"Captain, what are you talking about? There's nothing there." Dipper was very confused.
But at this moment, Charles had no time to care about what Dipper was thinking. He saw a white object falling from the sky in the distance and slowly approaching this side.
When he heard that familiar gurgling sound again, his entire false memory instantly began to crumble, and true and false information mixed together, making his mind a mess. Now he had two completely different sets of memories in his mind.
Charles' expression showed extreme pain, he covered his head with his hands, and veins bulged on his forehead.
"Hey! Chief Engineer! Get someone to call the ship's doctor over! The captain looks like he's in pain!" Seeing Charles like this, Dipper anxiously shouted into the communication channel of the turbine room.
Charles gritted his teeth and looked at the overlapping world around him. He took out the diary with his trembling right hand.
"Anna, come quickly! Delete my memory immediately!! Immediately!!!" Charles shouted excitedly.
He remembered that this thing was the non-existent monster that Tuba mentioned, and it was the one he saw in his dream.
Just at this moment, Anna appeared. She instantly read Charles' memory, immediately understood why, and pressed her hands directly on his head.
"Wait! There's still time. We must leave clues for our future selves." He took out his cell phone and started recording the next video.
But the change in the cover of the video made his heart skip a beat. He pressed the button on the phone with his right hand, and another new round of videos appeared in front of him. Charles in the video looked very panicked.
"Something is wrong. This is the tenth time for my future self. This is very wrong. No matter how many times I modify it, this monster will always appear. Moreover, it can be transmitted from person to person. We must not let others know of its existence!"
"That thing that Tuba mentioned that doesn't exist is it. When you think it exists, it really exists, just like the Second Officer Charlie, Sailor Sam, and Third Wheeler Clark who disappeared before!"
"Second mate Charlie, sailor Sam, third wheeler Clark? Who are those??"
Charles felt as if his hair stood on end. He didn't remember there were these three people on his boat. They had completely disappeared.
"When you see this video, that thing has already noticed you. You have at most two minutes to come up with a solution. It's very fast—"
The video stopped abruptly, and the big white skeleton face appeared in the video.
"Charles! Hurry up! That thing is coming!" Anna looked solemn as she stared at the long creature in the distance.
"No matter how many times it happens? Am I going to be trapped in this cycle of constant memory erasing forever?" Thinking back to what he had said, Charles' heart sank to the bottom.
He turned his gaze to the distance, looking at the guy more than a hundred meters away. The thing was still approaching this side at a neither slow nor fast speed.
Charles thought about it with a frown on his face, then his expression suddenly became somewhat calm.
"Anna, the source of all this comes from me. Three crew members have already disappeared. If we wait any longer, God knows how many more people will disappear because of this monster. We must solve the problem from the source."
"I want to give it a try. I can't escape anymore. Since deleting it a thousand times or ten thousand times will not solve the problem, I choose to face it directly." Charles' expression became firm. Looking at the thing in the distance, a black thorn pierced out from the palm of his prosthetic hand.
"You can't beat him! God knows what this monster is! It came from above!! Are you completely crazy!!" Anna looked extremely excited.
Charles' eyes gradually became firm. "Maybe, but there is no other way! We don't have time to waste. If I really can't go back, then you can live well with Winky. I can't take the guy in front of me and completely destroy the entire Narwhal! The suicide note is behind my pillow, give it to my crew."
Anna raised her hands, and more than a dozen tentacles directly wrapped around Charles' body.
However, Charles seemed to know that the other party would do this. With a flash of white light, Charles' body instantly disappeared from the spot and appeared on the bow of the Narwhal. He bent over and vomited violently.
Anna's heart moved slightly, and she wanted to control Charles through mental control to turn around, but she didn't expect that he completely ignored her control. There was a silver bracelet hanging on his right hand that was slowly glowing.
The furious Charles kicked his legs, raised the black thorn, and pounced directly at the monster in the distance.
Facing the aggressive Charles, the other party seemed not to see him at all and continued to approach slowly at that pace.
"Die!" Charles used all his strength to hit the skeleton's head hard.
The moment Charles came into contact with it, the monster disappeared instantly, and everything around it began to gradually fade away, including Anna and the Narwhal behind him. Everyone and everything disappeared, leaving only a gray world.
Charles stood there blankly, looking around. It was very empty and very quiet. Charles wanted to shout something, but he tried his best but no sound came out.
In an instant, Charles gained a lot of knowledge in his mind. He suddenly understood what that thing was. It was not a god on the surface of the earth, nor was it a monster. It was nothing. It was the concept of "non-existence" itself.
Even in its world, the concept of "non-existence" does not exist. It is nothing, it is nothingness. But humans cannot understand this nothingness.
Humans are unable to understand this nothingness, and they instinctively materialize it according to their own consciousness, so they see a strange monster.
When anyone notices its existence, that person will eventually become a part of it. Charles now "does not exist", so anyone outside will not be able to perceive Charles' existence.
After walking around in a circle, Charles suddenly saw something in the distance and he slowly walked over.
What did he see? It was a dead body, and he knew the man. It was his second officer, Charlie, who sat there blankly, without any reaction.
He wasn't the only one on the Narwhal, the second mate also noticed the "non-existence", so he also became a part of it.
Charles suddenly recalled that since he left 068, he had never noticed that one of his second officers had disappeared.
It turned out that he had been assimilated a long time ago, and it was only because of Anna's memory deletion that he was able to hold on for so long.
"What should I do now? Try to escape?"
Charles let out a bitter smile, he could no longer escape, he had become "non-existent", and everyone outside had forgotten everything about him.
(End of this chapter)