She spent a few minutes listening in on the crew’s theories about her, most of which seemed to agree she was more than she seemed, before another interesting tidbit popped up. In addition to what seemed to be a growing pool of bets about her true nature, a number of sailors had their money on the theory that she really was an Emissary, but for some previously unknown advanced race of magical beings in an undetermined far-off land.
Eve rather liked that idea. She’d like to one day meet this mysterious civilization of manahearts.
The gossip dried up fairly quickly as the day shift took to their duties steering the ship and optimizing the sails for minor changes in the wind and the flow of the Ilv. Eve stretched and pushed herself to her feet, working out the stiffness in her back from a night spent leaning against the wooden mast.
As soon as she surveyed the dawn-lit banks, the Defiant practically raced to the port side rail to check another item off her bucket list.
The Cherry Woods stretched all the way to the Ilv’s eastern bank. The vibrant pink of a million blossoms glowed with the orange of the rising sun. Eve didn’t question for a moment why the trees bloomed in autumn. Even a lowly peasant from the middle of nowhere knew the Cherry Woods never shed their petals, keeping their brilliant flowers even through the depths of winter.
Try as she might, not even Eve’s enhanced vision could pierce the first of the dense trees. This was no orchard, but a forest in the truest sense of the word. Just as she’d heard the tales of the eternal blossoms, she’d also heard of those foolhardy adventurers who’d wandered beneath the branches never to return. She knew, too, the stories of encroaching roots as the woods claimed yet more territory every season. Maybe in a few hundred years it would devour Ilvia itself.
Eve shuddered.
The Cherry Woods—assuming the stories were to be believed—were a view best enjoyed from a safe distance. At least the river had halted its westward expansion. She could only wonder what horrors lay hidden by its outward beauty. Eve only separated herself from the captivating view when met with an even more captivating sound: a chiming bell which could only mean one thing.
Breakfast was ready.
The door to the galley aboard Freedom’s Gale was closed as the ship’s cook distributed meals through a window, leaving the sailors to find their own place to sit and eat. As Eve claimed a spot in line to wait her turn, a certain young trellac’s voice rang out in her mind.
Why are they scared of you?
“Because I’m scary,” she answered aloud, turning to find Wes and Preston at Art’s side.
No you’re not! You’re nice!
A smile stretched across the Defiant’s face as she raised a shushing finger to her lips. “They don’t know that.”
Preston seemed to catch the gist of the partially silent conversation. “No, no, she’s terrifying. Mostly to those of us who care about her wellbeing.”
Eve playfully smacked his shoulder. “I’m not that reckless.”
“You ran headlong into a level three hundred griffin.” Wes made no effort to lower his voice, sparking a few incredulous looks from the sailors in line.
“That was to save your life!” Eve pointed at him. “And last I checked, you still owe me a scone for that.”
“You had a whole box of scones in Ilvia.”
“Yeah, but I bought those,” Eve argued. “You still owe me.”
“Okay, but—” Wes tried to protest.
“No buts,” Eve interrupted. “Once we get to Pyrindel, you’ll get me a strawberry scone or I’m giving you back to the griffin.”
“The griffin is dead.”
“Then I’ll find another one. Fair’s fair.”
“Nothing about this is fair,” Wes grumbled. “The damn thing was fireproof.”
Eve patronizingly patted him on the back. “It’s okay, buddy. You can pay for the scones with all that money the merc companies are offering you.”
“Yeah, that sounds fair,” Preston laughed. “Wes gets free enchanted gear and an entire org’s worth of resources, and Eve gets some scones.”
Eve snapped her fingers. “Exactly.”
What are scones? Are they tasty?
Judging by the chorus of facial expressions, Art sent the thought to all three of the adventurers. Preston chuckled. Wes paled. Eve grinned maniacally.
“They’re very tasty,” she said. “When we get to Pyrindel you should ask Uncle Wes to buy some for you.”
“Just what I fucking need,” Wes muttered, “a scone fiend with mind powers.”
