The squidolphin gently attached herself to the bottom of the ship, revealing yet another interesting capability—suction cups. All of the tentacles attached themselves to the hull, securely fastening the squidolphin to it—at which point we were turned around sharply as our target began to drag us, slowing in the process.
“Gran’rag rarra?” Even through the hull, we could hear the cargo ship’s captain call out. I’d need to find some way to learn the language of Shadow. If we were going to fight a war against this empire, we’d need to understand what our prisoners said. After all, there would be many prisoners.
“Shall we?” Stacey asked and, without waiting for my reply, engaged the tentacles. “We shall…”
“Narda’elok! Narda’elok!” The screams of terror drowned out the splintering of timber. To my immense surprise, Nautilus didn’t hurry to deal with the hull of the ship. A ‘Durability’ bar appeared and began to crawl very slowly, as if unwillingly, towards zero. The squidolphin’s tentacles hammered at the hull without pause, but the actual result was not the way it seemed. I had thought that it would be enough to approach the enemy ship and deal one blow to it to sink the target, but the in-game reality turned out to be quite a bit stricter. If you wanted to sink a ship, you had to destroy her hull’s Durability first, which could regenerate too it seemed!
“They’re repairing their ship from inside,” Stacey exclaimed, playing the role of Captain Obvious. “At least they can’t do anything to us, since we’re…”
Your ship has been damaged…Two tentacles have been frozen…Damage percentage is…
“Let’s go!” I ordered, taking the controls away from Anastaria. The Mages in charge of security on the target ship weren’t sleeping on their jobs—nor were they afraid of our monster, nor did they use their mana for nothing. All in all, all these ‘nors’ came out to 10% damage to our ship.
“Depth seven meters…eight…ten…that’s it, we’re at our limit!” Stacey helped me keep track of the readings while I steered the ship. The mages were sending giant blocks of ice onto us from above, which I was maneuvering to avoid. In addition to the damage that each block of ice did to the squidolphin, it froze our ship and, weighing her down, forced her deeper. For a Level 1 ship like Nautilus, diving too deep could cause her to rupture and be completely destroyed.
“I could be wrong, but I think they’re chasing us,” Anastaria pointed out, observing the cargo ship’s actions. She had abandoned her prior course and was following us as if the ten meters of water between us did nothing to hide us. In order to make sure, I changed our course several times and watched as the cargo ship turned to follow each time.
“Oh! We’ve been repaired as well,” Stacey said with surprise and immediately explained what had happened: “It cost us two barrels of fish. All that’s left is…Be careful!”
The girl’s scream coincided with a sharp maneuver to the right, which I made in order to avoid an enormous iceberg. Not only could they see us—they were targeting and trying to destroy us!
“When will their mana run out?” I managed to mutter as the water overhead suddenly grew dark and a gigantic chunk of ice descended right onto the center of the squidolphin. My head exploded in a hundred rainbow shivers, my vision grew dark, yet before losing consciousness, I managed to see two notifications:
Nautilus has been destroyed. Due to your lack of insurance, your ship cannot be restored.
You have lost your personal ship.
Darkness…
“…pull him….”
“…you go…I’ll deal with him…”
“…pull us out! Hurry…”
Snippets of a shouted conversation pierced the darkness around me, but I couldn’t summon the strength to concentrate on them. I had just lost Nautilus. A minor trifle like respawning didn’t upset me one bit. Although, I did feel bad that Draco had lost ten levels…
“Where did this happen to you?” Ehkiller’s voice sounded beside me, yanking me from the comfortable darkness of non-existence back into the game. Through my closed eyes, I could see the various auras from the debuffs that were currently on my character. The lengthy list included ‘Stunned’ which lasted thirty minutes and caused the world to spin like a helicopter around me.
“At sea. Mahan found a Level 1 ship. We tried to attack a Level 12 ship and this is what came of it. They dropped an iceberg on us. Mahan’s Totem and I dodged it, but he…It’s a good thing it didn’t flatten us.”
