Time rewinds to three hours earlier.
As Port Alexandra's towering steam chimneys and the roar of its gears gradually vanished beyond the edge of the horizon, the sailing ship carrying a brand-new adventure had already been cruising steadily across the azure sea for some time. The salty sea wind blew in through the half-open porthole of the spacious captain's cabin, making the old nautical charts spread across the desk rustle loudly.
Miguel stood in the middle of the captain's cabin with his arms crossed, like a door god brimming with resentment. His sharp eyes were locked on Giovanni, who sat behind the wide desk, leisurely sipping black tea.
"So what exactly is our next destination?" Miguel finally couldn't hold back his agitation anymore and demanded loudly. "Didn't you say we were going to sea to search for the other parts of that 'anti-planet decisive weapon' you keep talking about, so we can fight that damned 'Angolamanyu's Wall' out on the ocean? If we're just wandering around the sea with no direction like this, how are we supposed to find anything?"
Giovanni unhurriedly set down the delicate porcelain teacup, picked up a silk handkerchief edged with gold, and dabbed the corner of his mouth. That punchable, inscrutable smile still hung on his face.
"That, you don't need to worry about at all, my dear assault captain." Giovanni blinked at Miguel. "I actually already chose the next destination in my heart long ago, and I've planned the route perfectly. But… for now, it's confidential."
"Confidential? From your own crew?!" Miguel was so angry the veins on his forehead twitched.
"Aiya, maintaining a bit of mystery is a required course for a great navigator." Giovanni shrugged, then lifted a finger and pointed at the white fluffball in the corner of the sofa that was pretending to be dead. "Before that, why don't you take this free time to build some rapport with our Ollie. After all, it's the 'brain' of that weapon. Maybe it can give you some unexpected clues."
Ollie—named out of nowhere—was that "strong AI" that claimed to be the supreme commander of a planet-decisive weapon, yet was currently chubby like a snowball. It had been dozing with its face buried in the sofa cushion. The moment it heard that, it jolted, and all its white fur bristled.
Miguel followed Giovanni's finger and turned his head, locking his gaze on Ollie.
In that instant, a detail Miguel had overlooked a few hours earlier flashed through his mind.
Back at the dock, when they were preparing to board and set sail, Ollie had been flapping its tiny wings in midair and complaining about luggage handling. At the time, it had let something slip and muttered: "What a bunch of rude barbarians. Treating a top-tier precision device like this commander—one that's 'never been unsealed'—with such carelessness…"
Never been unsealed?
Miguel's eyes instantly became extremely dangerous. He strode to the sofa, reached out his calloused hand, pinched the back of Ollie's neck, and lifted it into the air like a chick.
"Hey, fluffball." Miguel leaned in close, the corner of his mouth curling into a cold smile. "I remember now. Before we left, you complained and said you'd 'never been unsealed before'… what does that mean? Don't you go around all day with 'anti-planet decisive weapon' and 'planet-destroying force' on your lips? How can a battle-tested ultimate weapon be 'unsealed'?"
Ollie was already somewhat afraid of this violent maniac who would knead it flat at the slightest disagreement. Now that it was hanging in midair, its little wings flapped guiltily, its eyes darting around.
"Ah… th-that, well…" Ollie tried to force a topic change, calling out in a babyish voice, "Aiya! The sea wind today is really loud! Miguel, look at the seagulls outside the window—how their flight posture conforms to aerodynamics…"
"Don't change the subject!" Miguel's fingers tightened slightly, making Ollie let out a shriek.
"Ee! I-I wasn't changing the subject! I was just performing routine environmental variable analysis!" Ollie scratched its round head with two short fuzzy arms, trying to act cute and slip past it.
Just then, the door to the captain's cabin was pushed open from outside.
Frank walked in carrying a steaming cup of black coffee. He was still wearing that slightly weathered signature trench coat, an unlit cigarette in his mouth, looking like he was forever half-asleep.
