Chapter 58: New Heading (1/2)

I took in the field of debris I found myself in and numbly processed it. When a heavily battered ship flying the flag of Antarus began sailing in my direction, I let myself slip beneath the waves.

Deep beneath the waves. I needed time to think, and process the prompts waiting for my attention.

Your recent endeavors have improved your Endurance by +3!

That teleportation spell had really put me through the wringer. I’d been close to advancing my endurance through exertion several times over without quite breaking through the threshold, but the ordeal my method of transport had involved pushed me through and then some. Endurance was now tied with Intelligence as my highest stat.

It was good to advance my attributes, since I hadn’t gotten any points from levelling with Jones’ order. Still, I was thankful I hadn’t advanced it any higher than that. It would have thrown my still-imbalanced attributes further out of whack.

Despite the attribute boost and the resultant stamina increase, I really wish I hadn’t gone through that – and not just because of how incredibly painful it had been. I was adrift. My crew was somewhere north-northeast of my position, and a long, long way off at that. I wasn’t returning to my ship anytime soon.

I couldn’t claim a replacement ship due to the infuriating ‘Slaver’ quest I’d been saddled with. I couldn’t claim an additional ship without investing the XP into the Raise Ship (II) ability … the 700,000 XP one. Being adrift wasn’t a mortal peril for me anymore – not like it used to be – but it was inconvenient and still dangerous with all the things that called the sea home.

What was I going to do? I’d left my crew for a moment to collect myself and decide how to respond to their mutiny, and now I was hundreds, thousands of miles away. They hadn’t stolen my life or profession, but they were in control of the ship. With the stealth ability I’d just purchased for it, they might have a shot at staying away from the navy – assuming they didn’t run straight to the authorities and beg for mercy.

I tried to imagine Burdette begging for mercy. My unpleasant expression twisted at the thought of my first mate. That man … I’d never felt the personal hatred for anyone that I now felt. Lawless Jack, the mercenary pirate who’d started me on this path, hadn’t warranted a fraction of this emotion. Even Jones, my unwanted master, hadn’t been so duplicitous in his dealings with me.

I hated Burdette … and dealing with him was my greatest motivation to return to the Death’s Consort.

But I found within myself an apathy regarding the rest of the ship and crew. I’d betrayed them, and they’d betrayed me. Now they were gone, and if I could have control of my own ship I’d have called it a clean break and for the best.

A clean break … whisked away first by Jones, then the ‘Spirit of the Ocean’. What had happened back there? Was I imagining things to think that I’d successfully resisted Davy Jones? Why had Jones let me be when the spirit had shown up? What kind of spirit was the ‘Spirit of the Ocean’ anyway?

It couldn’t be … like the actual spirit of the ocean itself?

You have been exposed to prolonged, concentrated amounts of a Deeper magic which you have an affinity for. You have developed new capabilities based on this experience.

New spell learned (Ocean Magic): Swift Current Travel – Utilize the concentrated power of the Ocean’s movement to propel yourself.

New spell learned (Ocean Magic): Replenishing Waters – With water’s ability to maintain life, heal injuries and restore HP.

For all that I’d just been thinking about distances, the first spell was useless to me. I checked. The initial mana cost was ridiculous, 250 points. That was just shy of my entire pool. The trouble was, that only got the spell going – it needed more mana during travel to maintain the spell!

Humans just didn’t have the capacity to hold that much mana. We became imbalanced first. The spell would be fine for fey creatures or spirits, but I didn’t have the capabilities for it. Even among those beings who had the mana to fuel such a spell, it was a powerful thing.

It spoke to how powerful the Spirit who cast it on me had been.

The other half of the problem with casting it was that channeling all that force meant that unless I had a crazy Constitution level (which I didn’t) the healing spell needed to be cast simultaneously. That was another drain on mana.

Fortunately, the healing spell was within my reach. It cost a base 200 mana to cast, then added an additional expense based on the severity of the injury. I couldn’t likely use it in combat, but with a full mana pool and maybe some spare mana potions, I could heal myself instantly and to a much greater extent than my cleansing waters spell could manage. That spell was handy, but very slow and couldn’t restore limbs the way my deeper magic spell could.

I’d have loved to get some offensive spell capable of weaponizing the power of the ocean to take out ships – something like creating a tsunami or maybe Cherry’s vortex – but the two spells was all I got from my experience. It was more than I’d had a right to expect.

Something about the mana cost of the swift current travel struck me as odd – and an investigation of the area I’d been transported showed I was on the right track. There was a lack of ambient mana in the area I’d travelled through, like was left behind when I claimed my ship.

