Standing at the bow on the deck of the ship, the cool spray of the seawater misted over me as the vessel cut through the choppy spring sea. The familiar scent of the brine brought me right back to my childhood, and I had a grin plastered on my face as we set off on our voyage.
Behind me, the sailors were all doing whatever it was sailors did to get a boat like this moving quickly and safely. I knew nothing about sea travel, aside from a tiny bit of experience kayaking, canoeing, and sailing on small sailboats as a kid on Earth. A big, traditional sailing vessel like this was not something one saw on Earth in my lifetime, unless one was wildly rich, and even then the modernization of a sailing type of yachts probably differed drastically.
I watched one young sailor apprentice as he swabbed the deck. I know what that is, at least.
Turning back to the ocean, I kept my eyes peeled for the wildlife. Ships had been dealing with troublesome sea beasts over the past years, and I was eager to spot some orcarins (AN: renaming whaloid, which was a dumb name, to orcarin), lorshes, shieldbacks, or any other beast I remembered from my youth.
By the late afternoon, still having spotted nothing, I was immensely bored.
So much for the exciting seafarer life, I thought with a sigh.
Despite how dull the trip threatened to be, it was the only real choice. Tarands were fast, especially if I kept one going at a full gallop with 6-point magic and specialty food. That would have also been uncomfortable for me since I would have needed to be in the saddle, and we would both need rest, and would be exhausted by the end of the journey, even with magical recovery.
Ships sailed all day long without tiring. The sea route was also as close to a straight line between the capital and Haklan as possible, as opposed to the land route which meandered quite far inland to circumvent the jungle, traveling through Fespen, Roko, and Taraponi on the way. While I would have liked to see Taraponi as well, it was not worth the massive detour.
Riding in the saddle, I could have tried to take a tarand through the wilderness in a direct coastal path, but that ran the risk of being slow due to the land, the jungle, and wild beasts. If I were going to follow the coast anyway, I might as well take the ship and not run a tarand to death while also displaying tamer talents, which ran the risk of exposing my identity.
Truth was, I was a bit nostalgic for Mirut, and was excited to see it again in the middle of the voyage. This sea route was the whole reason that city existed, so as a native Mirutian, it would be a shame to never go on a proper sailing trip.
Sitting down for dinner with the crew, the fare was actually pretty decent. It could not even remotely compare with what I was fed in the palace, but it was far from the worst thing I had ever eaten. With a resupply in Mirut and the relatively quick rate of travel, the crew did not need to rely on the kind of very long-term storage food that would make a cross-ocean journey possible.
The only issue with the food was that it was cheap, not that it was bad. I did not particularly feel the need to eat so much filler, which would keep the sailors going.
To that end, and taking the opportunity to get away from the rich cuisine of the palace, I had purchased a large amount of meat and borrowed the kitchens to pre-cook it all, storing it away in my inventory, the same way I had as a boy. A high-protein diet on my adventure should help me lean back out and keep me content.
I just had to hold myself back from eating the ice cream until I could no longer stand the heat in the south. At least I only brought a small amount, so I would not overindulge.
Back in my cabin—which was only a small room with little more than a bed, and probably used for storage more often than not—I settled down and tried to figure out what I would do for the bulk of the journey.
While I was not too worried about the danger of my adventure, it was still the case that dungeons were some of the most dangerous possible places I could go in this world. Anything could happen. I had no intention of widowing my wife, but it would be folly to entirely ignore the danger.
So, given the danger I was wading into, I pulled out parchment and ink from my inventory and started to write. Sera and I had spoken quite thoroughly about my former life, but in time the details would be hard for her to recall, and there were things I wanted my children to know about. Some of my less dangerous secrets, knowledge from Earth especially, I intended to pass down to them. Ideas and technologies worth pursuing for the betterment of the Kingdom were my focus, in particular, in case I was no longer able to see them through in this life, not the least of which was a proper ballpoint pen and actual paper. I already regretted not pursuing that over the past years as I fought with writing with a quill on a rocking boat, ruining a number of parchments along the way.
It took me days to sort my thoughts out and get them down, but it passed the time and gave me a safety net. I would leave the documents with people I trusted in Haklan—Shirel, probably—with instructions to get it back to the capital if I failed to return, otherwise I would take it home myself. Admittedly, it would be annoying and potentially problematic if these secrets got out in the meanwhile, but most of what I was writing down was not particularly dangerous, just disruptive.
In this fashion, the days of the journey south passed, blending together. The trip was far more uneventful than I expected.
At least, until we approached Mirut.
I could immediately tell something was amiss from the sounds of the ship, so I left my quarters and headed up to the dock.
“What’s going on?” I asked a sailor as he sped by me. He paused to turn to me and answer.
“A pod of orcarins are approaching.”
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“Orcarins? Aren’t they pretty gentle?”
“They started attacking boats since the king started trawling for deepwater pearls,” the sailor spat.
…Sorry. I just wanted to bring the people magical refrigerators!
“This one is also led by something bigger. Maybe a transformed orcarin. It could get dangerous, you should stay in your room,” he said, before rushing on.
No way. Could it be?
I ran to the bow and stared ahead, looking for the sign of large beasts in the water. There, I saw it. A large horn with a twisted pattern broke the water, connected to a large, twilight-colored creature’s long neck that broke the water.
“Is that you, Vlad?”
