Tales of the Endless Empire

Chapter 439: A Different Approach

That you needed to be careful on the open seas was something everyone normally understood very quickly. Even fighting between ships became a dangerous endeavor, and if you stayed too long in one position, a whirlpool would open up beneath you and swallow both ships whole. It was the first test of the merciless sea, and our next group had such a test right ahead of them.“Can’t this stupid ship go any faster? I want every windmage up here, and if it still isn’t enough, the rest should also blow on the sail for damn sake. I want that damn ship before us!” Jack shouted at the crew.

On the horizon before them, they had spotted their first target, and Jack wanted those leaderboard points no matter what. Jack wasn’t the only one itching for a first kill. The whole crew had taken over the ship after the captain proved a bit stingy, especially after he didn’t let Vorlok on board. There simply had been no other option than to take over and thin out the crew a bit, with most of them landing in Vorlok’s belly.

So far, their journey had been very successful. They found the first island quickly, where they could refresh their provisions, find a part of the treasure map, and gather a lot of other treasures that put everyone at roughly ten million leaderboard points. The last days, though, had been quite uneventful while they followed the map, and it also happened that they needed to eat a lot more after entering the open ocean.

Normally that wouldn’t have been bad since they were only half the crew. The problem was a very hungry skyturtle that was lying in the middle of the deck, always hungry. Evelyn, Kargul, and—what am I saying—everyone in the crew, even Kaldrek, couldn’t watch the poor skyturtle suffer. That had led to their provisions emptying rather quickly. So the ship before them didn’t just mean leaderboard points, but far more importantly, food.

“Please, Captain Jack. Can’t we let them be? We only have half the manpower, and they have an expert captain to steer the ship while you want to ram and board it,” one of the crewmembers pleaded, not keen on what was about to happen.

“No worries, my little sailor. This will work out fine. The ship has repair runes after all. Also, we are the ones ramming them from behind, so we won’t take any damage from it—obviously,” Jack shouted back in a good mood, a crazy grin on his face that drained all the color from the sailor’s face.

“Jack, can you believe it? Those idiots are slowing down!” Josh shouted down from the crow’s nest.

“Please, we cannot stay in the same position for too long, or we might get eaten by seawomen. To ram them is insanity,” the sailor tried one more time to plead for his life. “Please, we had to throw almost all of our cannons overboard too.”

“I think you are clearly lacking faith. When it comes to blowing things up, Lucan is the best, and when he says your cannons are not good enough, then they need to go,” Jack simply stated.

“But don’t you understand? Those seawomen are dangerous, and we are risking our lives—” the sailor tried again, but Jack cut him off.

“Now stop it already with the seawomen. You baited the poor Vorlok two times already. Every time he dove downward hoping to find something to eat, but then there were no fish and no seawomen. Get your weapon and ready yourself. This fight will be over in no time.”

The sailor trudged over to get his weapon and tell the other sailors that he had failed, shoulders and head lowered in defeat.

“Jack, they are already abandoning the ship?” Josh shouted downward from above.

“What? Those cowards. Are they already running? No way! I will drive over those weaklings,” Jack raged.

“I think they are actually coming towards us,” Athilrion shouted back from the bow of the ship. The elf had adapted quite well to the crazy notions of this party, and so far, it was working.

“Haha, awesome. Crew, prepare yourselves—we are getting attacked!” Jack shouted with joy in his voice, a joy that wasn’t quite reflected on the sailors’ faces.

In mere seconds, the first sailors were there, clinging to the side of their ship, jumping out of the water directly onto the deck, or trying to get up the rigging toward the sail.

Most of the sailors—with a few exceptions—weren’t that strong, and for Jack and the others, it wasn’t too difficult to kill them. The bigger problem was that Kargul was damaging the ship more than the attackers every time he swung down his mace.

Evelyn, Maike, and Lara were mostly staying in the back, avoiding the fighting altogether for now. All the others killed sailor after sailor. The first attack was over in not even a minute as the ship sped up further, almost flying over the waves.

“Please, Jack, why do I need to wait until we ram it? I can easily swim ahead and kill them all before you arrive,” Thalassan asked in a pleading tone.

The woman, who had evolved into a human from a fish, had grown rapidly in power inside the trial and was now level 151. She was also super nice as long as no one disrespected her friends. Most of the time, that ended with the tragic death of the accuser. Even when Jack and Josh didn’t want to admit it, she might be the strongest member of the crew right now, and this water stage was perfect for her. Still there was one problem with the request.

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“But then there is nothing left for us, and I also want to have some fun,” Jack responded, shooting her down.

“F-I-N-E,” she replied, clearly not happy. With her right hand, she motioned two water bubbles to follow her. In each water bubble, one of the attacking sailors was desperately thrashing around, trying to swim out of it.

“Where is my favorite turtle? Look, Vorlok, I have a few snacks for you,” she purred while turning to the skyturtle, who had tried to snap at the sailors who had jumped directly onto the deck. Now he turned around and happily flapped over to Thalassan like an elephant seal, his mouth greedily wide open.

The sailors in the bubbles paused for a moment in shock before redoubling their efforts to get out of their prison. Two loud snaps later, and they were gone.

