Chapter 111: Cruise Ship: The Second Attempt

Chapter 111 The Cruise Ship: Second Attempt

On the second day inside the time loop, at 19:50 in the evening, more than a dozen people, including Everly, quietly gathered on the lower deck.

During the day, the Mary Jane's failed evacuation had already sparked panic among the passengers.

When the cruise ship passed through the transparent "membrane," the bow vanished into thin air as if erased by an eraser, then reappeared from the other end of the time loop. Too many people had witnessed it. Even though the ship's broadcast later dismissed it as a mirage caused by light refraction and total internal reflection, claiming the ship had stopped only because of the heavy storm, the passengers remained skeptical.

After all, the eerie calm of the sea around the Golden Anchor was noticeable to anyone with working eyes. There were plenty of superstitious people in America; if just one religious zealot started preaching that "we must have angered the gods and brought their wrath upon us," plenty of impressionable people would believe it.

To calm everyone down, the Captain had to organize all kinds of activities to distract the guests and give high-energy passengers a way to burn off steam.

After barely getting things under control, by evening, while a song-and-dance party was underway in the banquet hall, the exhausted Captain, First Mate, and others finally found a chance to slip away.

Down below deck, crew members who'd gotten their orders earlier stood at the bottom of the gangway, already using poles to push the test lifeboat to the edge of the time loop, just waiting for the Captain's signal to put it in place.

Everyone stood silently in the darkness, no one speaking, each second dragging like an eternity.

Finally, after a long wait, the time reached 19:59. From that moment, everyone was on edge, eyes locked on the massive ship ahead, torn between hope and dread. The Captain gripped his walkie-talkie, ready to order the crew below the second the Golden Anchor changed.

10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds... The last minute somehow flew by. Obviously, the longer the time loop stayed down, the better for everyone on board. If it was too short, the Mary Jane might not make it out in time.

So with every tick of the clock, everyone silently prayed, hoping time would slow down, hoping the giant ship in front of them would change.

But fate had other plans. It wasn't until 19:59:53 that the change they'd been waiting for finally came.

"Click," the soft tick of the second hand sounded, and the invisible "membrane" covering the sky suddenly vanished. Rain came pouring down out of nowhere. As everyone stared in shock, the Golden Anchor in front of them looked like a fading painting—the pristine white hull quickly developed mottled yellow rust, the shiny glass turned grimy and cracked, railings broke, anchors corroded...

Thirteen years of skipped time had piled up, leaving permanent marks on the giant ship.

"Mark, push the lifeboat!"

The Captain raised his walkie-talkie and gave the order to the crew at the bottom of the gangway.

Mark got the order and immediately used the pole to nudge the lifeboat forward a bit more.

A few seconds flew by. When the second hand ticked again and it hit 20:00, in an instant, the battered Golden Anchor transformed back into its gleaming, pristine self. Colorful lights flickered back on across the dark ship, bright and cheery, with music drifting through the air.

"The time loop's back... We only have 7 seconds." The Captain's voice was strained.

That was nowhere near enough time for the whole cruise ship to escape the loop.

Everyone went quiet for a moment, then turned and walked to the far side of the ship, away from the giant vessel. If the lifeboat stuck at the boundary stayed unaffected when the loop closed and could pass through freely, then the Mary Jane still had a shot...

But what they got was more bad news.

"Captain, the lifeboat—it's broken!"

From down by the gangway, Mark's shout came from a distance.

Hearing that, everyone's hearts sank. They switched on flashlights and filed down the long folding gangway to the metal platform below, where they found Mark drenched in sweat, tugging at the tow rope, trying to drag a half-sunken lifeboat frame out of the water and onto the ladder.

Since the time loop had already reset, the terrifying creatures that had bitten Dali earlier were gone from the water for now. Everyone pitched in to help Mark, and soon they'd hauled the lifeboat up and onto the platform.

It was just a third of a boat—a wreck.

At the spot where the loop had closed, the lifeboat had been sliced clean through, top to bottom. The cut was perfectly smooth—something even the sharpest metal cutter couldn't have pulled off.

And not far off, outside the loop, in the raging storm, the rest of the hull could be seen drifting away under the pounding waves, slowly sinking.

It was easy to imagine: if the Mary Jane crossed the edge of the loop and it reset mid-passage, the whole ship would suffer the same fate—split in two.

This was really bad.

"Is there any other way... like, could we toss unnecessary stuff off the ship to speed it up?" Worried about everyone's lives, including her own, Everly jumped in with suggestions.

But her amateur advice didn't help.

"Even if we stripped the whole ship bare, no food or water left, the Mary Jane still couldn't speed up much. The performance ceiling is what it is—this is a cruise ship, built for stability and comfort, not speed."

"Then can we try reaching the Coast Guard or some other rescue agency for outside help? Like, have them send enough lifeboats to wait outside and pick everyone up the second the loop drops."

