Days as a Spiritual Mentor in American Comics

In the Age of Exploration, an unfortunate sailor or perhaps more precisely, a cultist, brought aboard the ship a book named "Water God Ketayat," and experimented with one of its spells during the voyage.

This spell brought disaster to the fleet, causing them to encounter a terrible storm and resulting in their complete annihilation.

Later, a shipwreck salvage company targeted this doomed team, and after conducting an exploration, they salvaged a portion of the ship's hull. Among the salvaged items were a diary written by a crew member and this dreadful book of disaster.

They regarded these items as valuable collectibles and sold them, eventually ending up in the hands of some private collectors, and later, were plundered by England; the collectibles were loaded onto a ship by the British.

Probably during World War II, a fleet transporting cultural relics to England included people who engaged in gambling to pass the idle time, and gambler Jeff could not withstand the temptation, losing almost all of his belongings, and possibly even incurring debts.

In order to deal with his creditors, he had no choice but to steal from the ship's cargo. Since other collectibles were inconvenient to carry and difficult to steal, he targeted the books and successfully stole "Sailor Pick's Diary."

But the theft was not flawless; the first mate soon became aware of it, and to determine exactly what was missing, he ordered a sailor to check all the records.

While flipping through the records, the sailor found "Water God Ketayat" and learned a spell from within it.

Worried about exposure, Jeff then framed the sailor for the theft, successfully inciting the sailor's resentment, which led him to use the spell that brought disaster, resulting in the annihilation of Jeff's entire fleet except for himself.

Jeff was viewed as an ominous person, and no one was willing to employ him until Old Sirteck, having concocted a series of conspiracies, followed various clues to locate the survivors from that time.

Old Sirteck obtained "Sailor Pick's Diary" from Jeff, and from what appeared to be a complete and authentic sailor's diary, learned the so-called correct method to counter such disasters—'see no evil, hear no evil, feel no evil.'

However, there is fear that this method is wrong.

Clearly, Jeff had held back something.

Firstly, Pick's team had been annihilated; the diary could have been salvaged, rather than handed down firsthand, which means the methods summarized for surviving disasters in it could very likely be incorrect.

There is also plenty of evidence, among which the most obvious is that the conclusion of the diary might be forged, with someone having imitated Pick's handwriting to write a satisfactory ending to mislead others.

Secondly, Old Sirteck only knew that Jeff had the sailor's diary, but didn't realize that "Water God Ketayat," this heavyweight, was also in his hands and had been concealed by him.

Combining these two points, it's not hard to see that Jeff had likely tricked Old Sirteck.

Old Sirteck, having gotten hold of the sailor's diary and deducing the so-called safe method to overcome disasters, felt emboldened. He believed that as long as he mastered this method, he could recklessly summon disasters to trouble others.

This also indulged his ambitions, making him believe that he could use the summoned disasters as a bargaining chip to negotiate terms with the Church—if the Church wanted to know the correct way to overcome disasters, they would have to plead with him.

The mistaken method made him feel invulnerable and profitable, naturally leading him to try summoning disasters to secure more benefits.

But in reality, this method was utterly wrong—the supposed survivors using this method either died or had not used this method at all.

Assuming the method of impassiveness is wrong, how did Jeff manage to survive?

Shiller brought out "Water God Ketayat" and exchanged glances with Batman before finally saying, "This book is alive."

"What do you mean?"

"Literally, there might be a cultist's soul within this book," Shiller paused and then added, "The cover is made from his skin; this book should be regarded as a complete person. Can you see anything?"

Shiller observed Batman's expression, seeing from it that Batman found all this utterly absurd.

But soon, he must have seen something even more absurd, as he was utterly stunned.

Shiller didn't rush him and waited for him to regain his senses. Batman sighed and said, "Arrogance tells me this thing is extremely evil."

"What type of evil?"

"It can bewitch people."

In almost no time, Shiller pieced everything together.

He had felt something was amiss before, as the ordeal of Jeff's family didn't seem like the work of a creature from the Cthulhu Mythos. Many among them showed clear signs of being lured, which was more akin to human inducement rather than the obliviousness associated with the old days or the Outer Gods.

However, in the entire story, it indeed didn't seem like any person had lured them, but if one considered the book as a person, then everything could be explained.

As said before, there are two kinds of cultists: those who resent anyone coveting their knowledge and those who wish their corrupt knowledge to spread across the world. The cultist inhabiting "Water God Ketayat" might be the latter.

Based on this motive, Jeff was probably bewitched by the cultists. After he came into contact with the book while working on the fleet, under the cultists' influence, he gradually brought disaster upon them, leading to the entire fleet's demise.

