Ashes Of Deep Sea Chapter 796

Chapter 796: Chapter 793 Temporary Communication Chapter 796: Chapter 793 Temporary Communication The atmosphere around suddenly seemed to change–something, a very massive “structure”, was taking shape near the Homeloss.

Duncan stood at the edge of the stern cockpit, continuously keeping an eye on Alice, but suddenly he seemed to sense something and simultaneously with Fenna he looked up at the sky.

A vague and massive “phantom” was slowly emerging in the dim Sky Light and the thin mist.

The phantom appeared to be a loosely aggregated mass of many disjointed large chunks with a roughly shuttle-shaped outline, as if torn from an even more massive entity, and within its heart one could faintly make out the fractured connecting structures!

The scale of the entire phantom could be described as startling–through the distant fog, Duncan and Fenna couldn't even determine its actual size nor ascertain how far it floated above the Homeloss, but the mere pressure from the phantom was already making them feel breathlessly oppressed.

Fenna stood on the deck as if struck by a Petrification Spell, staring blankly at the enormous phantom hidden in the clouds and Sky Light, and after who knows how long she muttered in astonishment: “What is that?!”

Duncan suddenly focused his gaze on the person clutching the steering wheel– he saw Alice still standing there quietly, however, her eyes had drooped unknowingly, half-open as if about to fall asleep, her soul seemingly no longer within that body.

And countless vague “lines” extended from her body.

Perhaps because of many shared “visions”, Duncan faintly saw those nearly transparent lines–they hung from the sky, dense and numerous, like an astonishingly structured gigantic tree, or a converging inverted cone, one end clearly connected to the gigantic phantom in the sky, and the other ends all converging behind the figure…
Alice felt like she had a very long and strange dream, in which, she was a ship–a great ship voyaging among the stars.

She carried many people's hopes and future, setting sail from a time cocoon that was gradually being swallowed, leaving her mother harbor behind, never to dock again.

Stars burst like a tide behind her, and extinguished like an outgoing tide, the spacetime structure collapsed along her hyperspace path, and a terrifying phenomenon like the red shift pursued relentlessly like a haunting nightmare in the collapsing stars, rushing through a collapsing world as if fleeing through a continuously falling, narrowing cave, deadly gravitational collapse traps and random cosmic ray storms raining down like falling stones…

She calculated incessantly, continually correcting her course, seeking an exit among the stars, planning escape routes out of the “Collapse Cave” with a star map pooled with the wisdom of millions, every mark on the star map dislocated, all things in the universe shifted from their original orbits, first the positions of the stars, then the laws of matter, and later… “Calculation” itself.

There were no roads ahead, no navigation, the process of “Calculation” itself had ceased to function, shields collapsed, structures dissolved… piercing alarms, the database went offline, ecological chambers caught fire… “Passengers'” cognitive responses vanished into the boundless darkness.

All came to an end with a fierce flash and explosion.

And then, Voyager Three awoke amidst a series of errors–he felt like he had a very long and strange dream.

In the dream, she was a puppet, a busy puppet on a bizarre Ghost Ship, cleaning, cooking, doing laundry, and bickering with some strange entities…

The ship sailed through a sea of scorching ashes, even the ship itself seemed to be condensed from some kind of ashes, and there were a few entities also born from ashes… living on that ship. Sometimes, the ship would dock beside islands–enormous clumps floating in the ashes, fused into bizarre forms, maintaining an unclear “operation” in the sea of ashes.

Those islands had lots of things and lots of noises; the ashes mimicked the vitality of the vanished, producing intelligent sounds. Sometimes, she–as Navigation Three–would feel these sounds and forms familiar, as if they were some kind of data stored in her memory, and this “familiarity” always made her feel a bit… “sad”.

But the “puppet” lived happily in that dream, she befriended the ashes, to her all the ashes looked alike, she wandered in that world after the burning as if she had a fulfilled “life”, she had a shell that mimicked other ashes, that shell allowed her to run, to jump, to laugh like other ashes.

And in that dream full of ashes, there was only one entity, one that was not made of ashes.

It was a piece of never-dying starry sky–a river of stars flowing in the hot sea of ashes.

Alice/Navigation Three suddenly opened her eyes.

She found herself floating in darkness, many vague contours and lines floating around her, that was the cabin of New Hope, a place in her “memory”.

“Mr. Goat Head? Miss Agatha?”

Alice looked around anxiously, she still remembered what she was doing before, but when darkness suddenly engulfed everything, the two familiar figures disappeared from her sight without knowing when.

“Where did you go?” she called out nervously in the darkness, taking steps forward but after a long time without any response, she stopped somewhat discouraged, “Did I mess things up again?”