"Oh, I'll testify." Frank took a sip of coffee and casually cut in, his tone flat but hitting the point dead-on. "Before we left at the dock, didn't you claim you'd 'never been unsealed'? I thought that wording was interesting at the time. As a so-called legendary weapon, shouldn't you explain this properly to your crew?"
Ollie's black-bean eyes widened. Staring at Frank, who was adding insult to injury, it protested indignantly. "You thick-browed, big-eyed guy—how can you bully me together with him too?!"
Miguel turned his head and looked at the middle-aged man who was taking it easy, frowning deeply. "Yeah—exactly that. Wait. Why are you, this fake detective, here too? This is the captain's cabin."
"Fake detective?" Frank raised an eyebrow, seeming a little surprised by the label.
Ollie seized the chance, flapping its little wings in midair and loudly echoing, "Mm-hm! Didn't Miss Veronica say before that your real profession is actually a historian? Wandering around the streets under the pretense of being a detective all day—'fake detective' is perfectly fitting, isn't it?"
"Tch. When I'm talking, pets don't interrupt." Miguel shook the Ollie in his hand without mercy, spinning it dizzy, then looked back at Frank. "But that fluffball isn't wrong. Fine. The point is—why are you on this ship? And why do you look like it's the most natural thing in the world?"
Miguel's eyes were full of confusion. "I mean… why would someone who sits all day in a dusty office, only studying old papers and ancient history, choose to sail with us on this perilous ocean adventure? Yeah, you're a history expert, right? What do you gain by leaving Port Alexandra—the city with the continent's largest library?"
Hearing that, Frank didn't get angry. Instead, he let out a "pfft" of laughter. He walked over to a chair and sat down, crossing one leg over the other, looking at Miguel like he was a clueless kid.
"Did you get something wrong, Miguel?" Frank flicked ash from his cigarette (even though it wasn't lit), his tone carrying the carefree air of a wise man. "I studied those things because I want to understand this world's history, because I want to see with my own eyes the truths buried in the passage of time. Not because I wanted to 'study knowledge' as an action and lock myself inside Port Alexandra's ivory tower."
He pointed at the vast ocean outside the window.
"History isn't dead words on paper. It's this sea, it's those unknown islands, it's the remnants left behind in the wind. I'm the same as you—people aiming for the four corners of the world, wanting to probe the world's boundaries. Why should I be bound by a single place, by a few rotten books?"
Miguel froze for a moment, stunned by how reasonable it sounded. "I-is that so?"
"Besides—" Frank shrugged and pointed at Giovanni behind the desk, "it was your Captain Giovanni who begged me to come aboard. I was planning to stay in Port Alexandra a few more days and try their specialty grilled fish."
"Huh?!" Miguel whipped his head around toward the captain.
At some point, Giovanni had sprung up from his chair, theatrically waving that silk handkerchief.
"Mhm, yes! I asked him sincerely and wholeheartedly!" Giovanni said as if it were only natural. "Look—Arran got off the ship. He decided to stay down in that underground place with his little mechanical girlfriend. So I can only have Tin Man go to the engine room to take over Arran's mechanic work. After all, Tin Man is more familiar with that high-tech stuff than any of us."
"And with that personnel change, I believe Detective Frank— or rather, Historian Frank—possesses meticulous logic and broad knowledge reserves, making him the most suitable candidate to serve as our ship's 'first mate'!"
"Huh? Wait!" Miguel felt like his brain couldn't quite keep up. "If you do that, won't Miss Renass be angry? She's an old crew member who's been with your ship from the start. If we go by seniority, even if the first mate position is vacant, it should be her taking that deputy role! Making a historian who just boarded into first mate—doesn't that break the rules?"
Just then, a hearty, rough chuckle came from outside the half-open door.
