The Day You Went out to Sea

Ever since the captain had suddenly vanished and then returned bringing Marlo along, Karen had sensed that something was off. The main issue was Richard's disappearance and return, during which Memphis—Uncle Aisen—had said to him, "They grabbed the wrong person..." Memphis's subsequent disappearance corroborated this. The other party truly must have taken the wrong person. Yet the question remained: if they took the captain, why would they release him back? Could the captain have been grabbed by mistake as well? So the captain and Richard were on the same level? Karen believed that even Richard wouldn't agree with that assessment. Taking a step back, assume the captain hadn't been captured, but had truly deciphered the rules of this place and brought Marlo back. Yet when had the captain ever spoken so many words before issuing orders to his team? Explaining, elaborating, sharing concepts—like a teacher lecturing students. What the captain preferred was keeping a whistle in his mouth and giving the most direct orders in the briefest manner. *You don't need to know why; you just need to do as I tell you.* When wrapping up and preparing to move, the captain had even praised the great God of Order. This bordered on dark humor with a touch of irony. As someone who couldn't even recite the *Code of Order* and taught Karen based on nonsense he made up on the spot, the captain had actually begun praying to God when facing a dangerous, bizarre situation? If outsiders had been present under normal circumstances—sitting down over coffee and conversing politely—it would be perfectly normal for the captain to utter such pleasantries. But now, it felt completely out of place. As for the parting "Captain, can I take off my mask?" it had merely been a joke Karen made after already becoming certain the captain was an imposter. Therefore, when the Sava-7 pistol was pressed between the captain's brows, Karen hadn't hesitated in the slightest. This was to prevent that bizarre "disappearance" from recurring and wiping him out directly; for that reason, Karen hadn't even explained to Richard the real reason behind his departure and return. *Bang!* The gunshot rang out. All the teammates ahead saw clearly: Karen had shot their captain dead with a single bullet. The captain didn't dodge. A hole opened right between his brows. When that hole appeared, Karen still felt a brief flicker of tension. After all, the captain held a unique place in the hearts of all the teammates, Karen included. To say nothing of facing a "living" captain, even throwing darts at his photograph would carry some pressure. Fortunately, the next moment, the captain's body began to twist, as if a black hole had appeared and sucked him entirely inside—an effect a Sava-7 bullet could never produce. Karen shifted sideways, breaking out of the squad formation, and aimed his muzzle at Marlo at the very front of the line. In truth, Karen wasn't certain his second shot would hit. Although he had practiced shooting for a time at Fanny and Peige's warehouse club, he still lacked solid confidence with firearms—especially raising his arm to shoot on instinct during an emergency, which was largely a matter of muscle memory. Most of all, Marlo was at the head of the formation while Karen was at the very rear. Between them lay not only a considerable distance, but also an obscuring layer of white mist. *Bang!* Karen had aimed for Marlo's head, but ended up striking only his shoulder. Still, Karen's marksmanship wasn't at fault; the accuracy of the shot was commendable. The main issue was Marlo's lack of cooperation in failing to catch the bullet with his head. Mainly, after the first shot, everyone had a stress reaction and instinctively took tactical evasive maneuvers. Aside from Richard, everyone present was an experienced veteran, and Marlo had dodged a vital hit precisely this way. Even so, black flames ignited where the bullet hit his shoulder—the enchantment effect of the bullet. Then Marlo began cursing: "Fuck! What are you doing, Karen?!" Karen's gaze hardened. *Huh? Marlo is real?* At that moment, columns of black light descended upon them, enveloping everyone. The surrounding scene twisted, and they all appeared inside an enclosed space built entirely of black bricks. Carved onto the ceiling overhead was a whip—the Whip of Order. Everyone here could only sit in their respective seats, their bodies bound. Moreover, a black membrane stood before each person; you could see the people around you, but could not communicate through sound. Here was a deathly silence. Fortunately, after seeing the symbol of the Whip of Order, although everyone was profoundly shocked by their prior experiences, their hearts at least settled down. As members of the Whip of Order appearing in a room bearing the Whip of Order's sigil, their safety was definitely guaranteed. Karen knew what kind of place this was. Though he had never been here, he had heard Fanny and Peige mention that the Whip of Order possessed an interrogation room. It was small, yet capable of simulating different environments—somewhat like holographic projections—to break the psychological defenses of the interrogated. When the two women quarreled in their room, Peige had snarled at Fanny, threatening to tie her up in the interrogation room, switch the setting to a town square, and ravish her relentlessly! Yet Karen had no recollection of when they had been "captured" and brought to an interrogation room. Most importantly, the Whip of Order's interrogation room merely altered the surrounding scenery to foster a certain atmosphere; people still stood inside a room of that exact size, and only the walls, floor, and ceiling changed. Meanwhile, they had previously crossed immense distances and even boarded a train. Karen pressed his lips