Chapter 24 - A Dove

Chapter 24 A Dove

The snow-white dove stood on the table, and on its neck was the brass compass that Duncan had been looking for. There was also a familiar obsidian dagger sitting next to its legs.

Duncan looked at the dove a little dumbfoundedly and the dove stared back at him with the same expression.

It wasn’t easy to see the expression a bird was making, but Duncan could not explain why he could understand the dove’s expression. Not only could he understand it, but he could also see a hint of intelligence in the dove’s red eyes. The dove kept staring at him with its pea-sized eyes, but when Duncan stared back, one of its eyes continued to look at him while the other started to look at the ceiling before moving about to scan the room. “A… dove?”

After a few seconds, Duncan finally managed to mumble as his lips twitched.

“Why a dove? Why would a dove suddenly appear? And why is my brass compass hung over its neck? How did that dagger get here?” he thought.

In the end, he concluded everything in one sentence. “Is it impossible for something normal to happen on this abnormal ship?”

Just as Duncan’s head was filled with questions, the dove that had been dazing off finally “woke up”. It took two steps toward Duncan and once it was in front of him, it reached its head out and cooed brightly.

Duncan looked at the bird speechlessly. Many different pirate captain images appeared inside his head and he looked at the captain uniform he was wearing. “I mean, having a bird accompanying the captain seems like the standard in movies, but isn’t it usually a parrot? What the heck is with this dove?”

Once the dove heard that, it suddenly nodded as if it understood him and spoke in a weird and stiff female voice. “Transfer complete!”

That immediately stopped Duncan from mumbling and he felt like his saliva suddenly choked him. He stared at the white dove with his eyes widened, completely dumbfounded.

He recalled the first time he stepped onto the boat. It was the same reaction he had when he met with the wooden goat head that could talk inside the captain’s cabin.

Fortunately, it wasn’t his first time on the Lost Home anymore. He was already used to all the strange occurrences in the new world. That was why he was only briefly surprised by the talking dove and was able to quickly recover from that. His expression turned serious as the green spirit flame flickered in his hand. He looked at the dove with caution and asked, “Where did you come from?”

The dove tilted its head. It looked at Duncan with one of its eyes and the ceiling with the other. “Incorrect address. Please double-check the address or contact the system manager.”

A lot of question marks appeared inside Duncan’s head.

Unlike the dumbfounded expression he made, he was shocked and excited.

The things the dove had said weren’t something that would make sense in the new world. Those weren’t words that the goat head or the cultist would understand. Instead, they were terms that the earthling “Zhou Ming’ was familiar with.

Yet, the dove did not notice the changes in Duncan’s expression. It nibbed its feather and shook the brass compass hung over its neck before casually walking on the table.

After taking a few steps, it jogged to the obsidian dagger and moved it toward Duncan. It then spoke in the same weird female voice. “Take this Solar War Ax to obtain the glory of battles!”

Duncan suddenly got up from his chair. His movement was so sudden that it sent the chair flying back and made a loud creak as it scraped through the wooden floor. He glared at the calm-looking dove as a weird and comical emotion filled his head.

The dove was not something from the Lost Home. To be more precise, it was not something from this world.

The sentence that it said was something that only “Zhou Ming” would understand.

Perhaps his sudden action was too loud and could be heard from the next room. The goat head suddenly spoke to him through telepathy. “Cap’n, are ye alright?”.

Duncan did not move his gaze away from the dove. He knew the goat head did not have the nerve to look into what was happening inside his chamber. He replied in his usual low and calm voice, “I’m fine.”

“Miss Alice wants to speak to you. Should I…”

“Help me keep her company for now.” “Aye, Cap’n.”

Duncan sighed and turned to look at the door that led toward the sea chart room.

The goat head continued to talk to Alice. The puppet tried to leave a few times but was stopped by the wooden carving. Duncan knew he had to save the unfortunate puppet, but he had a more pressing matter to attend to.

“Sorry, Alice…” he silently apologized.

Duncan returned to the table and was ready to test if he could normally converse with the dove. It was then he realized something that he had not noticed before.

The spirit flame flickering in his right hand had faintly extended itself to a long “flame string. The burning string was like a strand of long hair that spanned more than a dozen centimeters long before disappearing into nothingness.

The exact string made out of the green flame was on the dove’s body. It was very well hidden underneath its wing. The other end also expanded for a few centimeters and disappeared.

Duncan frowned and raised his right hand. As the flame flickered, the dove on the table suddenly disappeared.

In the next instance, it reappeared on his shoulder. It lowered its head a little too nimble on Duncan’s hair while cooing brightly.

Duncan then flicked his finger, and the dove on his shoulder teleported back to the table.

The brass compass still hung on the bird’s neck and its shining exterior was now enveloped in the green flame.

was now

Duncan frowned even more. “Is it connected to that compass?”

He was now sure that the dove had some connection to him. It was a type of connection stronger than his connection to the Lost Home. That would explain why the bird knew of “knowledge” that only he would know, knowledge of Earth. However, he couldn’t explain why the dove had suddenly appeared.

After a long ponder, he could only set his sight on the strange brass compass.

From the time he started testing the spirit flame up until then, every abnormal event that had happened originated from the compass. From his experience of soul traveling to possessing a dead body and then to the disappearance of the compass that reappeared on the dove’s neck, the compass was the source.

After staring at the dove for a while, Duncan reached his hand out for the compass.

He wanted to take it and study it.

The dove did not run away or try to stop him. However, Duncan’s finger could not touch the compass and went through it, feeling the soft feather of the dove instead.

It was as if his fingers had passed through a projection.

The dove hopped a couple of times as if it felt a little ticklish from the touch. It suddenly opened its mouth to talk. “Today is KFC’s Crazy Thursday! 50% discount…”

Duncan’s eyes twitched a little, and he tried again only to confirm that removing the compass from the dove was impossible. It seemed like the thing had undergone some change and had become an illusion-like object tied to the dove. It was impossible to touch or remove it.

Another reason would be that the dove was the true form of the compass.

There were a lot of guesses that Duncan wasn’t even sure if they were right or not. The only thing he could confirm was that the appearance of the dove was connected to “soul travel” that he had experienced by using the brass compass. The compass could’ve changed its appearance at the same time as that event happened.

Perhaps that was the feature of the brass compass, an ability it had as a type of “abnormality,” or to be more precise, it was the “price” to pay for using it. As for the malfunctioning dove, it wasn’t because of the compass but because of the Earthling “Zhou Ming”.

There was no way Duncan could prove all his speculations unless he could find an instruction manual for abnormalities onboard the Lost Home.

Now, the problem that he had to solve was how to handle the strange dove.

After a while, he decided to give the dove a name first.

a

“I’ll have to name you,” he said to the dove in a serious tone as he gently tapped the table with his fingers. “I’m sure you understand what I’m saying, right?”

The dove tilted its head and its two pea-size eyes fleetingly looked at him. “Aye?”