Warlock Apprentice

After sending Helen away, Angor took out Lucas’ logbook and began reading again.

According to Helen, the route they were traveling across now used to have all kinds of bad weather. Perhaps they were in luck this time since none of these happened.

“Maybe I’m worrying too much…”

He rubbed his temples and closed the book, but then he saw the book’s title again.

[A logbook written by the most faithful captain during the Age of Gold]

He wondered if this Lucas man described himself as “faithful” because faith was something he lacked. But supposed that Lucas was a big liar, it was still possible that the stories in the book were real, and Lucas desperately wanted people to believe him, so he used all sorts of embellishing words.

Angor shook his head. He still didn’t have enough clues to prove the reliability of what Lucas mentioned.

He put the book away and began working on the draft of “flying boots” again until the sunlight gave place to tranquil nightfall as well as glittering seawater under the stars.

He sat back and examined the pair of black boots drawn on his paper, which was decorated with dark gold runes that gave it a mysterious theme.

“Never done shoemaking before… Guess I’ll make something simple as a start.”

From his bracelet, he took out a number of materials according to his crafting plan and started tanning the hides to be used later.

Someone outside yelled loudly and interrupted his work.

He walked onto the balcony and was soon astonished by some brilliant light in his view.

“Tweet!” Toby joined him and was happily flying around him upon seeing the amazing sight.

The sea was already bright upon reflecting the starlight. But now, it was made even more dazzling when several shining loops were emerging from under the surface. When looking from above, the sea almost looked like a dish full of sweet donuts and candy shards.

From the occasional comments from the sailors, Angor learned that he was looking at “Death Loops”. The glowing rings were actually shown by a certain creature called the “grim jellyfish”. The creature itself was frail and easy to kill, but those who made contact with it would receive a deadly poison that couldn’t be cured by any known means.

There were many grim jellyfish roaming around at this hour and showing off their bright colors. This was also how this area got its name, the Death Loop.

Helen came to the deck area as well, but she was issuing more orders to the sailors rather than enjoying the sight. They would soon enter Wintertide, where everybody needed warm clothes to stay alive. Also, they had to check on the icebreaker at the bottom of the vessel and examine anything prone to freeze as fast as they could.

The sailors moaned in disappointment and returned to their posts.

Angor jumped from the balcony and landed beside Helen, which startled her a bit.

“Good evening, sir.” Helen saluted.

“We’re not far from Wintertide, I take it?”

“Yes. The captain has slowed down the ship so that we have enough time to do the last check-through. We’ll enter Wintertide in an hour.”

Angor looked around and failed to notice any marks that suggested a change of route.

“Officer Helen, I’ll go and draw something on the ship later, which will help the environmental temperature stay constant. In order not to damage the ship, I can only use a shallow engraving which will persist for about two weeks.”

“Thank you, sir! That’s enough for the ship to make it out of Wintertide.”

Angor nodded, took out a bottle of Gargoyle Blood Ink, and quickly got to work. He wasn’t going to enclose the entire ship inside the effect of the rune. Sailors still needed unaffected spots to observe the weather.

The rune wasn’t difficult to draw, but it still took some time because there were a lot of places to cover on the ship.

He suddenly heard someone yelling again, and all the sailors around him started running. At the same time, The Limpet made a sharp turn and gained speed.

He saw Helen coming on hurried steps who explained the situation.

“Sir, Tulu warned us that a terrible hurricane is approaching.”

Tulu was a young man from a fishing village who told Angor about Nayah the Charmer.

“You sure about it?”

“Yes, Tulu can predict weather changes rather accurately.” Helen nodded. “This is why Captain Erwin recruited him. Since then, almost all his predictions were correct.”

Angor frowned. A hurricane meant the ship might be forced to change course and possibly stumble into somewhere dangerous.

“Sir-sir, can you…” Helen showed a pleading look.

To Angor, it was possible to keep the ship steady using gravity power, but he might not keep it up for very long against the might of nature.

“How long until we reach Wintertide?”

“Half an hour if we go at full speed, sir.”

“How long do we have until the hurricane strikes?”

It seemed he didn’t need to wait for an answer this time. Both he and Helen looked to one side and saw a swaying tornado coming right at their position.

Angor had seen such disasters that wreaked cities in certain movies, but this monstrosity was several times bigger.

“I-I don’t think we have much time left, sir,” said Helen.

Angor quickly made a mental calculation and realized that the tornado was going to affect The Limpet in about two minutes, which meant he had to keep the ship safe using gravity power for at least half an hour.

This seemed to be impossible. There was no way his mana reserve had enough energy to fight against the rage of mother nature.

“Helen, how far are we from the other two routes?”

“We-we’re heading straight toward Wintertide right now. It will take us two hours to change course and enter Summerdew. And five hours for the Windless Sea.”

“No way back then… Keep going for Wintertide, but I’m not sure I can make it through this.” Angor looked at Toby. “It’s time to try our best.”

“Tweet!”

“There’s another way, which is to use that wind,” a man’s voice suddenly spoke from behind them.

Helen turned around and saw Erwin coming.

“Captain, you mean we are going to use THAT?” Helen pointed to the looming tornado.

“Right. While the hurricane will prevent us from going for Wintertide, we can follow that wind to go here.” He took out a map and put his finger on the Summerdew Ridge. “Telling from the wind flows, we can get to Summerdew quicker than estimated.”

“It’s possible but…” Helen frowned. “Is the wind going to keep pushing us there? You know that everything at Devil’s Water tends to change and surprise us.”

“We can only hope that doesn’t happen then.” Erwin shook his head and sighed.

They both looked at Angor, hoping for the final decision.

“I don’t know which choice is better,” said Angor, “but I do know that there’s a Summerdew who’ll attack us, no?”

“It’s likely. However, we can try explaining the situation to her, and she might let us go if she’s in a fine mood. I’ve heard uninvited ships including mortal ships that traveled through Summerdew Ridge unharmed,” said Erwin.

Helen nodded. “Ships only get attacked if they wander too far inside. We can remain around the edge of Summerdew Ridge and wait out the bad weather, then we can return to Death Loop and go for Wintertide.”

“Still, there are cases where people were killed as soon as they entered Summerdew’s territory. Again, let’s hope for the best.” Erwin added.

Angor glanced at the tornado, which just got a lot closer. In fact, he wasn’t sure if he could protect the ship against that thing at all.

“Alright. We’re heading to Summerdew Ridge.”

Helen and Erwin immediately went to give orders, while Angor remained behind and gazed at the coming twister.

It wasn’t a rare sight to run into such a thing at Devil’s Water. But still, it was unlucky for them to come across the hazard at this critical moment.