Chapter 126. To the North
A sudden attack by the Black Priest. It did not seem as though they had co specifically targeting Lucian’s ship.
But attacks like this would likely be frequent out on the sea, and there was no way to deal with them through ordinary ans…….
Using this attack as a turning point, Lucian resolved to establish proper defensive asures.
“Simply increasing the number of bombardnts wasn’t enough to stop them completely.”
The crew’s skill level was only about average. However, thanks to the device, the rate of bombardnt had beco several tis faster.
Even so, they hadn’t managed to sink the enemy ship, nor had they inflicted any aningful damage.
“We need stronger firepower…….”
Lucian threw off the Runefra and wiped the sweat from his face.
People lay collapsed all around. If he had asked Yul for help from the beginning, perhaps these sacrifices would not have happened.
But Yul could leave the ship at any ti. If Lucian could not stop him from suddenly departing, then he had to turn this ship into a powerful vessel capable of standing on its own.
The Black Priest’s attack had been unexpected, but the damage was not that severe.
That was because, from afar, Yul had rescued the sailors one by one using Telekinesis.
However, while his attention had been divided, so sailors had still died or suffered serious injuries.
The ship’s doctor moved quickly, performing ergency treatnt on them.
“Uaaagh!”
“What kind of monster did you fight for your leg to end up like this……. This won’t do. We’ll have to amputate.”
“No! If I lose my leg, I’m finished!”
“Do you see how badly this leg is rotting? If we leave it like this, it’ll decay completely. If we could use sacred power, it might be different, but there isn’t even a priest on this ship.”
Without even decent antibiotics, if a horrific accident like a crushed leg occurred on a ship like this, there was no way to save it.
Watching the dying sailor, Yul sohow felt that he might be able to do sothing.
“Step aside for a mont.”
“W-who? Ah. You’re—”
Yul reached out his hand toward the sailor whose leg had been completely mangled.
A faint light seeped out, and the wound began to close while the bones started returning to their original shape. It was not a perfect recovery, but what had once been an untreatable critical injury had improved enough to be treated as a minor wound.
“So this works?”
“A-are you a priest?”
“No, not really.”
Yul fiddled with his hand. He opened the 【Status】 window to check what had happened.
【Faith】
[Temple of Waves]
[Divinity: Faint]
[Number of Believers: 2,377]
[Total Faith: 2,221]
[Faith Absorption Efficiency: 7%]
[Doctrine: None]
[Central Rite: Prayer]
[Symbol: None]
[Apostle: None]
[Authority Creation Cost: 10,000]
[Apostle Designation: 10,000]
[Divinity Increase Cost: 100,000]
‘Nothing?’
Although it wasn’t explicitly listed in the status window, Yul was certain that this was part of the power granted by divinity.
It was a healing ability capable of completely curing severely wounded people, but it was not perfect.
It felt like there was a limit to its duration, so he worked quickly—treating the critically injured just enough to downgrade their wounds into minor injuries.
“Who would have thought there was a priest on the ship.”
“I said I’m not a priest.”
“B-but you’re clearly using sacred power right now.”
The ship’s doctor seed astonished and traced a holy sign across his forehead.
“I don’t believe in the Three Primordial Gods. And I don’t believe in any god either.”
“T-then?”
“I only believe in myself.”
Nothing sounds less cool than saying that outright. Yul rely shrugged.
Seeing that expression, the doctor assud that Yul simply believed in so other mysterious god that they did not follow.
In his common sense, it would be strange for a priest to believe in no god at all.
“Whatever you believe in, sir, thank you. Sniff…”
The sailor whose leg had been completely ruined burst into tears of gratitude upon seeing his leg almost fully restored.
Yul walked around the area, treating all the critically injured sailors, reducing their wounds to minor ones as a temporary asure.
For the rest, ordinary treatnt from the doctor would be sufficient.
“Yul, what in the world was that?”
Lucian was astonished after witnessing Yul’s healing.
“I’m not sure either. It seems like an ability that appeared for the first ti today.”
“You keep gaining new abilities.”
“Yeah, seriously.”
“Anyway, now that we’ve identified the problems during today’s battle, I’m planning to make improvents.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Instead of simple cannonballs, I plan to manufacture explosive shells.”
“You’re going to put magic stones inside the shells?”
“I’ll embed a Fireball spell inside as well.”
And Lucian had already built a mobile workshop inside the Strellock for exactly this purpose…….
“I should buy so magic stones at the next port.”
“Alright.”
The ship cleaned up the surrounding area. After the black ship disappeared, the fog that had been lingering around them vanished without a trace, leaving behind nothing but clear skies.
* * *
The next destination on their route was a place called Anteria Island. Located roughly in the middle of the Great Azure Ocean, it marked the last frontier settled by the Kingdom of Britain.
A naval force was also stationed on this island. It was the final port of call before ships ventured out into the distant open ocean.
Lucian joined the Navy here in order to share information about the naval vessel they had captured and about the Black Priest.
The naval commander stationed here was a colonel-rank officer. The man who introduced himself as Edmund Ravenhall was staying at a nearby tavern.
“A naval warship? Where did you get it?”
“We recovered it in the Howling Sea.”
Lucian explained everything that had happened.
“The Black Priest? I’ve heard of that pirate. They say he’s the most dangerous one around these waters. I even heard he killed his own comrades.”
“Comrades?”
“Why wouldn’t pirates have comrades? The gang they originally belonged to… the Grimtide Pirates. At the last gathering of that pirate crew, they slaughtered each other, and most of them died. I heard the one who led it was the Black Priest.”
“Why would he kill his own comrades…?”
“How would I know? I’d have to et the bastard myself.”
