Chương 81: The Ghost Ships and the Depths

The young ghost woman's name was Violet, and she spilled over with excitement speaking to Amberlin.

"I didn't know the living could set foot on our ship! Well, I didn't know we could leave the ships either, until that girl flew off one of the others. Just sprouted wings and headed for land! I tried jumping in the water to see if I could swim to shore. Wouldn't do it if I was living, but you only die once, you know? Well, it popped me right back onto the ship. Just like that—pop! Don't know how that other girl got around it." Violet wasn't the only spirit on the deck.

The other passengers kept a more cautious distance, probably still spooked by Amberlin's punching a hole through the other ship. They were a motley collection of men and women, young and old. Not very soldiery—or sailory, for that matter. They looked less like an invasion force and more like the neighbors next door, if that door was in a rural village like Restford.

"What's your secret?" Violet said.

"Is it magic? It isn't necromancy, is it? That's how you're able to bridge between the world of the living and the dead, isn't it? Though my town priest says it's impossible. But he doesn't have an answer for how devils do it. Oh! You aren't a devil, are you?" Amberlin didn't think that the spirit would ever guess "otherworlder," and she wasn't inclined to tell her. Though they say that dead men tell no tales, if Violet was anything to go by, then the spirits of this world were interminable gossips.

Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. If she could get the inside scoop on this invasion, maybe she could put a stop to it.

"What do you guys want with the bay?" she asked. Violet looked confused.

"We don't want anything? The only reason we're here is because we can't get our ship to leave."

"You don't have a captain to steer it?"

"The ship was drawn here like it has a mind of its own. It's got to have something to do with all the mana radiating up from the waters below. Can you feel it? It's like bathing in sunlight. It's so nice." While she couldn't feel the mana that Violet was talking about, she could understand a ghost wanting to feel the sun again, seeing how they couldn't come out in the daytime. Sometimes it's the simple pleasures in life that people miss the most.

"And the mucks!" Violet continued.

"We tried to warn the bay residents, you know. We signal with blinking lights, but they don't seem to see. We chant our warnings, but they don't seem to hear. We even spelled out words with the ships, but they can't seem to read. A real shame, that. We put in so much work figuring out how to get some of the steering back." There was a brief pause before Violet added with concern, "Hey, the residents aren't blaming us for the mucks, are they?"

"If you guys aren't making them, then who is?" she asked. Violet glanced around nervously, which seemed odd for someone who had already died once. Then she leaned in and whispered, "It's probably the same thing that drew us here. You know what's right beneath us, don't you?" Amberlin had a good idea what it could be. Back in her brother's game, there was a keystone site off the coast of Ygg Latten Bay. She thought back to the first keystone that she'd come across in the mountains north of Restford.

It had been old and crumbled at the slightest touch, a relic of an incomplete questline. While their purpose hadn't yet been determined when she died, the sites themselves were already placed in the game map, and therefore should exist in the real world. Even without a greater purpose, it stood to reason that they must be special in some way—like being an incredible source of warm, sunbathing mana.

The question remained on what changed recently at this particular site to draw the ghost fleet here, to generate the decay field, and to cause the run of the mucks.

"I've got to go and see what's happening down there," she decided. Violet gave a solemn nod.

"To be honest, I'm worried about what will happen to us once you fix all this. I know a lot of us still aren't ready to go." For the first time since they met, Amberlin gave serious consideration to the fact that Violet was a spirit. When she herself had died, there hadn't been any crossing of the Styx or rising into the clouds or pursuing a light through a tunnel. For her, there had been nothing in between her last breath on Earth and first one in Kalimor.

Would it be the same for Violet and the other passengers on this ship? Did they have their own isekai worlds to be transported into? It would only be fair if they did. Not everyone should miss out just because they didn't have a cool brother like hers.

"Do you know where you go?" she asked.

"No one has ever returned to speak of it," Violet said sadly. It wasn't their fault, she was sure. Amberlin would have loved to send a message back to Tashido if she could. Just to let him know she was okay. And maybe a couple of things to fix in his game. But what if there was a way? Alas, the spirits weren't given any sort of pamphlet or instruction manual after they died. There was no guide who explained everything to them.

Even the ship's captain was just an old sailor who'd retired to their town and would soon be moving on like the rest of them.

"There is something that might interest you," Violet said, lowering her voice like she was about to share some juicy gossip.

"I've been talking to the other ships by blinking light. My father was a sailor, you see, and he taught me. Turns out, most of us in this here fleet live... uh, lived... around the Fire Ring Range. Lots of volcanoes and earthquakes happening in the area of late."

