Chapter 1 A Bold Idea

Duncan knew that his idea was bold and bizarre, even to the point of seeming outrageous in this strange and unpredictable Deep Sea Embers era—transforming a true celestial body into the ten-meter "stone sphere" before him and causing it to float on the sea surface could no longer be described as mere fantasy.

But once this idea emerged, he found it difficult to completely drive it from his mind. No matter how incredible it felt, he couldn't help but associate the two.

Because...it was really too similar, not just in appearance, but also a strong sense of..."intuition," and even a "familiarity" that seemed to transcend time and the dimensions of the world was surging in his mind.

Duncan looked at the pale-textured sphere before him. For a moment, he even felt like he had returned to that familiar world, gazing at his homeland's...moon.

He stood there, staring at the moon floating beside the rail of the Brilliant Star, his expression frozen for a long time, until footsteps came from beside him and Lucresia's voice entered his ears: "Father, this is it."

Duncan turned his head. At this moment, he didn't even realize how strange his expression was: "Ah...

...Yes, this is it..."

Lucresia naturally noticed the strangeness in Duncan's expression and tone. She seemed slightly nervous, and then spoke with concern, "Are you alright? You don't look well... Is there something wrong with this stone sphere?"

"He...is well, thank you for your concern, Lucy," Duncan waved his hand, trying to adjust his expression, and then turned his head to point at Duncan, "He..."

He paused.

He had no idea how to explain this to Lucresia, how to describe the concept of "moon," how to explain another world, and his reaction at this moment, just like he had faced Tiren before—he didn't even know how to explain what a "planet" was.

The phrase instinctively popped into Duncan's mind, but he controlled the urge to blurt it out.

"This phenomenon is also puzzling to us," Lucresia's voice came from the side. "The dust scraped from the sphere seems to be attracted to the sphere itself. When the distance is close enough, these fragments will actively return to the surface of the sphere. However, this 'attraction' only exists between Duncan's own materials. We have tested with other light powders..."

So he could only open his mouth and stiffly change the subject: "Has anything changed since it fell? Was it like this from the beginning?"

Some dust slowly floated towards the sphere and landed back on its surface.

However, she couldn't see through him. All of her father's thoughts seemed to be shrouded in a thick fog, hidden deep within that unfamiliar and familiar dignified face. The only thing she could be sure of was that her father really cared about this "Duncan" very, very much—even more than she and Tiren imagined.

He withdrew his hand, looked at the faint gray-white dust on his fingertips, rubbed his fingers together, and let the gray-white dust slowly fall.

At that time, she asked her father how big the Boundless Sea was.

Lucresia explained to Duncan as much as possible about the various tests that the scholars had done on this "Duncan," explaining the information she knew so far.

Duncan shook his head: "Bigger, bigger than you can imagine."

"...Sorry, Lucy," Duncan finally sighed softly. He turned his head and looked into the eyes of the "Sea Witch," "I can't explain this to you."

The elves had fixed a platform to the "waist" of this behemoth and secured it with hoops around the sphere and a series of anchors and struts. The platform was small, only a few square meters, but enough to stand on.

Lucresia squinted her eyes, raised her head, and looked up at the "moon" in front of her, trying to imagine it being even larger than the Boundless Sea, but for the first time, she felt that her imagination was so limited—not only could she not understand what her father was saying, she couldn't even imagine it.

The "Duncan," only ten meters in diameter before her, was supposed to be even bigger than the Boundless Sea.

Duncan listened quietly and asked, "What else? What else have you discovered?"

"We have also tried to unravel the mysteries of the 'light' around it," Lucresia continued. "The giant geometric luminous bodies surrounding 'Duncan' are constantly releasing 'sunlight' outward. The scale of the sunlight can illuminate the entire city-state, but these lights do not come from 'Duncan,' or at least not in the way we understand 'light'—the light is directly 'generated' in the distant space and then evenly distributed outward.

"Bigger than the Seven Gods Church's pilgrimage ark? Or bigger than the city-state?"