Art, of course, didn’t need an ounce of telepathy to look up at the tall fire mage with wide-open eyes and hope on his face. Please, Uncle Wes?
Wes rubbed the bridge of his nose as he murmured a series of curses in Eve’s name. “Alright,” he eventually ceded, “scones for everyone once we get to Pyrindel.”
Eve flashed the smuggest grin she could manage before turning around just in time to reach the front of the queue. The bowl of porridge the grisly cook handed her looked less than promising. “Looks like it’s gruel in the meantime.”
“It beats travel rations,” Preston said as he and the others followed her back down the hall and up the stairs to the deck, “and it sure as hells beats skyswallower steak and Drathis’s mushrooms.”
“Hey, I cooked those steaks excellently,” Wes insisted.
“Sure you did,” Eve replied, “by the twentieth attempt.”
“And by the twenty-first I was already sick of it,” Preston added.
“You know, you’re all a bunch of ungrateful—woah…” Wes trailed off.
Eve stopped short, turning to follow the mage’s gaze over the bow of the ship.
The river was gone.
On both sides, the banks of the Ilv had retreated to but faint lines in the distance, while up ahead was but a world of blue.
The adventurers stood and gaped as all about them sailors hustled and bustled to prepare Freedom’s Gale for open water, but it wasn’t the mind-boggling expanse of azure sea stretching indomitably beyond the horizon that so captivated Eve. While Preston, Wes, and Art all stared at the limitless ocean before them, Eve’s own eyes tracked the sailors and the parrot which led them.
She noticed then, now that they’d sailed beyond a swimmable distance from the relative safety of shore, something about the sailors that hadn’t been true when they’d first embarked.
Each and every one of them, from the lowest Cabin Boy to the First Mate himself, carried a sword.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
A Business Transaction
“THEY STILL APPRAISE as Sailors, right?” Wes asked under his breath as a crewman walked by with a particularly brutal scimitar at his hip.
“Of course they do,” Preston snapped. “Who in their right mind would take the Pirate class? Surefire way to get hanged the moment you step foot into a city.”
“And Sailors don’t have combat abilities, right? I mean, why would they?”
Preston shrugged. “I’m no class scholar.”
“Then why do they have swords?”
Eve replied through a mouthful of gruel, “Why don’t we just ask?”
“Are you crazy?” Wes’s eyes shot open. “Why not just tell them we know they’re pirates?”
Eve swallowed her porridge. “Why not? They clearly aren’t trying to hide the swords from us.” She pointed at a passing Sailor. “Look, she’s got a fucking battleaxe.”
Preston grimaced. “Eve, we really should consider being a bit more delicate abou—”
“Why?” she interrupted. “They’re a bunch of tier twos with noncombat classes. Art could probably take them out.”
The hatchling perked up at the mention of his name. What’s going on?
“Nothing, Art.” Preston kneeled down to level with the young trellac. “Why don’t you head downstairs and bring Reginald some porridge?”
Okay! Art skipped across the deck on clawed feet before disappearing into the hold.
Wes turned
to Eve. “You’re the only one Art couldn’t take out.” He shivered, remembering the effects of the hatchling’s fear. “Let’s not sic him on the pirates.”
Eve shrugged, taking another bite of her rapidly cooling porridge. Wes and Preston seemed to have completely forgotten theirs.
“So what are we gonna do about the pirates?” Preston asked. “They’re clearly feeling brave if they’re arming themselves right in front of us.”
“We should start by grabbing our own weapons.” Wes gestured towards the stairs belowdecks. “If they’re armed, we should be too.”
Eve had another idea. Not even bothering to finish chewing the spoonful of gruel in her mouth, she called out to the parrot perched upon the ship’s wheel. “Hey Cap’n! What’re the swords for?”
“Squawk, sea monsters!” Abraham replied. Even he grasped a miniature cutlass in his left claw.
Eve cocked an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Best to be prepared,” the tier three parrot said.
“It’s not because you’re pirates?”
“Nope.”
Eve pointed over the bow. “And there’s a merchant ship on the horizon.”
