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Chapter 564: Swift and Hasty Exchange

Bizarrely, the rustling noise felt like it was beckoning him, almost like a sirens call.

Immediately attuned to this strange experience, Duncan heightened his senses to become acutely aware of even the tiniest movements around him. He concentrated on the direction where he had last seen a tentacle vanish and began to cautiously move toward it.

As he stepped forward, ethereal green flames manifested beneath his feet, trailing behind him like faint wisps of fire. These flames gently seeped into the cracks in the ground, infusing the garden with an otherworldly glow.

Duncan knew better than to carelessly start a fire in such a sacred space since this could have very well possibly been Alices very own soul manifesting in the form of this mansion. However, the unsettling activities he was witnessing made it clear that he must be prepared for any potential confrontations. If a malevolent entity had infiltrated this haven, he had to neutralize it without damaging the mansion or its garden.

Proceeding cautiously and guided by the mysterious rustling noises, Duncan moved further away from what he had mentally dubbed the Sleeping Doll. Soon, he reached the outer limits of the mansions enchanted garden. As he walked past thickets and crossed by a variety of unfamiliar small trees, he realized that the natural illumination from what he thought of as the Doodle Sun in the sky didnt reach this secluded corner. The overlapping shadows cast by the foliage darkened the atmosphere, creating a twilight zone within the garden.

In this dim, dusky environment, he noticed a group of plants quiver momentarily before him. Seconds later, a tentacle emerged from within the flora, slowly rising and swaying in an almost hypnotic dance right in front of him.

Unveiling itself without any pretense or subterfuge, the tentacle seemed to be inviting Duncan closer for some inscrutable reason.

Awestruck, Duncan studied this strange and inexplicable appendage. The tentacle was dark-hued, and its surface was adorned with complex, scale-like structures that appeared metallic. Interspersed among these intricacies, he could faintly make out pale blue patterns that struck a chord of eerie familiarity in him.

The patterns evoked memories or perhaps primal fears deeply embedded in him. They reminded him of something ancient, possibly from the icy depths of Frost or even from the abyssal depths of the oceanfeatures similar to those found on the tentacles of a god from time immemorial.

Can it be? Is this mysterious tentacle a limb belonging to the mysterious being known as the Nether Lord?

Duncans mind reeled as he suddenly recognized the source of the strange familiarity emanating from the tentacle. The moment he mentally linked the tentacle to the Nether Lord, the appendage shuddered as if an enormous and distant consciousness had finally managed to channel its essence through this limb.

In a slow, deliberate motion, the tentacle arched toward Duncan. Accompanying this action was a low, unique hum, almost like the resonant frequency of a distant world. The tip of the tentacle then gradually unfurled to unveil what appeared to be an eye. It flickered with an icy blue light, resembling a crystalline structure of irregular shape, its gaze locking directly onto Duncans eyes.

Hello, Fire Usurper, I have words for you.

A voice, murky and indistinct, devoid of any markers of emotion or gender, suddenly reverberated. It didnt come from the air around him but seemed to originate directly within the confines of Duncans mind.

Caught off guard, Duncan squinted incredulously at the tentacle that hovered before him. Nether Lord? King of Darkness? LH-01?

All of those names are correct, but listen carefully now, the tentacle replies, vibrating intensely as if burdened with a tremendous weight it can barely sustain.

The voice conveyed through it deepens and distorts, its words hurried. Our moments to communicate are incredibly sparse. Essential information must be imparted quickly. Whether or not you understand, commit this to memory: ?#%?# was engineered to last only eight thousand years and is currently overstressed. No external signals have been received within the expected timeframe. This is the final cycle reset; ?*??# will not regenerate again. Safeguard the fragments of ?#&** that have fallen. Should the worst come to pass, use these fragments to extend the lifespan of essential nodes. Survival is your ultimate mission. Your awakening at the end of this cycle holds importance we cannot fathom. Believe that neither you nor we are alone in this universe. This is the crucial message. If fate allows, I hope for a more stable, face-to-face communication next time.

As the tentacle finished its rapid monologue, its vibrations began to subside. Its once vivid, metallic scales started to fade and looked almost decayed. The voice in Duncans mind similarly waned, quickly fading as if receding into the vast cosmic background from whence it had come. Duncan couldnt claim to understand the mechanisms or forces that had enabled this ancient and cryptic entity to establish this fleeting connection, but it was evident that whatever loophole or energy source had been exploited to do so was now closing.

Given the urgency of the situation, Duncan didnt have the luxury to ponder the gravity of the arcane information that had just been imparted to him. With a surgeons precision, he mentally cataloged each of the Nether Lords words, allowing himself the time to analyze the overwhelming revelations only after he was certain the message had been fully and securely recorded in his mind.

The first thing that struck Duncan was the presence of garbled soundsauditory anomalies that should have represented vital information or key terms but were distorted into a jumble of incomprehensible, sharp, chaotic noises. It was as though the essence or meaning of these sounds had been deliberately filtered out, or that their weightiness had exceeded the carrying capacity of their fragile telepathic channel, leaving them indecipherable.

