Batman and Schiller entered the lowest level of the ship's hold. There was almost no light here, but there seemed to be no Deep Ones either, so Schiller confidently switched on his flashlight.
Under the beam of the flashlight, he found that the ship had likely been built by humans, but it appeared to have sunk to the seabed many years ago. Its wooden structure had been severely corroded. The fact that it had not yet fallen apart suggested that some mysterious force was protecting it.
The lowest level of the hold contained cargo. Some of the corroded, broken crates had revealed what was inside. The goods here could roughly be divided into two categories: spices and ores.
Batman rubbed a little ore powder between his fingers and said, "This should be a cargo ship from the Age of Discovery. It may have belonged to the Spanish Royal Fleet, though it's hard to determine the exact period."
Schiller's judgment was much the same. The appearance of these ships alone showed that they were not modern creations, and the corrosion and damage to their hulls showed that they had been here for quite some time.
What truly puzzled Schiller was that if the Deep Ones wanted to come ashore, they had no need to sail ships. That made these three vessels especially strange.
Although the ships and the Deep Ones had arrived at the same time, they might not have shared the same purpose. If the Deep Ones were the product of Old Siltec's scheme combined with Joker's setup, could these three ships be connected to the church?
If the church had found a way to summon these three long-sunken cargo ships, why had they done it? What secret did the ships carry?
Schiller told Batman his speculation. Batman said, "Old