“What the hell,” both Xane and Calrin said, spinning around. What they saw was Pyn. He was standing in the doorway leading down spinning the cuffs in his hands. The 3 never even went down below deck wanting to watch around.

Calrin was first to speak, “How the hell. And why the hell are you here?

The pirate stood straight and spoke with purpose. “I have been sent by the God Vir. To attune for my sins or something. Don’t worry I have taken an oath to not harm any of you. As well as this official binding document approved by Taxir.” He said this while holding out a piece of parchment. Xane used his slight telekinesis to lift the paper from Pyn’s grasp.

They read it. Xane still didn’t know all the gods names but Taxir was one of them. He was the god of documents and binding documents. Not to be confused with Xuir The god of Oaths. Both do similar things. If you say you are going to do something and swear by it/sign by it you have to do it or fear the wrath of the gods. It goes from minor things like loss of coin or status. To loss of attributes and levels. This depended on the severity of the oath/document. Or how the gods were feeling that day.

This being said Calrin looked over the document in full. It was a long read and Pyn waited patiently. Calrin finished a few minutes later, “This seems legit. I see the mark of Taxir on it.” The mark was a feather dripping ink. “As well it says Pyn needs to listen to us till the mission is complete.”

Pyn spoke, holding a finger up, “I still can’t harm the Lord of Iron.”

“Then why would we want you along?” Xane asked.

Pyn went on not the slightest bit perturbed.“You think it is only the Lord of Iron? They brought 3 ships with them. The best they had. And a crew to man them. You’ll be fighting at least 35 pirates, potentially more. You’ll need more help.”

“And we should trust you?” Calrin asked, still looking at the parchment as if it held secrets.

Pyn looked appalled, “Heavens no. I’m a cheat and a scoundrel. But I’m also honorable and very good at what I do.” He grinned a wolfish smile.

Xane spoke up, “Might as well have him along. If you trust the document he should be helpful.”

Pyn excitedly walked up. “Good on you boy this will be fun” He put his hand on Xane’s shoulder.

“Don’t call me boy.” Xane said, brushing the hand off.

The islands were so many that Xane had a hard time even counting how many he saw. It was an endless spread. They were also lucky to have the boon. For monstrous serpents and even larger crabs, than Xane first fought in this world, could be seen fighting. There was a reason very few people ventured in these dangerous waters. It was paramount to suicide. Xane didn’t dare inspect anything he saw. He was warned a long time ago that some creatures can sense it and see it as a threat.

“I have something else that might help.” Pyn added holding out a compass.

“I know which direction is north.” Xane could intuitively tell. And also he too had a compass in case he was wrong.

“Ohh this isn’t any normal compass. It points towards a tracker. Like I said before I’m a cheat and a scoundrel. I put trackers on every ship on the fleet. Had to pay a pretty penny to afford all of them. Though I believe it will pay itself off.” He said this while turning a small knob on it. Similar to a pocket watch. It changed it to a different direction each time. Potentially to different ships.

Xane took the proffered item. “Why are you here? I read it. You chose to accept this. What do you get in return?”

“My freedom of course. It was either this, or years in a dungeon and maybe turn into one of them by the end. You need to choose to be a moonfolk but that doesn’t mean you can’t be heavily persuaded. I’d rather be myself, thank you very much.”

This was interesting information. Though not useful. The compass got a hit. It had been slowly spinning while they talked. It stopped slightly vibrating and Xane feared the needle might shoot out at any second. It was due north east. Further into the mass of islands.

“How does this thing work exactly?” Xane asked the pirate lounging next to him at the wheel.

“Well you turn that knob there and if you are close enough, don’t ask me the distance I don't remember, it will point towards wherever the tracker was left at. In this case one of their ships.” He said not even looking. Pyn had taken out a cigar-like thing and was smoking it.

“No smoking on my ship.” Xane said his hand a flash as he smacked it from the pirates mouth. It tumbled off the edge.

“That was expensive…” He said almost falling off the edge to try and catch it. Pyn glared at Xane, boring a hole in the back of his head. “A warning would have been nice.” He complained.

