had been indelible…

However, after this diversion, he felt somewhat relieved. It seemed that Sherry and Dog truly didn't care about the transformation of their contractual relationship, which spared him a lot of unnecessary worries.

Sherry lowered her head and glanced at Dog, who was connected to her. She gently shook her arm, making the chain rattle.

The chains bound them together as always. Who was human, who was a demon, who shared whose humanity, whose heart was beating in whose chest… those details weren't that important.

They were “Sherry and Dog”– always like this, it was enough that they were together.

“So that leaves us with one other issue,” after a few seconds of quiet, Duncan suddenly cleared his throat to break the silence, looking up at Sherry who had “grown” almost three meters tall, supported by osseous limbs, “Can you still transform back?”

“Yes,” Sherry immediately nodded, but then her expression became hesitant, “after the chains were restored, Dog and I 'sensed' how to regain control of our bodies, only…”

Duncan looked puzzled: “Only what?”

“There's a bit of a side effect…” Dog mumbled.

As soon as his words fell, Sherry had already begun controlling her new body to transform back into a human–
Accompanied by a series of bone shifting and resetting sounds and rising dust, her size quickly shrank within the smoky haze, and in a few seconds, she was back to normal human height and build, with the terrifying black bone plates and spurs retracting into her body. Her once aged face returned to its usual appearance, except for…

Her eyes, still filled with a faint bloody glow.

She lifted her head, her eyes entirely covered by the bloody light, looking at Duncan with a rather resigned tone: “The features of the Profound Demons can't be erased. Dog can revert directly to its previous appearance– after all, it's just a matter of shrinking. But no matter what I do, my eyes won't revert, and they just look wrong.”

“…Actually, it's quite striking,” Duncan commented very objectively.

After holding back for a long time, Sherry let out a long sigh: “Ah well… I'll just go into the City-State with my eyes closed from now on. After all, I can see with my eyes closed now.”

(Time to recommend a book~ “For the Stars of a Glorious Warhammer,” with Warhammer as the main theme blended with elements of the stars, a fanfic where the protagonist is a planet governor lurking on the dark side of the Empire, growing under the benevolent blessings of five friendly gods.)

Chapter end

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