“Man, this is taking forever. LUCAN! Don’t you have something to make them a bit slower, the fuckers are speeding up again." Jack shouted over the roaring winds.

It didn’t take long until Lucan appeared on deck. Until now, he had been working on something below deck, but no one knew what exactly.

“Who do you mean?” Lucan shouted back, clearly not knowing they had spotted another ship. He turned around a few times before he spotted it, and an ember awakened in his eyes. Without a word, he hurried downward, motioning Kargul to follow him.

“I interpret this as a yes,” Jack murmured, holding the curse. “I wonder what he had been—OH GOD DAMN YES. LUCAN, YOU ARE THE BEST!” Jack shouted as Lucan and Kargul reappeared, carrying a five-meter-long metal structure that looked a bit like a torpedo.

“How big will the boom be this time?” Kargul asked with a wide grin as he carried the torpedo to the railing on the left side of the ship.

“I couldn’t test it, but it should definitely slow down the other ship,” Lucan said with a grin, tapping runes on the outer surface until they glowed in white light.

“Then does it fly over, or is it like one of those cannons?” Kargul asked, clearly having no idea what would happen next.

“No, no, just throw it in the water and I will steer it toward the ship before us,” Lucan beamed, unable to keep his anxiety in check.

“Ha, it doesn’t look like it can swim very well without legs or arms. You sure I should just drop it in?” Kargul asked skeptically.

Lucan didn’t answer and just quickly nodded, a big smile on his face. Kargul shrugged and threw it overboard.

After diving into the water, one end of the torpedo started to glow in a garish white light, and the whole thing took off.

“Ey, Lucan. Only a tiny hole. I don’t want the whole ship being blown—” Jack didn’t get any further as, with a giant boom, the whole ship they had been chasing jumped ten meters into the air, a massive fire pillar unfolding beneath it.

The shockwave of the explosion was so strong that their own sails ripped in many places while everyone had to hold on to avoid being thrown overboard.

“Hmm, maybe a bit much indeed, but it slowed down,” Lucan said thoughtfully, already starting to make notes while Jack facepalmed.

Instead of ramming the enemy ship, they gently bonked over a few planks and sailors floating on the water.

“Let’s find the trial takers and keep going. We want to get the big treasure after all,” Kaldrek said.

Their sailors, on the other hand, were panicking quite a lot right now.

“Are you crazy? We cannot stand here, or they will come and eat us. There is no way we can spend much time searching. Please hoist at least a little bit of the sails again. Stopping is never good,” the sailor tried to explain, but his opinion was simply ignored.

The rest jumped overboard to find the trial takers and their spatial amulets with all the leaderboard points. There were still a few injured sailors, but those were finished off quickly. It took a few minutes until they found the first spatial amulet.

“Ha, jackpot. Six million leaderboard points in this one,” Maike giggled, raising the spatial amulet above the water with one hand so that everyone could see it.

The sailor still standing on the railing was focused on something else entirely and was pointing behind her while stuttering.

“L-l-l-look… they are here.”

Maike also looked underwater, where she immediately spotted the many seawomen and Skarn arriving.

“Ohhh, Vorlok, this time there are really fish below us.”

Where the skyturtle had been floating atop the water, only a fountain remained as Vorlok dove downward, going for the first Skarn he spotted. Size-wise, the turtle was superior, and when it came to biting force, Vorlok also had the upper hand. The turtle wasn’t the only one going for them either, as a giant dark purple squid appeared underwater, also diving downward greedily, catching everything that came close enough with his fang-arms.

Thalassan, Annie, and Josh quickly followed, while the others stayed out of it, since they weren’t good when it came to underwater combat. The only thing they did was prevent Lucan from sneakily dropping another one of those torpedoes into the water.

Against sailors, the seawomen and Skarn clearly had the upper hand, but against a fortress like Vorlok, they did very little. The Skarn tried to bite off his flippers, which wasn’t possible due to how sturdy they were, and Vorlok could also tug them in if needed.

Jack was trying to coordinate his many arms while Josh unleashed slices at the Skarn that came too close. The most difficult to deal with were Thalassan and Annie. The two water mages were simply stronger than the seawomen, and at the beginning they even confused Thalassan for one of their own, which led to a few early deaths.

The seawomen were mostly used to dragging sailors underwater, where the Skarn would finish them off. But when it came to underwater combat against someone like Annie or Thalassan, who shot through the water like torpedoes, things went very differently. Annie could even freeze the water around her targets if she wanted, while sending out multiple water blades and other skills that ripped everything into pieces. Water skills were good enough against the seawomen, and against the Skarn she used icicles, since their resistance to water attacks was simply too high.

Thalassan was so strong that she didn’t need to bother much at all. She mostly used some kind of summons made out of water that looked like sharks or fish with extremely long teeth. Those summons had no trouble eating the Skarn or killing any of the seawomen.

Retreat didn’t seem to be something familiar to the seawomen, but after half of them were dead or eaten by Vorlok, they decided it might be best for their health to distance themselves—leaving four crazy murderers and one confused squid behind.