Chapter 144
Chapter 144. Survivor
It was late afternoon when the boat drifted in. Beneath the setting sun, a small boat, just big enough to carry three or four people, came into view beyond the coastline.
On the Island of Boundaries, there stood a single lighthouse meant to detect external threats.
It was one that Kaiman had once constructed using Yul’s karma, a lighthouse made of smooth stone.
A sea elf soldier was the one who spotted it. There was no sail, and no oars. It must have simply been carried by the currents, drifting wherever they took it until it arrived here.
When the boat reached the shore, four sea elf corpses were found aboard.
One sea elf had miraculously survived and was rescued and placed under protection.
As the commotion went on for some time, Yul went to see the sea elf and bolstered his vitality through Faith.
Even after waking, the fallen one seemed somewhat out of his mind.
“Is this… the place beyond the Eternal Sea?”
To the sea elves, heaven was an island beyond the Eternal Sea.
All sea elves live their lives longing for the Eternal Sea, a nonexistent ideal.
In that sense, the survivor was effectively asking whether he had arrived in heaven.
“Regrettably, this is the Island of Boundaries, my friend.”
“Haha. What is there to regret? I’m alive, so no matter what, I can still set out in search of the Eternal Sea.”
“All of your companions are dead.”
“That is regrettable.”
The sea elf, who had been laughing cheerfully, fell into a brief moment of silence at the words that all his companions had died, then seemed to struggle to maintain a forcibly upbeat tone.
“Your name?”
“Sildoren. It means White Feather. But… why am I on the Island of Boundaries?”
“You were carried here by the currents and washed up on the shore.”
“My goodness, that distance…… I am a crewman of Wing Vessel No. 1. I was aboard Prince Arurion Phantarey’s ship.”
“What did you say?”
Yul asked again in shock. Had a way finally appeared to learn the whereabouts of Arurion, whose fate had long been unknown?
“How did you end up here?”
“Well, it’s a long story. We set out to find the Healing Spring said to be somewhere in the Archipelago Ocean.”
“……I know of it.”
The Healing Spring. At those words, Yul felt a pang of regret.
Yul knew where it was. It had been in the village of the Orca Tribe.
His senior orca patroller, Borgin, had once fully recovered at that Healing Spring even after his tail fin had been severed.
If Arurion had asked Yul for advice even once, Yul would have told him the location of the Healing Spring.
Even though the Healing Spring existed underwater, the area where the orca village had been was not very deep, so it would have been possible to bring an injured person there.
However, Arurion had already fallen into a state of mental and physical disarray, and Yul had heard that his subordinates had voluntarily set sail to seek healing, so Yul had missed them.
“So, did you find it?”
“We searched every island within the Archipelago Ocean. Even remote places that we believed no one had ever explored. But it seems fortune was not with us, we failed to find the Healing Spring.”
That alone did not explain why he was here. Yul calmly waited for him to organize his thoughts.
“……One day, on a night when a storm was raging, we encountered the Sovereign of the Deep Sea.”
“The Sovereign of the Deep Sea?”
Tentacles as massive as a gigantic bridge reaching the sky, cruelty that never released once it had grasped something, obsession that pursued relentlessly for days while regenerating even after being struck by cannons…….
Shillenwe, who was nearby, murmured.
“Kraken…….”
The admiral, who had once lost an entire ship to that monster, spoke the name with a visible shudder.
Though it had ultimately been repelled by Yul, even that brief encounter seemed to have etched terror deep into Shillenwe’s mind.
“Even amid the storm, we struggled, but we were seized by the kraken and hurled into the sea. The last time I saw the Wing Vessel was as it grew distant, fighting the kraken within the storm.”
“How did you survive?”
“I was lucky. At the moment I was thrown into the sea, the tentacle gripping me was hit by a cannon and exploded.”
After narrowly escaping death, he saw the kraken and the Wing Vessel receding far into the distance.
As an exceptionally skilled swimmer, he circled the area searching for scattered items.
Fortunately, a single lifeboat, undamaged, was floating upside down.
He immediately retrieved it and gathered the debris that had fallen nearby.
“And then, around the time the storm subsided, I found other survivors.”
He rescued other injured sea elves and, together with them, managed to sail for a while.
After drifting across the vast open sea for some time, they could no longer endure it. With no way to heal their injuries, all of the wounded collapsed one by one.
They overexerted themselves trying to save one another, but having lost both oars and sail, they ended up adrift.
It was truly a tearful tale of drifting. Considering that they had been carried all the way here, not even to the Rainini Archipelago but to this distant Island of Boundaries, they must have been caught in some truly strange current.
“Get some rest.”
“Thank you.”
Sildoren’s story, in effect, presented Yul with his next choice.
As he was pondering what to do, Lucian appeared.
“Yul, preparations for sailing are complete.”
“The next destination was clearly the island west of Aragon, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Thanks to the crew we took on here, we have the power to move again. The modifications are finished as well.”
The Strellock looked distinctly different from before.
Sections that had once been made of wood were now reinforced with iron plating, and a propeller had been installed at the rear.
“Even with a shipyard, that kind of work couldn’t be finished quickly.”
“The sea elves helped with absolute sincerity. They were strangely friendly about it.”
“That’s probably because they heard you’re my Sinker.”
