Chapter 48
The Kraken thrashes about as it attacked the airship with its gigantic tentacles. Although the tentacles were incredibly fast, the airship still manages to evade every single one of them thanks to the captain’s skillful maneuvering. That said there were plenty of close calls, and if the Kraken was dealing with a regular ship then that ship would have sunk from the very first attack.
Still, the airship wasn’t totally helpless. Her crews have many steamed-powered harpoons that were powerful enough to pierce through the monster’s tough and slimy skin. There were also magicians on-board the airship that fires all types of elemental magic. Unfortunately, only powerful magic were able to cause some damage to the Kraken. The sorceress’ lightning magic was especially effective against the monster.
It was also thanks to this magic that the airship could evade unscathed until now. As a high-tier magic that’s especially powerful against water-type creatures, lightning could momentarily stun the monster every time it was hit. If the airship could only depend on its harpoons then it would have not have injured the Kraken as much as it did.
However, the Kraken was not a legendary monster for no reason, its towering frame and giant tentacles was definitely a force to reckon with. It might not be as powerful as a titan but it’s still a very dangerous monster that could never be underestimated. Moreover, it’s on its element which gave it a ton of advantage.
“Amazing… To think that there would be a day that I would see such a legendary monster up close,” Pina softly whispered as she stared at the Kraken’s mountain like body.
“You seemed to be enjoying yourself? Are you not afraid?” Miranda asked while holding on the steel rail tightly.
“Of course I’m afraid. But I’m also feeling excited right now,” Pina admitted. “It’s not often that one could encounter something as rare and exciting as this, you know?” She said while trying not to fall off as the airship as it maneuvers to avoid the incoming tentacles.
Miranda looked at her junior strangely, “are you sure you’re not a gnome, junior sister?” She said with helpless smile on her face.
There’s a good reason why Miranda mentioned the gnomes. These child-like creatures have the most excited look on their faces that the black-haired girl had ever seen since the start of the expedition. Yes, although they were fighting a monster that towers over them like a giant, the gnomes never showed fear. No, there’s no fear at all, just pure joy and excitement.
Heck, even the envoy Lucata had let her hair down and manned one of the harpoons to shoot at the Kraken while laughing maniacally!
“These gnomes… They had gone completely crazy!” Miranda thought rudely to herself.
“Aw… don’t be like that senior sister. There’s not many chance that we could let ourselves go like this,” Pina said with a huge smile on her face. “Just think of it as some sort of magic training. Go! Shoot you’re magic. It doesn’t matter where. The Kraken’s so big that it’ll be difficult to miss!” The red-haired girl egged further.
“Oh you…,” Miranda shook her head and turned towards Rennel who was just observing the battle from the very beginning. “Rennel, do something about you best friend. I think she’d gone crazy with all the excitement,” she complained.
Hearing the black-haired girl complaining, Rennel could only shake her head helplessly. “I think its fine to just let her be. She’ll eventually calm down once she’s had had enough,” the silver-haired girl answered.
“Besides, you don't really have to worry too much that this would continue. We couldn’t afford to toy with the Kraken like this for too long,” she said. “So you’ll just have to keep up with it just for a little while longer.”
Miranda gave the silver-haired girl a strange look when she heard her describing the fight with the Kraken as “toying.” Although everyone seemed to be having the time of their life, they were fighting with their lives at stake. And yet in the girl’s eyes, they were just playing around with the legendary monster?
“She might be the most relax of us all ever since the expedition started.”
The black-haired girl was suddenly reminded that the silver-haired girl played a huge role in the entire expedition. She was the first one to discover the sahagins; enabling them to evade a surprise attack. Not only that she was also the one of noticed what the sahagins were trying to do, and even deduced that another, more powerful monster was behind the constant attacks from the sea monsters. Lastly, it was thanks to her that they were able to discover the prince and his crew’s whereabouts along with a dozen humans.
Miranda was not really sure how it happened but it seems that the girl unknowingly influenced the whole expedition. Heck, even her teacher, the renowned sorceress was relegated to a side character!
“What a terrifying person my junior sister’s closest friend is!”
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“Captain, I think it’s time we end this,” said the old captain’s first officer.
“What? Already?” Regret could be heard on the old captain’s voice after hearing his first officer’s words.
The old captain completely understood why his first officer wanted to stop the fight with the Kraken. Firstly, their supply of harpoons was running dangerously low. Secondly, they’ve used up a lot of their fuels. And lastly, the Kraken was relatively unharmed despite its injuries which mean their attacks barely did anything to the creature. If they wanted to kill the Kraken, they needed something more powerful than what they have now.
“Fine. Tell everyone to get ready – we’re going towards the island. They should also protect our back as we proceed. I doubt the Kraken would just let us get to that landmass unhindered. It seemed to think that we're its prey after all...,” ordered the captain.