“Have to be ready to defend ourselves,” he squawked back.
Eve rolled her eyes, jerking a thumb over her shoulder. “That man’s raising a skull-and-crossbones flag.”
“Squaaaawk, just a formality.”
“A formality?” Preston worked up the courage to join in the questioning. “What’s formal about piracy?”
“Not piracy,” the grizzly voice of the First Mate interrupted the exchange. “Think of it more like… a business transaction.”
Wes furrowed his brow. “How can you have any sort of business transaction at sword-point?”
A slight grin flashed across Eve’s face as she recalled the oddly similar sword-point transaction she’d made with the Ilvia thieves’ guild. “I can think of a few ways.”
Pete flashed a toothless grin up at the captain. “As he said, just a formality. You’ll see.”
Eve shrugged. “If you say so.” With a small Mana expenditure, she casually leapt ten feet up to the upper deck, turning to sit with her legs dangling off the side. The maneuver only spilled a few drops of porridge.
Wes’s jaw dropped. “Eve, what are you—”
“May as well watch,” she said. “I can always stop them if they do anything too evil.”
Pete’s unpatched eye widened at her nonchalant mention of taking on an entire ship’s worth of pirates single-handed.
Captain Abraham was rather less perturbed. “Don’t you worry,” he squawked at her.
Wes and Preston shared an uncomfortable look before silently agreeing not to create any more of a scene than absolutely necessary. Together they climbed to the upper deck—via the stairs rather than any fancy acrobatics—to stand at Eve’s side.
The adventurers watched in silence as the ship on the horizon grew nearer and nearer, its motion slow with the cargo that weighed it down. Eve took the opportunity to observe the crewmen of Freedom’s Gale as they went about their business. Not a one seemed to be affected by any ounce of nerves as the pirate ship approached its quarry.
It wasn’t until the first shouts from the merchant vessel reached her ears that Eve had any idea why.
“Are… are they cheering?” she asked.
“But of course,” Pete snarled back. “Why wouldn’t they be?”
“Because you’re about to rob them?” Preston followed up.
“Not them, matey,” the First Mate explained. “Ye think any one of them owns even a percent of that cargo?” He spat. “Once we take it, they’ll be free to turn right back around and go home to their families, months before they would’ve otherwise.” He smiled. “We just have to dress the part. What can an innocent Sailor do against a brutal Pirate?”
“But you’re still stealing,” Preston insisted. “Won’t the merchant company go under if they keep losing their cargo? Those Sailors would lose their jobs.”
“Who do ye think hired us? The cargo’s insured.”
Preston snorted. “You’re kidding me.”
“Aye, it be cheaper to sail a third of the way, encounter pirates, and collect the insurance money than to make the full voyage.”
Eve laughed, shaking her head. “Gods below, they’re not pirates. We’re sailing with fucking insurance scammers.”
“Shh, lass.” Pete held a finger to his lips. “It be almost time. Do yer best to look scary.” With that, he hobbled away on his peg leg, drawing a cutlass that looked decidedly dull to Eve’s eyes.
Eve didn’t even bother to stand. If the fact the merchant sailors were already bringing all their cargo up onto the deck for unloading was any indicator, the ‘pirates’ didn’t need her help. “See?” she asked the others, “looks perfectly innocent to me.”
“They’re still stealing, Eve,” Preston argued. “Just because they aren’t stealing from the people we thought they were doesn’t mean they aren’t thieves.”
“Yeah, but look how happy they are.” Wes pointed out the relieved expressions on the faces of the merchant crewmen.
Eve nodded. “I’d be happy too if I’d just learned I was going home months ahead of schedule.”
The three looked on as Captain Abraham, who had at some point obtained a parrot-sized tricorn and tiny little eye patch of his own, waved his miniature cutlass in the air as he flew overhead. “Hand over the booty!” he menacingly squawked.
Wes, apparently, had been waiting patiently for that precise moment. He roped an arm around Preston, tugging the thin healer in close. “Yeah, Preston, hand over the booty.”