together. He instinctively sensed that the deception wasn't over yet. What he saw before him didn't feel like true reality. Karen looked at the two chairs diagonally ahead of him, where the captain and Memphis sat. Both appeared very calm. Because of their masks, their expressions were hidden, and neither attempted any physical gestures to convey information. At that moment, a figure materialized in the center of the room. He wore black priestly robes embroidered with a sharp sword on the front, flanked by two bolts of black lightning. Black lightning was a universal feature of Church of Order robes. As for that sharp sword, it likely represented a specific department, though Karen didn't know its function. "Please rest assured, everyone. Your safety is guaranteed, and your mission is already a success. Please remain seated here for another five hours. Once five hours have elapsed, you will leave here safely and collect your mission rewards. "After you depart, dedicated personnel will sign confidentiality agreements with you, and you will receive extra rewards for this. "I know this process might be somewhat dull, so follow your captain's example and sleep a while here." Everyone's eyes turned toward the seat occupied by the captain. From the look of it, he truly was asleep. Regrettably, although everyone was utterly baffled, the inability to communicate forced them to keep everything bottled up inside. "Well then, farewell." With those final words, the priest's figure dissipated. Karen found it somewhat absurd. What on earth was going on? Weren't they on a purge mission? How had they ended up here? What was even funnier was that the captain was actually sleeping... *Wait.* Karen suddenly noticed the captain's posture. He was leaning back against the chair, his torso slightly tilted. Ordinarily, when sleeping in such a position, resting one's hands on the armrests or letting them hang at the sides would be more natural. But the captain hadn't done that; his hands were folded in front of him. This posture looked awkward. Karen's gaze instinctively locked onto the captain's hands, noticing that the index finger of his right hand was pressed right against a knuckle on his left. *The position of the ring?* Realizing something, Karen immediately looked toward Memphis sitting beside the captain. Memphis hadn't shifted his posture since they had arrived and sat down; he seemed to be sleeping just like the captain. Unlike the captain's awkward, slouched sleeping posture, Memphis sat upright with hands folded before him, perfectly matching his rigorous temperament. Yet Karen noticed that Memphis's fingertips were performing the exact same gesture as the captain's. He knew that both men wore a ring on a finger of their left hand, and that ring was a mask. *Sleeping... ring... mask?* Karen licked his lips and reexamined the surroundings. Five hours—that was roughly the interval of the previous reset. So to get out, did they have to wait until the next reset? Where exactly were they right now? Hypnosis? Yet it was far more real than hypnosis, far more nuanced than a dream. The feeling was more like one's consciousness being forcibly integrated into a new environment, rendering everything beyond one's control. So, if "leaving" didn't mean breaking the seals and walking out through that door, but rather the return of one's consciousness... Then they were still inside that unreal conscious world! Karen felt he had grasped the crux of the problem. Operating under this premise, looking at the sleeping captain and Memphis made the situation seem even clearer. If this place was a cage within a conscious world and all of them were quarantined here, then weren't the captain and Memphis engaged in... a jailbreak? As the first two quarantined here, and as the strongest and most knowledgeable members of the squad, would they contentedly sit in prison? No, they wouldn't. They would definitely find a way to take action, to make an attempt. And that attempt was... masks? Karen doubted he could completely unravel the exact relationships between these environments in a short time, but he didn't mind imitating the captain and his uncle. After all, they all had masks. At this point, Karen noticed someone in the chair beside him frantically making hand signals at him. It was his cousin Richard. Richard clearly had an overwhelming urge to vent, but his sign language was undoubtedly made up on the spot. Karen made a gesture to Richard, folding both hands against his cheek to indicate he was going to sleep, telling him to go develop his sign language with someone else. Afterward, Karen leaned back, curled his body as much as possible, and pressed his hand down on the mask on his face. This mask was the silver mask Fanny had purchased in bulk last time, but in his ring, he had two more masks. One was Mr. Pavaro's, and the other was the silver mask left behind by his grandfather. Karen guessed that this conscious world had tagged everyone's presence. From accepting the mission to entering the scenario, arrangements had likely been made; to whoever controlled this conscious world, everyone's existence was known and definite. Therefore, on that basis, if one could temporarily adopt an untagged identity, wouldn't they become an entity that shouldn't exist in this conscious world? Free from surveillance and restrictions, possessing a certain degree of freedom—as long as one didn't court death by drawing attention. Which mask to choose? Karen instinctively wanted to use Mr. Pavaro's mask, but considering that he had used his grandfather's mask to enter the sealed space where Luoya was placed last time, his grandfather's mask was very likely to produce special effects in certain respects. His fingertip brushed the ring, and Karen selected his grandfather's silver mask. As the mask went on, to