“Are you going dispell his debuffs or is he just going to lie there like a ragdoll for the next half hour?”
“I don’t have a way to dispell them. I don’t have my Paladin powers, remember? But I’m glad you’re here. Tell me, how’s that thing I asked you to do coming along?”
“Now I’ve seen it all! My own daughter—instead of visiting me in real life, prefers to meet me in-game. What is the world coming to?”
“Dad!”
“All right, all right. The business is moving along fine. They promised to have a decision for us this week. You know yourself how the bureaucracy likes to drag its feet. When are you going to tell Mahan? If I were him, I’d have asked you a long time ago…”
At this point, the light waved a farewell and darkness descended upon me to melancholy music. I wonder what I was supposed to have asked Anastaria a long time ago…
“Wake up, Mahan,” I came out of non-being within a second. The debuffs did not leave a ‘hangover’—the bubble removed anything that the system considered a negative aura. “Have you recovered?”
“Where…? What’s with the ship?” I didn’t want to let on that I had accidentally overheard Stacey’s conversation with her father. What if it was merely the fruits of my feverish imagination?
“We’re in Altameda. Your ship has been destroyed. Evolett called five minutes ago. Grygz is super pissed with us for not showing up to the captains’ meeting. Especially since he’d invited us personally. Dan, please forgive me—I never imagined that it would work out this way…Do you want me to help you catch another squidolphin? I’m sure that there are plenty others swimming around the seas of Barliona…Dan, are you listening to me?”
“Give me a minute…”
“As if! By the way, that’s a pretty useful phrase you came up with. Anyway, don’t dwell on it, please. The loss of Nautilus is my fault and I’ll make it up to you. From now on, my Vraanakush is yours. I’ll file the necessary documents when we return to Cadis.”
“What does your ship have to do with this? That was a squidolphin!”
“I understand. Again, forgive me. I miscalculated its strength. And please note—I’m not saying that you agreed to the attack yourself. It was my idea and I’ll hold myself responsible for it. Get up—we need to go to Cadis.”
“I’m not going anywhere today,” I cut her off. “Since we already missed our meeting with the pirates, I don’t feel like doing anything until tomorrow. You have no idea what it cost me to get that ship. I had almost reached Cadis! And if the pirates had seen the squidolphin, I could have received new quests!”
“You think I don’t understand that, Dan?” Stacey parried. “I blame myself fully, but what’s done is done. Let’s look at the bright side—now we know how to kill the squidolphin.”
“Do we now?” I couldn’t help but remark sarcastically. “Nautilus was a minor squidolphin. We’re planning on hunting a real, mature, enormous monster. It’ll drag our ship underwater without even noticing what level it is.”
“That’s precisely why I want to go to Cadis right now. I have an idea and I couldn’t care less that it contradicts what I wrote in the wager note. Plinto will get his Tear after all.”
“What is your idea then?” I couldn’t help but grow curious. No one had canceled our quest to catch the monster, and Renox still had to be saved, so I could whine and mourn my ship’s passing some other time.
“We know how the squidolphin attacks. It swims up underneath and tries to pull the vessel to the seafloor. But what if we
do the following…”
Listening to Stacey, I couldn’t help but be astonished at her daring. She had learned every little lesson she could from our battle with the Shadow cargo ship—she even pulled up the video she had recorded and pointed out the illuminated porthole which the enemy had used to track us. If we had closed that window somehow, the squidolphin would still be alive…But all right. Anastaria was right—why cry over something that was gone? However, if I manage to catch another squidolphin, Stacey won’t be allowed to set foot on her.
“You’re mad!” Grygz retorted when Anastaria related her idea to him. “The sea won’t stand for this. We shall be smashed against the first cliffs in our path.”
“Does the wisdom of the mighty pirate really submit to tradition?” Stacey asked with surprise. “You do understand that this is our only chance to catch the monster?”
