Round Sixteen: Course

The female mage raised her staff just in time, allowing everyone to see the source of that weak current, but it failed to stop their resentment toward Simon—a tiny opening high up on a crumbling cliff, over a hundred feet above the ground.
“Are you kidding?! How are we supposed to get up there? Even if we can swim in there before drowning once the water reaches that height, the passage will fill up quickly at this rate. Besides, we don’t even know where that passage leads—up or down, it’s hard to say…” The sailors glared at Simon for giving them such an immediately hopeless hope. He stammered in defense, his usual authority as captain nowhere to be seen.
“There’s wind, which means it does lead to the sea surface, but it’s very weak, indicating the passage is either very long or too winding…” Simon’s voice grew weaker until it turned into a faint humming, like that of a mosquito.
Amid the chaos, the seawater had already risen to their thighs. Debris kept falling into the water, and seepage appeared on the cave walls as murky currents flowed into the rapidly rising water level through more and more cracks.
Those not too worried about the situation—or still trying to find a solution—were Moriel, who, like all mages who traveled at sea, knew how to breathe underwater; Rol, the sea elf, whose gills made such an environment not necessarily fatal, though the cold, dark water had already severely irritated his skin; and Chloe, who, as a pure warrior, seemed eerily calm in a situation where her skills were completely useless.
As for Forty-Seven, he was utterly bored—although half of his body was badly burned, with one eye turned into a needle-like red glow in the darkness, he seemed unconcerned, even scratching at his eye socket. If not for the critical situation, his appearance would likely have stunned two people into unconsciousness.
“Maybe we should leave first,” Forty-Seven said, growing tired. He looked up at the ceiling, probably thinking about where would be easiest to break through.
“Oh! Mr. Steel Warrior, with you here, anything can be easily solved! Please fly us out! Why so late…?” Simon looked around frantically before suddenly shouting at Forty-Seven as if grasping at a lifeline, successfully drawing the others’ attention away. But before he could rejoice, the word “Unexpectedly” was forced back into him by Forty-Seven’s blood-red, lightning-like gaze.
The sailors glared at Simon again. Joke aside, even if this iron monster were willing to help, how many could withstand the force of his rock-shattering attacks? Didn’t even his mage mistress say anything?
The water had now reached their chests.
Forty-Seven looked at Moriel. She seemed to have given up on finding another exit. Their eyes met, and she immediately turned away, clearly still angry at his “reckless” actions.
“Alright… I really didn’t want to do this.”

Before Moriel could understand the meaning of those words, black torrents surged in from all directions. In panic, the water level in the cave began to drop, but it wasn’t flowing away—it was moving upward along the cave walls against the laws of gravity. The black water curtain eventually gathered above their heads, gradually becoming clear and transparent. As the ripples continued to spread, a huge face formed from the clear water within the surrounding wall, gazing down at them solemnly.

The Queen of the Black Tides, Princess Olydra of the Water Elementals.

Moriel and Chloe both glanced at Forty-Seven simultaneously, their expressions filled with astonishment.

“Dry-skinned metal boy, did you get what I wanted?” Olydra’s water-like long hair drifted around her, and the seawater flowing in the air seemed eerily strange. She stared at Forty-Seven with her dark green eyes, her tone unfriendly, but she didn’t seem like an enemy—though she hadn’t seemed like one either the first time they met.

Forty-Seven raised his right hand toward the Water Elemental Princess. Olydra could still see Forty-Seven’s dark red eyes through the wound in his palm.

“So you didn’t get it?” Olydra snorted, causing the water in the entire cave to splash momentarily, though it quickly returned to calm. “If that’s the case, how dare you disturb me?”

“Take us out. This is a good chance to see if you can keep your promise.” Forty-Seven lowered his hand, looking unafraid—though it was understandable; the Water Elemental Princess surely hadn’t made any deal with him just because he was handsome.

“Don’t mess with me!” Olydra glared, her authority as a prince of elements pressing down on everyone like stagnant tide water. “Can’t you even get out of this place?”

“There’s no way… Without a GPS, I have no idea where I am.” Forty-Seven looked up at the furious Water Elemental Princess, unwilling to say a kind word. He had already seen her even angrier before.

After a brief silence, Olydra suddenly laughed loudly, “Hahaha… Your nonsense actually amuses me. Fine, get lost now! Don’t forget our deal!”

As soon as she said that, the Water Elemental Princess’s face blurred, and the seawater filling the cave spun rapidly, forming a violent vortex that threw everyone into disorientation…

Simon struggled instinctively, swimming toward the shimmering light above. When he finally poked his head above the water and took in fresh air, he felt an intense sense of relief.

“Pfft”—he spat out the salty seawater and wiped his face. He saw that the surviving sailors were also floating up nearby. The sunset painted the sky in fiery hues, and countless ripples covered the sea’s surface, creating a breathtakingly beautiful scene. The sailors all looked toward the setting sun. How long had it been since they last appreciated a sunset so intently? If not for surviving such a disaster, how much longer would they have missed such a view?