However, with the ancient entitys message rapidly fading and the frail tentacle showing clear signs of impending collapse, realized this was not the moment to dissect these auditory oddities.

The spectral whisper of the Nether Lord was quickly diminishing, the brittle link they had managed to create fraying to its last threads. Duncan glanced at the tentacle, now visibly deteriorating and possibly capable of holding on for only a few more fleeting seconds.

With an urgency fueled by the ticking clock, Duncan seized the dwindling moments to ask, If I need to find you, how do I get to the abyssal depths? It seemed to him that a face-to-face meeting in these mythical depths would be the most direct way to clarify the numerous uncertainties that now clouded his mind.

The tentacle was already starting to stiffen, its form crumbling as fragments of its otherworldly substance began to flake off like decaying matter. The mysterious and potent will that had been channeling through it was steadily retracting, the ancient entity pulling back from this frail conduit to our world. And yet, in those final milliseconds before the connection severed entirely, it gathered what remained of its dwindling strength to issue a simple phrase directly into Duncans consciousness: I dont know.

Duncan was dumbfounded. For once, he could empathize with those who had often been left bewildered by his own enigmatic words. He certainly hadnt anticipated this sort of answer from the Nether Lord!

However, his moment of puzzlement was brief, soon replaced by another cryptic whisper that resonated within the caverns of his mind.

Try capturing some Annihilators.

What? Duncan was utterly confused. Arent they your disciples?

No additional words were offered in response. The whispered voice of the ancient god ceased altogether. Accompanied by a chorus of snapping and cracking noises, the beleaguered tentacle disintegrated, its matter transforming into a cloud of blue mist that dissipated into nothingness.

The mysterious rustling sounds that had originally led him to the edge of the mansions enchanted garden abruptly ceased. The heavy, unsettling shadows cast by the dense foliage lightened as if the natural order had been restored.

Duncan remained stationary amidst the shrubbery, pondering deeply as he did so. Several minutes elapsed before he shook his head vigorously as if trying to rouse himself from an entrancing daydream.

The entire experience felt surreal as if he had been swept up in some cosmic play. The entity identified as the Nether Lord had suddenly appeared, delivered an enigmatic, almost incomprehensible message, and then vanished as abruptly as it had manifested. An event like this would be considered supernatural not just in the town of Wind Harbor but perhaps across the entire expanse of the Boundless Sea.

However, when Duncan took a moment to contextualize these otherworldly events within the tapestry of his own complex life, they didnt strike him as entirely earth-shattering. He turned to look back at the luxuriant Mansion Garden that lay not far behind him, glowing in the soft daylight. Nestled in a sunny clearing at the center of this garden was a silver-haired doll, serenely dormant.

This setting, connected intrinsically to an entity known as 099a product of the Nether Lords ability to clonewas essentially a nexus tied not only to Alice and her mansion but also to that enigmatic deity from the abyssal depths. It was quite plausible to think of this entire sanctuary as a kind of interface, a vessel perhaps deliberately designed by the ancient god to channel messages to the terrestrial realm.

Given this dense network of spiritual and existential connections, encountering an emanation of the Nether Lord within the secluded pockets of this garden was far from implausible.

What truly intrigued Duncan was something else altogether: The Nether Lords demeanor or state of being was quite divergent from what he had initially expected. The entity displayed rational thought and seemed to be operating under some sort of extreme constraint or pressure. Contrary to popular myths that painted such beings as malevolent forces of chaos, this deity appeared strangely benign, even friendly.

But Duncan didnt dwell too much on these apparent deviations. After all, only a very small number of individuals in this world had ever had direct experiences with so-called ancient gods. Popular narratives could hardly be considered reliable data. Moreover, perceptions of such beings were highly subjective. What manifested as a benign force in Duncans eyes could easily strike terror or awe in the hearts of average folks. He was acutely aware that his long adaptation to this mystical world had endowed him with a unique lens through which to interpret such phenomena.

What weighed heaviest on Duncans mind were the shards of information imparted to him by the ancient god.

He found himself replaying the mysterious phrases over and over in his mind, trying to distill meaning from the overload of cryptic hints:

Something had been engineered with a lifespan limited to eight thousand years and was now functioning beyond its intended operational span.

The we that the Nether Lord alluded to was waiting for some kind of signal, presumably from an external source, but had not received any feedback yet.

The term cycle reset was invoked What could that possibly imply?

He himself was designated as the Usurper of Fire awakening at the end of this mysterious cycle.

Finally, there was the perplexing directive about preserving fallen fragments to prolong the existence of something called the Node.

As Duncan continued to ruminate on these fragments of unearthly wisdom, his facial expression turned increasingly solemn. The gravity of the situation began to dawn on him as he grappled with the layers of ambiguity and significance wrapped around each piece of information.