novelraw Chapter 282: King of Dominions
Chapter 282: King of Dominions
Just as Jesse had said, the Flying Fish's sailing speed was extremely fast. It wasn't long before the shape of the Patroshen Islands, lying in the veil of night behind them, could no longer be seen from the deck. Jesse wiped the sweat from his face and walked out from the captain's cabin. Seeing Fisher still leaning against the deck railing, he spoke to him,
"Although the captain's cabin was ransacked by them, fortunately, the nautical charts are still there. Taking you to the Northern Border will be absolutely no problem. And I just checked the coal in the engine room; luckily, those gang members found it too troublesome to haul it away, otherwise we would have to drop anchor in the middle of the sea before we got very far."
"That's good."
Fisher nodded at him in response. For some unknown reason, in Jesse's eyes, this paramour of the Iceberg Queen now possessed an extra layer of mystery. The scene just now where he used the Weaver to steal the key back was still extremely shocking. It seemed this handsome young man from Nazareth was a Magician, though who knew how he got involved with that Iceberg Queen from the Sardin Woman's Country.
Jesse's eyes darted around as he cautiously glanced at Emhart on Fisher's shoulder, then suddenly spoke as if he remembered something,
"By the way, Mr. Fisher, didn't you want to show your book friend the books stored on the ship? Those books are in my captain's cabin. Do you want to go take a look?"
Before Fisher could respond, Emhart on his shoulder was already impatiently bumping his body against his gentleman's hat. Fisher smiled helplessly and gestured for Jesse to lead the way.
It had been too long since anyone else had boarded the Flying Fish, and the gang that impounded it naturally hadn't been kind enough to help clean it up, so any visible surface was covered in a very thick layer of dust. It was likely even Jesse couldn't remember exactly how long it had been drifting on the sea.
"Right this way, right this way... Back then, the voyages were long, and when there was nothing to do, I could only pass the time by reading various books."
The space inside the captain's cabin wasn't large, but on a ship like the Flying Fish that had been scaled down by a whole size, it was already considered one of the larger rooms. The furnishings inside were no different from a typical captain's cabin: nautical charts, clothes, various reports, and the main control switch axis for the engine.The only difference from other captains lay in the two large bookshelves placed against one wall of the room. They were filled with a wide variety of books, mostly from Nazareth, though naturally, there were also quite a few from the Southern Continent.
As Jesse introduced them to Fisher, a complex emotion surfaced in his eyes, as if encountering an old friend after a long separation, leaving him with mixed feelings.
"I smell an aura, Fisher, right there!"
The moment he entered, Emhart seemed to have caught the scent of something delicious. Smacking his lips, his eyes stared intently at a specific spot on the bookshelf.
"Haha, you can browse through the books here as you please. I'm going to check the lower cabins now to see if there are any problems after all this time. After all, the Flying Fish is still a wooden ship; if there's a hole somewhere or a screw has fallen out, it could cause massive problems..."
"Understood. Once I finish reading, I'll come find you."
"It's fine. I don't know if the lights below are broken, but it's probably quite dark down there. Mr. Fisher can stay on the deck. I'll come find you after I inspect the situation below... It won't take long."
Fisher glanced at him and nodded in agreement without much thought,
"Alright, then I’ll leave you to it, Captain Jesse. We'll wait for you here."
"No problem."
Jesse rubbed the back of his head and immediately jogged toward the deck. Standing in the captain's cabin, Fisher watched his receding figure and silently closed the room's door, cutting off all contact between the inside and outside.
The moment Jesse left, Emhart flew toward that corner of the bookshelf. Fisher merely gave a cursory glance over the books on the shelves, and upon finding no useful clues, walked behind the captain's desk to carefully examine the items placed there.
The desktop was covered in dust, yet there was nothing particularly noteworthy—only ordinary items like an ashtray and a desk lamp.
"Fisher, look quickly, there's a hidden compartment behind the bookshelf here! The thing I want to see is right inside."
