Most dwarven hunter ships were large hunks of black steel, held together with rare expensive timber, adorning tall sails made of carefully treated monster hide, their sides lined with rows and rows of magical cannons. It gave the capital’s harbor airs of grandeur. Without a doubt, the dwarves were ready for nautical warfare.
And then, there was Camilla’s ship, ‘The eyesore’, which was hard to describe as anything but a huge block of pure pink Orichalcum, without a single cannon or sail in sight, and covered in too many ritual circles to count.
The dwarves Shaily had contracted to help her move the crates of material and ingredients she had bought in the last week to make Exidian liquor finished unloading everything in front of the ship, leaving her alone in front of the pink eyesore.
What have I gotten myself into…
Someone jumped down from the ship without warning, a young-looking winged beastkin with colorful feathers, she landed gracefully on top of the crates.
[Mage - Lv. 100+]
“You’re the new recruit, right? I’m Pin, want me to get those on board?” she asked, pointing at the crates she was standing on.
“I’m Sofia,” Shaily answered, a hand shielding her eyes from the glare of the Sun reflecting on the metallic ship, “be careful about the small boxes, they have glassware.”
“Got it, welcome in, Sofia. Need a hand to get up?”
“I can manage, thanks.”
“Ayay, going then,” the beastkin answered, grabbing the crate she had been standing on and flying up.
Shaily jumped up, reaching about a third of the height of the ship, just high enough for [Summon Self] to be able to reach the top, where she landed on the railings.
“Oh! We got ourselves a space mage?” Pin asked as she also reached the top and put the crate down on the deck.
“No, no, this is a classless,” Shaily explained, sharing the skill description.
“Damn, neat, I could use that,” Pin commented before she jumped down again to bring up the other crates.
When she came up again, Shaily asked a question, “Is there no one else here yet?”
Pin was already about to jump back down but she stopped for a second, “Oh no, everyone’s already in there, it’s pretty early, most of ‘em should be sleeping, but there aren’t many of us to begin with.”
“Not many? This ship is huge though?”
“Yeah, but we don’t need a traditional full crew, Captain’s able to maneuver the entire ship alone, she’s a [Ritualist], all them rituals you see everywhere, she manages everything alone. I’m here as the boatswain, navigator, and barrelman, pretty much. Then we have Emma, our cook; Selene, who does all the monster processing, selling and accounting, and the four others are our hunters,” Pin enumerated while counting on her fingers, “so yeah, eight of us.”
“A crew of eight on this huge ship?” Shaily repeated, flabbergasted.
“Well, nine now. The others’ve been dying to get a brewmaster aboard for a long while so you’re a welcome addition.”
“I… Brewmaster might be exaggerating it a bit… I only know one recipe…”
“One’s a lot better than zero,” Pin answered with a smile before she jumped down again.
The conversation continued, and not long after the entire crew came up to the deck to welcome Shaily, aside from Pin, they were all quite youthful dwarven ladies with hair in different shades of red. As Pin had expected, the promise of a new type of booze had been enough for the entire rest of the crew to instantly have a good predisposition toward the new member. Shaily even learned that she was to be entitled to the same profit share as the other members, despite not having discussed that with Camilla at all.
At noon, after a celebratory drink, the ship departed for the south-west.
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In the next twenty days, Shaily had time to familiarize herself with the ship and the crew, and she even got to participate in a few of the hunts, finishing escaping monsters with long-range bolt shots.
It was a calm day, Shaily was on the upper deck near the bow of the ship, chatting with Selene while they sailed on the ocean’s cold waters, when Pin’s magically enhanced shout alerted the crew to an approaching monster, “Titan class astern!”
“Titan class?” Shaily asked Selene, the term having never come up until now.
“Means a monster bigger than the ship,” the crew’s merchant calmly explained, sipping on her liquor.
“Oh… That sounds bad. Shouldn’t we hide inside, then?”
“No point. We’re not fighting that. We try to escape, and if we fail, well, you can guess what happens.”
