Chapter 95 After Dinner

Because of the delay in the afternoon, by the time Shirley and Nina returned to 99 Crown Street, it was already close to dusk, time for dinner.

In this "City of Elves," there wasn't much that could be called normal food, but fortunately, normal ingredients could always be bought. Lucrezia's "servants" prepared a sumptuous dinner for the guests, and Nina and Shirley finally got to eat "food that humans should eat."

However, they both ate this meal with unease.

What they had heard and seen in that underground containment facility had left them both still somewhat dizzy—there were too many things they didn't understand, too many things that exceeded their worldview, about the Great Annihilation, about the "black wall" of history, about those doomsdays, about those destroyed old worlds, and this "new world" born in the Deep Sea Era...

For two girls who, strictly speaking, could still only be considered "big kids," these things were a bit too complex and advanced.

After a hurried dinner, Shirley returned to her room. She sat at the table for a while in a daze, then heard the soft clinking of chains beside her. Agou poked his head out from the shadows.

Shirley lowered her head and glanced at this "friend" who had once almost eaten her but had also raised her from childhood, and asked very seriously, "Did you understand everything the captain said today? Something about fragments of several worlds piled together and then the Deep Sea Era..."

"I can understand some of it," Agou lay down, gently rubbing Shirley's knee with his massive head, "but I didn't understand the parts that are too far beyond common sense either."

"I hardly understood any of it," Shirley said honestly. "Of course, I understand the sentences, but imagining how those things actually happened is a bit difficult for my brain—after all, why should we care about how this world was born?"

She said, very puzzled, even though she knew she was appearing quite shallow, but in front of Agou, she never had anything to hide.

"We can still live without knowing anything, right?" she continued. "Anyway, the two of us have lived like this for the past dozen years..."

Agou suddenly raised his head, his hollow eye sockets filled with crimson light staring straight into Shirley's eyes. A deep, hoarse voice came from his skeletal body: "We can live without knowing anything, but we must also know that this survival is not something to be taken for granted—this is true for ordinary people, and it is also true for the world itself."

Agou's suddenly serious attitude startled Shirley. She paused for a moment, and then vaguely seemed to understand something, a thoughtful look appearing on her face.

"The world will not always continue to 'survive' like this," Agou watched Shirley's reaction and then lay his head down again, saying in a muffled voice. "The Great Annihilation could destroy those 'old worlds', so the current Deep Sea Era could also be ended by another force. Ordinary people may be completely unaware of this until the end comes. They will welcome the end in a long-lasting illusion of peace. Just like in the homeland of that 'warrior,' those people waiting for the heroes to return in the kingdom, 'ignorance' is their greatest gift... For them, they can live without knowing anything, because they also don't know how far away death is.

"But Shirley, we are not those who stay in the kingdom—we are on the Vanishing Line.

"You have also seen those omens, the black sun that descended in Prand, the out-of-control Creator Blueprint in the depths of Frost, the boundless sea when Anomaly 001 went out, and those mumbling cultists... If you were a 'person living in the kingdom,' you wouldn't be able to come into contact with them."

Agou chattered on, shaking his head, carefully retracting his fangs, and rubbing Shirley's knee with his nose.

"Shirley, it's true that you can live without knowing anything, but you already know—the captain is worried about those ominous omens, and so are you, but you just haven't noticed it yourself."

Shirley fell silent, sitting quietly in her chair for a long time before reaching out and pressing her hand on Agou's skull, her voice tinged with unease, "Agou, are we those

people walking in the wilderness... like that 'warrior', are we also trekking towards the apocalypse?"

"We walk towards the apocalypse, and the apocalypse walks towards us. 'Cognition' is two-way. When we know its existence, there is no difference between the two. The only question is... how and when it will catch up with us. I think this is what the captain is worried about."

"...Agou, why do you understand so much? Understand... this feeling?"

The crimson light in Agou's eyes slowly brightened and dimmed: "Because I have felt something similar before—when you were very, very young."

He raised his head and looked into Shirley's eyes.

His voice was very soft, like many years ago, when he tried to soothe a terrified little girl to sleep on a stormy night—

"In the beginning, you were a... little creature that I couldn't understand at all. You were so small, so weak, your arms were like thin sticks that could be easily broken. Even with a demon symbiote, you were so fragile that you seemed like you could die at any moment....

"Every day, every second, I was worried about the arrival of this 'death'. I didn't understand your breathing, I didn't understand your heartbeat, I didn't understand how humans survived. I didn't even know you needed to find food until you had been hungry for several days—as an Abyssal Demon, I wasn't used to 'thinking' about things at that time, and you weren't very communicative then either.