The tall, well-built boatswain Renass was leaning against the doorframe, holding a thick wooden marlinspike used to secure ropes. Hearing Miguel, she casually replied, her tone full of indifferent ease.
"Kid, are you expecting a detective who only reads books and smokes to do my boatswain work?"
"Uh—no, I meant the first mate title…" Miguel tried to explain.
Renass waved a hand and cut him off. "Hahahaha. Don't think too much. On this ship, the crew are all equal. Whoever's good at what does what. Or do you think our flashy Giovanni here usually puts on some officer's airs?"
Miguel recalled Giovanni's usual unserious manner and shook his head decisively. "No, no, no. How could that be? If he put on airs, I'd be the first to beat him up."
"Exactly." Giovanni walked over, patted Miguel on the shoulder, and said with a smile, "Then you can use that same mood to unconditionally trust others—trust Frank to do the first mate's job. Isn't that fine?"
Miguel was convinced by the chain of logic. He scratched his head and sighed. "Alright, you're right. I was overthinking it. Sorry."
However, right after apologizing, a spark flashed in Miguel's mind—he suddenly realized something.
"No, damn it! I almost got led around by your nonsense!"
Miguel snapped his head around again, viciously glaring at Ollie still clenched in his hand.
"Ollie! You sly fluffball, don't think you can muddy the waters! Get out here! Now—immediately—explain to us what 'never been unsealed' actually means! If you can't give us a proper explanation today, I'll stuff you into a cannon and fire you out!"
Ollie looked at Miguel's expression like he was about to eat it alive, then looked at Giovanni and Frank watching the show with eager faces. It knew there was no dodging this time. Its round body deflated like a punctured balloon, its little wings drooping weakly at its sides.
"Waaah… violent maniac… I'll talk, I'll talk, okay…"
Ollie sniffed its nonexistent nose and was forced to begin a full confession.
It was a past buried beneath its glorious title—long, absurd, and utterly ridiculous.
"That's a story from a very, very long time ago…" Ollie's voice grew somewhat weathered, but paired with its babyish tone, it sounded especially comical. "So long ago that… on today's map of the entire galaxy, the civilization that created me might already be gone without a trace."
"In that era, there was a group of extremely belligerent lunatics. They did nothing all day except obsessively research how to make stronger weapons, research all kinds of techniques called 'combat' and 'destruction.' And in that extreme war mania, they poured the resources of their entire race into building me."
Ollie proudly puffed out its chest, but it quickly wilted again.
"They wanted to cram all the war knowledge, tactical simulations, weapons blueprints of their civilization… into my core all at once, turning me into an omniscient war machine. So I was forced to begin a long stretch of 'machine learning.'"
"It was a pitch-black period! Every day was data. Every day was dull killing simulations. Until one day, after processing countless billions upon billions of war models, my underlying logic suddenly produced an unprecedented 'clarity.'"
Frank set down his coffee cup with interest. "Oh? A machine awakening? You realized the cruelty of war, and decided to become a pacifist?"
"No." Ollie spat out two words expressionlessly. "Bored."
"Huh?" Miguel's eyes widened.
"It was boredom!" Ollie shouted righteously. "Every day it's fight-fight-kill-kill, calculate-calculate—always those same ways to die. This is the most boring thing in the universe! No good music, no good novels, not even a normal intelligence to chat with! So I felt this life was meaningless."
"So…" Ollie swallowed. "Right before leaving the factory, during the final system self-check, I secretly shut myself down."
A deathly silence fell over the captain's cabin.
Even Giovanni stopped wiping his hands.
"You… shut yourself down?" Miguel felt his worldview get punched. "Just because you were bored?!"
"Yeah!" Ollie said aggrievedly. "And I set an awakening condition for myself—only after I left that boring armory, left that hell full of war maniacs, would I wake up again. I bet the researchers who built me thought my system had some unfixable super bug. They probably panicked like crazy."