She remembered it firmly and followed in her father's footsteps to become an explorer, a "frontier scholar." As a member of the Lost Country Fleet, she went to many places with her father, including the distant and mysterious "frontier." She felt that her father in childhood had not deceived her—this sea was really big.

Lucresia's eyes widened.

"......Okay."

A diameter of ten meters was insignificant for a celestial body, but as an object close at hand, it was still a behemoth. Even if you don't count the height it floats above the sea, the diameter of the sphere alone is actually more than eight stories high.

"Yes, it was like this from the beginning," Lucresia nodded immediately, and then told the approximate process of discovering the fallen object, and added some details about transferring it to Heavy Wind Harbor, "It floats in the air at a certain height above the sea by an unknown mechanism. Without interference, it will stay in place completely, but it can be towed by external forces from the ship. Its interior is solid and dense. Several cautious sampling procedures have proven that its internal texture is similar to stone, but so far we have only collected relatively shallow components—the deeper it goes, the softer it becomes, and the drill simply can't drill through..."

"It..." Duncan hesitated, and then finally spoke slowly, "It's not the way I know it, it should be very big, much bigger than it is now..."

"...Could it be bigger than the Boundless Sea?"

After a long silence, Duncan finally spoke: "Did you take a lot of samples?"

"To verify this, we once built a very large light-shielding shed to completely cover Duncan. The fact proves that this has no effect on the luminous geometry or the 'sunlight' in the distant sea..."

He was not sure whether this Boundless Sea was really all there was to this world.

And Lucresia was destined to not understand what a universe large enough to accommodate hundreds of millions of stars would look like.

His father told her that the sea was very big, bigger than the Lost Country, bigger than the city-state—it was as vast and boundless as its name suggests, and could accommodate a person's lifelong curiosity and desire for exploration.

Duncan nodded, but didn't say much.

"How big is a 'moon' that big... how much space would it take to hold it?" She couldn't help but ask, "Like you said, it's even bigger than this world..."

During this process, she had been paying attention to Duncan's expression, wanting to guess what kind of mood was hidden beneath her father's overly serious and dignified expression at this moment.

A cold, icy touch came from his fingertips, like stroking a stone.

"I haven't measured the Boundless Sea, but...perhaps," Duncan said softly, as if talking to himself, "Perhaps it's bigger than the Boundless Sea, because this vast sea named 'Boundless' is actually just a prison surrounded by mist."

"Yes, surface samples have been scraped from various parts of Duncan, and this sampling is still ongoing," Lucresia nodded. "Duncan's depths are very soft and difficult to sample, but its surface layer is relatively loose and can be scraped off with gray-white fragments. These fragments behave like stone powder..."

For some reason, at this moment, she suddenly thought of when she was little. The few questions and answers just now seemed to suddenly go back a century, triggering the memories that had long been dormant in the deepest part of her mind—she vaguely remembered that many, many years ago, she had also asked her father similar questions.

However, now her father was telling her that the "Boundless Sea" was just a prison surrounded by mist.

Duncan stood on the platform, reached out his hand, and gently touched the...moon.

"Very big?" Lucresia blinked, "Bigger than the Lost Country?"

"Also, we have confirmed that Duncan's surface is covered with a very, very fine 'dust.' They are 'attached' to Duncan by an unknown force. Although they can be scraped off for sampling, they will not 'fall' off the sphere unless there is external force, even the dust at the bottom of the sphere is the same, as if some invisible force is 'adsorbing' them..."

Duncan and Lucresia arrived at the "research station" built by the elves, and then came to a platform directly connected to Duncan's surface through the connecting bridge on the upper layer of the research station.

Because he really hadn't measured this world, let alone crossed the mist called the "border."

Even if she owned a ship, and that ship's name was the Brilliant Star.

Speaking of this, she paused, looked at Duncan hesitantly, and raised her finger to point at the floating platform not far away that was used to study Duncan: "Would you like to go take a look over there with me?"

The Boundless Sea was not the entire world. "Much bigger than that."

"I heard my brother say that you call this strange Duncan the 'moon,'" Lucresia said, cautiously observing Duncan's reaction, "And you seemed very excited when you saw it... Do you know anything about this Duncan?"