Translator: SumTLMan
As Angel unfurled the parchment, a slight frown danced on his forehead: “This is genuinely a page from the nautical log, I didn’t expect to find a neglected chapter here.”
‘Shining Gold Era 1353, the eighth day of the first half of the Month of Frostfall.’
‘I quietly passed away at the bottom of the well, but alas, my treasure remains in a distant land. I hope my descendants can find my treasure; it is the only legacy I leave for you.’
The parchment held nothing more than this brief account. However, Angel deciphered a clue from the date.
Lucas had leaped into the well on Shining Gold Era 1353, the sixth day of the first half of the Month of Frostfall.
This record was written two days after his plunge. Thus, this parchment hidden in the drawer represented the final page of Lucas’s nautical log!
Once Angel had finished reading this last entry, he was momentarily confounded.
“Lucas claimed to have died quietly at the bottom of the well, yet his skeleton was clearly found on his Feather Fan ship. Could someone else have brought Lucas’s remains here?”
Moreover, Lucas expressed a hope for his descendants to locate his treasure, which neatly corresponded to the descendants’ use of blood to activate the magic formation at the bottom of the well and arrive in this peculiar region.
Could it then imply that this strange place still hides his treasure as suggested in his log?
Was Lucas’s final journal entry a fabrication or a true account of his sentiments following his well leap?
There was still a question that Angel hadn’t yet unraveled: was Lucas a liar or an honest man?
After pondering for a while without resolution, Angel put away the last entry, planning to investigate whether the alleged treasure of Lucas was present here. As he turned to leave, his gaze fleetingly grazed the skeleton seated on the bench.
The headless skeleton appeared somewhat eerie.
The skeleton was still clad in some rotten strips of cloth. Angel picked it up and examined it for a while but found no significant clue.
“This skeleton is very likely Lucas’s, but where has the skull gone?” Angel murmured to himself in puzzlement before shaking his head and leaving in resignation.
Upon stepping out of the captain’s cabin, Angel quickly descended into the ship’s hold.
The hold was partially submerged, conveniently engulfing half of the Feather Fan, with many rooms submerged in water. This reminded Angel of an event—when he first encountered the Feather Fan in the Devil’s Sea Mist area, it was eerily suspended above the sea surface, with clear traces of water intrusion inside, much like the present condition of the hold.
Angel carefully inspected the waterlogged areas of the hold, recalling the state of the Feather Fan when he explored it with a puppet.
In a dance of duality, Angel was confident in his theory. When the Feather Fan revealed itself in the foggy area, the traces of seawater submersion could be explained by its constant presence in this location. However, the mystery of why it suddenly appeared in the foggy area remained unsolved.
Could it be inferred, then, that the Feather Fan’s initial perplexing disappearance was actually a return to this place?
Yet, what exactly is this place? How did the Feather Fan manage to leave, and how did it return?
Bewildered, Angel flew out of the cabin, suspending himself above the figurehead of the ship, illuminating his surroundings with a luminescent stone lamp.
Before him lay an expanse of impenetrable darkness, its content indistinguishable. Below, the tranquil sea rested. Turning back to observe the rear of the Feather Fan, Angel found that while this side was also shrouded in darkness, the faint light from the luminescent stone created short intervals of illumination when directed towards it.
Flying over, he discovered, to his surprise, that the back of the Feather Fan was anchored against a precipitous cliff.
It was then that Angel realized that the Feather Fan was lodged at the edge of a small island, stranded amidst a pile of rubble near the sea.
“Is Lucas’ treasure located on this island?” Angel wondered silently.
Instead of immediately landing on the island, he transformed his mental power into tendrils, reaching out to explore beneath the sea. He had an inkling that the ocean was too quiet, as though it had lost its vitality.
When Angel flew a distance away from the Feather Fan towards the open sea, he sent his tendrils of mental power slowly downwards.
The feedback from the ocean was as he had anticipated—deadly silence. There were no currents, no hidden tides, no signs of living creatures, no detection of any biological frequencies. It was a truly dead sea.
Retracting his mental tendrils, Angel did not dare to fly further out to sea. Even without considering potential dangers in the open sea, his poor sense of direction over the water made him afraid of straying too far and losing his way back.
Thus, Angel returned to the site where the Feather Fan was stranded.
He woke Toby, who was slumbering in his pocket, and signaled for it to transform into a griffin. “Guard my physical body. I’ll investigate the surroundings in soul form.”
Toby was still dazed, not understanding how after a night’s sleep, they ended up over the sea again.
Angel quietly explained the situation, and only then did Toby comprehend. Upon hearing about the hidden treasure, Toby’s eyes lit up immediately. It nodded without hesitation, assuming an “I’ve got this” demeanor.