But since he wanted to spread knowledge, he couldn't let the books sink to the bottom of the sea with the fleet. With the help of the cultists, Jeff survived and brought the book back home.

During that time, he might have realized something was wrong, so he buried the book in a corner of the cellar and placed a pile of empty boxes on top of it.

But such evil spirits are extremely cunning. It's very likely that it lured one of Jeff's family members, making the person store the goat's feed in the boxes above his head, and it took the chance to contaminate the feed.

After eating the feed, the goats went mad and disappeared, and the whole family went out to look for them. Meanwhile, the evil spirit took the opportunity to entice Jeff's young daughter.

Under the cultist's influence, his daughter spread rumors throughout the village that Jeff's family had gone mad, causing them to be driven out of the village to the lighthouse, where, under Joker's coercion and abuse, they eventually killed each other until the entire family died.

However, the cultist probably didn't expect Jeff to leave without taking him along, leaving the book just there in the cellar, which was eventually discovered by Shiller.

And the ending of the diary might have been altered by the cultist influencing Jeff or one of his family members, just so Old Sirtek felt invincible, thinking he had a safeguard against death, and thus recklessly using spells to summon disasters.

Shiller then took out the "Bible".

If nothing goes wrong, the missing letters in this "Bible" should form the spell to summon Deep Diver, which Old Sirtek used to call forth the Deep Diver and intended to use the situation in the village to negotiate with the Church.

After discussing with Batman, Shiller found their speculations to be largely the same, but they also identified some temporarily inexplicable aspects through the process of elimination.

For instance, how could Old Sirtek have failed to find out that the team where Pick was located had been completely wiped out?

Although there was no modern internet during the Age of Exploration, news of the destruction of such a large fleet would definitely be recorded in history books. Didn't he think to check when he got the diary?

Then there's the mysterious arrival of the fleet and the figures in the cabins, which might not be Old Sirtek's doing.

Bruce and Pale Knight found an empty house in the wealthy district. The place was fully equipped with power and water facilities, including a computer; it seemed the owner was on vacation, so they made it their temporary base.

The house was located in the center of the wealthy district, allowing them to hear any disturbances immediately, which was also convenient for them to create disturbances to attract the police.

"When do we start?" asked the Pale Knight.

Bruce shook his head, "No rush; you can go prepare the materials, I need to check something."

Bruce started up the computer belonging to the house's owner, got accustomed to the operating system, and then began his search.

"What are you looking into?" asked the Pale Knight as he noticed Bruce typing "Royal Spanish Fleet" into the search bar.

The Pale Knight immediately understood. Bruce might be checking where the three ships docked at the pier came from.

After the Pale Knight went to prepare materials, Bruce continued his investigation into the sailing ships.

Through his research, he learned that the three ships were likely escort ships, similar to security in a fleet, specifically tasked with escorting cargo ships carrying precious goods on ocean voyages.

However, even though they were escort ships, they were loaded with some cargo to stabilize the ship's hold, but because battle ships might sink, they generally did not carry particularly valuable items, mostly rough fabrics or ores, and occasionally some low-quality spices.

But no matter how he searched, Bruce couldn't find any ships matching the exact descriptions, yet that era wasn't too far back; there shouldn't be no records at all, making Bruce realize, perhaps someone had deliberately suppressed the information.

It was time to employ some special means.

Bruce stared intently at the screen, and after a long time, he finally found a clue—it was a theft that had occurred in the National History Museum of Spain last century, where many unique archives vanished.

According to the investigations by American agents, it appeared the Church was behind it, but since there was no solid evidence, and at the time bizarre incidents were numerous, no one dared confront them, and the matter was dropped.

The records mentioned many archives had been lost, exactly from the Age of Exploration, including ship designs and valuable sea trial data, along with some other documents from that era.

Since these were unique documents and there was inadequate data preserved in photographs and the internet wasn't developed, this theft left a gap in the history of Spain's Age of Exploration.

Bruce immediately realized, it was the Church who had purposely stolen the records, probably those with information about the three escort ships, all to cover up what had happened then.

Even if these three ships had suddenly appeared at the docks now, Bruce wouldn't believe that they had been stopped at some small island in the sea for many years and had just suddenly re-emerged.

The three ships had most likely sunk long ago, and what had returned might be ghost ships, or perhaps these vessels had been pulled up from the seabed by some mysterious power.

Bruce believed that the Church hiding this piece of history was to bring back these three ships at some moment, and there must be something on them that they wanted, either a secret or a treasure.

What could that something be?