Perhaps because they were being fild, the eight explorers ultimately didn’t take anything and left the casino empty-handed.
Next, they headed to the ballroom.
The situation there was similar to the outside, yet subtly different.
The similarity lay in the fact that the ballroom also bore nurous traces of human activity, as if not long ago it had been filled with guests attending a grand banquet.
The difference, however, was that the ballroom contained things that shouldn’t have been there.
For example, a thick layer of foul-slling sli stretching from the entrance all the way into every corner of the hall. There was also a large amount of blood, black cloaks, and many extinguished torches.
“The ballroom was enormous, and with the curtains drawn, it was very dim inside. We only ant to try pressing the switch by the door, but unexpectedly, the lights actually turned on. The ship’s power system is still functioning!”
After the lights ca on, what appeared before them was a vast circular hall.
The floor was covered with thick red velvet carpeting, originally ant for dancing. But now, scattered across it in disarray were countless black robes. So of them were stained with the sa semi-transparent sli seen at the entrance, giving off a nauseating stench that made people instinctively cover their noses.
Along the edges of the hall, extinguished torches had been placed at intervals on the ground.
“It looks like a large number of people in black robes once held so kind of gathering here. After it ended, they left their robes behind. And at the center of where the crowd had gathered… there was a massive stage…”
In the video, as one of the crew mbers passed in front of the stage, he caught a strong sll of blood. At his call, everyone gathered in front of it. The cara focused on the stage, and Everly saw that on the red-carpeted floor, there was a huge pattern drawn—sothing resembling a ritual circle.
On the outer side of the pattern were two circles, one large and one small. Inside the smaller circle was a triangle, and from each of its three sides extended several winding, tentacle-like lines. Within the triangle itself was another circular shape resembling an eye.
On the curtain hanging behind the stage, soone had painted an eye-like symbol in blood.
The tallic scent of blood everyone had noticed was coming from these two patterns.
“When we saw those symbols, we were all terrified. We thought we had stumbled into so kind of ritual site for an evil cult. But after searching the entire ballroom, we couldn’t find a single body. So we were never able to determine whether the blood was human or animal.”
The ballroom was simply too foul-slling, and that magic-circle-like pattern was genuinely horrifying. After confirming that there were no people—or even human remains—inside, the explorers hurriedly left the unsettling hall and took the stairs up to the second floor.
From the second floor onward was the cabin area. Most of the rooms were locked and required keycards or special keys to open. Only a few doors were left open, revealing rooms where valuable items were casually scattered about. In one room, the bathroom shower was still running. Following the sound, the group nervously entered and saw the showerhead lying on the floor, water gushing out continuously and draining away through the floor drain.
On the drain cover, there were even a few strands of blonde hair.
It was really—truly—far too strange.
What on earth had happened on this ship? Where had all the people gone?
The eight explorers grew more frightened with every step. They didn’t dare linger in the cabin area any longer. Picking up their pace, they followed the evacuation maps posted in the corridors and found the captain’s cabin located on the starboard side of the sixth floor.
Fortunately, the captain’s cabin door was not locked.
The group entered the captain’s cabin and searched it thoroughly, but they didn’t find anything like a diary or a ship’s log. However, while pulling open a drawer of the captain’s desk, they used too much force and accidentally yanked the entire drawer out. Because of that, they discovered a letter stuck to the bottom of the drawer.
The cara captured them reading the letter, but perhaps to avoid leaking sensitive information, it didn’t deliberately film the contents. As a result, Everly couldn’t see what was written.
She looked at George questioningly.
He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, still looking shaken. “It was a letter written to the captain by soone signed S•T. The main content was about three suspicious individuals. S•T said that among the passengers on the Golden Anchor, there were two ‘investigators’ and a powerful witch. Their presence would inevitably bring disaster and unforeseen changes to the voyage. He hoped the captain would carry out a full-ship screening as soon as possible, find the investigators and the witch, and kill them—so as to eliminate the threat before it could grow.”
“When we saw that letter, we thought its contents were probably related to the strange situation on the Golden Anchor. So we secretly took it off the ship and handed it over to the captain. But last night, while the captain was holding the letter and reading it halfway through, sothing strange happened—”
“Right in front of all of us, it suddenly beca worn, yellowed, and aged, and then, as if erased by an invisible eraser, it disappeared completely!”
“What ti was it when that happened? Did you notice the ti?”
George shook his head and looked toward the captain, who frowned in thought. At that mont, it was Penny—the video editor who had been silent until now—who spoke up first:
“I rember… it was a little past 7:59 p.m. My phone has an hourly chi. When the letter disappeared, it was exactly 8:00.”
Again, the ti! Last night, Misha had witnessed the Golden Anchor suddenly aging, and it was the sa ti period. After that fleeting “aging” mont, lights appeared across the massive ship, and singing and voices could be heard—right at 8:00 p.m. That ans the ship’s sudden aging occurred just after 7:59. This is absolutely no coincidence.
But what exactly does it an…?
Everly had never encountered such a bizarre “movie-like scenario” before. Her mind raced with countless questions and half-ford ideas, none of which she could fully sort out.
