"Over here, over here, you two, this is a shortcut. We all, we all enter and exit the city this way."
Speaking in broken Iberia, a sallow, thin man dressed in coarse sackcloth stumbled in front of Goki and Skadi.
"We robbed you, it was our fault. Please don't, don't tell the Inquisitor."
Extending his hand, the man, who looked clearly malnourished, pointed out a winding path leading to the upper levels amidst the dilapidated construction site of the mobile city's lower structures.
Behind Skadi and Goki, nearly ten equally weak men and women were lined up obediently, walking slowly with their heads down.
The battle with these "bandits" lasted less than half a minute.
An Abyssal Hunter who had just slain a Seaborn God, and an Old Hunter who had just taken down the Moon Presence—if their actions against a group of emaciated, utterly defenseless ordinary people still required detailed descriptions, it would be too much of an exaggeration.
In fact, when dealing with these city residents wielding iron rods wrapped in seaweed, Skadi and Goki couldn't even manage a "strike" action.
With just a gentle push, these weak townspeople would fall to the ground, clutching their behinds and wailing.
Their "traps" made of pits and ropes didn't even make Skadi budge an inch.
Little Orca specifically emphasized that this was absolutely not because she was too heavy.
She was very light, really.
Goki expressed a desire to try carrying her, but Skadi firmly refused, leaving no room for negotiation.
In short, facing these hungry "bandits," Skadi and Goki couldn't even treat them as enemies.
Even the crows of Yharnam were tougher than them.
"We, we were just too hungry. The law doesn't allow, doesn't allow us to plunder our compatriots, but, we were truly too hungry. There's no food around, so we could only, try our luck, who knew we'd run into, you two."
Compared to the dazed other townspeople, the "bandit leader" at the front seemed more energetic and talkative. His Iberia was not very standard, with jumbled word order, making it difficult to understand.
Skadi, having just come ashore, didn't understand Iberia at all. She looked utterly bewildered, only able to stick close to Goki, pretending to listen attentively, like a cute Little Orca.
Fortunately, Goki, this foreign Hunter, came with a built-in translation cheat. He could instantly understand Iberia, so he served as a temporary interpreter, providing simultaneous translation for Skadi.
Goki could largely confirm that what the man said was true, which aligned with the plot he knew.
"You guessed right, we do have a little food, but it's very precious. I'm a Hunter, I hunt, so perhaps I can catch prey even further away—tell us about Saltwind City. When did the famine start? What year of the terra calendar is this?"
Goki felt in the pocket of his Hunter attire, found a piece of smoked jerky, and handed it to the man.
"Meat!"
The man's murky eyes instantly gleamed, and a vital enthusiasm radiated from his hunched back. Saliva quickly secreted at the corners of his mouth, and he eagerly rushed to Goki's side, but then cautiously took the jerky. After much thought, he still carefully tucked it into his pocket.
"Wooden Frame, I have to save it for, Wooden Frame to eat. Thank you, thank you, Hunter."
But in the end, he still resisted his drool, stuffed it into his pocket, and looked at Goki gratefully.
"Most people, they, they all went north, but even more, died on the way. We, we were too scared, so we didn't go."
After receiving the jerky, his gaze towards Skadi and Goki held more curiosity and less fear.
"terra calendar, I don't know. Calendars and books, they were all burned in winter. But the famine started a few years ago. No food in the city. Some ran, some starved to death, some died of illness. The Inquisitor didn't come either. People became fewer and fewer. In these few years, only one child, Wooden Frame, was born—but today the Inquisitor came, I, I don't want to be taken away."
Perhaps the jerky bribe worked, as this "bandit leader" eagerly began to describe the current situation of Saltwind City.
Goki could only sigh at this, and began to mentally summarize the current state of Saltwind City.
Although he and Skadi hadn't lacked food on their journey, near Saltwind City, let alone coconuts on trees or wild boars, Goki hadn't even spotted a single mouse.
Since The Great Silence event, Iberia and several kilometers of the Aegir coast had fallen into a deathly silence.
According to Skadi's description, the nearshore areas had become habitats for Seaborn Terrorfish. They devoured all other creatures, integrating them into their own kind.
It was practically like a swarm of insects constantly seeking biomass, and they weren't even edible. Famine naturally ensued.
Of course, the Seaborn temporarily lacked the ability to live on land for extended periods. The edible things nearby had basically been consumed by the townspeople.
The saline-alkali land made large-scale agriculture impossible, and the ocean only offered a meager amount of barely edible food like seaweed. Many residents of Saltwind City either fled north or stubbornly held on, barely surviving.
A society sustained only by gathering and hunting was almost akin to primitive people.
