Early Evening - Late Spring : Home

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*Fwoosh* *Fwoosh* *Fwoosh-thud* Gently landing on the mountaintop, I followed Mother over to the mountain’s edge and laid down, with Ilios following suit.

The view was once again nothing special for this world, with light orange skies, and an ocean of gold, but oddly enough, it felt a bit more enchanting than usual.

"Haah…" I let out a soothing breath as I finally laid my head down and relaxed my body. -Maybe spending my days like this wouldn't be too bad…-

The next couple of minutes flowed by like water as I nearly fell asleep to the melody of the waves crashing below.

At least that was until Mother spoke up in a soft yet curious tone. "So, Kaelallan was the first humanoid nation you have been to… What did you think of it?"

Another moment of silence followed while I thought about it. "It.. wasn’t terrible…"

"Hm? You sound like you didn’t like it there."

"It’s not that… I was treated well, and it was a fairly relaxing stay, but.. humans have a long way to grow…" -For a world with dragons and magic.. I guess I didn’t expect it to resemble the older ages of Earth as much as it did…- Back on Earth, the countless stories I read painted a fantastical picture of fantasy cities, but in reality, they were very similar to Earth.

Mother seemed oddly curious about that statement though. "What makes you say that?"

"They just aren't utilizing magic as much as they should…"

A smile quickly came to her face. "Haha, Vasilias, not all creatures can utilize magic as easily as we can. Not all humans are born with the ability to even activate runes, let alone become a mage and use magic themselves."

"That's.. not what I meant."

"Hm? Then what is it?"

I paused for a moment before eventually continuing. "Magic has infinite potential, but the only thing they had that even somewhat utilized that potential was their ID and banking system, something I'm almost positive a dragon gave them."

Her expression quickly shifted with surprise. "What made you think that?"

"They were proud and showing off their new ‘artifact’ which was just a monster core with a water rune carved into it. People who are proud of making that could never manage something as complicated as the banking and ID management stuff."

"Haha, I guess nothing can get past you, huh." Her smile carried a sense of pride as she turned back to look at the horizon. "But Vasilias, you should always remember that not every creature shares the same history." She slowly turned back to me with a look full of fondness. "We have the knowledge we do now because dragons in the past worked to learn about it. There was a time when the basics were unknown to us too."

There was a moment of silence as I turned back to the horizon. -I.. guess that's true…-

The next few minutes passed in complete silence while we watched the sun slowly fall below the horizon.

But after a while, once the starry sky started to become visible, a small dot on the horizon caught my attention. -Hm?- Idly focusing on it, I immediately went wide-eyed. -A ship?!-

It was a massive galleon with bright white sails.

I quickly turned to Mother with a concerned look. "Uh, Mother?"

Lethargically opening her eyes like she was on the verge of sleep, she glanced over at me. "What is it, sweetie?"

"Ships aren't normal around here, are they?"

"No, there shouldn’t be any around these parts, why?" Finally noticing where I was looking, she turned to the horizon and squinted her eyes slightly. "Wow.. there really is one… Can you see its flag by any chance?"

-Flag?- Quickly looking, I immediately saw one, but the colors were hard to recognize with the only light being behind it. "I can’t see the insignia but I think it's blue with white and green details…"

Mother immediately fell into thought. "Toria maybe? But they were forbidden from coming here… Can you tell what direction it's going?"

"It’s coming straight at us by the looks of it."

Her expression darkened instantly. "Tch… How troublesome…"

But her aggressive reaction gave me an idea. "Um, could I try to sink it from here?"

Her eyes widened from shock immediately.

"I don't want it to cause us trouble in the future, so if we just sink it over deep water..."

A short pause followed my proposition while a smile crept onto Mother's face. "Alright, how about this then, if you can hit it from here in three shots, when we go to Bahamut I'll get you something extremely~ tasty."

My eyes immediately lit up as I turned and looked at her with a childish smile. "Really?"

"Do you think I won't stick to my word?"

Her confidence made me cave immediately. "Hehe, that's a promise!"

