“Woohoo!” Elisa shouted. “I thought so! It hates it!” The attack had made the monster grind to a near stop, rearing back from the chaos the bolt left on its stomach. “It’s not fully ford! Everything in my bolts is disruptive! Keep steering, Marco! I’ll keep making it flinch!”
The tactic worked for a surprisingly long ti. Every ti one of Elisa’s bolts hit, the monster would treat it as a much larger form of damage, covering itself and ignoring the ship for a mont as the power wreaked havoc within it. Aethe had joined in by pelting it with various arrows, which seed to each have an effect about a tenth of what Elisa was doing. After a few minutes, the damage they had dealt would have been enough to sink an armada, but the monster was barely showing the damage. Worse, it was starting to adjust.
“It’s attacking!” Elisa yelled. “I can’t make it flinch!”
The monster ignored any further provocations from Elisa as it raised its mighty arm almost to the sky, then brought it down in a smash that would have destroyed a town. Marco steered as far from the center of the impact as he could as Elisa and Aethe pumped everything they could into slowing down the arm, but as it neared the ocean’s surface, it was still going to hit them. It would have taken a massive explosion on par with anything their ship could have produced plus so to deflect the arm, and they just didn’t have it to give.
Frisk, it turned out, did. A barrage that felt a lot like a last-ditch, all-or-nothing skill hit the arm, shredding it around the elbow and pushing it back just enough to send Marco’s vessel reeling in the wake of the impact rather than sinking. Frisk’s ssenger illusion arrived a mont later, visibly sweating.
“Quite a situation you’ve made for yourself. I’m assuming you need help?”
“We do.” Marco gritted his teeth as he avoided a follow-up smash from the monster’s shredded arm. “Anything you can give.”
“We can’t dodge like you. I’ll do what I can to distract it from outside its range. Just try not to get too far.” Frisk saluted. “Give ‘em hell, Marco.”
Marco nodded in respect. Of all the things he had ever expected, he expected to find himself considering Frisk a friend the least. Yet here they were, and he was glad for it. Frisk’s firepower was never up to the standards of that first big shot again, but the sheer fleet-clearing power his ship could output simply couldn’t miss the huge target, and every volley staggered the huge monster just enough for Marco to avoid the latest attempt to ram him, to smash him, or to capsize his boat.
When the monster adapted next, it was unsurprisingly to get rid of Frisk. It maneuvered between them, taking advantage of the smallest mistake in Marco’s planning. Once Frisk was to its back, it was free to drive Marco back towards the capital, keeping him reined in with smashes, rams, and strikes. Frisk gave everything he could for a while, but soon enough the monster had outdistanced him and was pressing The Foolish Endeavor to her very limits.
“It’s not enough,” Marco yelled. “We’re in trouble.”
“Not for long, boy. Help is incoming.” Tatric, of all people, noticed it first. “Looks like you made so friends.”
Marco turned his head to see a small army of System Priests on the docks, recovered and raising their staffs to exude power. Unlike the sickening force from before, this felt as healthy as a new sprout poking through the soil. It felt like growth. Most importantly, it felt like power. With dozens of priests present, the buffs that could reach him added up fast. He felt the battery swelling with power as the ship sped up beyond anything Marco had seen from any craft before. Dodging was no longer a problem. Shooting full-powered bolts was no longer an issue. They were strong with the strength of an entire network of islands, and it showed.
Conventional defenses from the shoreline began to co alive, peppering the monster with normal, average cannonballs. None of them seed to do much, but between the ship’s new capabilities and the distraction, it found itself unable to respond to anything that was happening. It took a dozen unanswered shots and for the first ti in the fight, it started to look like it might actually be feeling the hurt.
And then it beca very still.
“What’s it doing?” Marco yelled. “Elisa, what’s it doing?”
“I’m not sure! It looks like it’s going to change again.” Another bolt slamd into the beast, devastating and yet ignored. “Get ready.”
The change ended up being the last thing Marco expected. Rather than growing, it shrunk. The form of the enemy drew in on itself, compacting into a concentrated fog of dread Marco could barely look at before reforming into the sa shape, if a quarter the size.
It didn’t take much ti to know why. The monster was imdiately faster. Its first strike was only dodged because it had yet to realize how much smaller its new arms were, and the second and third because the others gave it their all to distract it mid-strike. Smaller or not, though, Marco knew the enemy only needed one good hit to end the fight.
He needed more power, but all sources of it he could imagine were gone. Jane was good for one burst of effectiveness, but that was far from enough to win the fight. The only real source of power he could count on was his own, and most of that was locked behind the system’s stupid insistence that he set his course.