“My ship, my rules.”

“Aye aye Captain.” He picked up the compass looking it over. “I will also say that it doesn’t tell you which marker it is targeting. So we could be chasing the one without the Lord on it.”

“We better hurry up then.” Calrin said, coming up the steps to the wheel.

“Oh you.” Pyn looked immediately less entertained.

“I’m here to make sure you don’t screw us over.” He had a hard look on his face. “I believe you said you know where we are heading?

Xane showed him the compass, “Yes north east.”

They followed the compass. It had a sizable range or the ship was moving at a slightly slower speed because it took 3 hours to finally catch up with the vessel. It was a smaller ship more maneuverable in this cluster of islands. Luckily it didn’t have that annoying invisibility thing all the ships had. Xane had asked Pyn about it.

“It is a very costly rune setup. A person or core needs to be used to fuel it. They wouldn’t have it running all the time. Truly I’m surprised you don’t have one.”

“Never came up when I was upgrading this ship.” Xane answered bluntly.

The pirate ship was currently being harried by what seemed like a flock of glowing birds. Xane truly hoped it wasn’t a seagull.

Moon Blessed Seagull:

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

Level: 43

Dexterity: 71

Agility: 71

Intelligence: 50

Information:

These aren’t your regular seagulls. They be blessed with the ambient mana of the shards of the moon. Over time they absorbed the ambient mana and were changed. This gives them higher stats than usual for their levels and has moon magic. They might not be geniuses but their higher intelligence stat than a normal seagull allows them to sling moon magic for an alarming amount of time.

Xane cursed his misfortune “God dammit. Why does it have to be seagulls.”

“You don’t like seagulls?” Pyn questioned?

Xane’s voice was filled with anguish, “I have a bad history with them.”

They talked about whether they should attack while they were being attacked or wait for after the battle was over. “My vote is to wait.” Pyn said, taking out a flask from his jacket, “Why get ourselves in more danger than necessary.

Calrin was quick to reply, “You don’t get a vote. I say we just wait on the sidelines. Just take long range attacks.” He grinned a knowing smile. “Why get ourselves in more danger than necessary.”

“That’s wha-”

Xane interrupted, “I agree.”

Xane and Huntress got to the front and started to aim. Their ship slowled to a crawl. Sierra’s Song was still little under a mile away. This wasn’t a problem for the two as they just used their respective skills to aim. They didn’t take careful aim. The goal was to merely cause more chaos than to actually kill everything. The team wanted the chance to interrogate someone.

The battle didn’t take long. Xane watched as the gulls shot beams of white light from their beaks towards the pirates. Those caught in the attack sizzled. Xane believed he would be fine taking a few hits from those attacks. But still would want to be hit by them. Soon the fight was over with the pirates heavily damaged and a few killed. Mostly from Xane’s and Huntresses attacks.

The pirates had spotted them attacking but couldn’t do a thing about it. Now though that the birds were taken care of, bolts and arrows were fired at Sierra’s Song. As well as waves of water and a new attack Xane hadn’t seen yet. Bolts of lightning.

Xane had known lightning to be an element. From what he had heard though it was one of the rarer ones. Rarer meant more power. And the lightning surged with so much speed that Xane could barely dodge even though it was teetering at half a mile away that the attack was launched from. He felt his muscles constrict from the minor damage he took.

Xane forced his muscles to respond as the fireball came streaking towards. He used dodge as it exploded in the middle of the ship. The perk didn’t say so but he felt as if spell damage wasn’t nearly as resisted by the perk than when he got slashed with a sword. Maybe his comporial form wasn’t capable of reducing as much magic damage. He didn’t have time to think on that.

With the short respite as the spell slingers readied their next attacks Xane turned the ship and the sails dropped. “We are getting closer.” He yelled.

The reasons for this were clear. The pirates had more ranged options than them. Even though Xane had a better weapon, the fact that there were so many of them all firing right after each other made it hard to shoot back.