Chloe, as she had wished, was hugging Moriel. Her ability to swim was far better than Moriel’s.

“Haha!” After admiring the sunset, Simon looked out at the sea and excitedly spotted a ship drifting not far away. The entire ship looked adorable under the twilight glow, though it still bore signs of intense battles—his Hermit Crab!
“Let me go—” Moriel’s resistance was useless. Chloé was like a fish; even without using her hands, she swam effortlessly, her speed only slightly slower than that of Raul, who had webbed limbs.
But the fastest was Simon. He was the first to climb onto the ship’s deck and turned back excitedly to call out to everyone, “We’re saved! Now we…”
Before he could finish his encouraging words, 47 kicked him off the ship.
Only after everyone had boarded did Simon climb back up, looking aggrieved and too scared to say anything.
“What deal did you make with the Water Element Princess?” Moriel refused Chloé’s “kind offer” to change her wet clothes and went to the cockpit, frowning at 47, who had already taken control of the rudder.
“Nothing much,” 47 said, casually turning the rudder back and forth. “She can’t handle me, and I can’t handle her… so we just stopped fighting.”
“That’s not what I asked! Can’t you answer me straight?” Every time Moriel saw 47’s attitude like this, she couldn’t help but get angry.
“Never mind.” After waiting for a while, Moriel realized 47 seemed determined not to answer her. Instead, he was intently watching a seabird perched on the ship, pecking at seaweed. Annoyed, she stamped her foot and turned to leave.
“Ah, right. That woman did say something.” 47 seemed to suddenly remember. “She said she sent you to a very dangerous place, where your lives are in peril… I thought I’d come look for you first, so I agreed to her request.”
“What did you agree to?” Moriel grew serious, thinking of 47 forcefully taking the Divine Seed. “Ancient legends say the Water Element Princess has been searching for a way to become a true god since ancient times… No wonder she’s willing to be controlled by the Xeric believers! Could it be… could it be that your deal with her is the same? How could you agree to such terms?”
47 turned to look at Moriel, at her still wet long hair and clear brown eyes.
“Oh. Is that so? The noise the woman made back then was so loud that I didn’t hear some of the words clearly.”
“You… you!” Moriel was amused by his almost shameless reply.
“Aren’t you going to change your clothes? Or is there nothing to change?”
“Of course I’m going to change my clothes.” Moriel thought for a moment. “Come with me.”
Chloé stood on the deck with 47, looking at the night view helplessly. “Hmm… why aren’t you steering?”

“I’m tired of playing already.” Forty-Seven leaned on the railing, watching the Hermit Crab and the sailors busy on the deck, like a tyrant inspecting his subjects. On the true sea—Saimon and the others refused to admit that the terrifying whirlpools were the real sea—the sailors once again demonstrated their exceptional skills: raising sails, turning the rudder, repairing the hull, and setting course. Though only a little over a dozen sailors, including Saimon and Ror, managed to survive, they still handled the Hermit Crab with agility, skill, and order, giving the impression that as long as they were there and the ship was intact, they could sail to the end of the world without problem.

“Oh… ugh, my mouth is so dry. I’ll go see if there’s any wine!” Chloe tried to leave, but Forty-Seven grabbed her firmly: “If you drink too much, your hands will be unsteady, and your thrown knives won’t be accurate.”

“I don’t need to throw knives…” Chloe complained, but since Forty-Seven was holding her, it was basically the same as being trapped.

“Sharkfishmen! So many!” Ror, who was detecting ocean currents in the sea, climbed up the side of the ship and shouted. He seemed to have a connection with sharkfishmen—though now the sea elves’ keen senses seemed fully restored: “About three miles to the northeast! Turn hard to the left to avoid them!”

Molier emerged from the cabin, finally tidy from head to toe: “Are they here again?”

Forty-Seven released Chloe. “Go find some wine now.”

The Hermit Crab couldn’t avoid the sharkfishmen because there were too many of them. They appeared in groups, leaving no gap for the ship to pass through. But strangely, these fishmen didn’t attack the Hermit Crab; instead, they swam past it carelessly, heading straight into the depths of the sea.

“Mr. Forty-Seven, Mr. Forty-Seven…” The poor Twenty-Six once again stepped forward to try to stop Forty-Seven, who was gesturing at those ferocious creatures swimming by the ship with a harpoon. Having survived the whirlpools and the fierce battles on Fishman Island, he had miraculously lived on—no one knew how: “You’ll alert these sharkfishmen. If you kill one of them and they smell blood, things will get troublesome… Look, I know there’s an abundance of sea blue algae not far ahead. It’s a delicious food for many fish. You’ll surely be able to catch big, fat blue algae fish there, maybe even ghost face crabs, those crabs with patterns on their shells that look like ghost faces…”

“Stop lying to me. Those guys just swam over from over there—how could there still be fish?” Forty-Seven mercilessly exposed Twenty-Six’s delaying tactics, though he didn’t intend to kill a sharkfishman. If he had wanted to, the sea would have already turned red.

