Deep Sea Embers

It's a wonderful feeling.

Duncan could clearly feel things in the distance - he could feel the Lost Country drifting in the boundless sea, the living ghost ship was constantly developing its route on the chart under the control of a goat's head, and there was a man with a weak head. The cursed puppets turned around in the cabin, familiar with the environment on the ship as if they were exploring. The deep and dark sea was slowly rising and falling around, and there were countless strange things hidden in the sea.

However, in his other line of sight, he was sitting in an antique shop in the lower part of the city-state of Pland. The voices of people and cars on the street came to his ears, but instead set off the quietness of the shop. A man named Nina's human girl was sitting across from him, nibbling on the cheapest cake in downtown.

He's Captain Duncan, the master of the Homeless, a moving scourge on the boundless seas—he's sitting here like an ordinary man, eating his breakfast, in the peaceful depths of the marketplace.

I don't know if it was an illusion or not. He felt that there was a part in his heart that was always hanging and always restless. It might be the nerves that had been tense for a long time on the ghost ship, or it might be something else, but he felt that it was always the case. Not a bad thing.

Seemingly noticing the sight from the side, Nina, who was eating cake, suddenly raised her head. She glanced at Duncan curiously: "Uncle Duncan, don't you want to eat?"

Duncan glanced at the food on the other's plate: "Is it enough for you?"

"Enough, it's not good to eat too many sweets."

"Um."

Duncan nodded, picked up the cake and took a bite. He seriously felt the rich taste that he hadn't tasted for a long time, and felt the crude sweetness slowly dissolve in his mouth - then, he clearly felt that this body began to process the food. down the food.

He calmed down a little, knowing that the situation was as he expected.

This body is "better to use" than the body that was temporarily occupied for the first time - its "parts" are intact, the death time is not long, and the takeover of its own soul almost seamlessly restarts the vitality in the body, which is the same as the previous one. Open-minded corpses are quite different.

He is breathing now, blood is flowing, and his heart is beating—though it seems to be beating a little slower, but it should still be in the normal range.

There should be no need to worry about the problem of body corruption, and it also saves the calculation of soaking in preservatives, and in this way, it is less likely to be exposed in front of ordinary people.

There was one thing Duncan wasn't quite sure about, though.

He knew that his body should be diseased - in the memories he had swallowed, the negative impression of the scabies was stronger than all other memories, and the spirits and painkillers he had found in the cabinet before were also proof.

He didn't know what happened to this body before, because the time of onset and the causes of onset seemed to be memories from a long time ago, and it was already unclear, but one thing was obvious: at this moment, apart from ordinary human physiques Apart from the feeling of weakness he brought him, he didn't feel anything wrong with this body.

Disease gone? Because of the reason of walking in the spiritual world, this body has healed itself? Or is it because the projected soul is finally limited in perception, so that he can't actually feel the problem of the body, and the health of this body is actually still deteriorating?

Duncan ate quietly while thinking, then suddenly glanced at Nina who was eating opposite him: "Don't you have to go to school today?"

Nina lives in the Xiacheng District, and the economic conditions are not good, but the city-state of Perand has obviously developed to the level where basic education is more popular. She is now studying in a school jointly run by the church and the city hall, specializing in the steam engine. This kind of school can be seen as a kind of "vocational high school", mainly to send skilled steam craftsmen to factories and churches.

Half of Nina's tuition is paid for by her uncle and the other half comes from a grant from the city hall.

For a city-state that has developed into an industrial age, it is quite worthwhile to train artisans in this area even with official subsidies - and it is undeniable that this very purposeful school has at least solved the literacy problem of the common people.

Nina is very good at learning, and in her uncle's memory, this girl has relatively good grades in all courses.

"I have no classes this morning," Nina nodded. "There are only two history classes in the afternoon. In addition, I have to go and tell Mrs. White in the afternoon that I will not be living in the dormitory these days..."

Duncan suddenly stopped what he was doing. He gave Nina a serious look and asked, "Don't you think staying here to take care of someone like me will delay a lot of things? You can live in the school for a long time, That might be more helpful for your studies."

