Chapter 536. Traces
The gray snow had stopped falling, leaving the ground bereft of snow, but the surroundings were still hazy. Visibility was low, and it seemed as if the haze had a purple hue.
Charles looked up at the hazy purple sky; he had never imagined that he would return to the surface.
"So this is what the surface looks like, Captain. Have you really lived in a place like this? The surface doesn't seem as good as down below," said the Deep Dweller squatting on the ground with a cigarette in his mouth.
"This place is not my world—for now," Charles replied. He crossed his arms and waited patiently for the massive airships to dock at the Colossal Hole Fortress.
Dipp flicked away the burnt-out cigarette and said, "Captain, I think it's going to be faster if we explore with those airships."
"You really think I wouldn't know that? The issue is we don't have that many of them. The factory has picked up the pace, but they have to prioritize our supplies before anything else, so they're not really that fast at making one.
"You should stop with that nonsense and think about how to deal with what we're going to encounter soon," Charles said, stepping down the stairs. He had no time to waste. Their ongoing situation was so bad that he had to move as soon as possible. Thus, Charles quickly assigned the explorers their own places to explore.
Charles decided to use the Explorers Association's method of exploring an unknown island, as the captains were familiar with it. It was a method that involved slicing a massive island as if it were a pie into small, manageable slices.
Charles even went further and sliced those slices into tinier pieces before assigning them to each explorer.
The denizens of the Subterranean Sea knew nothing about the surface world.
Since they were here to explore, Charles decided to go all out. He assigned both dangerous and safe regions to the explorers for them to explore.
It was unrealistic to expect the first batch of explorers to find the darkness just like that. Charles also thought of them as a huge reconnaissance team, and they were just here to light up the way for the next expedition team.
Charles chose to explore the massive mountain where he saw Pope Lylejay pulling the Light God by His head. If there was anyone who knew what exactly happened to the Light God, then it would be the Pope. The quickest way to find clues would be to seek the Pope.
The explorers wasted no time and immediately prepared their supplies.
There was no water on the surface, so ships could not be used. Meanwhile, airships were needed for supply transport between the surface and the Subterranean Sea. However, there were brand-new cars available for them to use. Of course, Charles and his crew would get to use those cars.
Four cars loaded with supplies were allocated to the crew of the Narwhale.
The sailors picked up barrels of whale oil and poured them into the fuel tanks while the sailors of the other exploration parties did the same. The pungent smell of whale oil filled the air of the fortress.
"I hate riding in cars. I feel like vomiting when I'm inside one," Sailor Norton grumbled with furrowed brows.
Charles patted him on the shoulder and said, "Our ship is still being retrofitted, so just bear with it for now. We have to make do with this for the time being."
The implication in Charles' words was clear, and everyone looked at him.
"Captain, can the Narwhale really come up here?" Audric asked in surprise.
"It can definitely come up here once it has been retrofitted. Anyway, stop the nonsense and get in the car. Except for Audric, split yourselves into three groups; make sure to change drivers every eight hours," Charles said. Then, he opened the car door and got in the car.
"Captain, we... we've never driven a car."
"Then practice. Anyway, this place is very open and empty. Just make sure to keep some distance away from each other when practicing."
Driving was difficult to learn, but the difficulty wasn't in the driving itself; it was in the fact that one had to understand traffic laws and ensure that one wouldn't end up hitting a pedestrian in a densely populated city.
Without the constraint of traffic laws and pedestrian traffic, then driving was easy. It was just a matter of knowing how to use the accelerator, the brake, and the steering wheel. Moreover, this desert seemed as vast and empty as the Gobi Desert, so these rookie drivers couldn't possibly hit a pedestrian, even if they wanted to do so.
Charles took out a compass from his pocket and hung it in front of the windshield.
Soon, cars drove out in all directions from the Colossal Hole Fortress, leaving behind crooked tire tracks.
Sitting in the passenger seat, Charles frowned as he peered at the strange scenery outside. Ever since his arrival on the surface, there had always been burning questions in his mind: what exactly was the source of the purple color in the sky, and where was it coming from?
Those who had stayed in the Colossal Hole Fortress all said that the purple light from the sky had never vanished even once.
At first, Charles thought that perhaps it was sunlight, and the reason it was purple was all thanks to the seemingly endless shroud of purple mist. However, the blind vampire Audric didn't catch fire, and the light didn't kill the inhabitants of the Subterranean Sea.
In other words, the purple light wasn't sunlight.
Perhaps there was a light source somewhere, and this purple light was some sort of reflection, but Charles was unsure. To make matters worse, he wasn't even sure whether this was Earth or not. In other words, there was a chance that this planet's start was emitting a purple light.
Charles was soon engrossed in his pondering over the answer to his burning questions. Eventually, a familiar massive mountain appeared in his view.
"Captain! Where do we go next?" Dipp asked, sticking his head out of the window from the driver's seat. Dipp's physique could be considered superhuman, so it wasn't that difficult for him to learn how to drive.
"Go around it; our destination is on the other side," Charles said.
The mountain seemed close, but it was actually farther than it seemed, so it took them two hours to reach the foot of the mountain.
The car scaled the mountain until Charles finally saw traces of the Light God. He also saw several colossal chains, which the Pope had used to drag the Light God away.
However, Pope Lylejay was nowhere to be seen. The last time Charles saw him, he had been prostrated on the ground here, but he had disappeared without a trace.
Charles gave his orders, and Dipp immediately jumped out of the car and observed the nearby traces. "Captain, I can only see a child's body imprint here; there are no other traces.
"And the Pope can fly, so he wouldn't have left any footprints."
As Charles stared at the footprints before him, a question soon popped up in his mind. The Pope was having a mental breakdown the last time he saw the former, so where could he have gone?
The god he had believed all his life had died suddenly before him—Charles was surprised that the Pope hadn't committed suicide right there and then. How could he have moved, considering his mental state?
Annarles Island hadn't received any reports about anyone descending from the surface, which meant that the Pope had yet to return to the Subterranean Sea.
"Captain... maybe... something here... has killed him..." First Mate Bandages said to Charles.
Charles immediately disagreed. "He's too strong to die here. Even if there really was an entity capable of killing him here, the battle would have been cataclysmic. In other words, there would have been traces of battle as well as enemy footprints.
Charles looked around the vast desert and pointed at the deep marks on the ground, which had come from the Pope dragging the Light God away.
"Get in the car. We'll follow these traces to see where Lylejay dragged the Light God from."
The car immediately got moving, driving along the descending deep marks. They followed the deep marks for two whole days, but the end of the deep marks was still unseen.
Even Charles was astonished by Lylejay's tenacity. Charles couldn't quite believe that Lylejay had actually dragged the Light God for such a far distance.
If given enough time, Charles believed that the Pope could have dragged the Light God all the way back to the Subterranean Sea.
During the early hours on their third day of following the deep marks on the ground, Charles let go of the steering wheel. He transferred seats and tucked Lily into his arms before leaning on the headrest and closing his eyes to rest.
Before he could take a short nap, however, the car came to a screeching halt, sobering him up. "Captain! There's a giant outside! It's as big as a mountain!"
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