Not only that, there were more catastrophic consequences of The Great Silence, leading to the great decline of southern Iberia.
The entire south was calling for aid, but Iberia was unable to rescue all cities. They could only prioritize abandoning the southernmost, most dangerous coastal cities, with Inquisitors only occasionally arriving to barely maintain order through the law.
But this was useless. Iberia's decline was a foregone conclusion, and Saltwind City had been abandoned.
By now, only a few hundred people remained in the town, and that number was rapidly dwindling, with many dying each winter.
According to Goki's estimation, only when Saltwind City's population dropped to a hundred, or even dozens, would the food supply barely be enough to sustain the entire city.
It was important to remember that this mobile city was designed to carry at least hundreds of thousands of people!
Many of these hungry townspeople had once been incredibly respectable, moving here from various parts of Iberia with dreams of exploring the sea, and they were also the most devout believers.
It was also thanks to Iberia being an exceptionally devout religious nation, where the presence of Inquisitors made the populace particularly reverent of the Law.
Even at the point of extreme hunger, they dared not harm others. Just like today, they only used threats to force Goki and Skadi to hand over food, and there was no tragedy of cannibalism.
Well, they didn't have children either, only… Wooden Frame!
As he climbed with both hands over an exposed carbon-alloy pipe, and then ascended a maintenance ladder dozens of meters off the ground—a height that could kill a hundred demon hunters—towards the top of the mobile city, Goki suddenly thought of something.
In the plot he knew, Saltwind City would, many years later, become an area similar to Innsmouth and the fishing village of Yharnam.
To obtain food, residents would turn to and worship the Abyssal Church, sacrificing themselves in exchange for food from the ocean. Even their speech would become exceptionally stiff, clearly becoming breeding grounds for Deep Ones—no, for Seaborn.
And the future bounty Hunter, Rhodes Island Operator Skadi, would follow in her companion's footsteps to Saltwind City, turning a perfectly good Call of Cthulhu tabletop game into an ultimate "kick-down-the-door" campaign that made the Keeper of Arcane Lore despair.
But now, Skadi was just a cute Little Orca who had just come ashore. Goki's intervention had brought her to Saltwind City early.
Judging by the "bandit's" words, though stumbling, they were still somewhat fluent, perhaps the Abyssal Church had not yet taken control of this abandoned city, or had only just begun to infiltrate.
And most crucially, during the event called "Under Tides," the most adorable little girl, who, as a supporting character in the Arknights lore, was lucky enough to survive to the end, left a deep impression on Goki.
Wooden Frame… Picture frame… Anita!
Goki nodded. As long as he could find her, he could deduce from her age how far away they were from the main storyline's timeline.
After more than ten minutes of traversing back and forth, everyone was finally about to reach the upper deck of Saltwind City. A series of low, dilapidated buildings appeared before Goki and Skadi.
Among them were also some towering buildings, still retaining modern designs, but now all were in disrepair, worn down and crumbling by the passage of time.
"I can choose not to tell the Inquisitor about your law-breaking actions, but you must be responsible for arranging our accommodation, try to find a secluded place. We will handle our own food, understood? As for you all, no matter who asks about us, say I am a Hunter and she is a wandering Skadi the Singer."
He handed a few more pieces of jerky to the other "bandits" behind him. Watching them greedily devour the food, Goki didn't have high hopes, but more people confirming their fake identities would make them more believable.
After The Great Silence, the once prosperous and open Iberia had transformed into an exclusionary, idealistic country adhering to the Dao of inner sanctity. He and Skadi, as outsiders, had best disguise themselves well.
Then, Goki looked at the gaunt young man and asked seriously.
"Also, my name is Goki. What's your name?"
No matter how weak or humble the other person was, Goki would treat them as equals.
In Yharnam, the most precious thing was a living person.
Hearing Goki's question, the man grinned, revealing a not-so-pleasant smile.
"Hearth, just call me Hearth, Hunter—Saltwind City lacks everything but houses for people to live in. It takes over a day to walk across the entire city. If you don't mind, you can stay nearby. We haven't had guests here in a long time, and I still have extra dried seaweed at home…"
"Goki."
Just as the young man, who called himself "Hearth," was still chuckling, Skadi suddenly tugged at Goki's sleeve.
And Goki had noticed it earlier: not far from the entrance of Saltwind City, several individuals in neat trench coats, armed with firearms and long swords, stood on the damp ground of the mobile city.
The one leading them wore a mask and a wide-brimmed hat.
"Citizens, the Inquisitor asks you, where have you just been?"
At that moment, Goki felt an unspeakable, immense fear emanating from the residents beside him.
The will of Iberia had extended to this place.