"We can't get in touch with the outside."

Everly's eyes widened: "What?"

The Captain covered his face with his hand, his voice heavy with pain: "Since entering the time loop, we've lost all contact with the outside... At first, I thought it was just the storm affecting the signal. Now it's clear—the time loop is blocking it."

All the news that night was bad, and everyone felt numb.

After a moment of silence, it was Everly who rallied first.

"Let's keep studying this. There's always a way."

So, more than ten minutes later, while the banquet hall below was filled with song, dance, and laughter, the grim-faced group crossed the deck and gathered once more in the Captain's office.

As Everly had said earlier, the situation, though dire, wasn't completely hopeless.

The first option was, of course, to find the source of the time loop and shut it down entirely.

But that was easier said than done. On one hand, the crew had searched the entire Golden Anchor and found no one. Even if a witch existed, she must be well hidden, and thoroughly searching the whole ship was no easy task. On the other hand, someone capable of creating such a vast time loop would be an extremely powerful witch—there was no way ordinary people could "persuade" her by force.

The second option was to seek help.

After the time loop reset, people saw the remaining two-thirds of the lifeboat hull in the storm outside, proving that escaping from within during those 7 seconds of malfunction was feasible. The Mary Jane couldn't do it simply because it was too long and too slow to fully clear the boundary in such a short time.

If they switched to smaller lifeboats, with proper preparation, 7 seconds would be more than enough to escape.

According to regulations, the total rated capacity of a cruise ship's lifeboats must be at least 1.25 times the total number of passengers. The Mary Jane carried 263 people including passengers and crew. Since new guests would board at ports along the way, the ship had 17 lifeboats, each with a capacity of 20 people.

These were non-motorized open lifeboats, requiring manual rowing with oars. One had been destroyed in the experiment, leaving 16—more than enough to seat all passengers on board.

However, the weather outside was a problem. The storm had raged for two days with no sign of stopping. Plus, to avoid the storm, the Mary Jane had sailed nearly 10 nautical miles (about 18.5 kilometers) away from land, putting them extremely far from shore. If all passengers boarded the lifeboats to escape the time loop, their survival odds at sea would be very low—they'd likely capsize in the waves before rescue arrived.

So, after discussion, they decided that during tomorrow's time loop malfunction, they'd send one lifeboat carrying distress personnel out of the loop to use a wireless phone to contact land and call for help.

Once rescue vessels arrived nearby, they'd use the Mary Jane's lifeboats to ferry passengers out in batches, allowing them to board safe, stable ships immediately after leaving the loop, avoiding the danger of drifting in the storm.

After the plan was finalized, everyone reviewed it repeatedly and found it highly feasible.

The Mary Jane's First Mate even volunteered to lead the mission personally.

Time flew by another day.

On the third day of being trapped, the storm outside still raged.

Early in the morning, bad news arrived—Dali was dead.

Following Everly's suggestion, he had been placed in an empty presidential suite. It was a bedroom with a large sealed window, and when they pushed him in, the crew had stocked it with ample food and water.

However, this morning, when a crew member, feeling uneasy, opened the door to check, he found Dali dead on the carpet, frozen in a crawling position, his face twisted in agony. His body looked like a mummy left under a desert sun for days—skin withered, flaking, and brittle, and the gill-like slits on both sides of his neck were flared wide open.

The food in the room remained untouched, but the glass of water had been knocked over.

It looked like Dali had died of thirst.

Afraid it would spark panic, the Captain kept it quiet. But sure enough, he looked even more haggard than before.

Trouble never comes alone. And to make things worse, the passengers were getting restless too.

After three days stuck somewhere with no signal, some passengers were getting fed up, and others were worried about the delay. They crowded outside the captain's office, making a racket and demanding answers.

What they didn't know was that the captain was already drowning in his own problems and had no patience for them. All he could do was tell the crew to keep putting on events like dances and wine tastings to distract the passengers.

At 7:55 p.m., in a corner no one was watching, the First Mate and two other crew members boarded a lifeboat with portable radio communication equipment, tethered by a safety rope, and approached the edge of the time loop.

Outside the loop, thunder roared, lightning flashed, and the storm raged.

Inside the loop, the sea was calm, with no wind or rain.

The jarring split-screen scene made everyone watching instinctively hold their breath, scared the First Mate and his crew would get flipped by the waves the second the loop dropped.

Fortunately, the three, being seasoned sailors with over a decade of experience at sea, had impeccable boat-handling skills.

The time reached 19:59:53, and as yesterday, when it was 7 seconds before 20:00, the time loop malfunctioned.

"Quick, row the boat!"

The moment he saw the "film" vanish and the storm surge in, the First Mate barked the order. He and the other two sailors dug their oars in, shot across the invisible line, rode through the waves, and rowed the whole lifeboat clear of the loop.