"Oh." Amberlin frowned.

"So it was..." She wasn't sure if it was right to ask.

"It is as you think," Violet said.

"Don't worry, I've had time to come to terms with it. It's kind of what you'd expect for a place with that name, don't you reckon? Well, it's been different for the past two hundred years, since the Apostle came through and stabilized the land. Rumors are, Annaconda did something to trigger the recent eruptions." She gave this some thought.

"I think maybe we know of a different annaconda."

"I hope to Goddess there's not more than one." Violet looked thoughtfully at the life preserver she'd thrown to Amberlin earlier.

"You know, if you can endure that cursed water, you might be able to stop the lich." Amberlin listened while Violet told her about Annaconda and his centuries-long quest for ever greater power. It left her feeling conflicted. She wanted to travel the world with her friends and help people along the way. But to hunt a lich? That seemed far too dangerous. She'd be all right because she was immortal, but she couldn't bear the thought of anything happening to Boots or Havlo or Maelle.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. She put the decision aside for later. Right now she had to focus on saving the bay. It was time to go down into the depths and see the truth for herself.

"I don't know if fixing the problem means you've got to go away," she said to Violet.

"But if there's a way to stop the mucks for good, I've got to do it. I'm sorry." Violet nodded sadly.

"You've got to do what you've got to do." A couple of the other passengers had been listening in, and they approached her now.

"Are you going to turn it off?"

"I'm going to try," she replied, expecting them to try and stop her. But none of them made a move. Instead, one asked, "What do you think is on the other side?" She shook her head.

"For you? I don't know. But I hope you get a world where you can make good friends."

"Wouldn't that be nice?"

"Maybe it's worlds all the way down," another person said. Leaving it at that, Amberlin stepped up onto the bulwark and dropped into the sea.

The journey down to the sea floor was long and uneventful. She spent that time messing around with her light spell, trying to get it to project farther and farther in front of her so that she could see all the way to the seabed. When at last it came into view, she wasn't prepared for what she saw. Imagine if you will, a tree at the center of a mystical forest, standing taller and sturdier than everything around it. Did the forest give life to the tree, or was it the tree that gave life to the forest?

There's no easy answer to this question because that's how ancient this tree is. Now suppose its roots extend through the entire forest. Imagine how one might look if you dug it up. Picture the fibrous growth high enough for you to climb, wide enough to fill a creek, and solid enough you break your shovel. Amberlin didn't see this tree or the forest but she saw the root.

And instead of a creek, it stretched along a volcanic fissure, blocking the gap with its immense girth, leaving only enough room for the gases to bubble up around the sides, and for a glimpse of the underside bathed in the hot orange glow of magma. Whether the root grew to follow the fissure or the fissure grew to follow the root, the two now existed together. Amberlin was no marine botanist, but even she could tell the unhealthy state of the root.

A slimy goopy substance beaded out from tiny pores before sprouting tiny tadpole tails and to propel themselves along. As they went, they blended together with their cousins into larger clumps, all heading in the same direction. These were the mucks, she realized. They were born of this diseased root. The equivalent of plant pus. But what was the root's origin? Tracing back along its length, she saw twinkling lights up ahead.

Strengthening her light spell to cut through the dark water, she saw the form of a giant tree, a real towering behemoth. It reminded her of a conversation with her brother. He always had a fascination with the old growth forests. They were the closest thing her old world had in scale to the dinosaurs, a childhood obsession of his. She remembered being shown a photo of a man standing next to one of those ancient trees. She'd thought it must have been fake.

There was no way a real tree could get that big, not as recently as the invention of the photograph. She could see that inspiration in the tree before her, and it made her feel a pang of regret for what she might soon have to do. It was a mighty specimen, and might have been beautiful, had it the opportunity to thrive. But everyone knows that trees need sunlight, and none penetrated this deep into the sea. If it ever did have leaves, they had long withered away, leaving behind a wooden skeleton.

It turned out not to be completely dead, as its limbs shifted on sensing her approach. The lights she saw came from inside the wood and shined out through the ends of the twigs. The many beams brightened and focused together in an attempt to blind her. As more branches turned in her direction, her skin began to warm like she was swimming under the midsummer sun. Amberlin dropped to a low approach, skirting just above the seabed. The tree bowed its mighty trunk to bring more of its limbs to bear.

