Ashes Of Deep Sea
Chapter 645 - Chapter 645 Chapter 643 After the Annihilation of All Things

Chapter 645: Chapter 643 After the Annihilation of All Things Chapter 645: Chapter 643 After the Annihilation of All Things The aftershocks caused by the explosion reverberated between two worlds, stirring up winds of chaos that tousled Fenna’s silver-white hair. She raised her hand to shield her eyes from the gritty wind, watching the Ghost Ship, ablaze with fierce flames, slowly descend onto the sandy sea. Then she saw the giant black goat descending from the clouds, step by step, coming to a stop beside Homeloss.

A flame then fell like a meteor from the deck of Homeloss and exploded before her eyes into a grand portal. Duncan stepped out from it.

“Captain!” Fenna immediately snapped back to reality, stepping towards Duncan, but she staggered after just half a step, nearly toppling forward–just in the nick of time, she steadied herself with the staff left by the giant, swaying momentarily before regaining her balance.

Duncan quickly approached her, “What’s the situation?”

Clutching the staff with one hand, Fenna struggled to lift her head and managed a weary smile, “This time… I think I’m really exhausted.”

She then let the Longsword in her other hand dissolve away and dug into her clothes, retrieving the radiant and warm “Sun” left by Tarrikin, slightly trembling as she handed it to Duncan, “Here, this is the ‘Sun’ that Tarrikin left behind… It’s intact.”

Duncan immediately recognized the name, “Tarrikin?”

“Yes, that giant… His name is Tarrikin,” Fenna nodded slightly, “He is a god who recorded history, who fell on the day of the Great Annihilation long ago.”

Frowning deeply, Duncan stared at the ancient “star” in Fenna’s hand, radiating warmth. Amidst myriad thoughts, he finally reached out and took the sphere.

The warmth seeped into his palm, the flames on the surface of the sphere gently licking his skin–but now there were more pressing matters.

Duncan casually stored the “Sun” into his chest, stepped forward to support Fenna’s arm, and took the large, rough staff that resembled a tree trunk from her–he could tell, this valiant young woman was truly at her limit.

Fenna did not protest; she breathed a sigh of relief, leaning most of her weight on Duncan’s shoulder and looked up at the giant black goat still standing quietly beside Homeloss, thoughtfully asking, “… Is that the ‘First Mate’?”

“How did you recognize him?”

“The face shape, although magnified many times, I could still tell,” Fenna said, and couldn’t help adding, “Besides, I do think and reason too.”

“It is indeed him–I repaired Homeloss’s keel and shared some of my flame with him, allowing him to regain this form for a short while,” Duncan spoke as he led Fenna towards the still-present flame portal at the edge of the sand dune, “We’ll discuss the details later. Let’s head back to the ship first, the ordeal isn’t over yet.”

As if to confirm Duncan’s words, no sooner had he spoken than a low, sinister rumbling and unsettling wailing gradually approached from afar, sounding as though two immense grindstones had begun to crush and shred each other again, the terrifying vibrations and loud sounds echoing in both worlds!

At the distant horizon, the “collision” that had paused momentarily had restarted–mountains were collapsing, clouds starting to boil, and in the sky, the depths of the ruined Silantis once again glowed with immense fires. The forests and lands nearly engulfed by darkness seemed momentarily to reshaping, yet in their reshaping, they twisted into horrendous forms–only to disintegrate once again the next second, swallowed back by darkness, the cycle repeating, inching towards madness.

Around Fenna, the boundless desert was once again whipped up by a fearsome wind, this time not of her making–an “Storm”–those winds seemed to harbor countless screaming, ferocious phantoms, each calling a series of lost names, and a huge wall of sandstorm formed, faintly revealing the illusion of cities and mountains within the barricade.

The final collision and merging of the two worlds had begun.

In the last second before the storm hit, Duncan dragged Fenna into the rotating portal of flames.

The next second, she was standing on the deck of Homeloss–the Spectral Flame blazing outside the Ghost Ship formed a barrier, the terrifying scene of the worlds colliding turning into distorted, murky illusions beyond the flames. Yet even through this barrier, she could almost hear the roar of both worlds collapsing, the terrible thunder of annihilation!