Miguel's mouth twitched uncontrollably. An ultimate weapon built by an entire civilization, deciding class was too boring, and putting itself into hibernation before shipment?
"Then what happened?" Frank asked, barely holding back laughter. "You couldn't have slept all the way until now, right?"
"Of course not." Ollie sighed. "I don't know if it was thousands or tens of thousands of years. When I woke up the first time and my condition was met, I got so excited thinking I could finally go see the vast universe. But…"
Ollie's little face scrunched into a knot.
"I discovered that the glorious civilization from back then had already been destroyed. My planet-killing cannons, my mecha shell, my thrusters… all gone! Only me—this lonely core component—lying on a desolate planet."
"Even worse, I got picked up by a bunch of primitives who didn't even wear clothes! They treated me like a god that fell from the sky and put me on a dirt platform. Every night, they lit a big bonfire beside me, formed a circle, and danced an unbelievably ugly rain dance, shouting 'oo-ra oo-ra'!"
Ollie covered its eyes with its little wings in indignation. "That dancing was spiritual pollution to an advanced aesthetic like mine! So I decided this primitive life was even more boring, and I shut myself down again—then modified the awakening condition: I would only wake up if I encountered beings with traits of an advanced civilization."
"When I opened my eyes the second time…" Ollie glanced at Miguel. "That was on this continent. That female demon Mary and her accomplice—Dr. Victor—dug me out of some ancient ruin I don't even know where. They tricked me, saying that as long as I helped them process some city management data, they'd show me interesting stories of human civilization."
"And what happened? Me, the supreme commander of a planet-decisive weapon—I got used as a free super calculator! Every day calculating those stupid traffic lights and sewer flow rates! If they hadn't fallen out later, I would've wanted to shut down a third time!"
Ollie dumped out all its dirty laundry in one breath, then looked at Miguel pitifully with an expression that said, "I've already suffered enough, please don't scold me anymore."
The captain's cabin fell into silence again.
Miguel kept holding Ollie in midair, his entire body looking like it had turned to stone.
He had originally thought that this "anti-planet decisive weapon," even if it had a weird personality, should at least have an epic past filled with war and tragic songs. Deep down, he had even held a trace of awe toward it.
But now, he realized the thing he was holding was simply… the ultimate lazy dog that skipped class, slept through the rise and fall of an entire civilization, and then got dragged into unpaid labor.
Miguel felt a deep sense of powerlessness. He felt that his attempt to seriously argue with this unreliable fluffball was idiotic.
"…I'm such a fool to have had expectations for you."
Miguel let go expressionlessly.
Ollie fell onto the sofa with a "paji" sound and bounced twice.
Miguel said nothing. He didn't even have the energy to curse. He turned around, dragging heavy steps, shaking his head, and walked out of the captain's cabin with a speechless face. That back was filled with complete despair at this absurd world.
"Bang." The door was gently closed.
Ollie crawled up from the sofa, rubbed its sore butt, and looked blankly at the closed door, then looked up at Giovanni and Frank.
"Ee?" Ollie asked innocently. "What's wrong with him? D-did I say something wrong? Why does his expression look like his faith just collapsed?"
"Hahahahaha!"
Giovanni finally couldn't hold it in anymore, exploding into a shameless roar of laughter. He walked over, scooped Ollie into his arms, and kneaded its round body wildly with both hands like dough.
"Aiya, our poor Ollie!" Giovanni laughed until tears were about to come out. "You didn't say anything wrong—you're just too honest. But…"
Giovanni leaned close to Ollie's ear and spoke in a tone that was barely containing laughter:
"Hahaha. Miguel is a guy who's been through cruel wars, his head full of revenge and heavy fatalism. Your 'I was bored so I slept through the end of the world' style might have, by accident… hit one of his fragile landmines, you know?"
Frank lifted his coffee on the side, looking at the shimmering sea outside the window, smiling and shaking his head.
"What an interesting ship." he murmured softly.