In the captain's cabin of the Narwhal, the lights swayed left and right with the waves, making Charles and the bandaged face flicker.
"Da~da da da~" Bandage took Charles' pen and wrote silently and quickly on a piece of white paper.
Soon, a human-shaped pattern formed by some strange arc-shaped characters appeared in front of the two.
This is what the bandage had written inside his shadow. It was because of this that they were able to escape safely on the last island.
"Bandage, can you tell me the actual use of this thing?" Charles looked at his first mate in front of him with a serious expression.
Although he wanted to avoid the fact that he was a monster, Charles knew that he had to face it and could not avoid it.
"I... don't know..." Bandage silently put the pen tip on and placed it between two books to prevent it from shaking with the waves.
"How could you not know? You clearly drew this. Or have you forgotten where you learned it?"
Bandage looked at Charles calmly and shook his head slowly. "No, I haven't forgotten... the last island... The past me... remembered... what I did... So I recalled... everything that happened to us... on the last island..."
Although his language was a bit confusing, Charles tacitly understood what the other party wanted to express.
What West saw Bandage shrink do before has always been in his mind.
Since Bandage and West are the same person, for Bandage at that time, that memory is both the past and the future.
So at that critical moment, Bandage recalled the future that was about to happen, and finally he saved his present self through his past memories.
"Doesn't that mean that the things you drew were learned through your current self, so you only know that this thing can help you escape from trouble, but you have no idea what the inscription actually does?"
"No, I know... what this thing does... it brings out the real you..."
"The real me?" Charles' pupils shrank slightly.
Bandage nodded, picked up the pen with his bandaged hand and continued drawing.
Gradually, a monster that was barely human-shaped appeared in front of Charles.
The swollen body was deformed and terrifying, and tentacles with barbs and eyeballs slid out of his chest. His entire face had melted, and seven or eight eyes replaced his facial features and kept pushing on his face.
Limbs like crab claws, a body swollen like a bubble; triangular, deformed eyeballs that are staring like fish are all over the body.
Although Bandage didn't seem to have high painting skills, he managed to depict the horror of the monster with just a few simple strokes.
Looking at one of the monster's twisted and enlarged steel limbs, Charles, with a frown on his face, touched his prosthetic limb with his hand.
He thought back to his experience at the spiral elevator on the previous island.
The self with extremely cold thinking, the self who doesn’t care about anything.
This person is himself, but he doesn't want to be that kind of thing. At least now that he has emotions, he doesn't want to be that kind of existence, even if that kind of existence seems amazing.
"You too... are he..."
Bandage looked at Charles quietly and pointed at the shadow behind Charles.
Charles turned his head and looked at his own shadow in confusion. The black object seemed darker and deeper than the shadow of the table next to him.
Charles turned around again and looked at the painting in his hand silently. He always thought that he was an outsider in this underground world, but now he felt that he was becoming more and more entangled with this place.
"... This is a hidden danger... You have to find a way to solve it... ... I always feel that this is not a good thing... At least for you now... it is not a good thing..."
"I know, of course I know, but now I have no clue except that I have inexplicably become a chosen one of the gods."
When he rushed onto the deck, he also saw Dipper rushing out. He also heard something. The two of them went to the left deck and looked down.
It was a pair of black human-like arms, with their hands clasped into a ball, constantly hitting the hull of the Narwhal. The strange sound he had just heard in the captain's room came from here.
"Captain, I'll go take a look!" Dipper leaped straight down.
"Be careful! If you encounter danger, warn immediately and don't try to be brave!!"
With a "splash", the bandage fell into the water, and the object that was hitting the hull instantly shrank into the sea.
Dipper was very fast, and soon he was back on deck grabbing the rope that stretched out to the sea.
In his right hand he held a furry, dog-like creature with a large, flat tail following behind it.
This is a sea otter, a common marine creature. It is holding a clam in its hand. It seems that it has previously attempted to use the Narwhal as a chopping board to break the clam shell.
Looking at the pair of dark, frightened little eyes, Charles grabbed it by the scruff of the neck and threw it back into the sea.
"Go down and look around. It's impossible for a sea otter to drift alone so far out to sea. It doesn't make sense. There must be other reasons."
"Okay!" Dipp jumped down again without saying a word. This time it took longer, almost an hour, but the wait was worth it, as Dipp brought back very valuable information.
"Captain, there is a vast patch of seaweed ahead of us, and this sea otter is probably one of the creatures in it.
"The kelp patch? How wide is it? Can we get around it?"
"No, I looked around for a long time and found a large area of seaweed in front of me. It seems that this is the sea of seaweed."
Charles walked back to the cockpit and looked at the sea chart on the wall. After estimating the current distance between him and the target, he said, "We are not far away. Maybe the island is in the seaweed. Let's go straight to it."
Charles then looked at Dipper and Feuerbach next to him, "You two go down, one is to be careful of the propeller getting tangled in seaweed, and the other is to be responsible for alerting any dangers in the water."
"Yes, Captain."
"OK!"
The problems encountered by the Narwhal were immediately known to all crew members, and everyone began to cheer up to meet the unknown challenges.
Soon the seaweed colony appeared under the searchlight of the Narwhal.
Normal seaweed should be green, but this one is not. It is dark blue.
It was dark blue under the floodlight, but where nothing could reach it, it looked like clumps of black hair.
"Knock, knock, knock!" Suddenly, extremely dense knocking sounds came from all directions of the Narwhal.
Thanks to xmPXLM for the 3800 reward! Thanks to the 5000 reward from the pen with SS! Thanks to the 500 reward from the sword of the master!
42-1+1=42
(End of this chapter)