“I thought it was all over…” she said in astonishment, watching the world outside splintering apart, feeling the increasingly intense vibrations on the deck, seemingly a bit slow to react, “Why…”

“We only eliminated the Scion of the Sun who invaded The Dream of the Nameless–yet the nightmare of Silantis will not end because of this,” Duncan’s voice arose beside her, “This place holds the deepest memories of the Elves’ race, the scene of the Great Annihilation deeply engraved here–the collision and annihilation of the two worlds, it is the inevitable conclusion of this nightmare.”

As the ship’s shaking grew more intense, Fenna, striving to maintain her balance, stared intensely at the collapsing everything afar, finally bursting out, “How can we stop all this…”

Duncan turned his head, silently gazing into her eyes, “Stop? Stop what? Stop the collision of the two worlds? Or stop the Great Annihilation?”

Fenna paused, seemingly coming to a realization.

“The Annihilation had already occurred–in the true annals of history, as the onset of the Deep Sea Era, it had long since happened and concluded. All that remained was a ‘memory’ of an event already passed. We couldn’t prevent it, nor did we need to,” Duncan slowly shook his head, “Our only task was to stop Silantis.”

Fenna no longer spoke, merely displaying a contemplative expression.

Duncan then slowly approached the edge of the deck, gazing far into the distance, beholding the apocalyptic demise of the world.

The blending of the two worlds had begun–at the finale of the “collision,” the two inversely suspended lands did not physically overlap. Instead, they disintegrated before that, in numerous reshaping events and distortive disintegrations, gradually transforming into some dark, chaotic… “entities.”

Above and below Homeloss, around the deck, beyond the gunwales, the erstwhile forests, mountains, deserts, and rivers tore apart, swiftly losing their discernible colors and outlines. The light of the entire world diminished, and thereafter, those varied fragments slowly became dimly outlined “clumps” floating amidst endless darkness, colliding and merging with each other, turning into even more distorted and grotesque shadows.

Then, after an indeterminate amount of time had passed among the utterly submersed darkness of all things, a chaotically dim luminescence appeared–as though it were the soul that remained after the world had burned out and extinguished, like the last flickers of embers. These dim lights flowed chaotically among those grotesque shadowy clumps in Duncan’s view.

Deep within those dim, unordered streams of light, amidst the wreckage and ruins of the world collision, only one barely recognizable form remained.

It was a gigantic tree.

It quietly floated in the deep darkness of the Annihilation of All Things, in the stopped flow of time and ages following the day of destruction.

It was already dead, having perished completely during the collision. The conflict of laws and order annihilated all things, and gods, being one step ahead, were no exceptions, nor was the World Tree created by gods–Silantis was just an illusion, a phantom that had long since vanished.

But it couldn’t truly die.

Because deep in the “Elves'” memory, there was always a recollection of such a World Tree.

Even if these Elves were recreated, even if they were restored by “The Saint” during the third great night–after witnessing the true nature of the Annihilation, Duncan had vaguely realized what the essence of “all things” in this Deep Sea Era truly was.

Nothing could escape the conflict of laws during the world collision, not the mightiest warriors of the kingdom, not the World Tree created by deities, not even the deities themselves.

Duncan didn’t know precisely what beings the “Four Gods,” including “Ever-Burning Tarrikin,” currently were, but he was certain of one thing: the entire Deep Sea Era, strictly speaking, was merely a product restored by The Saint from the “Blueprint” after the third great night.

They were all remnants.

Duncan quietly watched the Silantis, quietly floating in the darkness, his gaze fixed on its remains and the chaotic shadows around it, once the homeland of a race.

The “World Tree” that appeared in the memory of the Elves, in a strict sense, was also a replication–but it couldn’t comprehend this fact.

Similarly, it couldn’t recognize those Elves “replicated” from “ashes.”

A faint glow slowly emanated from the remnants of Silantis.

Dots of flowing light, like fireflies, gently seeped from the remains of the great tree, gradually gathering into a river in the chaos. This river meandered and gently encircled below Silantis, much like the rivers that long ago, in the forests of the elves’ homeland, nourished the World Tree.

Every point of light in that river was a sleeping consciousness.

Nourished by this river, the remains of Silantis once again began to grow–in still lifeless “corpse” state, its branches bizarrely rose and stretched, growing gray-white, densely twisted leaves from their edges, like a zombie rising from the grave, climbing into the mortal realm from the land of the dead.

Ted Riel’s final resistance had failed.

Duncan reached out his hand.

Homeloss silently sailed into the dark toward the beckoning pale, twisted “Tree of Death,” already burned to ruins but still continuously growing and spreading.