When I used my deeper magic to claim a ship, the initial mana expenditure was used to create a thread that extended into the surrounding water. Those threads attracted ambient mana and grew. If a single thread cost 1 point of mana, it could accumulate five times that from the water. When I completed the spell, all those accumulated threads spooled in and the mana fueled what I was casting – even though the power of the spell should have been far beyond me.

When I was traveling through the painful swift current travel, the spell had grabbed ambient mana as I went to continue the casting until the spirit deposited me where it wanted, leaving a trail of mana-stripped water. It wasn’t quite as bad as when I raised my ship – more like an arrow piercing a sail than a sword cutting it open – and even now the water was returning to equilibrium.

If I could learn how to employ that technique though … I could have nearly endless mana. I could harvest it from my surroundings … at least I could once, and then find another area. The swift current travel wouldn’t be beyond me.

That was great for future me. Present me had problems.

I considered dropping into the depths and leaving this battlefield behind, taking the freedom I had and isolating myself from contacting anyone else. The trouble with that was I couldn’t claim even a small wreck, and I’d be swimming around until Jones decided to swoop in on me again or some leviathan decided little level 10 me was a good snack.

That left finding passage on the ships above. The problem with doing that was they belonged to the same human confederacy that had been hunting me down in the Death’s Consort. They’d call Domenic Seaborn falling into their hands a miracle.

I considered killing all aboard a ship and commandeering it, even if I couldn’t properly claim it, but however skilled I was I couldn’t manage a warship on my own. That was the same reason I’d gone with recruiting a crew who had turned around and betrayed me.

I could consider getting some XP and buying the ability to summon constructs to help me sail, but I couldn’t afford that yet. Even if I could, they couldn’t fight for me and so we’d be on the run. Since I couldn’t claim a commandeered ship with my slaver quest active and the Death’s Consort was an ocean away, I’d be stuck on the surface, unable to submerge to escape and doomed to be hemmed in again and stuck like a fish in a trap and … aaargh!

I had to get help from the ships above.

I knelt on a broken section of ships’ hull, waving a white shirt above my head. The shirt had the dual purpose of getting the attention of the passing ship and indicating that I was peaceful. I was also wearing a ragged pair of pants I’d pulled from my adventurer’s bag, clothes that I’d used for working. My Captain’s ensemble was stowed in that same bag.

If I wasn’t human, the ship might have left me or used me for target practice. Instead, they nudged through the debris and dropped a rope ladder over the side, which I left my barely-floating island for and swam to. Once on deck, I faced the armed-but-not-yet-hostile reception I’d expected.

“How’d you find yourself in these waters?” A gruff military sergeant asked. “And what ship were you sailing on?”

I nodded to the sunken ship behind me. “I was sailing on that one.”

Instantly the reception became more hostile. I accepted it. I knew I couldn’t bluff my way into claiming to have been from any of the human ships – they’d have ferreted my lie out and clapped me in irons in a matter of hours.

“You fought for the enemy?” the sergeant asked, clarifying.

“I did, until they died.”

My calm admittance to fighting for the enemy seemed to confuse several, but the sergeant eyed my bag and spat.

“What kind of scum hires himself out to the snakes against his own kind?”

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard the Madu called snakes, but I’d been hoping that they’d take my position as a mercenary with less racial bias.

Not because I didn’t have my own reasons to hate Nilfheim, but because I didn’t want my first attempt at this to devolve into a fight.

“I had my reasons.”

“Is that so?” The sergeant said. “Mister, I don’t like you. I don’t like men that won’t stand up for their own race. I’ve got a notion to take your head and your bag and lodge a complaint with the adventurer’s guild!”

“You better have a notion that beats that one all to pieces, because I don’t like you either.”

This was going great.

The sergeant took a step back and gave the command to his men to ready themselves, the crossbowman first. I had nearly decided to summon my water whips when a voice called “stop!” A naval officer paced quickly across the deck. The sergeant scowled even as he ordered his men to hold. The officer moved to the sergeant and demanded a report, at which the sergeant explained how I was an uncooperative enemy who’d shown myself to be hostile.

The officer noted my unarmed stance and adventurer’s bag, lingering on my face. My imbalanced charisma might have had something to do with the sergeant taking a disliking to me, and the officer seemed to know that.

“Mercenary?” he barked.

“Yes,” I replied, unapologetic.

“Drop your stats.” He commanded. I complied. At least, I showed them part of the customized lie I’d created with my Necklace of Persona. Between the magical item and my Hide True Nature ability left over from my time in Tulisang, I had a plausible alias.

The officer scrutinized my stats. “Well Dom Harter, you’re not much of a mercenary.”

“No,” I admitted, wondering if I should have gone for a less generic last name. “I was a sailor most my life. The adventuring and mercenary work is … a recent career change.”

“You are also a sailor?”

“I’m the best sailor in the country.”