It was still early in the morning, Kiefer was standing atop the bowsprit of a small smuggling ship enjoying the light breeze and admiring the reflection of the twin moons on the rippling ocean surface. Isana and Sher were still sleeping in their room and Kiefer chose not to disturb them, seeing as he was used to waking up early.
The ship was small and fast, smaller than Sharon’s merchant vessel and was painted in a deep navy blue colour with black sails to avoid visual detection at night. The smugglers only operated at night, making short fast trips moving slaves or opiate drugs. However, this particular smuggler’s cargo hold was empty, for he was on an even more lucrative trip.
With nothing illegal on board, the captain had agreed to take on the 15 day operation proposed by Kiefer for a payment of 1 platinum coin upon completion. Even though they had come to a mutual agreement, the captain was still afraid of the couple, not daring to approach them during the trip. After all, in the process of negotiation, Kiefer had burnt all his cargo drugs as a form of ‘persuasion’ saying that now he doesn’t have any other shipment to move and thus will not reject Kiefer’s proposal.
Staring out into the horizon and watching the twin moons set, kiefer revised his plan for Isana’s revenge in his head again.
Having fought it out with the 2 titans, they came to an agreement that Drigor was most likely more powerful than the 3 of them and so it would be wiser to gather information and potential allies first. Seeing as Rashael has no fixed combative force and had to rely on others to protect itself, Kiefer chose to move to Fiora first.
Tracing along the southern coastline from Wanda to Shearwood it took them almost half a month to arrive at the Southern Shearwood port. That’s where Kiefer had managed to ‘persuade’ the smuggler to take him on a trip to one of the warring countries. His target: Avian Titan Fiora.
They were already 10 days into the trip. In total, they’ve encountered 3 pirates and 2 navy patrols from Grandu. Surprisingly, it would seem that the pirates and smugglers seem to have some sort of agreement or code that they follow, not bothering each other whenever they met at sea. The navy on the other hand though were a hassle, but were easy enough to deal with.
The smuggler must have been famous to a certain extent, in the seas between Grandu and the main continent. Navy ships could spot him from miles away and identify straight away who the captain was and what he was most likely to be smuggling. It would seem that this smuggler is famous for bribing Naval officers and they all wanted a share of it, always keeping a close eye for him.
With the naval officer on board the smuggling ship, Kiefer took over and presented his Alluviate royal academy identity card, and informed the officer that he was here on a covert and official business, before showing the officer a tiny fraction of his capabilities. Hinting that everything is to be kept under the hush or they will risk facing decimation, Kiefer managed to get rid of the navy easily and quickly.
The idea to travel by sea was proposed by Isana. Kiefer’s intention was to originally travel by foot which would be much more convenient on land because they could take breaks and set up camp for the night. However, Isana warned Kiefer of one of the many skills Drigor had.
“His territory may be very big, but given how powerful he’s gotten recently, I wouldn’t be surprised if he could sense us the moment we step foot within his territory.” (Isana)
As such, they had to take the round-about method of hiring a smugglers ship since no other ship captain was willing to risk their lives to go to a warring province, much less a demihuman one where they will be killed as humans long before making port.
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And hence, here he was, standing on the smuggler’s ship as it sailed through the ocean towards Fiora. Kiefer had been training non-stop ever since he had such a hard time fighting the 2 titans. Up till this date, the biggest improvements he’s had are with his range of control.
He could easily deploy his gravitational field for up to 500m away from himself now, while his mana pulse has increased its range to just shy of 10km. The only problem though, with such a wide mana pulse is the shear amount of information he was receiving and he had to take some time to filter out the feedback to pinpoint key threats. As such, he usually limits it to the original 2km radius which he had become comfortable with.
Making several improvements with his red orihalcom metal, Kiefer decided to adopt a similar tessellated pyramid design for his tower shield and sphere shells, and with some testing, confirmed that it increased the resistance to blunt force tremendously with just a single layer.
Kiefer now spent most of his time trying to figure out a way to mold some reinforcement armour for Isana using the orihalcom ingots in his PD. With her new form, she had sacrificed some of her defence for an enormous boost in speed and aerial maneuverability. While it was almost impossible to hit her while she was alert, sneak attacks would deal lethal damage to her, so Kiefer had wanted to infuse several ingots with her mana so she could control them.
The main problems, however, lie in the fact that Isana cannot control her mana like Kiefer, so not only could she not induce her mana into the raw ingots, even if she managed to do it, she won’t be able to manipulate the metal like Kiefer does. Kiefer had been trying to find the right runes to mold the metal into a neck brace and shoulder guards for her wings, but without the correct tools and information, he was stuck behind a really tall roadblock.
The day on the boat passed as usual, with almost no incidents. If anything, the only interesting thing would be that one of the sailors had their arm frozen and shattered by Isana because he had accidentally touched her butt as the boat swayed due to the waves. Even then, there was nothing the ship captain could do but apologise to Isana.
Saying that, night fell and the twin moons rose and set. However, just as the twin moons set, Kiefer’s extended pulse registered a small skirmish going on around 9km inland. It would seem that the beings are fighting against something invisible, with no mana signature. Recalling Sher having mentioned that undead have no mana since they are not technically living things, Kiefer became excited. He equipped his full mithril armour with his 2 red shields, woke Isana up and informed the captain that he would be departing effective immediately.
Tossing the captain 1 platinum coin, he carried the still sleepy Isana in a princess hold and leapt into the air, running towards the cliffs he could see in the distant. Isana, embarrassed by Kiefer’s actions, immediately chose to get down and fly alongside him.
Kiefer registered several demihumans hiding within the holes in the cliff, but he ignored them instead, heading straight for the battlefield. Careful not to touch the ground, Kiefer maintained his altitude high up in the air, steadily making his way towards a prospective research element.
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Here's the prologue to the second arc. lets go for another fun ride shall we?
Next chapter : The Specimen and The Study