In the blink of an eye, the clamor of the Sea Market gradually drew to a close. One by one, the Ship-Nations retracted their walkways, cast off their moorings, and scattered across the vast ocean like seabirds returning to their nests.
Byrne packed his belongings and bid farewell to Puspe's fleet. Following their prior agreement, he headed toward the Black Sail fleet to rendezvous with Helder. After several more days of sailing, the Black Sail fleet came to a halt. Three nautical miles ahead lay the area completely blacked out on the nautical chart—the Tears of the Mother Goddess.
Helder stood on the deck of the flagship, his single eye gazing at the distant waters, lost in thought.
Byrne approached from behind. "Captain Helder, is the ship you mentioned ready?"
Helder turned slowly, his eye narrowing slightly in the sea breeze as he pointed toward the side. "Of course. It has been ready for a long time."
Byrne looked in that direction and saw a cutter anchored on the outer edge of the Black Sail formation. In terms of size, this ship was similar to the deep-sea fishing vessels Byrne had seen in his previous life.
"This is the Shadow, the finest small exploration vessel in my fleet. I've stocked it with enough supplies to last you a month." After saying this, Helder turned and signaled to his men.
Soon, two crew members carried over a metal crate about half the height of a man. Inside was a deep-sea diving suit, silver-gray in color with cold, hard lines.
"This is the diving suit I told you about. It can descend to a depth of three thousand meters and features a built-in micro-oxygen system that lasts for three hours underwater. In all of Black Sail, we have only three sets of this equipment. If you weren't going to the Tears of the Mother Goddess, I would never have brought this out from the bottom of my vault."
Byrne replied, "Thank you, Captain Helder."
Helder waved his hand, the sea wind whipping his tattered cloak. His single eye remained devoid of emotion. "Hah, no need to thank me. I give you equipment and a ship, and you find my ancestor's ship-plate. That is all."
Byrne nodded. "Understood. I'll remember."
A while later, Byrne boarded the ship with the metal crate. He untied the lines, and the sea breeze immediately filled the black sails, making them look like a bird spreading its wings. The cutter slowly pulled away from the fleet, heading toward the sea that the Louvielle regarded as forbidden.
Helder stood at the bow, watching the solitary black sail drift further away until it became a tiny black speck. Behind him, a crew member asked in a low voice, "Captain, can he really come back?"
Helder didn't answer immediately. He slowly raised his hand, his fingertips brushing the rough half-plate at his waist, his eye filled with a sense of melancholy. "Mother Goddess above, I hope this brave guest can return safely."
Meanwhile, aboard the Shadow, Byrne gripped the helm as he sailed into the cursed sea. Initially, he had worried about being affected by the curse. As Helder had described, he and his ship were supposed to experience eerie symptoms.
The moment the Shadow entered the Tears of the Mother Goddess, the sea abruptly turned quiet. It wasn't that the wind had stopped, but rather that all sound seemed to have been sucked away by the deep sea. The sound of waves hitting the hull became muffled and blurred, and even the flapping of the sails felt nearly illusory.
Byrne tightened his grip on the helm. He felt an inexplicable pressure seep through the sea breeze and into his bones, making his breathing feel sluggish.
Strange...
According to Helder, once inside Darussel Bosa, compasses would fail, engines would stall, and people would cry uncontrollably. Yet the Shadow sailed steadily, the compass remained fixed, and his mind was perfectly clear with no urge to weep.
Had the curse lost its power? Or was the Mother Goddess's curse ineffective against him because he was an outsider? Regardless of the reason, the lack of negative effects was a good thing.
This cursed sea was not small. At this ship's speed, it would take at least ten days to scout the entire area. The wind continued to blow and the sails continued to move, yet everything around him was terrifyingly silent. There was no sound of waves, no cries of seabirds; even the sound of flowing water was swallowed by this region.
Every fifty nautical miles the Shadow traveled, Byrne would drop anchor. Besides using the pendant to sense Helder's ancestor's ship-plate, Byrne relied on another device to sense the location of the company shipwrecks. This was a portable detector that looked like a sports wristband. However, unlike the pendant which could sense things from the surface, he had to enter the water to detect the wrecks.
Byrne opened the metal crate and put on the diving suit. Once fully equipped, he strapped the detector to his wrist, walked to the edge of the boat, and fell backward into the ocean.
Plop!
The sound of his entry was swallowed by the water, stirring only a fleeting ripple. The cold seawater instantly enveloped him, but the diving suit's thermal system quickly activated, sealing out the bone-chilling cold. Byrne kicked his flippers, his body sinking downward like a fish.
The further down he went, the darker it became. When Byrne reached a depth of over a hundred meters, the light faded rapidly. Fortunately, the suit came with built-in lights. Two beams of light pierced through the thick darkness of the deep sea, causing tiny plankton to scatter in panic within the beams.
Byrne moved his flippers. The screen of the detector on his wrist glowed faintly, but the waves representing ship signals remained as flat as a mirror without any fluctuations. This deep sea was excessively quiet. No schools of fish swam by, there was no friction from crawling crustaceans, and even the flow of the water felt sluggish and stagnant.
The deeper he dove, the heavier the sense of isolation became, as if the entire sea were deliberately avoiding something.
At around five hundred meters, the detector finally gave a slight tremor. A weak but clear signal wave jumped onto the screen. Byrne's heart tightened; he immediately adjusted his direction and swam toward the source of the signal.
Before long, a piece of metal wreckage covered in seaweed entered Byrne's vision. He reached out to brush away the thick seaweed on the deck to identify it. However, because it had been submerged for so long and he couldn't find any of the company's signature marks, he couldn't identify it immediately.
Swimming further ahead, more wreckage appeared. A twisted bow, a broken engine room, rusted bulkheads—Byrne identified them one by one, but none bore the company's markings. While the detector had found shipwrecks, they were not the ones he was looking for.
After swimming dozens of meters further, a relatively flat and orderly area appeared. This was no longer scattered wreckage, but a single massive stone standing upright, covered in heavy seaweed. By estimation, this stone was over two meters high.
Byrne swam up to it and peeled away the seaweed on the surface. Once cleaned, the stone revealed a line of carvings that looked like text. After scanning it with his optical computer, Byrne realized that the writing was left by the Water Spirit tribe that lived in the sea.
This massive stone was a tombstone of the Water Spirit tribe.