Moving Mountains

22

.^^ Captain w/ Magic Musket ^^

— Josef —

The grappling hook tensed, trying to find a setting on the boat, and I braced one foot, then simply pulled as hard as I could, smirking at the surprised shouts and the one splash I heard afterwards, but then the rope hauled again, halting my celebration.

Vanya laughed. "See? S- is the average, lovely. Settle in for a fight!" She knocked another hook out of the air with a sword she'd pulled off her belt, and I turned back to the water, releasing the hook.

"Or I'll avoid the battle entirely..." I hummed, and searched my grimoire, finding a freezing spell. "Ah... this should do." I nodded, and froze all the water around the enemy ship, making it into a floating iceberg, and following that up with a spell to instantly turn ice into steam, creating a steam explosion of powerful proportions.

The ship vaporized entirely, the resultant shockwave pushing our ship a good two hundred meters across the surface of the water, and we saw two more ships, abandoning our pursuit for the wreckage, quickly fishing the survivors (of which there were many more than I expected; the entire crew, it seemed,) out of the freezing water.

"They all survived that? Rather impressive, I'd say..." I hummed. "Either way, Captain, onwards. Ignore them for now." I froze the water behind us, preventing any further chase, and sat back down.

Vanya frowned at me. "You're no fun, sometimes."

"There'll be plenty of fighting when we get to shore, Vanya, but for now we probably should avoid making enemies for no reason." I shrugged.

"That's true, I suppose. Destroying the ship is an insult, sure, but also a warranted response to an attempted boarding. After all, only a fool would wage war with the expectation of zero casualties or losses..." she sighed, and sat back down, waving the sailors back to their duties.

Most of the crew were women, selected by Vanya from amongst mercenaries from her old homeland, our destination. Surprisingly, or should I say unsurprisingly, given my new knowledge that nearly all Warriors from this society were S- or better, they were all of that same rank, which was apparently a cut-off for most normal adventurers.

'Why is that, do you think?' I asked The Messenger, curious.

'The Peak of the Mortal Form is S-. Anything after that is considered to be Demigod territory. The gods decide who can or cannot reach that level of attainment. Creatures are of a different scale, uncontrollable by the gods of civilization. Different gods decide the powers of Beasts.' She responded casually.

'I see... so the gods might be a bit miffed that I created six SS+ ArchLich?'

'No, UnDead are governed by the Gods of Death and the Underworld. They're pretty lax, seeing as every soul you summon is one they don't have to deal with.'

'Ahh, good to know.' I nodded.

"Dragon Sighted! Young, it seems, and skinny!" The lookout barked.

I glanced at the dragon, and hummed. "Send it off with a warning shot, Captain, we've no interest in hunting dragons today!" I called out.

He nodded, and raised a musket, sighting and firing in only a few seconds. The barrel spouted a flash of blue magic, and the musket-ball, made of tungsten and charged with lightning magic, slammed the joint of its wing, breaking it and making it careen towards the water.

It flapped it's one wing laboriously, and then splashed down, grasping the side of the ship for dear life. (Apparently, dragons could not swim, an odd bit of information I had not been aware of until Francois had refused to play in the lake I'd had made for him. They were too heavy, he informed me, and their flight was made possible with magic, not pure physics, like birds or bats.)