Release that Witch

Tilly poured her magic into the flying magic stone then jumped into the air, from where she could overlook the entire deck.

The crew of the Charming Beauty was mostly formed out of experienced sailors, so after the initial panic subsided one after another they picked up their weapons and grouped together to fight against the demonic beasts to gradually guide them to the aft of the ship. It was obvious that it would be impossible for them to defeat such a large number of enemies with their strength alone, so their only hope lay in the witches that were together with them on board.

When Ashes joined the battle the situation quickly changed.

She was like a gust of wind, causing all the monsters to cry and scream as she passed. Any demonic beasts daring to face her sword met with a clean cut; leaving with severed limbs scattered all across the deck.

Unwilling to fall behind, Andrea released one arrow after another. Her magic longbow allowed her to use any object at hand as an arrow and release it with an alarming power and accuracy. So she rarely prepared a conventional feather arrow, but rather a bag of glass beads. The glass beads were solid enough that it could cross a distance of twenty paces and penetrate the demonic beast’s head, turning the brain into a mass of paste, only allowing them to weakly twitch before turning limp, without even managing to release a single miserable cry.

Breeze and Shavi pushed their way back and forth over the deck and rescued the injured sailors. Under the protection of an invisible barrier, the demonic beasts weren’t even able to come close to them.

Even on seeing the demonic beasts quickly being beheaded, and their number rapidly beginning to dwindle, Tilly still did not dare to relax.

These fish-shaped monsters were clearly not enough to cause the violent shaking that the Charming Beauty had felt at the beginning. Instead, it was as if there was a huge monster hitting the bottom of the ship from below. Without the protection from Molly’s servant, the force would have been strong enough to turn the ship into a piles of broken wood floating in the sea if it managed to hit the ship a few more time. At that time, the witches would just barely be able to protect themselves while probably only a few seamen would be able to escape ending up in a fish belly.

Just like she had expected, the moment Ashes’ sword had cut down the last demonic beast, a gigantic shadow, which was much too large to be a fish, appeared in the water in front of the ship’s hull. It quickly approached them and once again bumped into the Charming Beauty.

“Be careful!” She shouted.

Her voice had hardly fallen when the shadow once again passed beneath the bottom of the ship, causing the sailboat to start violently shaking. Two masts began to issue a series of cracking sounds, as if they would come crashing down at any moment. Fortunately, the shadow didn’t attempt another attack, and instead quickly disappeared into the depths from where it could attack the Charming Beauty with its back, shaping its knife and fork for a satisfying meal.

After dropping down back on the deck, Tilly quickly summarized the situation.

“We must force it out of the sea, otherwise sooner or later this damn monster will manage to sink the ship.” Ashes declared with a frown.

“I’ll try it,” Shavi said. “Since it’s coming from beneath when it hits the bottom of the ship, as long as it gets in close enough, I could use my barrier to stop it.”

“Oh Emperor of the Sea above,” Old Jack cried out as he wiped the sweat from his forehead, “If it’s really as huge as Lady Tilly said, I’m afraid that ordinary attacks would be unlikely to work against it. So how would you kill it, even if you are able to force it out of the sea-“

“Just let me do it,” Andrea combed her loose hair back behind her ears as she showed them a confident smile. “There is no enemy able to resist my full power within a distance of ten steps.”

It wasn’t long before the shadow appeared again, but this time it had changed direction and was coming at them from the stern of the Charming Beauty.

Monitoring the situation from high up in the air, Tilly immediately called out a warning. When Shavi heard her she quickly ran into position and jumped off the ship. Previously she had firmly tied a hemp rope around her waist, while the other end was in Ashes’ hand, who could use it to control Shavi’s falling height.

As the shadow approached, Shavi quickly opened her barrier, splitting the dusky sea water, as if it was separated by something invisible.