“There has to be another way!”
“There isn’t. The squidolphin can drag a ship down to the bottom like a turtle snapping up a pond lily. If we don’t bind the ships together into one whole, the pirates will forever remain a secondary power in this part of the ocean. If that suits you, then…”
“We were never a secondary power!” Grygz exclaimed enraged. “If we have to break with tradition to catch the monster—I will do it! All of the smiths and shipwrights of Cadis are at your command! Do what you must—tomorrow we set sail and I will personally lead the monstrosity that you will cobble together! The ships allocated to the hunting fleet are moored at the second wharf.”
Anastaria’s idea was as simple as 2+2. The squidolphin dragged ships down to the seabed as if they were pond lilies. That was a given. Consequently, it could take two ships at the same time too—but with a little effort. But even for a monster of the deep it would be incredibly difficult to pull down three ships at once. Therefore, if we bound together four ships—to be safe—there wasn’t a squidolphin out there that could take them to the sea floor. The monster would have to attach itself to the hull of each ship separately and hammer at it with its tentacles. And that’s when we’d give it an icy welcome…
The most difficult step in Stacey’s plan was binding the ships together. They would have to be attached so tightly to each other that even if one ship was dragged underwater—the others would go with it. For that we needed smiths and many kilometers of thick chains with hoisting winches. None of this was impossible, however, so an hour later the Cadis wharf was bustling with work as the shipwrights created a four-decked ship, with all the decks at one level.
The captains whom Grygz had put under our command wept as holes for chains were drilled into their beloved vessels. And every gang of four captains cast lots to see which ship would be the most unlucky—Stacey had been taken with the idea of making a porthole for observation by hacking one into the hull of a ship and glazing it with a magical shield. Doing this caused the ship’s Durability to drop by 20%, but everyone understood the need to observe what the squidolphin was up to, so they stayed silent and accepted their fate.
The work went on into the night, and in the morning the townspeople of Cadis awoke to find six enormous conglomerate vessels of four ships each. Butterfly and Vraanakush did not go untouched, being bound to the ships of Grygz and Calran. From the perspective of power, this was our flagship and the vessel we placed most faith in.
“The ordinance has arrived,” announced Evolett when a portal appeared and began disgorging players. Mages, Druids, Hunters—Evolett had brought everyone who could do damage from a distance. Once more, we’d had to pony up for a portal, since the Kartossian scrolls were only effective in the territory of that Empire and couldn’t transport anyone to the Free Lands.
“And here comes our ordinance,” I said, when the stream of Kartossians ended and our boys from Malabar began to arrive. I didn’t want to invite strangers, so our side consisted only of fifty warriors. However, almost all of them were at Level 200. Basically, I doubt that the sea creature would be very happy to see them.
Despite the realities of life, in my heart of hearts I hoped that the squidolphin we were about to set out after was the same kind of ship like Nautilus and I could get a chance at ‘saddling’ her. With this goal in mind, we stored ten barrels of fish in the hold of Stacey’s ship. Who knows—maybe they’d come in handy. All in all, we were well prepared.
“Captain, we are ready to set sail!” Lom reported when we had taken our stations. With Grygz’ and Calran’s agreement, Anastaria—as the plan’s author—took over the command of our squadron. To do this, all of the ships’ steering wheels had been moved to our vessel and connected to the rudders with magic. I do love magical games—there’s never any problem with technical details.
“Full steam ahead!” Stacey ordered, turning into the same girl who had wrecked my Nautilus. I guess Evolett’s thirst for the sea runs in the family.
Over the next two days that we spent wandering around the ocean looking for the squidolphin, I managed to learn to hate the sea. The sea, the sea, the sea again and some more sea. And endless waves, tossing the ship up and down. Then a calm and then more waves. Repeat x times, until you’re utterly nuts. We passed through all the points where ships had vanished previously, but encountered nothing. One time a sail appeared on the horizon, but the captain of that vessel wisely decided to avoid our armada and fled before we could take a closer look at him. I hoped that that wasn’t the same cargo ship that had sunk my Nautilus—I’m never opposed to an act of revenge.