Richard, Karen simply sat there motionless, as if truly asleep. Karen himself, however, found his surroundings transformed. The enclosed space was gone, his teammates were gone, and he was lying on a hillside. Karen knew this hillside well. Looking up ahead, he could see Alais Castle. In the very beginning, the whole squad had lain in wait here for a long time. Karen sat up and felt the ground on either side of him. Why start here? Anthony and Kanse's squads had driven past here to enter the castle. When they came out, his own squad had gone down from the hillside and discovered their abandoned vehicles on the highway. This location seemed to be the starting point of everything? But what was the reason for it being the starting point? Karen stood up and looked down at where he had just been lying, murmuring, "In reality, are all our bodies actually lying right here?" If one had to pinpoint an intersection between the conscious world and reality, this seemed the most fitting. Alais Castle's sudden plunge into darkness hadn't merely meant the castle itself was shrouded in darkness; it was more like their own vision had been obscured. "Heh..." Karen drew a deep breath. "So what is this all about? Testing a divine artifact?" Connecting this to what the man in the secret chamber said—"your mission is already a success," "sign confidentiality agreements to collect additional compensation"—it was very likely that their squad and the other two hadn't been sent to purge aberrant demons in Alais Castle at all. Instead, they had been lured here to serve as lab rats for an experiment. What about the captain and Uncle Aisen? They must have "awakened" here too, but they wouldn't have lingered. Where had the two of them gone now? The answer was already obvious. The castle, which in a real-world mindset they would avoid by as great a distance as possible, practically begged to be explored under these circumstances; not checking it out would be doing themselves a disservice. Karen began walking down the hill. As he moved, he deliberately concealed his figure, making full use of the night cover so his movements wouldn't stand out. Instead of taking the castle manor's main gate, he approached the wall on the manor's western side. Inside stood only a row of shrubs with no figures in sight. Karen scaled it directly. Landing with a faint thud, Karen crouched low, warily scanning his surroundings. After confirming no one was around, Karen straightened and prepared to head toward the castle. Just then, a figure abruptly leaped out from the shrubs behind him, letting out a loud yell: "Aaagh!" "..." Karen. Yet the man seemed completely oblivious to Karen. Emerging from the greenery, he moved his arms in a swimming motion, paddling forward as his feet marched ahead. Muttering under his breath: "I am a little fish swimming in the long river of time, a fish, a fish!" From beginning to end, he didn't spare Karen a single glance. It was unclear whether he truly couldn't see Karen or was simply so lost in his trance that nothing else could penetrate his focus. Karen pondered a moment and seemed to recall that this person had been one of the members swapped over to their squad from the other two teams. Had he gotten that deep into the act? If their squad hadn't had the tone set by their captain from the beginning, if Mr. Memphis hadn't pointed out it was a deception, if Karen hadn't shot the fake captain dead, would everyone in their squad also end up like this, believing they were swimming in the long river of time? Karen wondered how the psychological trauma of these people would be dealt with once they learned the truth. "Think it's cruel?" A familiar voice drifted from a castle window beside Karen. Following the sound, Karen looked over and saw... the captain standing inside the room, watching him. "Captain, you can see me?" Neo countered, "What, did you think you were invisible?" "I almost thought so just now." "Heh." Neo gave a dry chuckle and took off the silver mask on his face, revealing a bloody face devoid of skin. Karen reached up to touch his face, then shook his head. He couldn't take his off. The captain had changed identities by removing a mask, whereas Karen had changed identities by putting one on. "I've seen you wear that mask before. Back then, I thought silver masks looked nicer, which was why I had Fanny custom-order a batch of silver masks for all of us." "Oh. Yeah." Neo pointed in the direction where that "fish" had wandered off. "Were you pitying him just now?" "Not really." "You'll get used to it. To research bacteria, the Wien government gave locals bacterial injections under the guise of free vaccinations just to observe the results. Compared to that, our Church at least isn't so outrageous." "Captain, did you find anything inside?" "Nothing at all. The castle is entirely designed around psychological suggestion, like a horror-themed amusement park. The useful information probably isn't inside, but outside." Neo vaulted out through the window and signaled Karen to follow. They circled to the back of the castle, where a fountain stood. The fountain was situated oddly, almost flush against the castle's rear outer wall, so sightlines from the outside and the hillside were blocked, leaving it completely hidden from view. In the center of the fountain stood a statue: a man seated upon a chair, his right fist pressed against his jaw in contemplative thought. "Who is he?" Karen asked. "Oh, I was just about to ask you that." "Ask me?" "Because not long ago, you mentioned this name right in front of me. If you don't believe me, take a look at this stone tablet." Beside the fountain stood a stone tablet. Karen walked over and looked at the inscription: [I would pay any price to trace back time, if only to return to the day you went out to sea. —Raniedal.] "..." Karen.