Preston blushed. Eve made a show of over dramatically gagging. Wes cracked up at his own joke.
“How long were you saving that one?” Eve asked.
“Since we stepped on board,” Wes and Preston answered in unison, one with pride and one with disdain.
Eve shook her head. “And you went with booty? Couldn’t you at least have come up with something original?”
Wes scoffed with fake indignity. “No respect for the classics.”
Eve snorted. “Classics, my ass.”
“I think you mean,” Wes said as he struggled to hold back laughter, “classics my booty.”
In lieu of a witty comeback or a smack on the arm, Eve simply flashed him her best ‘I’m-upping-your-scone-debt-for-that’ look.
The conversation died down from there as the adventurers watched the amicable transfer of cargo. Eve could practically see Freedom’s Gale sinking lower into the water as it took on more of the ill-gotten goods. It was roughly halfway into the ‘business transaction’ that one particular package caught the Defiant’s eye, or rather, her ear.
“Do you hear that?” She pointed at an otherwise unremarkable wooden crate from which a deep melodic humming sound seemed to resonate.
Preston and Wes both shook their heads no.
“Weird,” Eve continued. “I wonder what that is.”
“I’ll tell you exactly what that is,” Preston said. “That’s a side quest waiting to happen, and you’re not going anywhere near it.”
“Come on,” Eve protested. “What else are we going to do in the two weeks to Pyrindel?”
“I don’t know, maybe have some peace and quiet for once?”
“That’s boring,” she argued. “Besides, if you can’t hear it, the pirates probably can’t either.”
Preston sighed. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”
“Think of the exp! I haven’t earned a single point in weeks.”
Wes took Preston’s side. “Eve, we have a tournament we’re trying to get to. We can’t waste two months sailing around the world searching for whatever crappy dungeon that crate’s gonna lead us to.”
“We’ll just take a peek,” Eve insisted. “If it looks like it’ll be some long side quest, we can just… walk away.” She spoke that last through gritted teeth as if the words physically pained her.
/> Without giving the others a chance to further protest, Eve pushed herself to her feet, her sights set on the stairway to the cargo hold.
Wes and Preston shared a concerned look before scurrying after her.
The candlelit gloom of the bustling hold was no obstacle to the glowing manaheart as she deftly maneuvered around the line of sailors carrying crates and rolling barrels to be stowed and catalogued by the ship’s bookkeeper. None of the crewmen dared question their high-level passengers, and the quartermaster proved too enraptured by his ledger to even notice their passing. It was all the same to Eve; they couldn’t have stopped her if they’d wanted to.
The greatest challenge, as it turned out, wasn’t in finding the mysterious crate—its deep hum sounded as a beacon to Eve’s manaheart ears—but in unearthing it. Truth be told, Eve wasn’t entirely sure how the crew of Freedom’s Gale had managed to bury it beneath so many other crates and pallets of cargo in the few minutes it had taken her to reach the cargo hold.
Unlike her passage, Eve’s rearrangement of their carefully stacked booty earned her more than a few sour looks from the sailors who’d no doubt have to clean up after her search. Wes and Preston joined in the chorus of disapproving looks.
“Couldn’t you have just asked what’s inside? I’m sure they’ve already tallied most of—”
“Not those,” chimed in the nasal voice of the quartermaster. “Portside is tallied, starboard isn’t. The question is, who are you to disrupt my system?”
“The most destructive force known to man,” Wes muttered, “a curious adventurer.”
Eve shoved the final crate off, finally freeing the mystery package. “The damn thing’s humming,” she said, drawing a dagger and wedging it under the lid. “I’m pretty sure cargo’s not supposed to do that.”
The quartermaster adjusted his spectacles and leaned in. “I believe not.”
With a simple flip of her knife, Eve popped the lid free, carelessly tossing it to the floor with inhuman Strength. The front panel of the crate fell to the floor as she tore it loose. The humming continued.
This Class is Bonkers! (This Trilogy is Broken (A Comedy Litrpg Adventure) Book 2) Page 15