Chapter 0 In Three Hours

In three hours, the sun would rise from the distant sea, and the relatively safe and stable daylight would replace the unsettling night—if the sun actually rose normally.

Duncan glanced at the mechanical clock hanging not far away. The hands were ticking slowly.

"Are you planning to wait for sunrise?" the goat-headed voice suddenly asked. "That's three hours away."

"...Waiting idly for three hours is even less interesting than sitting here staring at a basically blank sea chart," Duncan shook his head, got up, stretched his shoulders, and slowly walked towards the bedroom. "I'll go back and rest for a while. If I'm not out before sunrise, you can just wake me."

"It would be my pleasure."

Duncan nodded, pushed open the bedroom door, casually tossed the paper with the mysterious numerical patterns on the table, and walked towards the bed not far away.

His body basically didn't need much rest, but every so often, he would still take a nap before dawn—not to alleviate fatigue, but simply to "wake up and greet the sunrise."

This allowed him to maintain a sense of "being alive" on the Ghost Ship, preventing him from gradually losing his humanity on this quasi-spiritual vessel. Although he didn't know if there was any hidden danger in that, after sensing that the Ghost Ship's state wasn't as stable as he had imagined, he had been consciously maintaining this habit of "maintaining a human lifestyle on the ship."

Duncan lay down, closed his eyes, and listened to the whispers of the wind and waves coming from all directions, feeling the slight shaking of the ship beneath him, and slowly controlled himself to relax.

…

As they got closer, Lucretia and Luni were able to observe more details of this behemoth.

In the captain's cabin of the Brilliant Star, decorated with feminine touches, Lucretia, wearing a silk nightgown, suddenly sat up in bed.

As the Brilliant Star's speed further increased, this massive golden luminous object floating between the mist and the sea surface finally appeared more and more clearly in Lucretia's eyes.

Lucretia saw this ray of light, and at first, she didn't react much, but after only two or three seconds, her eyes suddenly focused, and then she abruptly looked up at the mechanical clock beside her.

Luni responded slowly, "Reserves are sufficient, your order has been conveyed."

This doll was pieced together from pink and blue fabrics, with a scar across its face and blood-red paint smeared on its jagged mouth. As Lucretia got up, the rabbit doll moved slightly, then turned its button eyes towards its mistress, and a young boy's voice came from the cotton-filled body, "Mistress, I thought you had fallen asleep."

However, the next second, the expected tragic collision and death did not occur—the bird flew straight in, flying into the slightly upright cliff.

Just then, a wisp of faint golden light suddenly spilled in through the gap in the curtains and entered the "Sea Witch's" vision.

Lucretia stared intently in this direction, then took a deep breath, and her body suddenly turned into a pile of scattered colored paper. The colored paper swept out of the window, flew across the deck, through the stairs, and into the upper-middle bridge.

After a while, in the corner of Lucretia's eye, she saw the bird flying out from another direction, looking completely unharmed.

This was the moment the sun rose!

"It seems to be translucent?" The puppet Luni curiously leaned against the open observation window. "It looks... like a piece of luminous stained glass?"

Even the clockwork puppet Luni gradually widened her eyes and couldn't help but exclaim in a drawn-out voice, "Oh my... Mistress, what is that?"

Also presented was its increasingly vast real scale.

"It's not dawn yet," Lucretia said slowly, walking slowly towards the window. "Where are we?"

The toy sailors were briefly confused, then skillfully tidied up and reorganized their formation, still…

The rabbit doll, having finished making the bed, noticed its mistress's movements and hopped over, "Mistress, it looks like it's getting light outside!"

In the bridge, the clockwork puppet Luni in a maid's outfit was steering. She noticed her mistress approaching immediately. As the colored paper flew in and swirled, she released the helm. The next second, Lucretia's figure had already coalesced from the colored paper and reached out to take the helm.

Lucretia sat listlessly in front of the dressing table, letting the dolls fuss around her. She resisted the fatigue and stress caused by a sleepless night and wild thoughts, and pondered listlessly about matters related to the Ghost Ship. After a while, she took a deep breath and forced her mind to recover.

Lucretia nodded, and then, at the captain's command, the Brilliant Star fully awakened.

A large group of toy soldiers ran out of the drawer, quickly lined up, called roll, and then ran to the side to pick up combs, hand mirrors, water glasses, and toothbrushes, lining up to run nimbly to the back of the seats on or in front of Lucretia to begin the mistress's morning ablutions.