As the monster rushed into the barrier, its huge bulk stopped and Shavi let out a pressured groan, her hands were hanging down beside her body, as if she was using an enormous amount of strength. Looking down, the shadow beneath her feet was rapidly expanding, and the water was rising violently.

“Quickly pull her up!” Tilly shouted as she rushed downwards.

Using all her power, Ashes single-handed pulled on her end of the rope. The moment Shavi fell on the deck, a huge sea monster came roaring out of the water, causing waves which made the Charming Beauty sway heavily. The monster looked like a mixture between a shark and an octopus, with a triangular head which was covered with several tentacles, all of which shot straight toward the deck.

Even without hearing its cry it became clear that the unfathomable impact has made it incomparably angry, as it let its adult thigh sized tentacles rain down onto the ship, trying to break everything apart, but even from the beginning up until the end it had no way to penetrate Shavi’s defense.

“Andrea!” Ashes bent down, entwined her fingers and formed a step with her hands.

“Coming,” the latter set a foot onto Ashes’ palms and shouted, “Give me everything you’ve got!”

Thrown by extraordinary power into the air, Andrea turned into an arc and within the blink of an eye, she had already appeared above the monster’s head.

She summoned her magical longbow, pulling the string to its fullest, unexpectedly there were flashes of light breaking out between the bow and its string. Rather than flashes of light, it seemed as if the sun had actually come out from behind the clouds, reflecting across the sea’s surface in a golden luster.

“Go!”

The light flashed, and with an ear-piercing cry an arrow, made purely out of magic, it drilled right into the monster body like a strike of thunder. The monster’s gray-brown skin suddenly swelled, and golden cracks appeared all over its body, before finally, with a loud explosion, it shattered.

The huge explosion created ripples across the surface of the sea. Its blood, which was as black as ink, dyed the sea a pitch-black, while viscera came falling from the sky like rain. The previously attacking tentacles all curled up and sunk back into the sea together with pieces of the monster’s blown up head.

Andrea crashed into the sea.

“Ah… Help, help I can’t swim! Guru, who… who’s going to pull me out?!”

Ashes glanced toward the seemingly tired Shiva before she helplessly sighed. “She is indeed only a handsome fool,” she said then unhooked the sword on her back and jumped into the sea to swim to Andrea’s side.

As the threat of a sunken ship was lifted, Tilly finally felt some relief. At least she no longer had to worry how they were going to travel on their own to Border Town.

But just at that moment, she suddenly felt something cold on her nose, raising her head, she could not help but freeze on the spot.

She could see snowflakes falling from the gray sky, flying around like white fairies, filling her entire field of view.

“This… is snow?” Tilly asked in disbelief as she looked at the melted water on top of her hand, “Graycastle has snow during autumn?”

“Well, it’s like I said. The further West we go, the colder it becomes,” One Eyed Jack said as he pulled out his pipe, “It seems you are really returning toward an abyss of suffering.”

Tilly was unable to answer, only showing a dignified look. Breeze had originally come from the Kingdom of Dawn, which had a favorable climate throughout the year, while Jack was born within the Fjords, where even during the strongest winter it was difficult for them to see heavy snowfall. But for Graycastle’s Western Region, snow had a special meaning.

Her court tutor had once said, that once the snow began to fall it wouldn’t stop for a long time. Just like the Devil’s fanfare it symbolized the beginning of the Months of Demons and would only settle after the Months of Demon had come to its end.

Although the beginning of the Months of Demons isn’t at a fixed date, generally it won’t start before the beginning of winter, can it be that Border Town is already under the attack of demonic beasts? Moreover, those Sea Ghost would usually only appear East of the Burning Fire Island, but right now there are even traces of them at the most southern corner of the Vortex Sea. I wonder if those merchant ships sailing between the Fjords and the Four Kingdoms are also under attack from these monsters.

Tilly was starting to feel more and more worried.

Navigating through the whirling snow for two more days, they finally saw the hazy coastline on top of the horizon.