Huntress made an opening. She used the rain of arrows perk. The arrow split to almost a hundred as it came crashing down on the other ship. Most had to just huddle as the mage types summoned their various shields based off of their elemental choices. The lighting wielders barrier of electricity burned the arrows on contact.

This made them easy targets for Xane. An infused shot slammed into an unexpecting lightning mage. The explosion knocked her aside. Xane assumed female since she had long hair. Why does every mage wear stupid robes? Looks like fancy bathrobes. He thought as he rapidly fired the last of the rounds into the water mage.

Xane didn’t target the fire mage because the mage noticed what was wrong too fast blocking towards Xane. The slower water mage wasn’t so lucky. Bullets tore through his body. Holes were visibly seen as he fell to the ground. Mages constitutions and endurance too low to survive such an onslaught.

Xane realized oddly that he hadn’t gained experience from the lighting mage. A streak of lightning went towards Xane. He didn’t have any time to evade the attack as it was truly faster than lightning. His entire body convulsed. 19% of his health fell.

Electrified!: Your body seizes up as the electricity courses through you.

-60% to bodily control

Time remaining: 8 seconds

Xane was strong but this mage was in a class way higher than he. Taking his most powerful attack proved that.

“Xane watch out.” Said a voice Xane couldn’t quite pick up. “Behind you.”

Xane tried to look around but his body just didn’t want to do anything he wanted it to do. He felt a sharp pain in his back as 30% of his health dropped. The pain was more than he had ever felt. He wanted it to stop. For himself to just pass out already. “I can’t let you go unconscious.” Lyenn urged him to stay awake.

Xane could barely hear a fight behind him. Surges of lightning and yells of pain. It must have been Pyn. Xane thought. He stabbed me in the back as he told us he would. Why did Xane ever trust for even a moment. The sneaky pirate must have forged the document. Or found a way to go against it like he did with the Iron Lord’s oath.

More and more thoughts rushed through his mind as the counter went down. His high intelligence working against him as he thoughts were accelerated to insane speeds. 3 I’m going to kill him. 2 He will drown like he should have with his ship. 1 I hope calrin wins the fight. Wait what fight? The sound of fighting had ended a few seconds ago and Xane had never noticed. 0

Xane spun around badly injured. What he saw confused him. Pyn was behind him, yes. But he looked mildly burned like Xane himself. And the lighting mage was beheaded. The orcs head by Xane’s feet. Xane remembered the blade that stabbed him. He looked down to see only fried skin and armor.

Pyn spoke first. “Snap out of it Xane. You need to keep a better eye on your back. Don’t know when a sneak attack will happen.”

Xane put two and two together. The lighting mage had used the electrifying attack to somehow get on board behind Xane. And Xane could do a thing as he was stabbed with probably an electrified knife or knife made from lightning. Xane took a healing potion. “I told you we should have bought an entire range of elemental resistances.” Lyenn said hotly.

Xane piped back trying to turn the ship again.“I was running low on funds. Anyway who brings a lighting mage to a potential underwater place. Sounds dumb to me.”

With two mages down the rest of the battle didn’t take long. The fire mage did a similar thing as the lighting getting on board Sierra’s Song. He looked as if he was gaining energy to literally explode himself. Two arrows, 3 bullets, and a thrown dagger seemed to solve that problem before it started. The body fell with a surprised yet still angry face. Xane didn’t think the ship could handle someone going supernova.

The rest of the crew tried to surrender. Sadly for them the group didn’t have time for prisoners. They were all executed. Xane didn’t like it. Pyn though had somehow convinced Calrin to agree. “They are scum. I can tell you despise us pirates. They will not hesitate to attack the moment they can. We can’t let them live and potentially attack us later.”

“Fine.” Calrin yelled. “Do it. But we need to question them.”

“They won’t speak. I tried to tell you before.

Pyn without his usual lackadaisical grin slaughtered them all. Pyn went on board the vessel and killed the marker. Xane took all the valuables he could get his hands on and the ship was stored for potentially being grabbed later. Ships were valuable and could be sold for up to 10k gold each.

The next tracker must not have been too far away as the compass pointed further north immediately.