Captain – Chapter 476 – A Fatal Gift

The merchant ship did not change hands.

Upon realizing that in this dream, no one would clean up the mess, and that according to how events were unfolding, she didn’t need this ship anyway, the young woman laughed it off, pretending she had been joking all along.

Seeing this, the fat captain was naturally more than pleased, especially after receiving her promise to guide them out of their lost course. He immediately ordered that no one should disturb her and cleared a relatively clean room for her in the cargo-filled hold.

That cramped single room was indeed the lodging in Roy’s memories.

Sitting on the straw-covered wooden bed that was still uncomfortably hard, Roy stared absently at the thick book in her hand.

The book was titled “The Making and Appreciation of Barley Wine,” which she had borrowed from the fat captain after drawing a simple navigation chart in the captain’s cabin. In her impression, that person seemed to have read it too.

Back then, he had leaned against the wooden wall beside the bed, reading this book with his back to the porthole. When responding to her, he hadn’t even looked up, his stern profile illuminated by sunlight, blue eyes as calm as the sky outside.

Somehow, although she had forgotten that person’s face, she still remembered the color of his eyes.

That gentle, ocean-like blue.

Blinking, Roy awoke from her reminiscence with a slight sigh. She put down the thick book, completely unsuitable for a pirate’s taste, and gently rested her forehead against the porthole, looking at the peaceful sea surface while murmuring softly, “It seems this is going to be an enormous undertaking.”

Just as the captain had anticipated, these journeys they had experienced together did help with recollection. Through those familiar scenes, she could glimpse images related to him.

Like him sitting quietly reading in a nearby room, or the embarrassing incidents that had occurred here.

But she couldn’t be certain that even if she walked through all the old times, seeing all his blurred silhouettes within them, whether at the moment of reaching the end, she would be able to remember his identity, and whether through him, she could realize what those close to her and this world meant to her.

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Everything was uncertain, and uncertainty erodes confidence most effectively.

“If you wanted, you could traverse this path in the blink of an eye. Why suffer this torment and torture?”

The devil’s voice echoed in the room, concealing beneath its calmness and languor a temptation strong enough to drive ordinary people mad. Yet in reality, he was merely stating an extremely ordinary fact.

He was just lifting the thin veil before her eyes, letting her see the unimaginable power she possessed.

Eternal immortality, crossing thousands of miles in an instant—in this world where truth and illusion intertwined, she was omniscient and omnipotent, able to do anything at will. But… it was all meaningless.

Wealth, power, love…

Before such authority that could disregard all worldly rules and even natural laws, everything seemed as dull as children playing house.

And this was what it felt like to be a devil.

Roy finally experienced it firsthand.

“No matter how many thousand times I tell you, even if I stir the blood within you, making you endure storms and frost, it cannot compare to this dream that belongs exclusively to us in helping you understand my feelings.”

“Do you understand now why the things mortals cherish and crave, I have always disdained?”

“Because we and they…”

“Enough.”

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Interrupting the devil’s occasional lengthy discourse, Roy felt that bone-chilling sensation rising from the depths of her heart, gradually eroding her like termites gnawing at a levee. She whispered, “I know what you’re after, nothing more than trying to accelerate the influence of power over me.”

“But give up that hope, I won’t use it.”

In fact, as early as in that cold rain before Ilruwin, at the moment of “awakening,” she had already felt this sense of erosion. No, to be precise, she was gradually adapting to the great power within her body, being pushed by an invisible hand toward that final destination.

It is said that only after walking the forbidden path would one transform into a devil, completely forgetting everything from the past.

But in truth, even the “old pirate” who had entered the dream as an anchor point didn’t know that the “path” the devil spoke of wasn’t referring to the distance traveled in this storybook with countless pages, nor the trajectory of times gone by, but the all-pervasive…

Assimilation.

Just like the most common scenario in the real world, where the righteous are corrupted by power and wealth, this so-called forbidden path followed the same principle. Except it wasn’t temptation by benefits.

It was simply returning the power that already belonged to the devil’s descendant to her.

Nothing more.

In response to the captain’s cold, war-like words, there was only the devil’s composed, slightly mocking laugh.

The annoying ghost spoke no more, but Roy’s mood didn’t improve in the slightest. She felt the coldness transmitted through her forehead, one hand resting on her knee, the other inconspicuously falling on the pocket watch at her waist, silently pondering why she had suddenly wanted to obtain it.

What exactly are you? A clue, or…

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A trap?

Time was running out.

Although upon realizing that each time she activated the great power within her body she would become more dependent on it, the captain had never used it again. But even so, it continued to subtly erode her.

Roy didn’t even know if she could complete the journey through the old times before approaching the endpoint of fate.

If not, she would have to make a choice: to take a desperate gamble or to turn back. But…

At that moment, would she still be able to let go?

“Meow.”

Hearing the cat’s meow from behind, the young man who was tying wood together to make a raft paused, turning somewhat stiffly to look at the cat and ask, “What did you just say?”

“Meow.”

The cat found it troublesome and unnecessary that mortals, when shocked or surprised, liked to ask others to repeat themselves. But seeing the first mate standing motionless like a wooden stake until he got a response, it reluctantly meowed again.

The tone was identical.

“Countdown…”

Muttering this urgent term, which had also appeared in Isaac the leader’s words, Caine frowned, turned back to continue working on the raft, and asked the Siamese cat in a heavy tone, “Is it because of the intersection between my dream and hers that this process has begun?”

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“Meow.”

The cat said no, it had been going on for some time.

“How much time do we have exactly?”

After completing the final step in constructing the raft, Caine straightened up to catch his breath, then immediately began pushing it toward the sea, asking the cat who had already timed its jump perfectly to land on the raft.

“Meow.”

The cat shook its head in a human-like manner, saying it didn’t know. If that reckless person hadn’t prematurely unsealed the medium under the devil’s instigation, perhaps she could have held on longer.

After the raft was fully supported by the seawater, the young man flipped himself aboard, picked up the wooden oar, and began rowing in the direction the cat indicated. Puzzled, he asked, “The medium’s seal… you mean that pocket watch?”

“Meow.”

As the raft gradually moved away, only a faint, lingering cat meow could be heard, confirming but not hopeful about it.

As if saying, don’t expect that person, who’s as curious as a cat, to restrain the impulse to unwrap a gift.

Even though she knows that gift might cost her life.

Translator Note

Curiosity kills the cat!