Lucretia took the glass and drank it down in one gulp, but still stood up. "No need, continuing to lie down will only increase my frustration… Tidy up."

"...No, it doesn't just seem to be transparent…" Lucretia shook her head. Her eyes stared unblinkingly ahead, seemingly discerning something incongruous from the edge of the giant luminous geometric figure. Just then, a small white dot suddenly flew out of the distant mist and entered her field of vision.

Under Lucretia's personal command, the entire ship presented a posture of magic and machinery coexisting, ugly elegance and terrifying beauty mixed together!

A large number of clockwork sailors, puppets, and porcelain soldiers rushed to their respective work posts. The special paddlewheel structures on both sides of the hull also began to accelerate their rotation. These seemingly outdated engine devices gradually released more power than modern propeller engines, allowing the ship's speed to increase rapidly. In the rear half of the hull, the ghostly "original hull" became more illusory and blurred, and jet-black, hair-like stripes gradually spread from the stern to the surrounding sea, giving the impression that a jet-black wake extended from the Brilliant Star.

A huge and simple golden geometric figure floated quietly on the sea surface, radiating a stern and soul-stirring pale golden glow. Its height almost exceeded the Brilliant Star's tallest mast by eight times, and its sides extended out like city walls. Its upper half stood slightly upright, like a terrifying cliff, and its surface showed no superfluous or trivial protrusions, each part seeming to be perfectly natural.

"Still advancing according to the planned route from last night," the rabbit doll said, "We're getting close to the location where that 'big guy' we observed earlier fell!"

Lucretia didn't speak, but stared intently ahead, at the huge golden phantom, now resembling a large mountain peak, gradually emerging from the mist.

"Yes, Mistress."

A layer of thin, hazy mist floated on the sea outside the window, the most common sight in the border area. Deep in this thin, hazy mist, a very large, vaguely spreading pale golden glow floated quietly on the sea surface, its distance from the Brilliant Star yet to be determined.

It was a seabird. Even on the boundless sea, even in this border full of bizarre phenomena, such things still existed.

At the moment the rabbit doll's voice fell, Lucretia abruptly pulled open the thick curtains and pushed open the window reinforced with a fine metal mesh.

She suddenly stood up.

Not to mention, precisely because they did not possess simple intelligence like humans, these "wild animals" actually lived better in the bizarre border seas than those timid and weak adventurers.

Her hair was a little messy, and her expression showed a hint of fatigue and irritability. When she got up, she was still holding a giant rabbit doll, half her height, with a comical shape and a hint of eeriness.

"Mistress, I was just about to send someone to call you," Luni stepped aside and said. "This golden light suddenly appeared from the fog. According to the position, it should be the 'fallen object' we've been tracking."

"Two hours before sunrise," the rabbit doll said as it jumped from the mistress's arms to the ground. It hopped to a cabinet, opened the door with its seemingly limp plush palms, took out the captain's treasured wine, poured a large glass, and handed it to Lucretia, "If you can't sleep, this can help soothe your mind."

At the same time, Lucretia casually snapped her fingers, and the lights in the room turned on. She slowly exhaled, dragged her feet to the dressing table, reached out, and tapped a drawer on the mirror with her fingernail. The drawer opened in response.

A huge, luminous behemoth floating on the sea.

Less than an hour until sunrise.

"Increase to full speed, all hands on deck, prepare the stern section for entering and exiting the spirit world at any time," Lucretia said quickly. "Are the spiritual dust and witch oil reserves sufficient?"

Lucretia glanced at the clock beside her, her tone particularly weary. "I only slept for a few dozen minutes, and I was awakened by a strange dream… What time is it now?"

The rabbit doll with the boy's voice answered crisply, then took the wine glass handed over by its mistress, and then hopped to the ground to make the bed, looking skilled.

It was too large to determine its outline from a single perspective, and it was so majestic and complete that it didn't seem like something humans could build.

A toy soldier carved from wood jumped in. The soldier wore a classic naval uniform and held a large cutlass in his hand. He first bowed to Lucretia, then stood on top of the drawer, waving his command sword, issuing sharp commands.

Lucretia's gaze was drawn to the seabird. She noticed that the poor thing seemed to be confused by the golden light on the sea and, in a panic, rushed straight towards the luminous "mountain."

Luni also saw this scene. The clockwork puppet murmured in surprise, "Is that a phantom?"