"Do we have no fruit stores left?" Zae Zin Nim asked. "I would have sworn on my cultivation that we had more."
"We need to conserve them," Omilaena said as she forked more fish onto her plate. "Kai might be healthy just eating monsters, but we'll get sick if we don't balance our diets."
"This is supposed to be preparation for a great risk. Is this not the time to break out the stores?"
"Nope, have some more fish."
The three of them were eating all of their food that might spoil before their entry into the Blood Current. Even though they were being chased, they had decided to take a full day of rest. So far it seemed that the Brightwind cultivators assumed they were about to give up and were simply preparing to swoop in on them. With luck, they'd be completely taken aback by their next move.
For his part, Kai was the only one who felt completely full and satisfied. He'd helped cook the final big meal they'd put together, since he was apparently the best cook, but he didn't really need it. Rest for him was more about getting some solid sleep, and in this case just lying back to relax. It was surprisingly pleasant to listen to Zae Zin Nim and Omilaena, because even though they sniped at one another, their words didn't have the same venom as before.
"I'm getting the dried fruit." Zae Zin Nim started to get to her feet, only to have them swept out from under her.
"No you don't," Omilaena snapped. "You're completely useless when it comes to cooking, so you don't get to decide the menu."
Zae Zin Nim was knocked over, but landed on her hands and balanced there. "You can't expect a cultivator to be a cooking expert," she said while upside-down. "Besides, Kai did almost all the work, you just threw in your weird spices and injections."
"Which will do more for your health than the dried fruit. Sit down and eat."
Alright, maybe there was still some venom there. But even though they were about to face a huge threat, Kai felt confident that the three of them could work together. If they couldn't survive the Blood Current then it would be because reality simply bore down with too much raw power.
After three days of sailing into the red waters, they were beginning to hit the truly risky currents that stopped even ships carrying powerful warriors. Allegedly, Omilaena could help them find the stable current that would take them east to Rosemount. The problem was that instead of skirting the red waters they'd be plunging straight into the worst of it.
When he woke up the next day, the sunrise lit up the sky in a red to match the waves, which looked unreal around them. Omilaena was already up, examining the environment carefully. Kai walked up beside her and rolled his shoulders as he got ready for anything.
"Red sky at morning, sailors take warning," he said. "I've heard people repeat that saying, but I don't know what it means. Just a sailor's superstitions?"
"It's accurate and involves the effect of clouds on the atmosphere." Omilaena shrugged languidly without looking up at him. "Of course, this is the Blood Current. Every morning is red here."
It wasn't long before Zae Zin Nim joined them. She wasn't cultivating that day, instead she appeared ready with both qi and mana fully restored. After she confirmed that the Brightwind cultivators were beginning to edge west, it was time for them to go.
When they moved forward, Kai could actually see the flow: the waves tore through the sea like a line as if some destiny carried them east. Omilaena gestured for them to get ready as she guided them closer, carefully turning their ship to the side to put them closer to parallel to the intense current.
They hit the edge and it felt like something had grabbed the ship. No natural current could possibly have moved so quickly, as if the waves hammered at the bottom of their ship to pull them onward. The sudden lurching as their momentum changed nearly made Zae Zin Nim fall over and Kai had to stomp a foot against the deck to stop his slide.
Suddenly they were moving faster than before, even faster than the ship's top speed. Yet the current ahead was treacherous, filled with paths that were invisible until they were almost on top of them. When Omilaena jerked them right he realized that the flow turned north. If they'd fallen into that stream, they likely would have been swept into the deadly northern oceans, which looked like utter chaos compared to the road carrying them east.
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"This is definitely a lot faster," Kai said. "And it'll take us to Rosemount?"
"We'll have to break off mid-way to reach the western side of the continent." Omilaena spoke through gritted teeth as she wrestled the ship's wheel and remained focused. "This will work really well until it doesn't. Stay alert."
For the first hour, as they made incredible progress, Kai almost began to wonder if she was just being unnecessarily cautious. Then, out of nowhere, one of the most powerful bursts of mana he'd ever felt shot over the horizon.
