Badge in Azure

“Master, why the rush? Have you found something good?” Nailisi curiously asked Saleen. Saleen did not share his senses with her and she was unable to see what lied one-hundred miles away.

“To save people.”

“Save people?” Nailisi asked in glee, and even Truman found that to be odd.

“Killing people all the time is tiring. Getting to save people for a change sounds fun.” Nailisi was so eager to try it out that it rendered everyone laughing, even Saleen.

While it was not precisely correct that he had been killing people all the time, what he had done as of late got him nothing but headaches.

The magic power furnaces of the dragon skeleton combat vessel went full power, enabling the warship to travel at one-hundred and twenty miles per hour in the direction of the storm. Such a speed, however, was not the fastest the vessel was able to reach. The one-hundred yard long construct was able to fly after all.

Everyone onboard was able to see the dark clouds in less than half an hour. The waves seen in the alchemy binoculars were more than ten yards tall. The ones who controlled the magic power furnace were all mages, as there were not many sailors onboard. The soldiers who followed Saleen were all astonished by the scene of the storm.

It was fortunate that everyone knew what the dragon skeleton combat vessel was capable of, and there were grade-9 sorcerers stationed onboard. They would have needed to only take flight if anything happened.

The ten yard tall wave chased after the merchant ship in front of it. The ship had obviously undergone modifications, as it looked to be a common warship originally. The merchant ship that was modified from a warship even retained the two magic stone cannons on it.

The modifications allowed the ship to travel at very high speeds, yet sport reduced defensive capacities. Any huge waves would have gotten the ship off-course, let alone the fearsome storm at their rear. The merchant ship began to tip in the waves. The near one-hundred yard long ship was severely tipped over soon. Ships in the sea were to keep at a vertical angle with huge waves. If ran with waves flipping at the ship’s sides, not even the Ancient would have been completely safe.

Most warships had mages stationed on them, ensuring survivability in the event of storms. The ship before them however, seemed to be one of those capable of hiring only magic apprentices.

Crack…Boom!

Loud cracking sounds were heard from the merchant ship. The bow of the ship made it past the wave and trembled violently. Soon after it was torn apart in the middle!

Saleen was able to tell that the ship was given modifications to the center of it in order to increase cargo capacity, by stripping off some magic instruments. There were no mages to be found on a merchant ship after all. The ship’s cargo capacity would have easily doubled at least, at the cost of severely reduced durability.

“Let’s go rescue some people,” Saleen sighed, as the ship before them was bearing the flag of the Sikeqinya Empire, but it was not a warship. Even if it happened to be a warship, if both sides were not engaged, he still felt compelled to at least save the sailors.

The dragon skeleton combat vessel adjusted its angle and extended the bone wings at its flanks, deploying metal buoyancy modules as well to ensure stability to the ship. All that enabled it to maintain its balance to a certain degree in the storm. More than forty dinghies were thrown out from the deck on both sides. They were not lifeboats, as lifeboats would have simply toppled over in such storms.

The area covered by the storm was incredibly huge, covering an area of more than one-thousand miles. The center of the storm was however, incredibly calm and serene. Within the area of less than ten miles, furious waves were seen everywhere, stirring about the center of the storm and moving forward. An old sailboat was seen traveling at great speeds in the area. The ship was about sixty yards long, its masts held high, yet its sails were utterly tattered. A row of soldiers stood on the deck of that old ship.

The soldiers were seen clad in rusted iron armor and were not wearing helmets. Most of the flesh on their faces had rotted away, and their eye sockets were almost all bereft of eyeballs. None of them had the soul flames typical of spirits.

The soldiers held ancient spears in their hands. The spears’ blades were about a yard long, serrated on both sides.

A large eerie eye was seen hanging above the ship, staring forward. Its pupil was thinned to a vertical slit in the middle, exuding an incredibly evil aura. The eye had a diameter of one mile. As it was hanging high above the air, it did not look as repressing as its size suggested.

All elements surrounding the eye were subjected under its control. The waves were unable to make it to the ship, and it was not known what actually made the ship move at such speeds.

The eye blinked slowly, with every blink stirring up huge waves faraway. The dark clouds in the sky stirred along, cracking noises were heard from the violent air currents. The storm covering the one-thousand mile radius area seemed to have originated from the eye.

The merchant ship was totally wrecked in the storm. The sailors and merchants onboard were at a loss of what to do. The chances of surviving such a storm was next to none.

“Captain, a ship at our front!” Some of the soldiers pointed at the dragon skeleton combat vessel from their ship that had yet to sink. The huge vessel waited silently under the shadow of the clouds, waiting for the storm to come.

More than forty dinghies were thrown overboard into the water, with two spirits on every boat for control. The boats had Water Shields about them, but they were different from the ones Saleen was used to using; they were probably grade-2 spells. The boats were using magic arrays to propel them, and power driven from magic nuclei. The dinghies were not fully inflated, and they were all caved in somewhat. With the protection provided by ball-shaped Water Shield, the dinghies were able to easily float at sea, making their way for the dismantled ship.

The storm engulfed the forty dinghies and more in an instant. The boats rocked feverishly in the storm, yet they stuck to the water stubbornly.

