Chapter 115: Another Kind of Ocean

"What do you mean there's no hole above?"

"Literally." Kraft touched the white rock wall in confusion; they were indeed standing in a tunnel barely wide and tall enough for two people. By all rights, the gap between this place and the Present World shouldn't be that great.

"Over there, it's all earth and stone, not a single gap."

When he tried to rise, rock occupied every inch of space corresponding to that position in the Present World—solid, unified stubborn stone, rejecting transfer to another plane in the simplest, most decisive manner.

Kraft didn't particularly want to add an unsolved mystery of a human fossil for future generations, something for various third-rate publications to write at length about.

"So, originally there should have been an identical cave 'above.' Wait, why say 'above'?"

"It's just a term. Calling the place where we live daily 'outside the mirror' would work too, whatever you like. Did you feel a sense of falling when you came here? If that was a real distance, we wouldn't be much better off than being mixed into a stone salad right now."

This wasn't hard to understand. Combining it with the earlier, somewhat inappropriate metaphor, William roughly grasped his meaning. "You're saying 'outside the mirror' hasn't been carved out with a hole identical to the one 'inside the mirror,' meaning we still can't get back?"

"Actually, it is still possible, as long as you don't mind being stuck in the middle of solid rock like a frozen fish in ice." Kraft corrected William's view, indicating it wasn't a problem with his personal technique. But the result was exactly the same; they couldn't return to the Present World from here.

"Besides, it seems the mirror metaphor isn't quite appropriate now." Kraft raised a torch to illuminate the surroundings. "I think you can imagine them as two sheets of paper. When writing on the top one, similar strokes press down onto the layer below, but writing only on the bottom sheet doesn't really affect the upper one."

"Then that means..." William's palms sweated, and he hesitated, unable to voice that possibility.

"Yes, I'm afraid that thing is active here too." Kraft nodded, affirming the thought William hadn't put into words.

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Expanding the thought slightly made the key point obvious. If these caves are like written strokes, and there is a stroke appearing only on the lower layer, it necessarily means there is an entity in this plane that constructs caves.

The threat of being mixed together with earth and stone had never truly departed.

Staying in place any longer wasn't a good idea. If they didn't want to be caught by the thing that swapped faces, they had to keep moving.

"Let's go; perhaps we can make it if we just walk a bit further?" His knees ached, like a mechanical pivot without lubrication, stiff to the point where it felt like it would creak the next second.

The pursued realized they had to keep walking rather than waiting for those faces to chase them again.

They would emit that same horn-like long cry as Old Gori, summoning the Cave Builders to crush anything protruding from the cave walls.

The reason they hadn't done so immediately was that he had reason to suspect human fragments weren't what they wanted.

Those sharp, barbed, dark arthropod limbs might be very skilled at peeling faces off skulls, but they wouldn't be nimble enough to pick mushy matter out of rubble and then patiently piece it together like a puzzle.

To avoid having to choose between two endings, the unexercised captain decided to make up for the exercise he had neglected in recent years today.

Footsteps and firelight twisted around their swaying shadows. William felt he hadn't relaxed despite temporarily escaping danger; instead, his spirit tightened further with every step of the walk. He needed to talk and express himself to share some of the heavy things accumulating during the endless trek.

"I feel... we are like we are in the sea."

The words themselves were like something floating up from the sea. Kraft didn't know where they came from nor understood their meaning, but he noticed the floating tremor in William's tone. "Why do you say that?"

"No, it's much worse. If I could return to the sea, that would actually be a good thing."

For a sailor, believing in the existence of things beyond "ordinary" cognition was perfectly normal. However, what they witnessed now seemed like content beyond what the human mind could bear, overturning past views.

At eleven, his elders first brought him onto a ship. From that moment on, he considered himself to be struggling against the world's most vast and unpredictable domain.

The ocean, with just the corner currently explored, exceeded the combined territories of kings and nobles by several times. Even the North plus the various nations on the continent across those straits were insufficient to match the distance on his charts from a fair wind to the ice fields.

Depths unreachable by anchor, treacherous and ever-changing weather, countless rumors wandering the shipping lanes and blank spaces—filled with the unknown and challenges. Even the most excellent divers could only understand its surface layers.

People who fell into hysteria at sea often developed similar symptoms: an unavoidable fear of the unknowable depths below and the distant horizon, imagining huge creatures existed there, interpreting shifting shadows as the outlines of massive forms, to the extent that they never wished to set foot on the sea surface again in their lives.

His elders viewed this as a shameful exit. They had seized wealth on the sea surface and bequeathed their disdain for it, along with gold coins, to William.

The ship's second master mocked those people and didn't understand their thinking. Until today, he discovered another kind of "ocean."

It was so vast and so deep that the ocean was merely a handful of water held up by it.

Its waves could reach a thousand feet; the highest peaks required months of climbing to reach the crest, and its width was immeasurable. In the gentle areas, entire populations had inhabited it for thousands of years, building cities and towns that were like moss yet considered themselves vast.

Similarly, people usually only moved on its surface, rarely venturing below, and had grown accustomed to it. More terrifyingly, no one had ever touched its bottom, unlike the ocean where there were always shallow places to drop anchor.

This other "ocean" was merely ignored because the human body could not swim or dive within it freely.

He had witnessed that kind of thing, something that could roam deep within the earth, viewing the ground as a "land sea," like the legendary giant eight-legged creatures wandering the deep ocean. The Face Stealers moved in its wake, like fish schools following a predator's leftovers.

And there were countless such caves in the southern hills, varying in size, scattered everywhere, some large enough to accommodate houses.

The horrifying fact caused a fundamental shift in his perspective. The solid ground no longer made this seasoned captain feel safe; he realized that walking on the ground was more dangerous than days at sea.

The two had flipped. He had moved from the safe water to an incomprehensible, infinitely deep realm of earth and stone. Every step accumulated pressure and fear, just as those who feared the ocean spent their days in panic on ships, trapped in the torment of hysteria.

If he could, he would rather stay on the water surface forever and never set foot on land again. At least he had never seen such creatures in the water.

"I never thought of this. The land is a dangerous ocean."

"Hmm?" Kraft couldn't untangle this confused jumble of ocean and land statements. "I don't quite understand what you're saying, but I strongly suggest you stop thinking about it, because things are getting complicated."

The cave changed; it truly narrowed and twisted like intestinal walls.

The rock was given a "flexible" form, swelling like pus-filled boils to encroach on the cave's interior space. It looked as if the body of the Cave Builder that should have passed through here had gone to another space, while the rest continued to pass through as usual.

Within a distance of just a few dozen steps, the tunnel was completely sealed off by rock; they had reached the end.