Just as Fisher was surveying the room without any gains, Emhart, who was swaying back and forth in front of the bookshelf, suddenly discovered something and hurriedly turned around to call out to him.
Fisher walked up to the bookshelf. In the innermost corner near the back, obscured by many books, there was conspicuously a square-shaped recessed hidden compartment. Since Emhart had no hands, he could only watch anxiously. It was Fisher who reached out first, picked up the books in front of the hidden compartment, and opened it.
Inside the modestly sized space lay a thick notebook. Resting atop the notebook were two or three items glinting with a metallic gleam: a pocket watch, a very old flintlock musket, and a few gold bars bundled together.
Fisher raised an eyebrow and took out everything from inside. First, he looked at the book that Emhart cared about the most, but upon seeing the book's title at first glance, his expression turned odd, because the title read, "Flying Fish Logbook".
A logbook was something every captain was familiar with. Unlike modern standardized logs used for corporate inspections and audits, the pioneer logs from the early days of exploration were mostly very private items that recorded the people and events encountered along their journey.
Fisher still remembered that when the Gedrin royal museum was established, Blake had gifted his own logbook to the Gedrin Royal Family, who then collected it as an epoch-making treasure.
But regardless, was what Emhart originally found so interesting the logbook of a captain? Why did that feel a bit underwhelming? Could it really contain some profound secret?
"No, it's not this logbook. It's the thing tucked inside! There's a piece of paper tucked in this book; that's what I want to see."
Hearing Emhart's demand, Fisher helplessly opened the captain's logbook. Sure enough, right on the inside cover of the first page, he saw a parchment that had been folded many times. The parchment was incredibly quaint, giving off the illusion that it had become extremely fragile due to bearing the weight of a heavy history.
"This is it! Fisher! This is it. I already smelled the fragrance of this thing. Hurry, hurry, hurry, open it quickly, let's read the contents inside together."
Fisher reached out and unfolded the parchment to reveal the ghost-drawing-like text written within. Between the characters and words, various bizarre and eerie symbols had been drawn using the fresh blood of some unknown animal.
The moment he saw those eerie symbols, Fisher's scalp inexplicably tingled. But when he saw the symbol right in the center of the parchment—one shaped like a gemstone crown—he suddenly felt it was incredibly familiar...
Yes, Fisher felt like he had seen this symbol somewhere before.
"Is this... the writing of the Southern Continent?"
"Yes, but also no. The most widely circulated writing in the Southern Continent is the language of the Femabaha Dragon Court, which is intimately tied to the period of their past rule. But the writing on this isn't Femabaha Dragon Court text; it's [Ancient Human Script]. That is to say, the writing on this is human writing, a cousin to the human writing you use today from the ancient era. During the early ancient times, human groups in the Southern Continent all used this kind of script."
"Wait, are you saying the humans of the Southern Continent used a language related to that of the West Continent?"
"That's right. Who knows, maybe a group of people from the West Continent migrated to the Southern Continent?"
But the problem was, humans only acquired such navigational technology a few decades ago. How did humans cross over thousands, or nearly ten thousand years ago? By relying on some sort of demi-human?
Speaking of which, Fisher also suddenly remembered; Caleb Uz, the author of the Soul Completion Handbook, had previously mentioned that the Dragon Court's magic was also brought by humans. So did this truly mean that back then, there really were humans from the West Continent who immigrated to the Southern Continent through some method?
Fisher pondered for a moment, then shifted his gaze back to the scroll in his hands. At this moment, he suddenly recalled where he had seen the symbol in the center of the scroll.
He had seen this symbol on the Demon Gate behind those two demon sisters deep in the Serpent's Head Street of Saint-Nazareth. And if Fisher remembered correctly, this symbol was one of the precise few hanging high right at the pinnacle.
"My god, Fisher..."