As word quietly spread that Lucian was Yul’s Sinker, the sea elves’ attitude toward Lucian became exceedingly polite.
“But I wonder why they won’t join as crew members.”
“Would you want to join a place filled with middle-aged men whose eyes have gone half-crazy?”
“Well, I suppose those fellows are a bit rough.”
Only a small number of sea elves joined, and even those were all men.
Once you leave land, you might never return, and a brutally male-dominated workplace that standardized the entire meal plan to hardtack biscuits.
“Anyway, the sea elves devoted themselves to helping us. Their magical skills were all excellent.”
Within a month, the refitted Strellock was ready.
“I won’t be able to join the next voyage. Something’s come up in the Archipelago Ocean.”
“Can’t be helped. We’ll go on our own.”
“I’m counting on you.”
“I have a feeling that something incredible awaits us at the end of this Golden Sea Route.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Perhaps something irreversible... well, never mind. It’s just nonsense. We’ll depart first.”
Yul nodded. It was probably just growing anxiety.
Not long after Lucian left, Sonam Rinpoche entered.
“Lord Yul! I’ve come with an urgent report.”
“What is it?”
“We’ve heard that, at the southern edge, forces of the Sea Succession Church are gathering ships. There’s no one they’re currently fighting, so that means……”
“With high probability, they’re aiming to attack the Rainini Archipelago. Still, they’re awfully relaxed. It’s been quite a while since they lost Rainini.”
“Their decision-making structure is extremely slow. Even after something is decided at the top, there are pointless approval procedures unique to the Sea Succession Church.”
“Ah. I get it.”
The hallmark of a bloated, corrupt bureaucratic organization—slow decisions, slow execution.
“It looks like around ten combat fleets will be mobilized. And according to our informants, they possess dragon-slaying cannons. They’re extremely dangerous weapons.”
“Dragon-slaying cannons?”
“They’re weapons the sea elf royal families used to kill the Sea Dragon Tribe. They resemble super-heavy harpoon launchers, but they’re imbued with a magic called「Sure-Hi」.”
“They always hit?”
“They’re harpoon cannons enchanted with High Elf arcane magic. Weapons guaranteed to strike the heart of colossal monsters.”
“……I see.”
“They hunted the Sea Dragon Tribe with them, then used the dragons’ hearts as power sources to build Wing Vessels.”
“So they hunted seven Sea Dragons?”
“Yes. Over a very long span of time, from what I’ve heard.”
Hunting with harpoon cannons…….
Yul did have a bad history with the Sea Dragon Tribe. More precisely, with the True Word Dragon Lord Timur.
A monster that pursued its objective with obsession, even after suffering fatal wounds.
Even though Heaven and Earth Resonance was a destined outcome, regardless, it was hard for Yul to feel even the slightest sympathy for the Sea Dragon Tribe.
‘If even Sea Dragons can be hunted, then it really is a terrifying weapon.’
A weapon that had slain beings on the level of True Word Dragon Lords. A weapon enchanted to strike without fail.
It didn’t seem necessary to take that risk head-on.
“Understood. I’ll keep it in mind.”
“How many ships can the sea elves prepare? Since the ships in the Rainini Archipelago are not for combat...”
“No. I won’t be sending a fleet. I’ll handle it myself.”
“Ah……! Understood.”
Yul organized his priorities.
First, he must find Arurion. If the Kraken is tracking him, he will dispose of the Kraken. Then, he will take Arurion to the Healing Spring.
In the meantime, the Sea Succession Church, busy gathering fleets, would also need to be smashed.
There were choices in how to do that. The first was to crush them head-on with overwhelming force.
That would certainly destroy the Sea Succession Church by making humans feel utterly powerless, but if civilian casualties rose, fear and resentment toward Yul would also grow.
For Yul, who needed to increase the number of believers in the long term, whether that was the right approach required thought.
There was still time. The more urgent matter was Arurion.
Yul was the type to repay favors. If Arurion had calculated all this when he readily handed over the Island of Boundaries, he would be a master strategist, but judging by how casually he had given it away, he was simply a straightforward good man.
And Yul did not want him to fall to the kraken.
“First, I’ll go rescue Arurion.”
A few days later, Yul went to find Sildoren. Sildoren had largely recovered from starvation and his injuries.
“I’m going to look for Arurion Phantarey. Where did you last separate from him?”
“Ah, if you could bring a map…….”
“That won’t be necessary.”
Yul grabbed him as if lifting the hunter Bjorn back in the Arctic.
“H-huh?”
“We’ll talk while flying. Guide me properly.”
Immediately after, Yul reverted to his true form through Polymorph and took hold of him firmly.
“H-huh???”
-Let’s go.
After confirming that a telekinetic barrier was properly formed around Sildoren, Yul gained altitude.
“Th-this is j-just what is happening…….”
Sildoren turned his head and looked into Yul’s eyes. Six pupils gazed down coldly, sending shivers through his entire body.
“You told me to guide you. F-from where we disappeared…… To think the Rainini Archipelago is receding at such incredible speed...! It’s that way!”
Sildoren kept pointing out directions. Since they were retracing the last known route, their path curved somewhat, but speed solved that problem.
And then Yul spotted it in the distance—a storm behaving in an abnormal way.
‘There.’