“Captain…?” Bandage had stood behind Charles without him noticing, looking at him with a serious expression.
Charles took Lily out of his pocket and put her in his hand. "Wake up everyone. Something's wrong."
While they were getting up, Charles suppressed his uneasiness and carefully read the contents of the diary page that appeared out of nowhere.
June 9, 808
"My diary has no abnormalities except for one special page. I am considering whether to throw away or burn this abnormal diary."
"It records a lot of my past memories, but if it causes trouble, it would be more trouble than it's worth."
"I think this trouble is not a small matter. I decided to spread out all the rats and explore the entire island."
"This is very risky and will soon cause some trouble. Besides, I don't know if Lily's mice are enough to consume, but we don't have time to consume them."
Not only are the notes in the diary Charles', but the tone is also very familiar, as if it were really written by him.
Just as Charles finished reading the contents of the diary, the sleeping crew members surrounded him.
The brown-covered diary was opened and laid on the ground. They stood in a circle and looked at him warily.
"Captain, what is written here? Is it the secret code of the Western Sea? I heard that their writing is different from that of other sea areas." Second Mate Nico asked curiously.
He was the only one who knew how to write Chinese characters. He always carried them with him. These characters suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
If Anna wrote these words and then deleted her memory, this is absolutely impossible. First, she can't be so bored, and second, even she can't imitate her own handwriting.
"Don't worry about what the text is. The most important thing now is how the diary above came about. I will briefly tell you the content."
Then, Charles explained the information in the diary to them.
After listening, Nico gently lifted the hair behind his ears and said softly, "Captain, there's something wrong with the contents of this diary."
"What did you find?" Charles looked at him.
"The timing is a bit off. The above is written from your perspective, but the content is about your thoughts when you saw this diary suddenly appear."
"But the problem arises here. The content of this diary records what happened after it appeared. This is a paradox."
Charles was stunned for a moment, and immediately understood what he was going to say. No matter who wrote it, it was predicting what would happen after it itself appeared.
"Someone is providing me with information through the diary? But why? Who is it?"
For a moment, the surroundings fell silent. The crew members all looked at the diary in front of them with frowns, trying to guess the cause of this strange incident.
But with only the diary appearing out of nowhere, no one had a clue.
After sorting out his thoughts, Charles cleared his throat, attracting everyone's attention.
"This incident may be the prelude to some big trouble. We must change our strategy and speed up our exploration to get out of here as soon as possible. Lily, how many mice do you have left?"
No matter what this thing is, Charles will not let it interrupt his plans. He came to the island this time to find the foundation, and this has not changed.
"Hmm... there are still 63. Sorry, I didn't bring many this time." The golden mouse replied with its head tilted.
Charles said this, picking up the diary and turning to the simple map of the island he had drawn.
When he saw the map, his expression froze and he discovered that there were three lines on it, which were exactly the routes he wanted the mice to explore.
"Mr. Charles, what's wrong with you? Why don't you continue?"
Charles glanced at her, then put the diary on the ground and ordered the mice to start exploring along the route.
While waiting for the rats to return, in order to prevent sudden danger, Charles did not let the other crew members rest again.
He planned to retreat as soon as the rats came back and found no clues of any living Foundation creatures.
Although this was extremely hasty and there might be some fish that slipped through the net, Charles still felt that the sooner he left, the better. He began to feel a little uneasy.
Charles' right eye crawled out of his eye socket and jumped directly onto the diary. He stared at it intently, guarding against any abnormality of this thing.
Time passed little by little, and the long-term lack of sleep made the crew members look tired.
"Linda, do you have any medicine? Hold on for now. If nothing goes wrong, we'll be there soon." Charles asked the ship's doctor.
The bald woman nodded, opened the medical box, and quickly took out several test tubes filled with purple potion.
Charles reached out to take it and drank it directly with his head tilted back. A strong stench instantly came out of his throat, making him retch uncontrollably.
The others had the same reaction, but when the nausea disappeared, Charles saw that the fatigue on the faces of the people on the ship disappeared, and the potion took effect.
In the anxious wait, the rats gradually began to return, but unfortunately they did not find anything special, except rocks and some Foundation crashed planes.
When all the mice came back, Charles looked at the map and felt something was wrong.
"We searched the entire island, but not a single monster that fought the Foundation appeared. The number of Foundation fighters doesn't match up. From what I heard from Feuerbach, there shouldn't be so few Foundation fighters."
"Captain, I know what's going on! This place is not the first crime scene!!" Dipper suddenly said excitedly.
"What did you say?" Charles looked at him puzzled.
"Um... I said it wrong. It's not the crime scene but the battle scene. We always thought that the Foundation and those monsters were fighting on this island, and those monsters were also on this island."
"But that's not right. I've been checking for traces these days. From the traces on the island, apart from those planes, there are no other traces of human fighting or movement except us."
"If what you said is true, that means..." Charles slowly raised his head and looked up at the dark sky.
"The Foundation fought those monsters up there. They fell to the ground from up there, not on this floating island. There are a lot of things on it."
Hearing Charles' words, the other crew members also looked up at the same time.
"My goddess, how many big islands are there floating in the air?" Nico said in surprise.
(End of this chapter)