The storm was powerful, but it was not some kind of offensive spell. There were no other impurities found within the storm other than water. The dinghies made it through the waves and came to the merchant ship. Most of the ship have sunk by then, with only the deck left about half a yard above the water. Most of the hold had already been flooded. If the ship had not been keeping half of the sealed holds intact, the ship would have gone completely underwater by then.

The spirits threw ropes overboard. With the sailors and the soldiers being within an inch of their lives, they cared not for who it was that came to their rescue. They were soon dragged onboard by the spirits. Every dinghy was capable of carrying about twenty people and left as soon as they were filled.

The storm made it to the dragon skeleton combat vessel. It rocked in the huge waves whipping about, with the wings at its flanks sticking close to the water, acting as balancers. Conventional balancing plates would have failed their intended purpose when subjected to waves of such magnitude. The bone wings on the vessel however, came with auto-adjustment functions, allowing them to brave the fierce waves without snapping.

The dragon skeleton combat vessel was built to be a flagship all along. While the ship was indeed powerful in combat, the most crucial aspect laid still with safety, speed, and its ability to adapt to situations. The dragon skeleton combat vessel sported the best teleportation portal to be had, magic arrays and nine magic power furnaces. The ship was also equipped with a hold that functioned like a space warehouse, enabling it to carry massive amount of cargo. The metal buoyancy modules were designed specifically to brave large scale storms such as the one they were facing then.

There were more than one-hundred sailors and more than one-hundred soldiers on the merchant ship. The rest were coolies meant for hard labor. On the Myers Mainland, being a sailor was a lucrative job, which differed from the coolies working on ships. More than forty dinghies meant that more than eight-hundred could have been saved; the merchant did not have such a capacity to begin with.

The sailors and soldiers on the dinghies were rocked until they felt like vomiting. The ones in charge of steering the dinghies respectively were two spirits, and they only knew to secure the rescued people by tying them to the boats. They then steered the dinghies back to the dragon skeleton combat vessel.

Saleen stood at the deck of his ship, overlooking his spirits fishing people out of the water. Nailisi had dived into the sea and went to the broken ship, diving into its hold.

The cargo hold was divided into several sections and Nailisi was looking for the smallest one. She kicked the door open and found the place to be filled with crates—the space crates used by Qin elite forces, completely identical both in looks and dimensions. It was only how the content was stored that was different. Such crates ensured the safety of the cargo within, and there was no need for the content to be weighed prior.

Such spatial crates ensured that no matter how heavy the content they were made to carry, the total weight of the package remained unchanged. As such, the spatial crates were valuable commodities on their own, specifically due to their properties. The crates however, were not very sturdy, and Nailisi was able to easily break any one of them. As she was there alone and there was no one around to watch her, she went stuffing all of the crates into a dimension stone instead.

There were more than one-hundred of those creates within the small hold. After Nailisi was done bagging whatever was in the hold, she went into large holds. That hold carried the usual cargo, and as such, was packed using large wooden crates, tied up using metal threads and labeled.

Nailisi bagged the normal crates into her bracelet. She had sharp eyes and went checking out the labels themselves. Anything she deemed of low value, she would hardly bother doing anything with. The ship came from Sikeqinya, and she was sure that it was a smuggling ship. The goods needed to be valued to at least one-hundred-thousand gold, before the journey was deemed to be worth the risk.

One-hundred-thousand gold was no small amount to even the Kingdom of Metatrin. While Saleen had his way hunting in the Oceanic Ice Block, the current situation with things meant that Saleen would never sell a single magic nucleus, no matter how expensive they got.

The economy of the entire kingdom was undergoing a recession. Wealth was only circulated domestically. Magic nuclei, metals, wood, and ores, all commodities fought over by merchants, were stored by the royal family within the kingdom’s warehouses as soon as they were produced.

Nailisi went to explore the next hold with glee, thinking that saving people was indeed interesting, and a lucrative activity to boot.

After clearing out most of the sunken ship’s goods, Nailisi made it back quietly to the dragon skeleton combat vessel. Most of the rescued people were seen onboard the ship by then, and there were more than two-hundred of them.

Saleen went back to the hold early. He was in no mood to deal with the people. As the merchant ship was merely a smuggling ship, he handed it over to Truman to deal with them.

Four-hundred miles away, at the center of the storm, the great eye was still flying forward. The sailboat beneath it reeked of death. The ship went skimming the waters without making a sound.

The great eye in the sky retained control of the storm, and it soon got near to the dragon skeleton combat vessel. It was flying at about one-hundred miles per hour. If the dragon skeleton combat vessel had simply turned around and left, the ship would not have encountered the monster. As the ship was still busying itself with sorting out matters of the rescued people and Saleen paid little heed to the storm, the ship stayed where it was.

Both parties got increasingly near to each other. Four-hundred miles, three-hundred, two-hundred…

Saleen felt strange. He had finished meditating and three hours passed, yet the storm seemed to have no intentions of stopping. The dragon skeleton combat vessel continued to rock on the waves, yet those within were hardly able to feel it.

“Nicholas, do you sense any danger nearby?” Saleen asked the old holy master.

“Nothing. Nailisi, you sense anything?”

Nailisi shook her head. She was very sensitive to perceiving danger, and she felt no threat looming about.