The sphere of crimson light moved so quickly it was practically just a streak, already on top of them in the same moment he realized it. Kai reacted on instinct, summoning the strongest Tyrant's Claw he could as he rushed to the side. Just before the attack collided with the side of the ship, he swept his claw upward to knock it toward the sky.
To his shock, the impact jarred his entire arm and slammed him against the deck. Even all his strength was only just enough to deflect it: from his back he could see the streak shooting upward until it exploded into a shower of blood-like mana. He groaned and forced himself back to his feet in case another one was coming.
"What was that?" Zae Zin Nim asked tensely. She perched at the back of the ship, desperately searching the horizon. "I can't find the source."
"Don't bother. Our only hope is to outpace them." Omilaena gritted her teeth harder as she pushed them faster, even within the current. "That was probably just a warning shot or a lazy attempt to hit us. Most monsters here aren't going to go out of their way to chase us."
"But what if one does?"
"Then we'll adapt. We don't need to be worried about the strongest monsters in the Blood Current so much as predators that either feed on humans or want our type of power in particular."
It wasn't a particularly cheerful thought. Kai watched carefully and only saw one more streak of red - this one was near the horizon, slamming down into the sea hard enough to cause an explosion. He thought he saw something vast twist underneath the waves, but whatever titanic battle was happening there, they left it behind as they sped eastward.
They sailed smoothly until something massive appeared ahead of them, floating in the current at a slower pace. He wondered if it was an island, or even irrationally hoped they were getting close to Rosemount, but as it drew closer he saw the hooked tentacles.
The kraken pulled itself higher to observe them and let out a roar from its cruel beak. A tentacle thicker than a tree trunk slammed toward the prow of the ship and Omilaena barely managed to deflect it with one hand. Another tentacle swept overhead and Zae Zin Nim attacked it with qi techniques, but even though her qi burned through its flesh, the tentacle was just so massive, it was barely slowing down...
Kai didn't help either one of them, assuming they could handle themselves. The threat of the kraken was probably that it had so many tentacles, and now that they were almost on it - there! Another tentacle was wrapping around the ship, threatening to snap it in half.
He brought down a Tyrant's Claw just to the level of the deck, slicing the tentacle into pieces to break its grip. The severed stump seemed to flail in pain, but it was actually an intentional motion.
Abruptly the spiky side was slamming into him, trying to flatten him even as more tentacles approached. He grimaced and pushed back, exerting his full strength to overcome the tentacle. Once he got his feet under him he managed to throw it back into the ocean, but the kraken had far more tentacles and the head was looming over the ship. This was going to be a grueling battle.
Something small tore through the kraken's head.
As the massive body sagged and the tentacles unfurled, Kai desperately searched for the source. He barely spotted it crashing back into the waves: a comparatively tiny fish, only the size of his chest. But it appeared to be chewing the kraken's eye in sharp teeth, and as it swiveled around toward them, its eyes glowed with an intense power.
Those eyes turned toward them, then it exploded through the water. It would have torn through the ship in an instant if Kai hadn't hurled one of the pieces of the kraken's tentacle at it.
The crimson fish ate the entire segment in a single bite, even though the piece of the kraken was larger than its entire body. It was similar to his bite technique and Kai should have been eager to see if he could eat the fish... but he wasn't sure they could stop it. He'd never felt monstrous power that intense and his spiritual sight failed to measure the creature's threat.
With its charge stopped, the monstrous fish instead leapt into the air to attack them. Zae Zin Nim met it head on, but her qi attacks scattered off its crimson scales. It might have killed her if her Coldfire Corona hadn't lit up just in time. The fish struggled to penetrate, its sharp little teeth drawing closer and closer...
Kai swept it off the deck with a claw and then hurled all the remaining pieces of the kraken after it. As the fish snapped up piece after piece, the current carried them further away. Finally he saw the fish turn away - not because it was anything like beaten, but because it was going back to the kraken's corpse. He watched it dwindle into the distance, the small red fish consuming the kraken's body.
"The kraken was from the central ocean. That fish was the first local monster we've seen." Omilaena glanced over her shoulder with a vicious grin. "Welcome to the Blood Current."