* * *
I did not have a tamer bond with Vlad anymore—if that even was who this abyssal orcarin was—but I still used 3-point magic to try and project my thoughts at the sea creature.
Now emerged from the water, the abyssal orcarin stared up at me. Unlike Treepo and many of my more recent familiars, I had not raised Vlad from infanthood, and we spent no time together outside of the enforced tamer bond. I still remembered how dejected I was when I had needed to let him go so I could leave Mirut, feeling like we had no connection once the magic was gone.
Still, I had been the one to help him transform. He had been a phenomenal companion when he was tamed, even if we could not spend as much time together as I had with my other familiars, since he lived in the ocean.
The sailors around me were still in a panic, but I noticed the rest of the leader’s pod was now idle behind him. The abyssal orcarin raised his head to the sky, his neck stretched out, and bellowed.
A deep, haunting sound washed over the boat, and I saw the sailors all stop, many of them with wide eyes. The deep thrumming reverberation continued as the orcarin sang to us.
Then, with one final glance, Vlad descended back into the water and the pod swam away.
“We’re safe,” a sailor groaned near me, collapsing to the deck. “Why did it spare us?”
I frowned. It had been over a decade since I had heard Vlad’s songs and tried making sense of them, but that sound was almost like a warning.
“Hoist the sail!” the captain shouted. “Let’s get this ship into port while we can.”
The ship began moving towards Mirut once more, but something was setting my senses off. I tilted my head, focusing, as the background noise of the sailors working faded.
My head snapped up, and I saw the ocean bubbling.
“Stop!” I shouted. “Turn us back!”
The boat lurched, and giant red tentacles exploded out of the water, spraying the deck and causing sailors to start screaming. My eyes narrowed as I watched the squid-like appendages start to wrap around the boat.
Back when Vlad and I were exploring the ocean floor, we had encountered a creature in the depths. It was one of the only enemies I did not try to face, given its size and advantage. At the time, when it was green and more docile, I had pegged it as a Rank C beast.
This was no longer that. It had evolved. A colossal kraken, I appraised. Rank B.
Several sailors cried out in fear and with a burst of adrenaline, several ran at the tentacles to start hacking at them with cheap swords or stabbing at it with spears and other tools they had on hand.
“It’s Gold rank!” I screamed. “Fall back!”
I raced back to my lodgings, cursing myself for leaving my sword behind. I heard the ship groan as the kraken tightened its grip, and sped up. Blowing into my room fast enough to crack the door, I grabbed my sword and sprinted back out, almost losing my footing as the ship tilted precariously to one side.
Once I got back to the dock, I looked around in horror. Several sailors had been pasted by the large tentacles, the deck crimson with their blood. Others had gone overboard and were swimming away, while a few holdouts still tried to fend off the beast. I was not sure how much more damage the ship could take before it was doomed to sink.
Speeding forward, I swung my massive sword, severing a tentacle that was grabbing a sailor around the middle. The severed appendage flopped to the deck, squirming as the nerves fired uselessly, and the crying sailor desperately squirmed to get out of its grip and to safety.
The ship shuddered as the beast responded to my strike.
A huge amount of water was displaced as the surface broke and the head of the beast emerged. Its massive eyes were as terrifying as the one I had barely made out underwater all those years ago.
“I should have killed you then,” I growled. “But I’ll fix that mistake right now.”
Ignoring the sounds of fear and death around me, I focused entirely on the massive squid-like monster as I leapt forward. Tentacles whipped through the air towards me, each large and powerful enough to crush a lesser man, but my enormous strength allowed me to catch the blows with my sword, cutting into the beast’s flesh.
The monster was unusually silent, never even making a sound as I cut it. The only sounds were the sloshing of the water, the creaking of the boat, and the crying of the men around me.
Another tentacle whipped across the deck, coming at me low to sweep me into the ocean, and with a shout I chopped downward at it. My sword cleaved through the flesh, dismembering the beast of another arm, and it pulled the stub away, its dilating eye the only visible response to the loss.
Squirming severed tentacles littered the deck as I continued racing across the ship and chopping them off, trying to halt the progression of the kraken’s attempt to pull us into its underwater domain. I breathed hard as I moved quickly.
Finally, the kraken started to release the boat, deciding that it was no longer worth the losses.
“Not this time,” I muttered. I sprinted to the end of the deck where the kraken was withdrawing, my final step landing on the railing, and leapt towards the massive cephalopod, swinging my sword towards it.
My body smashed into the beast, the hook of my sword tip catching its flesh, and scrambled to get purchase. I ripped a knife from my belt and stabbed it into the head of the giant squid to create a handle, then dislodged my sword so I could start hacking away at it before it returned to the water.
Once I had a large enough hole cut into it, I shoved my greatsword in. I pushed and wiggled my sword all the way into the beast, my hand and arm following until I was shoulder deep in the wound, attempting to puree the beast’s insides until I hit something critical.
I must have done so, because with little fanfare, the beast died. It continued to flail for a short while after death, so I only knew I had killed it from the gain of experience points. Sighing, I pulled my sword back out, then kicked off, landing in the sea.
My heavy sword tried to sink me, but I had enough strength to tread water and make my way back to the ship.
“Toss me a rope,” I called up to the incredulous sailors looking over the railing. I clutched my sword as it acted like an anchor trying to haul me underwater. “And make sure it’s a sturdy one.”