With a happy trot, I moved a few meters away from Mother and laid back down, perching my jaw on a rock. -Alright.. how am I going to do this...-

In my breath gland, I quickly readied a long metal dart with pronounced fins and a ton of lightning magic to fire it. -For the first shot, I'll aim right at it, and I'll adjust for the drop on the second one..-

Slowly opening my mouth just enough to let the dart out, I took a deep breath and fired.

*CRACK* The sonic boom was deafening and kicked up a ton of dust, but I still managed to keep my eyes on the red-hot, glowing dart.

The thing was, the dart wasn’t dropping.

After around two seconds passed, the dart blew through the main mast of the galleon, causing it to collapse over the ship.

-Good lord, that dart is faster than I thought...- Since I didn't account for the ship moving, the dart actually ended up shooting a bit high, meaning it didn’t drop at all. -But that’s good to know for this shot…-

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

While I was thinking though, Mother gave me a curious look. "Is that your breath that uses that magnetism magic, as you called it?"

It caught me a bit off guard. "Haha, it's science, not magic. But yes, this is my improved version of that."

"Haha, how ridiculous..." She seemed truly intrigued as she let out an awkward laugh.

"It's pretty wild, isn't it?" Quickly starting to line up my next, I glanced over at Mother again. "If I sink it on this shot, how about you get me 2 tasty things."

"Haha, alright. I don’t think a dart alone will sink such a large galleon."

"You're right, if I just used a dart the damage would be fairly minimal, that's why I'm going to be using something a little special." I gave her a momentary smug smile before closing my eyes to focus. -Alright, let's see if this will work.-

This time, instead of making a simple tungsten carbide layered iron dart, I made it out of a stable form of uranium known as depleted uranium and created a hollow space in the middle that I filled with regular water.

-Hehe..- An evil smile came to my face as I finally lined up the shot again. -The ballistics won't be the same as the iron dart, but if I launch it with a little more juice it should still fly flat...-

Finally finishing all my preparations, I opened my mouth once again. *CRACK*

The glowing dart immediately started zipping toward the horizon, but once it got a little over halfway, it exploded like a firework.

-It worked!- With the water in the center boiling almost instantly, the dart was blown into millions of red-hot chunks of metal that blasted the ship like a ridiculously oversized shotgun.

As the projectiles hit, they kicked up tons of water and pulverized everyone and everything on board, leaving an eerie, bloody mist hovering around where the ship was.

By the time the mist cleared, the ship was nowhere to be seen, and only wood shrapnel and bloody cloth scraps remained on the surface of the water.

I could only sit there, stunned at its effectiveness, for several moments.

Mother wasn’t much different. "What.. did you just do?"

-What a monstrous spell…- "That was, uh.. the power of utilizing science in magic!" I quickly held my head high with confidence, finally accepting my experimental success.

Mother quickly turned to me with a look of fascination. "Can you explain what you did? In detail…"

I felt proud to see her take an interest in it. "Well, like you said, just a dart likely wouldn't have sunk the ship, so I came up with a crazy idea."

Quickly creating a similar dart to the one I just fired, I cut it in half and laid it on the ground.

"So to start, I changed the material of the dart. The original dart would stay intact and strong until it hit, but this one I made, would easily melt from the air resistance."

Although she was struggling to follow because of my use of some unusual vocabulary, she managed to get the gist of it. "But why did it explode?"

I immediately pointed to the small cylinder cut out of the dart on the ground. "Well, you see this small empty area in the middle? I filled this with water."

"W..why?"

"Well, when water changes temperature quickly, it creates a huge amount of pressure which, in some cases, can cause a small explosion."

She could only stare at me in disbelief.

"In most cases, that explosion is barely anything, with only enough power to crack rock, but it was more than enough to simply blow apart the liquid metal trying to contain it."

Mother looked at me as if she were completely lost in thought.

It actually made me nervous that I got a bit carried away. -Did I.. say too much?-

But eventually, she seemed to break out of the trance. "That.. makes so much sense…" Quickly looking toward the ground, she set the tip of her nail down and blasted a stream of water into the stone. *thunk*

Pulling her claw away revealed a small, needle-sized hole full of water, but she immediately set her claw down over it again. *crackle-POP*

The stone blew away immediately, leaving a small crater around her glowing red nail. "How.. fascinating…"

Warmth, joy, and pride flooded my mind as I watched her slowly turn to me with an eager gleam in her eyes.