“Colonel, that man isn’t ordinary. The upper halves of his crew were sea monsters, while their lower halves resembled humans—fish-n. He was using them as sailors.”
“…That’s hard to believe. A ship of fish-n that appears with fog and disappears with fog? Still, it sounds plausible. I’ve heard that ships that encounter that black vessel often vanish without a trace. As far as I know, you’re the only ones who survived.”
The captured naval warship itself served as evidence that made it difficult to dismiss the story as a lie.
“The navy will purchase this vessel after a prize court review… Since you recovered it from the black ship, it’ll likely be settled with a bounty reward. Twelve thousand ducats. After taxes, it’ll probably be about ten thousand.”
“Thank you, Colonel.”
Lucian curled the corner of his lips upward. A dium-frigate-class vessel was worth roughly forty thousand ducats, but that amount of bounty was still fairly reasonable.
“Ah, didn’t you say you weren’t a mage?”
“Yes.”
“How fascinating. A magic engineer. Is that sort of technology becoming popular back in the holand? What in the world happened over the last ten years?”
Colonel Edmund had been at sea ever since the Great Catastrophe, so he was curious about what had been happening in the holand.
Since magic engineering was also cutting-edge technology even in the Kingdom of Britain, Lucian gave him a rough explanation.
“A technology that lets ordinary people use magic… Haha. Incredible. By the way, Captain Lucian, where do you plan to go? Anteria is the last colonial settlent of Britain.”
“We’ll keep heading north.”
“North? Be careful. There are stories that ice falls from the sky there like rain.”
“Hail? We can handle that much.”
“Not ordinary hail. Soone claims they witnessed actual pillars of ice falling.”
“…Understood.”
After the eting with the Navy, Lucian set their course north.
If the sea chart was correct, they would eventually reach the Arctic that Yul had ntioned.
After a brief rest on Anteria Island, the ship began sailing north again.
However, from the very first day, the weather looked ominous. Rain poured down from the sky.
“Captain, maybe this really is dangerous.”
Corman had already expressed his objections during the previous leadership eting when Lucian suggested following the uncharted northern route.
“It’s the sign of a storm. The sky on the opposite side has turned pitch black.”
“No need to worry about storms. Just be careful on deck.”
“Pardon?”
Yet Lucian’s words proved true. The Strellock entered straight into the raging storm.
But the mont it entered the storm, everything suddenly cald down. More precisely, the waves stopped.
“W-what in the world is this…?”
“Huh? Did soone do this with magic?”
“Idiot! Do you think sothing like this is possible with magic!?”
“Hey, stop hitting .”
As the sailors stared in shock, everyone’s gaze turned toward Yul standing at the bow.
With Yul standing there, every wave around him was settling down.
In fact, the ship slicing through the current even seed to be moving faster.
Rain was pouring down like madness, yet the sea remained calm—a bizarre phenonon no sailor had ever experienced before.
It was the sa for the sailors pushing rainwater toward the drainage grates on the slanted deck and for the officer-rank sailors watching from behind.
Feeling a sense of awe, Corman asked Lucian,
“Just who exactly is that man?”
“……”
Lucian himself was astonished as he watched. Yul seed different from when he had first t him.
At that mont, Yul’s eyes widened.
Splash. Splash.
“Huh? What’s that? That’s not rain.”
At the edge of the storm clouds, pillars of ice were pouring down from the sky.
The fallen pillars looked about two ters in size. If the ship were struck by sothing like that, it would be shattered into pieces.
“W-what is that?”
“We’ll have to change course.”
Yul looked up at the sky. Sothing was up there.
“I’ll go up and deal with it. Lucian! Wait here a mont.”
Yul abandoned his human form and returned to his true form.
When the enormous Deep King Tribe appeared, the sailors were startled.
“A m-monster!”
“Not a monster, it’s Lord Yul, you idiot. Didn’t you just see that!? He told us from the beginning his true identity was a Seaborn.”
“R-really? Huh? Huh? He’s going up!?”
“Seaborn can fly?”
“He can turn into a person, too.”
“Well… that’s true.”
While the sailors argued in confusion, Yul shot straight upward into the sky.
At first, he thought it was simply rain and went up to investigate, but that wasn’t it. Once he rose above the clouds, its true nature was revealed.
There was sothing enormous, as if ford from condensed cold itself.
“What the hell is that?”
It looked like a gigantic spear. A massive spear made of ice was embedded into a floating stone.
The clusters of square crystals floating in the air were jagged, like unprocessed raw stones freshly mined from the earth, several of them stuck together.
From what appeared to be a wound(?), a vivid blue liquid like blood dripped down. It condensed in the air into pillars of ice, which then fell toward the sea below.
‘I’ve never seen anything like this.’
When he had been an orca, he had road throughout the Great Azure Ocean, yet even near the Arctic, he had never witnessed a scene like this. That ant it must have appeared after the Heaven and Earth Resonance.
He approached the enormous frozen spear.
[Who are you?]
A voice resonated from a very distant place. Yul answered through a magic signal.
[Who are you?]
[Do not touch the spear. If you have business, co to the Frost Dragon Mountains. I will be there.]
The Frost Dragon Mountains. Yul thought about where he had heard that na before, and then rembered. It was the mountain range that the penguins had ntioned in the north. That was where Eternal Ice Stone was said to co from.
[Hey, whatever this thing is, the ice coming out of it is blocking the ship from passing. Do sothing about the ice crystals below.]
[With strength like yours, shouldn’t you be able to ‘handle’ such side effects easily?]
[Tsk. Hey, co out here.]
[If you’re dissatisfied, co here.]
The mysterious being transmitting its will imdiately cut off the connection.
Huh? That pissed him off.
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