Nina was stunned, she looked at her "Uncle Duncan" dully, and then suddenly became angry: "You shouldn't talk like that! You're just sick, just follow the doctor's advice and take medicine— Mom and Dad entrusted you to me..."

"Your parents entrusted you to me," Duncan corrected seriously, using the memories in his head to organize his words, "You were only six years old then."

"But now I'm seventeen," Nina puffed up, slamming her fork into the last little piece of cake, "you're not even as good at taking care of yourself as I am—if I do move out, you won't need three days. It can make a mess in the room. In fact, you can also ask me to help you with the storefront, at least cleaning, the windows are so dirty that you can't see clearly..."

Duncan reluctantly listened to the girl's rambled "preaching". He didn't expect that his casual "test" would bring about such a big reaction from the other party.

But slowly, he couldn't help laughing again.

He felt a kind of temperature from this girl named "Nina"... a warm temperature that seemed to be bathed in sunlight.

"Okay, I'll just say it casually," he said, shaking his head, stirring the last bit of soup in the bowl. "History class this afternoon... How's your history class going?"

"Uncle Duncan, are you really all right?" Nina widened her eyes in surprise. "You've never... well, at least never asked me about school in the past two years."

Duncan opened his mouth and was about to say something, but the girl in front of him continued to speak for himself: "We are talking about ancient history recently, and Mr. Morris is telling us about the events after the Great Annihilation... To be honest, still It's interesting, ancient history sounds like a lot of the story, much more interesting than modern history and modern history."

Duncan thought for a while and looked serious: "It sounds like you learned well? Well, let me test you, what is the related concept of Great Annihilation?"

Today's Uncle Duncan is very strange, although I can't tell what is strange, but it is different from usual.

But Nina didn't think too much about it - compared to her uncle's slightly strange words and deeds, this innocent girl was happier at this moment that Uncle Duncan was finally energized and seemed to be in a good mood.

She was glad that Uncle Duncan was asking exactly what she had just learned.

So with a smug smile, she began to tell Duncan what she had just learned:

"The Great Annihilation happened about 10,000 years ago—although for unknown reasons, ethnic minorities with more unique cultural heritage, such as the Elves, Senjins, and Kiplos, recorded inconsistent times in their calendars, But in general, the archaeological consensus that the Great Annihilation occurred at the end of the Era of Order 10,000 years ago..."

Duncan listened calmly.

My mind is full of question marks.

Elf? Senkins? The Jeep? what's going on? It turns out that there is not only one intelligent group of humans on land? And elves...Is this the same concept as "elves" in my own understanding? Are there still elven city-states living in the age of steam industry in the boundless sea?

Some very strange pictures appeared in his mind, and Nina's voice was still coming from the opposite side:

"...There are certain discrepancies in the records of the Great Annihilation of various city-states, but the more common part is that the era of order before the Great Annihilation was a far more prosperous, stable and secure era than today. At that time, there were extremely vast continents, and the ocean area was far It is not as boundless as it is today, and there is no such end as the so-called 'realistic frontier' between sea and land...

"The era after the Great Annihilation is called the 'Deep Sea Age'. The Deep Sea Age has continued to this day, and there is no sign of its end. The most striking feature of the Deep Sea Age is that the boundless sea covers almost the entire world, and only the land remains. Less than 10% of the old era, and they were all divided into large and small islands or 'otherworlds in the fog', today's many city-states are built on relatively stable islands, and various ocean-going ships have become inter-island. No means of communication with each other.

"In the early days of the deep sea era, the remnants of the old world suffered heavy losses, and the old civilization was almost completely destroyed. The 'ancient kingdom of Crete' that first emerged from the ruins is the earliest ancestor of civilization in the deep sea era. This ancient kingdom lasted for less than a hundred years, but left a lot of legacy that will have far-reaching influence on future generations, including the most primitive and superficial classification methods for many anomalies and anomalies in the deep sea age, as well as a lot of valuable experience in maintaining survival in the deep sea age …”