“We have a day left,” Grygz said in a torpid voice, heading into his cabin. “If we do not encounter the squidolphin in the next day, I will hand both of you over to Geranika…It’ll be some small compensation for all the holes you’ve put in my ships.”
The pirate leader had almost reached his cabin when the creaking of the rigging was drowned out by a thunderous ringing:
DONG! DONG! DONG!
“All hands on deck!” Not a trace of lethargy remained in Grygz’s voice. “Man your stations!”
Three tolls of the magic bell meant only one thing—we had found the target of our expedition…
Chapter Twelve. The Battle and its Aftermath
“TARGET straight ahead!” reported the player we’d assigned to the viewing porthole. His task was simple—report everything that the underwater creature does, where it goes and what it’s about to do. All six of our ‘squadrons’ had players like this, who reported through their amulets to the captains. Even though this caused a lot of noise over the ‘airwaves,’ the information was invaluable. “Distance—who the hell knows! Depth is 50 meters and it’s moving incredibly fast. It’s headed in our direction but not surfacing. This beast is enormous! It’s a real doozy!”
“Doozy?” Calran asked Anastaria in puzzlement.
“A hundred meters,” the girl explained. “Maybe longer—but a more precise estimate is unnecessary.”
“What a pithy word,” Grygz nodded his approval. “I’ll need to remember it.”
“Twenty tentacles on one side, fifteen on the other—something’s chewed at it a bit!” the lookout went on with his report. “The monster’s stopped right before us. I get the impression that it’s looking for a target. Sending a projection now…”
The amulets were working perfectly and in several moments, several steps next to Grygz, there appeared a 3D spatial grid in the middle of which floated the squidolphin.
“A real doozy,” Grygz concluded meaningfully and I could not help but agree with him. Nautilus didn’t even come close to this beast—I’d never seen a creature of this size in Barliona. “So this is what the monster looks like…”
Unlike the squidolphin I was already familiar with, the current member of this species had a number of further characteristics—there were fins along her spine and stomach which it seemed would allow her to break ships; her tentacles terminated in what looked like claws or fingers, and bristled with hooks in addition to their suction cups. And that was only what I could see of her additional weaponry. I wa
s afraid to imagine what remained hidden inside this miracle of the seas…
“The monster’s too far. I can’t get a read on its properties,” the lookout continued. “Attention! It’s headed for squadron number three! Tell them to prepare for collision!”
The third squadron, which consisted of four pirate ships, was one of our weakest links. Only one of the ships was at Level 10, the others were barely Level 7. After the sinking of Nautilus, I took a look at the distribution of ships in Barliona and almost growled with rage—it began at Level 1 and ended at Level 20. This meant that by attacking that Level 12 cargo ship while at Level 1, we were quite consciously committing suicide. We had had no chances of surviving. When I showed her this part of the manual, Anastaria grimaced guiltily and confessed that she was actually quite familiar with this aspect of the game, but had reckoned on us calmly escaping underwater. This had turned out to be a failure and she again offered I take her ship as partial compensation. I had to refuse once again—I didn’t feel like having to deal with an enormous chunk of wood. I’d rather wait half a year, solve all the current problems and find myself a new squidolphin. But I did make the necessary notes in the margins…
“Thirty meters until collision! Ten! Contact!”
The squadron of ships beside us shook noticeably and rose out of the water, after which the ship nearest to us began to go under. In the projection it was clearly visible how the squidolphin had attached itself to two ships at once with her tentacles and began to gnaw at the hull, trying to tear it to pieces.
“I’ve got a readout of the properties!” the lookout went on as if nothing had happened. “Sending it now…”
The Karmadont Chess Set (The Way of the Shaman: Book #5) LitRPG series Page 34