She gave George a look, signaling him to continue. She wanted to hear everything that had happened on the giant ship first before trying to piece together the full picture.
George nodded. “After leaving the captain’s cabin, we imdiately went to the bridge. Everything there was in perfect condition—the instrunt panels were lit, the radar and radio were all functioning. However, the radio could only receive ssages from the Mary Jane; it couldn’t connect to the outside world. A crew mber checked the engine paraters and said the ship’s propulsion system appeared fully operational, so the Golden Anchor was entirely capable of normal navigation…”
“Crewman Donnie found the voyage recorder. It showed that after leaving the port of Yanifly State, the ship had followed the ocean current southwest, passed Guadalupe Island, and then stopped on the way to the Lane Islands. The recorder’s log ended there. Donnie dismantled the device to check it, and he said it was working perfectly. But this still doesn’t explain why a massive cruise ship, which should have been sowhere in the Pacific, appeared here, all the way in the Atlantic.”
Perhaps worried that Everly wouldn’t understand, the captain brought over a nautical chart and pointed out the route for her.
“Look,” the captain said, pointing on the chart, “we’re here, and the Lane Islands are over there. A whole continent lies between the two. Under normal circumstances, the Golden Anchor shouldn’t have been able to appear on the East Coast. There’s another thing I can’t wrap my head around: thirteen years ago, on the ship’s maiden voyage, its planned route was southwest, passing through the Lane Islands and continuing onward, heading straight for the Tuvalu Islands…” He gestured as he spoke.
“If the voyage recorder didn’t make a mistake, the ship never went off course. But after the Golden Anchor disappeared, Carnival Company sent out countless search boats, scouring the surrounding waters—and they still couldn’t find it. It’s so strange… truly bizarre!”
Just like the captain, the eight explorers on the massive cruise ship were haunted by one baffling mystery after another, their spines tingling with unease.
Because the atmosphere aboard the ship was so eerie and the ntal strain so great, they had hurried their exploration. They roughly checked every accessible area, confird the ship was completely empty, and quickly left.
What happened next was exactly as Everly had heard: one crew mber accidentally fell into the sea while evacuating and was bitten on the leg by so kind of monstrous fish.
The ship had a doctor, so the crew mber was taken to the infirmary and treated promptly. The doctor, experienced and skilled, cleaned and stitched the wound, then administered antibiotics and a tetanus antitoxin.
Given the crew mber’s physical condition, he should have recovered quickly—maybe a slight fever, then fully healed.
But the next morning, when the doctor pulled back the curtain to check on him, she witnessed a scene that made her blood run cold.
The crew mber, Dali, had transford into a monster.
In just one night, this crew mber—known for his excellent reputation and well-liked among the ship’s staff—had transford from a human into a complete, unrecognizable monster.
“This is actually the main reason I brought you here, Miss Everly,” the captain said, his voice strained. “I’ve heard that so witches are highly skilled at concocting potions with unusual effects. Perhaps you can help us… help turn Crewman Dali back to his original form.”
With that, he led Everly into the infirmary next door.
Pulling back the partition around the bed, Everly saw a creature that defied description.
Its entire body was covered in a slightly yellowed, translucent sli, dripping wet and soaking the bed beneath it. Under the sli was a twisted, elongated body, sowhat like a worm with legs, yet also resembling so kind of octopus.
There was no doubt it was alive. The elongated creature writhed smoothly across the bed, opening and closing its lips, making tiny bubbling sounds, a distorted “ah… ah…”
At the head, the faint outline of a human skull remained—but the cranial bones were either shattered or dissolved. The crew mber’s head had been stretched into a long, rounded shape, almost like cream squeezed from a piping bag.
Even the facial features had been distorted along with it. The eyes were slanted, narrow slits pointing upward, each containing a round, fish-like eyeball that stared at everyone at the bedside with a cold, eerie gaze.
Those eyes alone were unsettling, and when paired with the completely deford nose and a mouth lined with jagged teeth pointing outward, the scene was already horrifying enough to make one’s spine tingle.
And yet, as if that weren’t enough, there was still a more nauseating, stomach-churning sight further down…
Below the neck, Dali’s body had completely transford into so kind of mollusk-like creature. His torso twisted unnaturally 180 degrees, sprawled on the bed in a horrifying and grotesque posture. His arms hung limply over the bed rails, gradually elongating from the wrists into slender, tentacle-like appendages lined with suction cups, coiling and clinging to the tal bars.
The further the transformation went, the more extre it beca. By the ti it reached the lower half of his body, Dali could no longer even wear pants. His legs had fully turned into a dozen or more long tentacles, each tipped with hooked, sharp teeth.
The air was thick with an unbearable stench of decay and blood. The visual impact was overwhelming, and it was clearly the first ti George and the others had ever seen Dali like this.
George was the first to lose his composure. Covering his mouth, he bolted toward the bathroom. Not long after, the sound of retching and gagging could be heard from inside.
——————————————————————————————————————————
Author’s Note:
So sources of inspiration for this dungeon:
The movie Event Horizon
The legend of the ghost ship Mary Celeste
The movie Ghost Ship
Other inspirations will be revealed later—no spoilers for now.
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