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Tatric had known what that ant, but he hadn’t clarified, and now things were moving too fast to ask him. Even before the temples forced the issue, Marco had been thinking about sothing like this. He could go as far as any human had ever gone, but that would an abandoning the last few vestiges of ho he had. He had never felt ready for that. He could go ho, but that would an abandoning his freedom, even if the temples weren’t forcing the issues.
But would it?
His mind raced as the beast prepared for another burst of strikes. Elisa had said that so long as they moved around, they might have years before the temples beca stagnant and problems arose again. Adding more temples to the network would probably only help that. The Foolish Endeavor was only getting faster, and taking little stabs into the unknown would take less and less ti as they got stronger. They could draw a circle, he thought, and sail it before coming ho, then a bigger one, then a bigger one.
It wouldn’t last forever, but neither would ho. Eventually, Tatric would pass. Old connections would weaken. People would have ti to co to terms with the idea of leaving, on both sides of every relationship.
But until then, there were no limits. They could go or stay as they pleased, just so long as they were always willing to move where the system pointed them every now and again.
“That’s the course,” Marco said. “I choose freedom.”
The gold glow was so strong it actually cracked like thunder as it spread out from the ship. The beast’s arms ca down only to hit a barrier so strong it bounced off like a child trying to break a boulder. Under their feet, the ship lost all distinct form, gathering and changing into sothing different faster than it ever had before. There was no shortage of energy for that, Marco supposed. He had been saving it for a while now.
Course Resolved!
You have chosen a course of freedom, sailing the seas to build a larger and larger network from a ho base until, finally, sailing out forever. This idea of creating an adventure that benefits the most people possible seems to resonate with the temple system and has freed up an enormous amount of power in your temple network.
All that power is freed now and is working on your ship and equipnt. Prepare yourself.
Marco’s clothes did change, although not much. If he had to describe it, he would have simply called them more post transformation. He could feel they’d stop more attacks now. He could sense they were helping him communicate with the ship better, too, which gave him a sense of the magnitude of the transformation happening below his feet.
“Marco! We are going to get one big shot at this.” Elisa had her tactical notebook out, the magical one that gave her ideas when everything else had failed. “Most of its defenses are on its skin. You have to get inside it.”
“What?”
“Just do it!” Elisa shouted. “We should be coming out of it soon!”
She wasn’t wrong. Marco could see the ship under his feet now, and it was beautiful. Every line of it was perfect, the end-ga form of every ship he had ever dread about from a storybook. While still being obviously magical, all the functions of the runes and the battery had been engulfed by the ship itself now, integrated more fully into what it was.
Marco gawked at it, then controlled himself. The gold was fading now, and Elisa was right that they really only had one shot. He pushed the ship forward, and the mont his power touched it, he felt exactly what it was in every bit of his soul.
Royal Exploration Sloop
This ship is built for long haul speed and focuses on that aspect of travel. In every way those confines allow, it is perfect.
Marco agreed. The slip told him every detail about the water around it as it slipped through it, pulling in power from the buffs the system clerics were still granting him. He added to that, sending the ship forward with all the speed of a cannonball directly at the bottom of the beast’s torso.
A slapping strike just missed the back of the ship, but Riv was ready for it. He had been waiting the entire fight for just that mont, and as the waves slid around the new ship’s perfect hull, he hit the arm with everything he had, slamming the ship away even faster as he left the monster’s arm in bent agony. Marco was surprised Jane hadn’t added to that but then had to shift his attention to the terrifying barrage of arrows Aethe had unleashed on the monster’s stomach. The horror twisted and roared as arrow after magical arrow punched into its stomach, long having lost the ability to exercise their original effects as they all added to a ss of roiling power at the bullseye of Aethe’s choice.
Marco adjusted the course of the ship just a hair to match it, then held his breath as the entire ship prepped for impact. He finally saw Jane in that last instant, standing with one arm looped through part of the arbalest and the other on Elisa’s back.
They punched through. The ship stabbed into the monster's stomach, and the addition of power was too much for it. The power from Aethe’s arrows ran amok, blowing out a cavity just big enough for the ship in the evil black fog the beast seed made of. Marco sailed onward into that fog, controlling his terror as the monster healed and sealed them off from the world.
It was beyond any attempt at description inside the belly of the beast. Marco resisted the despair just long enough to give Elisa everything else he had left for one last big shot.
The bolt flew from the ship, lighting up the horror like a candle in a hallway before bursting. Marco flopped onto his back, staring up as the chaos Elisa had wrought did battle with the monster around it.
It was close. He had never and would never see a contest that was closer. The bolt won.
Marco ignored every notification the system sent him for a while, just staring at the clear blue sky above him. It was his, he decided. Or at least as much his as anyone’s.
“Ho?” Elisa asked, as she appeared above him, holding out her hand to lift him up.
“Ho.” He smiled at the sky one last ti before standing up. “Ho sounds good.”
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