“Oh.”
Shaily was not reassured by the dwarf’s nonchalance, but Camilla rushed to the center of the main deck, taking position in the middle of a particularly intricate ritual circle, and the runes covering the ship suddenly all lit up. Under the captain’s direct control, the ship started picking up speed in no time, while the four hunters, who were all between level 200 and 249 took place at the rear of the ship.
“What are we facing?!” Camilla shouted out to Pin when she got done kickstarting all the rituals she needed.
“I- I’m not sure! It’s huge! And it’s keeping up!”
“Swallower!” one of the hunters shouted, and Selene’s calm complexion rapidly shifted to a worried frown, and she reached out to grab one of the many chains sprouting from the deck.
“Shit!” Camilla cursed and the ship started gaining even more momentum, cutting through the waves at speeds defying anything a vessel with regular sails could ever hope to reach.
“What’s a Swallower?” Shaily worriedly asked her dwarf friend who was turning pale.
Selene methodically attached herself and Shaily to the chain before answering, “You’re a Saintess. Do you worship a god?” was the dwarf’s answer. The dwarves had all avoided the topic until now, being content to accept Shaily without probing for more. “Because it’s time you start praying for a miracle.”
The four dwarven hunters ran to surround Camilla, they were not even going to try fighting back whatever was coming, instead focusing on providing more mana to their captain’s rituals.
The ship sped up again, and Shaily had yet to catch a single glimpse of the monster pursuing them.
Then, suddenly, the stern of the ship started to drop. It was as if it was climbing on a hill, or rather, it was as if the ocean’s level behind the ship was getting lower.
Selene grabbed the railings and urged Shaily to do the same, “Hold on tight!”
Shaily’s hands barely closed on the orichalcum railings that she lost her footing on the deck, the ship suddenly turned almost completely vertical. It was at the border of a gigantic hole, a vortex of water trying to suck it in, the monstrous maw of a titanic sea creature at the bottom of it, sucking up maddening quantities of sea water.
This isn’t something we can fight.
The ship quickly sank, unable to free itself from the currents. And Shaily was ready to unhook herself from the chain at any moment to [Maiden bolt] into the sky if needed, but she was reluctant to abandon the crew even if this was only the trial, and these people were bound to disappear as soon as it was over.
Instants before it was too late, as Shaily finally decided that it was time to abandon ship, hundreds of ritual circles appeared in the air, surrounding the ship. And the ship which had been struggling to fight the currents leading it to its doom suddenly freed itself from the pull and seemingly from gravity itself, as it shot into the sky at an absurd speed, leaving the vortex and the monster behind.
Shaily blacked out for a second.
Coming back to her senses, she watched the ocean below, which looked more like a flat blue surface as the ship kept flying up, while the sky slowly started to turn black.
Camilla shouted as soon as she recovered from the sudden mana expense, “Everyone gather near me! Landing’s gonna be hard!”
One of the hunters actually moved to grab Shaily and Selene, bringing them near the center of the deck in an instant as the ship was at the top of its curved trajectory. Then it started falling.
Layers and layers of magical shields appeared around the crew, completely obscuring the outside, and after what seemed like an eternity, the shit finally landed in a violent crash, which Camilla’s magic greatly absorbed, keeping everyone unharmed.
The ship was oddly still afterwards.
“By the ancestor’s fiery beard…” Camilla murmured, “We touched land somehow.”
“Land?!” Pin repeated.
Camilla proceeded to dispel the shields, revealing that the ship had impaled itself on top of a pointy mountain, right in the center of a small group of volcanic islands covered in thick jungle.
What the... How far did we fly?! There were no islands anywhere on the horizon!
The relative peace of this surreal moment was immediately interrupted by the maddening screeches of thousands ugly creatures rising from the jungle and the surrounding waters.
It seemed the landing was not to the liking of the local fauna.
Despite the worrying situation, Camilla burst out into laughter suddenly.
“Ya happy, Sofia? Look! We found ya all the sirens you could want!”
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