But the heat was something she could stand, and she found that her immortal eyes were immune from blinding. Soon she had crossed beyond its flexibility, and unable to bend its trunk any further, the tree resorted to another trick. Long, flexible vines shot up from its base. There were so many of them, like it had prepared to defend against an army. But there was only her. The vines were rotted like the root, and as fearsome as they appeared in their large collective, the battle only took one punch.

Her fist, trained against the sturdy flesh of a rock troll, shredded its target into dark confetti. The rest of the vines rapidly retreated. If a tree could panic, she sensed it now. There was something in the way the volcanic fissure bubbled faster, and the muck goop began to shoot out from the roots in longer drops, like the tree was squeezing itself from the inside. The goop coalescing up ahead tried to block her way while the one behind reached out to grab at her after forming into a giant hand.

She conjured a fireball, her go-to solution when it came to mucks, but quickly remembered she was underwater, and her spell fizzled out. To her surprise, both masses of goop burned up anyway. It was only when her skin began to warm up again that she understood why. The mucks had been caught in the tree's beam of artificial sunlight. The tree-beams dimmed to avoid a repeat of the friendly-fire mistake, but it was already too late.

Amberlin took this lesson and intensified her own light spell, emitted from her pointed fingertip, and aimed it along the root like a laser, burning up all the goop. At last reaching the tree, she settled by its base and gazed up. Had the man in the photo felt as she did now, like he was looking up from the foot of a god? The sense of regret returned, stronger. But after what she'd seen, she couldn't leave it here.

There were more roots extending out in other directions, each one following a different fissure, all of them sweating mucks. Who was to say they wouldn't soon reach other lands, other cities? Up close, it became clear how frail the tree really was. The rot was everywhere, like it had already spent years decaying in a bog, and the wood might come apart if she tried to pick it up. She felt sorry for the tree. However it had gotten here, it deserved better. Were the mucks a cry of pain?

Or a cancer that was trying to spread? Either way she was here to end it now.

"I'm sorry..." Amberlin tried to send the message telepathically. The branches above her relaxed. Resignation or peace? She wished she'd studied plant body language. She pushed her fingers into the mushy wood and pried the stem open like a stubborn double door. And open the doors certainly did—all the way up to the heavens. The entire giant tree split in two, and the halves slowly fell to either side.

It was only when they struck the ground that their immense weight made itself known, shaking the seabed and throwing sand up hundreds of yards into the surroundings. A furious bubbling began around her. Fearing volcanic activity, the conversation with Violet still fresh in her mind, Amberlin swam upward before remembering that she was immortal. She turned and watched the events unfold from above. The disturbance had come from the roots.

With the loss of the main trunk, they began to disintegrate and fell down into the fissures, where they were absorbed into the cooling magma. When the bubbles cleared away, all that remained were the molten fissures and the dark sawdust that had once been part of the split trunk. She was filled with a sense of loss. This was a tree her brother would have loved to see, and it deserved a place in his world. While she processed her thoughts, she spotted something that had dropped out from the core of the tree.

Unlike everything else around here, these didn't appear to be infected or dying. They looked a lot like healthy seeds. She picked them up, counted seven of them, and put them away in her pocket. She would make sure they found a better home than their parent had. Before leaving, she took one final look around and found long trails of molten rock on the seabed, back in the direction she'd come.

They looked like the sorts of trails left behind by a welder or laser cutter, only these were several feet wide and seemed to have cut quite deep into the seabed. Strange how she hadn't noticed them on the way in, since they stood out quite prominently. But then, she had been distracted by the tree's unnecessarily bright light beams. It was a shame her brother never implemented the keystone quest. This site could have been made quite lovely.

Thinking about how big the tree had managed to grow despite the lack of sunlight, the mana level here must have been enormous. The tree might even consider this a lucky break. While it did die in the end, it had gotten to live. It must have thought itself in paradise, with everything it needed to sustain its life, despite its unorthodox surroundings. But all living things do die eventually, and for the tree this process corrupted the way it used the available mana.

Perhaps an infection, or a cancer, or just plain old age. The result was that instead of producing life for itself, it made the mucks. Seeing the potential power of a keystone site, her thoughts turned to the Fire Ring Range. Tashido had put another site there. From what Violet had told her, there appeared to be another disturbance in that region. But it was a long, long way away, and a higher-level zone to boot. Her party needed to get stronger first. Which they will—she had every confidence in them.

And after they fix the problem there, they'll go and check up on all the other keystone sites to make sure nothing else was going to go wrong. She was determined to keep this world safe for all her friends.