With a shake of his head and a small smile, Angel’s soul departed from his body, which was enveloped in Toby’s gray gravity lines.
“I’ll scout the area to see if there are any traces of magic formations.” Having said this, Angel began his search around the Feather Fan.
In principle, a two-way magic formation should not be far from the exit. Angel started by searching the nearby beach, but found no signs of magical runes.
He then dove into the seabed, but still found nothing. Instead, he discovered several skeletons hidden under layers of dust.
These skeletal remnants bore no distinguishing information, but their location suggested a high likelihood of having fallen from the Feather Fan ship.
Could these bones once have belonged to sailors aboard the Feather Fan?
Angel could find nothing under the sea, leaving only the precipitous cliffs to be explored.
He flew close to the cliffs, surveying back and forth, yet no clues surfaced. Just as he started questioning his own judgment, Toby, in his playful curiosity, called out to him.
Following Toby’s voice, Angel found that Toby, with his physical body, had somehow reached the bottom of the cliff. Beside him was a dead, withered tree.
As Angel pondered the purpose of Toby’s call, his eyes lit up with realization. Concealed behind the withered tree was a hidden cave!
Could it be that the portal was within this cave?
Curiosity piqued, Angel ventured into the cave. Illuminated by luminescent stones, the cave wasn’t deep, and soon Angel found himself at its end. To Toby, this was nothing but an abandoned cave, an anticlimactic discovery. But through Angel’s eyes, the cave was filled with a faint, captivating glow.
The familiar magical formation on the cave walls provided a sense of relief.
Indeed, there was a portal back home hidden within this secluded cave.
Reuniting with his body, Angel, having secured a way back, was free of his lingering worries. He could now explore this island with ease.
Accompanied by an excited Toby, Angel headed towards the cave entrance.
As he was about to reach the entrance, Angel’s vision blurred momentarily, as if a shadow had darted past the cave entrance.
He paused, rushing to the entrance, but found nothing nearby. The only thing was the shadow of the dead tree, twisted and contorted as if imprisoning a struggling soul.
“An illusion?” Angel shook his head, circling the vicinity again. Still finding no signs of life, he had no choice but to abandon the search.
“Let’s check the other side of the cliff, and find out what Lucas’ treasure is, and where he hid it.”
Angel ascended the cliff, the other side also presenting a precipitous cliffside lined with oddly shaped withered trees. As he descended, the shadows of the trees, lit only by the glow of the stones, seemed to morph into monstrous shapes, watching him from the dark.
The pitch-black surroundings and the eerie silence sent chills down Angel’s spine.
Sticking close to the ground, he sped past the cliff. If it weren’t for the lack of light and the reliance on the luminescence of the stones for illumination, he would have opted to traverse the landscape from the sky.
He flew for miles, seeing no signs of life, until finally he and Toby found themselves by a lake.
The reason for halting here, Angel surmised, was due to the substantial size of the lake, and more importantly, the signs of human activity detected nearby along the shoreline.
Not too far from his current position, a crude outdoor stove rested on a patch of scorched earth. A dust-laden iron pot sat atop a stone-built furnace platform.
From the thickness of the surrounding dust, it could be inferred that the stove had been abandoned here for decades at least.
These signs were enough to determine that this island had seen human activity before. However, like the sea itself, this island was probably long dead. The tracks on the island were likely not from the natives but from others who, like him, had stumbled upon this place.
Angel took a walk around the lake, hoping to spot other signs of people while also sorting out his thoughts.
The island appeared desolate, and from what he could observe so far, there wasn’t anything of substantial value. The only intriguing aspect was the elusive treasure recorded in Lucas’s nautical log.
Could it be the treasure that attracted the Song of the Deep Sea and Summer Dew Ridge?
To verify this, Angel would have to locate the place where Lucas recorded the treasure.
However, Angel was well aware that he didn’t have much time for treasure hunting. Given that both the “Sea God” and the “Basket Witch,” two true knowledge wizards, were on the move, it was only a matter of time before they found this place.
The pressing pressure extinguished Angel’s spark of excitement. Regardless of whether he found the so-called treasure, he had to leave before the arrival of the true knowledge wizards.
“Chirp—”
Suddenly, Toby’s call from a short distance away interrupted Angel’s thoughts. Looking over, he saw Toby flapping his wings in the middle of the lake, holding a luminescent stone lamp.
It was only after Angel flew over that he realized why Toby was calling out.
Right beneath him, in the center of the lake, a small wooden stick protruded straight out from the water surface. With the help of the luminescent stone, he could even see the stick extending quite a distance under the water.
Angel tossed a luminescent stone along the wooden stick into the lake.
The luminescent stone slowly sank to the bottom, illuminating a massive shadow lurking underneath the water…