"Elliot?!" Sidney immediately perked up. "He contacted us?! Where is he?"
"He's..." The crew member looked somewhat strange. Rather than give a specific location, he pointed out the porthole.
"He's over there."
Sidney froze, then rushed to the porthole in disbelief and looked in the direction indicated.
On the seabed below, a jagged rift stretched through the sea. Elliot was poking his head out of it, waving at them.
Sidney was dumbstruck.
"He... he..."
"He actually went in?" Michel asked incredulously, then turned to Allen.
"Is that your Duke Sterling? You're sure you haven't mistaken him for someone else?"
"That's him." Allen looked certain.
Finally, after a bout of confusion, the fleet gradually descended.
After another round of painstaking, cautious probing by every means they could devise, Sidney finally had to admit that the person before him really was Elliot.
And behind him really was a passage into a dream.
At the end of the passage really was an Abode.
A Great Being really had connected an Abode to the Sea of the Moon!
"It's actually real. It's actually real..." Sidney muttered to himself, his face full of disbelief.
"How long are you going to keep this up?" Elliot patted his shoulder. "I told you, but you wouldn't believe me."
"But... I still can't believe it. This is too outrageous!" Sidney shook his head, his gaze grave. "I still think there's a conspiracy here!"
Elliot rolled his eyes. "Then here's a trick. When something good happens, assume your Lord has already paid for it. When something strange happens, say the Lord has his own plans. When something bad happens, consider it a trial bestowed by the Lord."
"Where did you learn all that?"
"From believers."
Beside them, Allen's shoulders trembled.
Elliot glanced at him and casually took the towel