Just as Fisher was still trying to recall the exact symbols engraved on the Demon Gate in his memories, Emhart, who was floating in mid-air and had finished reading the contents of the parchment, suddenly plummeted downward as if his body had lost control. Fortunately, Fisher reacted quickly and caught him with his hand, preventing him from crashing headfirst onto the ground.
"What's wrong? What is recorded on it?"
Emhart, lying in the palm of Fisher's hand, seemed to have been awakened to some immense terror; even his pupils began spinning.
He opened his mouth, waited for a good while before floating up from Fisher's palm again, and then spoke to Fisher with considerable guilt,
"This records how ancient humans prayed to the Abyss and how to set up the ritual to summon a specific Demon God Pillar... My god, I absolutely never expected to see this thing so many years after the demons' Demon God Pillars were locked in the Abyss. It's... it's just too terrifying!"
Good grief, did you just recall the painful experience of being grabbed and brutally beaten by a demon in the Abyss?
Fisher found himself not knowing whether to laugh or cry, and he said to Emhart,
"Didn't you just say that the Demon God Pillars are all locked in the Abyss right now and can't come out? What are you afraid of?"
"No, no, no, Fisher, first take that torn piece of paper a little further away, and listen to me! I previously read in demon texts that an extremely brutal war once occurred in this world. Almost all races participated in it, but mainly several Mythical Species that even I can't clearly name fought the fiercest."
Emhart's words seemed quite rushed. As he spoke, the pages on his body rapidly flipped. The golden light bursting from within indicated that he was continuously extracting various knowledge from the past recorded in his body.
"The specific outcome of that war is still unknown to this day, because the time period is simply too ancient. Back then, I didn't have any sentience, and I haven't seen any relevant records anywhere outside the Abyss since. So, I only know the outcome of the Demon-kin in that war—they ultimately failed."
"The true bodies of the demons, the [Demon God Pillars], were purged by their enemies and locked deep within the Abyss, unable to be moved. The Eliog you saw before was exactly like this. Her overly powerful soul came to the West Continent, and because of the unity of soul and flesh, the world constructed a body for her, much like how Chaos-kin descend from the Spirit World into the physical world. That shell is just a crude imitation of her true form, and its rank hasn't even reached the Mythic Rank at all—it's roughly around Tier 13 to 14. But her true body is a full Tier 18!"
As Fisher listened, his expression grew increasingly peculiar. So, wouldn't his previous intimate encounter with Eliog count as a kind of soul-level interaction?
"Fisher, there are 72 Demon God Pillars in total, symbolizing the 72 Great Demons of the Mythic Rank. Logically, after that war, all the Demon God Pillars should have been locked and their true bodies sealed beneath the Abyss. But there's a single exception."
"There is one Demon God highly skilled in the use of trickery who used a despicable method to escape the purge of the war, hiding her true body away in some place in the world where it could never be discovered..."
"And currently, this summoning parchment we're looking at... the ritual on it summons that exact Demon God whose true body isn't locked within the Abyss! No matter how you call the other Demon Gods, they can't respond to you right now. But only this Demon God, I can't guarantee whether she will or won't respond to you. And as far as I know, that vile fellow loved to actively bestow knowledge upon humans back in ancient times!"
Emhart possessed some lingering fear. A terrifying demon wearing a gemstone crown with a mischievous smile seemed to surface in his eyes. Just recalling that figure made his square body tremble. He didn't even dare to speak her name out loud, as if that hellish situation had happened just yesterday.
Fisher sized up the intensely frightened Emhart and suddenly guessed something in his heart. He gently folded the parchment in his hand, put it back into the book, and then looked at Emhart before him and said,
"Let me guess, this demon who was the only one to escape the sanctions of the war... you must have seen her true form back in the Abyss and deeply know her terror. She's still active in this world, which is why you're so worried right now that our calls will be heard by her, right?"
Fisher's finger tapped against the cover of the book, recalling the words Eliog had spoken to him about that very demon.
"That Demon God who escaped the war's sanctions is the [King of Dominions], the Demon God [Baimon]..."