Chapter 3: Voyage.
This wasn't Lee's first time on a ship. In fact, it was the second. The first one was when after the Phnom Penh scam he chased Lisa from Cambodia to Bangkok, then to Istanbul and afterwards through half of Europe until he finally caught her on a cruise liner in the Adriatic sea.
Even after all these lives he could still clearly remember the dumbfounded look on her pretty face when she realized he was the creator of the item in her backpack, and it wasn't some otherworldly ancient treasure. That was how they first met, well, face to face.
Seeing her vanishing stature from the hotel balcony in the capital of Cambodia didn't count, though it was the reason he chased her without a second thought, and not the fake feng shui compass she stole – he could reproduce those en masse if needed.
Now though, Lee and the other two members of his new family were on a wooden vessel, a large three-mast ship named Isabella. He had no clue about seafaring and how one should categorize the ship – caravel, barque or schooner – to him, they were all the same. Even the only clue he got from Tess was completely useless.
Upon boarding, his stepmother, slightly out of breath, asked him with the sweetest smile, "Are you excited? We'll travel on this big-ass boat from now on! Isn't it great?"
The term big-ass boat was fine, Lee didn't care. Just like his stepmother, after rushing for several days straight on foot, he was delighted to finally rest. Of course, she was the one rushing, and he was merely dangling in the sling on her chest, but as it turned out, for him nothing changed. On the ship he was almost in similar state, except the sensation of swaying was caused by the sea waves.
The most annoying part was that the stepmother never let him out of her grasp, literally. Lee longed to finally lie on a solid ground, even if it was a wooden deck, and start practicing the silly toddler exercises he invented in the previous life. Unfortunately his physical advancement had to wait.
At first, Captain Freewon was delighted to accept both Tess and Alan on board. Turns out the two were some kind of big shots in the Cloud Kingdom and part of something called the Royal Council.
Alan used his status to commandeer the ship, but from what Lee could tell, the captain complied too eagerly. Clearly, he, similar to the crew, was long bored out of their mind on the anchored Isabella, waiting for the royal army to return.