"Could you.. teach me more about this.. science thing?"

My eyes went wide in an instant. -T..teach her?-

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Bonus POV (aka Chapter 110.5):

- Unknown Captain ~

*tap-clunk* I perched my feet up on my desk as I eyed the well-dressed, chubby nobleman sitting on the guest’s bed in my quarters. "So what are your plans for the city here, Mister city lord?"

His smile turned to a grimace the instant I spoke. "I plan to keep my word. Once we get the town going, I will build you a trafficking hub."

-That’s perfect, but…- "You know, I've been thinking... I think I’ve done quite a good job here. I've given you and your knights comfortable beds and supplied them with food and just about whatever they wanted, so how about a tip?" I looked at the noble with a greedy smile.

"Tch… What kind of tip?" He wasn’t even hiding his annoyance with me anymore.

"Hmm, I wonder... How about a night with that young maid you brought with you?"

His expression darkened immediately. "Disgusting bastard..."

"If that's a no, I'll just turn the ship around. Thanks to a shiny new artifact the king gave me as payment, we are far quicker than traditional ships so I have no qualms about turning around."

"You know you can't do that, the royal family would execute you on the spot."

"But they'd get you first." *Clunk* I gave a sly smile as I slammed my glass of booze on the desk. "So?"

He gave me a look like he wanted to kill me, but we both knew that was a ridiculous thought. "Fine... She's yours for the night..."

"Good, good. I hope you don't mind me giving her to a few of my best mates afterward, right?"

The noble looked at me with indescribable disgust.

-Yeah, yeah, act like you haven't already laid your fat hands on her...- Picking back up the booze, I went for a sip but noticed it was empty. -Huh?-

Looking down at my desk, I saw several shards of glass laying in a pool of liquid. “Ah hell-” *CRRAACKKK*

My thoughts came to an abrupt stop as a deafening noise ripped through the cabin.

The fatty was the first to stand up and get ready to run outside. “W-what was th-”

“MY LORD!” The knight yelled as he held his hands over his ears, but blood was seeping through his fingers. “THE MAST-”

*cruuunch-Bang* An all too familiar noise met my ears as I jumped up and ran outside.

I was immediately met with the sight of my crewmates laying or rolling on the ground and gripping their bleeding ears, with the main mast having smashed through the side of the ship and fallen into the water. “WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?!” I yelled loud enough for everyone on the ship to hear me, but no one responded.

-F*CK!- Looking up at where the mast had broken, I saw that the mast wasn’t splintered, but instead cleanly burnt. -A spell?!-

Immediately running up to the helm, I started looking all around the ship but saw nothing out of the ordinary. -What the hell…-

*thump-thump-thump* Hearing people running up from below deck, I looked over and saw several knights and other crew who were coming to check what happened. “Everyone, bring the injured below deck and begin treatment immediately! Jeff, push the mast into the water! We won’t make it if we drag it! Jack, raise the sails!”

The crew and knights immediately started moving to my orders as I walked up to the helm and turned it sharply to counteract the drag of the sail. -The reason Lassar never came back wasn’t because she ran away… That bi*ch probably f*cking died to whatever is here!-

Finally setting the helm properly, I finally went to go help the crew but something caught my eye.

It was a simple, tiny red dot that appeared like a star in the sky, but it seemed to come from the top of the mountain.

-What.. is that...- But as I asked myself that, I saw the star multiply into millions of smaller lights.

I watched the scene as if time had slowed, and after what felt like an eternity, the stars finally reached us.

Complete silence wrapped around me as I helplessly watched the crew and ship I had spent my life with getting helplessly shredded.

It made me feel despair, unlike anything I thought possible, to the point that when one of the countless stars hit me in the chest and blew apart my body, I simply felt nothing.

But after another short instant, as my head slowly fell to the ground I had one final thought that resonated through my mind.

-This must be.. God’s.. wrath...- *B-B-B-B-B-B-BAAAANG*