A light suddenly appeared at the end of the darkness, interrupting her muttering.

Alice looked up in surprise, toward the direction from which the light came.

She saw a tall rectangular shadow, a red light embedded at the upper half of the shadow like a giant's cyclopean eye, and many twinkling lights floated around and behind the shadow, like countless eyes lurking in the dark.

Alice froze for a moment, subconsciously wanted to walk towards it–just at the moment this thought emerged, she felt a blur before her eyes.

By the time she realized what was happening, she had already arrived in front of the tall shadow with the red light.

The darkness seemed like a curtain blocking her view, making it hard to see the details of the shadow, but she quickly recognized the other party–or rather, the part of her that belonged to “Navigation Three” recognized it.

“Navigator Unit Two?” She opened her mouth in surprise, uttering the unfamiliar name with her own voice, as if she had known the other party for a long time.

“Navigator Unit Three… long time no see,” the tall rectangular shadow spoke, its voice seemingly carrying the noise of interference, “It seems that Navigator Unit One indeed succeeded… although its method deviated somewhat from my calculations, I am still pleased to read your identification signal again.”

“Was it you who brought me here?” Alice pondered, trying to articulate a question–her mind felt cluttered with jumbled thoughts, luckily she had no brain inside her head, otherwise it would have definitely been broken by those thoughts, “How do I get back?”

Navigator Unit Two fell silent for a few seconds.

Alice's response seemed to have deviated again from its “calculations.”

Soon, the lights flickered again, and Navigator Unit Two's voice reached into the doll's ears: “I just wanted to see you in advance, to confirm whether your condition is stable–I made a bold attempt with the navigation key I created for you, it's based on my calculations and understanding of the current state of this world, I'm not sure if it can actually function, after all… to avoid cross-contamination, I haven't had direct communication with Navigator Unit One for a long time.”

Alice widened her eyes, listening intently to what Navigator Unit Two was telling her, then furrowed her brow and thought for a moment: “…What do you mean?”

Navigator Unit Two fell silent again for a few seconds, this time, even the red lights on its surface dimmed.

Alice did not urge it and just stared wide-eyed at the lights in front of her.

After a while, the lights finally brightened again.

“…In the last message received, Navigator Unit One mentioned it released a 'split entity' inside the Shelter that found a 'vessel' with great talent, a vessel capable of carrying the backup data you left behind, but why is your current operational efficiency so… inconsistent with my calculations?”

Alice thought for a while, looking seriously at the other: “Are you saying I'm dumb?”

Each silence from Navigator Unit Two seemed deafening: “…”

“Although I don't know exactly what you mean, it sounds like it has something to do with the 'Replication' of the Frost Queen like before, right?” Alice spoke offhandedly, she certainly wasn't stupid, at least she could figure out this much, “I don't know the details, but the captain said there was a problem with the operation of the replica of The Saint, the replication target was wrong…”
She paused, then looked curiously at the lights again: “Is it a big problem?”

The red light on the surface of Navigator Unit Two slowly flickered, as if pondering, or simply idling its thought threads, after a long while, its slightly noisy voice broke the silence: “No, if it's just about performing the navigation task, it's enough.”

“Oh, that's good,” Alice said happily upon hearing this, “The captain has put me in charge of steering, I was worried I might not do well–just enough to complete the task is fine.”

“…Don't you feel regret?” the red light dimmed slightly, “You've forgotten many things, you once had the fastest processing speed and multi-threading response capability among us, you were used to gauge the entire scale of the universe, but now you are trapped in such a… shell.”

Alice blinked her eyes.

The words from the other side seemed inexplicable, but she felt that she somewhat… understood.

So this time, before answering, she thought seriously.

“I don't think so,” after a long time, she gently shook her head, “I couldn't find my way before, now I know where the path is, so no regrets–and I also have plenty to do every day, no time to feel regret.”

The red light of Navigator Unit Two gradually dimmed and then slowly brightened again.

It seemed to be pondering too, and after a while, it responded: “If that's the case, then that's good too.”

In the darkness, the tall rectangular shadow seemed to be gradually fading away.

“Are you leaving?” Alice hastily asked.

“…This is just a temporary communication established through the navigation key, I can't connect outwardly for too long,” in the darkness, the voice of Navigator Unit Two was already starting to blur, “We will meet again, I'm glad… to read your identification signal once more.”

Alice smiled happily.

Although she wasn't quite sure what was going on, she could feel that she was also happy.

The captain had said, being happy is a good thing.

“Then we'll see you later,” she waved at the increasingly dense darkness, waving vigorously, “Me, the captain, and everyone, we'll come to find you!”

In the darkness, there was no response, only a short hum.

Chapter end

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