So Molier ignored him and just stood by the ship, observing the strange behavior of the sharkfishmen, her robes fluttering in the wet, salty sea breeze.

“That’s not the case, Mr. Forty-Seven. In fact, um… the fish scared away by the shark-humanoids will quickly return to their usual feeding grounds…” Although Twenty-Six always felt an overwhelming sense of pressure from this steel-clad guest—shaking uncontrollably at the mere glance of those dark red eyes—he was also very grateful to Forty-Seven. He understood clearly that if not for Forty-Seven’s intentional or unintentional rescues several times over, his own body would now be drifting somewhere in the ocean. With such feelings toward his savior, and since Forty-Seven treated him harshly not because of his slave status, Twenty-Six was able to speak a word or two with Forty-Seven more than the other sailors.

“They seem to be heading toward the Island of Human-Fish.” Chloe stood on the mast under the awning, observing the movements of the shark-humanoids for a while before jumping down and saying, “There are a huge number of them—at least a dozen groups… It seems all the human-fish tribes in this area have been disturbed. What do they intend to do?”

“The Queen of the Black Current,” Moriel said, holding onto the ship’s railing. “It seems she hasn’t left the main material world yet… Since even the remaining illusion of Lady Mist could deceive the shark-humanoids for so long, it’s easy for Olydra, one of the Princes of the Ancient Elements, to gain their worship.”

“Miss Moriel, where should we go now?” Rol approached her for instructions. “Should we head back to the Pearl Islands?”

Simon became anxious upon hearing this. “We can’t go back! We should find a place nearby to repair the ship as soon as possible, and then… I mean…”

Undoubtedly, he was afraid that the pirate leaders of the Pearl Islands would come after him.

“I’m going north,” Moriel said after pondering for a moment. “I can sense it… Hey, is your body okay?”

She was asking Forty-Seven, whose burns on his face still hadn’t healed.

“Problems? What problems?” Forty-Seven shrugged.

The Steel Dragon carried Moriel through the vast night sky. Forty-Seven flew so high that the stars seemed to pass by right beside them. Through the gaps in the sea of clouds below, one could see the blue-black ocean like a carpet, along with occasional glimmers of light. In this boundless universe, it seemed as though only Moriel, Forty-Seven, and the dragon existed—no one in front, no one behind.

Moriel focused intently on tracing the traces of the Mist God’s power. Although the spells she cast on Kairo’s illusion on the Island of Human-Fish didn’t have any substantial effect on the seeds of divine power, those seeds still left some clues as they passed through her magical fluctuations. In fact, Forty-Seven’s attempt to forcibly grab or crush those seeds made the traces left by the Mist even more apparent, though it only allowed Moriel to roughly determine their direction of departure.

They must have gone to join Lady Mist… It’s very likely that Kairo is there too.

But Moriel’s gaze remained obscured by the endless mist, unable to discern any direction. Forty-Seven had flown far away—but she became increasingly trapped.

“Go back to the ship,” Moriel said weakly in the end. All her strength had been exhausted, and there was not a trace of magic left in her body.

Morrill took a whole day to recover, even developing a slight fever.
“I heard shark fin tastes good,” Si Qishi said, sitting by the bed with his hands crossed, his index fingers gently tapping together. “Do you want some?”
“Hmph, what do you know?” Morrill lay on his side in bed, flipping through a spellbook. “It’s smelly and foul… Now you know not everyone is as strong as you are.”
Si Qishi scratched his eye socket. “Well, actually I’ve never objected to traveling by boat… I’m going fishing.”
“Can’t your face recover yet?” Morrill asked, looking at his half-face that resembled a skeleton with visible bones.
“Recover?” Si Qishi was momentarily stunned before laughing. “No, it just makes me look like The Terminator.”
Morrill was furious. “I’m fed up! Fix your face or stop showing up in front of me!”
The Hermit Crab sailed north, exactly as Simon wanted.
Morrill had no further clues and could only sense a vague direction. So they had no choice but to move along the coastline, taking things as they came—The Hermit Crab made two stops along the way, both at night, but they didn’t stop to repair the ship or recruit more sailors. They left the waters around the Pearl Islands; these people weren’t honored citizens of the coastal towns on the mainland.
As the journey continued, the sea breeze grew noticeably cooler.
“That must be Deep Current City ahead, right?” Morrill wrapped himself tightly and asked, standing next to Simon at the helm.
“Yes—achoo!” Simon sniffled. The broken porthole in the cockpit hadn’t been repaired, and the cold wind had given him a slight cold. “We’ve entered northern waters now… We should reach Glory City—Deep Current City—by tomorrow—achoo! I know a few friends there. We can anchor at night, and I can go see them; they might be able to provide some supplies…”
“No,” Morrill said. “We’ll dock in Deep Current City.”
Simon’s expression darkened. “What? Dock in Deep Current City? That…”
“Do you have any objections?” Si Qishi fiddled with a compass in his hand, but Simon caught a glimpse and felt as if saying more would mean the compass would be embedded in his forehead.
“No… Of course, we’ll dock in Deep Current City.”