"So I always felt that you could die at any time due to something I couldn't understand yet. Your breathing, heartbeat, blood flow, these strange 'phenomena' were, in my eyes, extremely fragile 'temporary balances'. The cessation of any link would make you leave me, so when you were a child, you would always see me groping and observing beside you when you woke up, because I had to check your breathing and heartbeat, to check if you were already dead.

"This worry is very similar to the captain's worry now."

Agou paused, raised his head to look at the second floor, but quickly withdrew his gaze.

"I can't compare myself to the captain, and I shouldn't speculate on his thoughts, but today, in his eyes, I felt that familiar... worry. This seemingly vast Boundless Sea is probably equivalent to you in my eyes many years ago—a small and weak 'strange thing', not knowing how it survives, only knowing that it will die at any time."

Agou chattered on for a long time, and now he finally fell silent, but Shirley was still staring at him blankly, without making a sound for a long time.

"Why aren't you talking?" Agou asked, puzzled.

"You've never... told me these things before," Shirley said a little blankly. "So I was like that when I was little..."

"It's all in the past," Agou said softly. "You survived, so all the worries and difficulties at the beginning are 'past' matters."

Shirley pursed her lips, suddenly raised her head with some worry, and looked in the direction of the second floor: "Agou, do you think... we will be the warriors and their companions in the story?"

"If possible, I don't want to be like them," Agou shook his head. "Warriors can't stop the end of the world with a steel sword. Their journey towards the apocalypse is arduous but destined to be futile—but since the captain is leading us, we obviously have more than just a steel sword, so I'm willing to be more optimistic."

"The captain..." Shirley said with emotion. "I wonder what the captain is doing now... He didn't even come down for dinner."

"Do you want to go up and deliver the food and see what's up later?"

"Uh, never mind—anyway, Alice will definitely go." "That's true."

Watching the fading daylight and the dimming sky outside the window, but the gaps between the tall buildings were always filled with a faint golden "sunlight," Duncan took a slight breath and turned to switch on the room's electric light.

Although the "sunlight" that permeated the streets brought eternal "illumination" to Pingtone, after the fall of Anomaly 001, those rays that spread from the nearby sea surface and were blocked by layers of buildings could not illuminate the entire city after all. Deep within the city-state, where the "sunlight" was blocked by buildings, night could still be seen, and here, people still needed the comfort of lights.

The bright light dispelled the darkness that was spreading from all around, seeming to add a bit of warmth to the room.

Outside the window, as the power of Anomaly 001 faded, the pale fissure of the World Scar was gradually emerging in the starless and moonless sky.

The cold, pale brilliance permeated the night, but it was cut into pieces by the "sunlight" that permeated the tall buildings, presenting a bizarre scene that could not be seen in other city-states, where the World Scar and sunlight appeared simultaneously and intertwined with each other.

Duncan looked at the fissure-like "scar" in the sky, but his mind was still recalling the "memory phantoms" he had seen today.

He thought of the "deep crimson" that ran across the sky, like a huge scar.

What exactly was that "red light" that traversed the cosmos, its propagation patterns seemingly defying the laws of physics?

Whether it was in the phantom of the New Hope crashing, or in the oil painting in Alice's mansion, or in the homeland of the "warrior" nearing destruction, there was that red light.

There was no doubt that the red light was the "culprit" that scholars had been painstakingly pursuing, which led to the "Great Annihilation" event, or at least the "first symbol" of the Great Annihilation.

Looking at the "World Scar" that also traversed the sky, Duncan couldn't help but have a series of unfounded "associations"—

The destruction of every "old world" was accompanied by the appearance of that huge red light, and in the "Deep Sea Era" of the new world, the pale World Scar hung high in the sky... Could there be any connection between the two?

Is the "World Scar" that illuminates the night sky in the Boundless Sea an echo of the doomsday of the old world? Or is it the remnant of the destructive power at the time of the Great Annihilation?

Duncan even had a more unsettling guess—

Whether that destructive force had never dissipated at all, it had simply entered a state of slumber, looming in the air every night, and the so-called "World Scar"... was just the form of that "red light" during its slumber.

Could the role of Anomaly 001 be to periodically "hypnotize" that "Doomsday Crimson"?

In this series of guesses, Duncan's gaze gradually became solemn, and another question that he had not thought of before suddenly surfaced in his mind.

In his hometown, at least in the hometown in his memory... he had not seen that "red light".