“Aye captain!”
Everyone on the airship heard the announcement from the first officer and many of them sighed in regret as if they haven’t had enough fun yet. Nonetheless, no one tried to go against the captain’s order as they fully understood what their real mission was.
So while they were battling the monster, the airship suddenly took a sharp turn to the surprise of the Kraken. Seeing that its prey were trying to escape, the monster screeched with madness.
“Ahahahaha! Look the Kraken is chasing!” One of the gunner commented after seeing the Kraken’s mountain like body cuts through the water.
“Fool! Why are you just laughing like an idiot? Shoot it! We’ll be in trouble if it manages to catch up to us,” another gunner scolded after shooting a harpoon at the Kraken which annoyed the monster further.
Pina saw that the fun was over and sighed in disappointment. She really wanted the fight with the Kraken to last a little longer but knew that they have a mission to complete. So with a pout on her face, she hurled a few more fireballs to the Kraken that’s furiously chasing them.
Of course it did nothing, serving only as an annoyance to the monster.
“Seriously… this girl…” Miranda was little speechless seeing her junior sister’s childish action. If not for the fact that she’s holding to the railings for dear life she’ll happily give the red-haired girl a beating.
“Keep it up we’re almost at the island!” A gnome responsible for navigation yelled out loud.
Indeed they’re almost there. Everyone looking ahead could finally see the landmass clearly. Just a little more and they would be safe from the Kraken – at least temporarily.
As If sensing the thoughts of the humans and gnomes on the airship, the Kraken, in a last ditch attempt to stop its escaping prey forced it’s mountain-like body and lunges forward. It extends one of its tentacles and brought it downward with full force!
Noticing what’s happening and sensing the danger to the airship, the old captain did a sudden and forceful turn to its left. The forceful turn shook the people inside the airship, even sending some of them flying off board. Thankfully, some people with quick reflexes, including Rennel, saw what had happened and saved the unlucky gnomes before they fall into the water.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of it. Although the Kraken failed to stop the airship, something else happened that sends the airship almost crashing into the island.
It all happened after the airship reached one of the landmass. For reasons unknown, all of the airship’s equipment including the one controlling the engine suddenly malfunctioned!
“We’re falling!”
“Someone, please do something!”
With the engine no longer working, the airship could only fall like a piece of stone carelessly tossed into the air. Unless they do something about the situation, the airship would certainly crash into the ground below. Once that happen, everyone would be in a heap of trouble. Even their survival would be in question. And even if they survive the crash, they’ll surely be stuck on the island without a working airship to use.
Fortunately, they’re not as helpless as they seemed. Aboard the airship are several powerful magicians which include the sorceress. Not failing to live to expectations, the sorceress chanted her strongest wind magic to slow down the descent of the airship. The other magicians, unwilling to be left out also casted their wind magic to support the sorceress which greatly reduced the speed of the airship's descent even further.
However, supporting such a massive object was no easy feat. The sheer weight of the airship quickly depletes the magicians’ mana with the exception of the sorceress. Even the talented Miranda and Pina has a hard time maintaining their magic what more for the gnome magicians which possessed lesser mana than human magicians.
If things keep up, the airship would surely fall to its doom even with the support of the sorceress’ magic. But would that really happen? Not if a certain silver-haired girl could help it. Although she’s lacking in magic knowledge and haven’t learned a proper magic yet, Rennel still possessed something that very few magicians has – her overwhelming mana that’s on the level of an arch-mage!
****
Since Rennel could not help in the magic department, she could at least serve as a mana battery. The girl quickly linked her mana to the wind magic formation casted by the other magicians and used her overwhelming mana to support and stabilize the magic to the surprise of sorceress and the magicians.
How could they not? Connecting one’s mana to other people’s magic might seemed easy at a glance but in truth the difficulty of doing so was very hard to measure. It’s one thing to connect one’s mana to one’s own magic but doing it to other people’s magic, especially large scale one was close to impossible!
But what was almost impossible to other magician was actually very simple to Rennel. After all she’s been doing that for a very long time every time she uses Detection. Yes, her ability to detect lifeform and aura required the girl to link her own mana to the mana in her surroundings in order to function properly. It’s also one of the main reasons why the two girls, Miranda and Pina had difficulty learning the ability despite their talent.
Now that Rennel had taken action, the depletion of the other magicians' mana stopped completely which allow them to let out a sigh of relief. The only other person that didn’t relax yet was the Sorceress Cassandra who was maintaining the magic while the girl supplies it with mana. That said the pressure on the sorceress was almost none existent as she only needed to concentrate on the magic itself.
And so with everyone’s help, the airship safely landed on the landmass.
“Man that was a really close call,” Pina plopped into the ground looking exhausted. “I wonder what happened. Why did the airship’s engine malfunction like that?” She asked quizzically.
“I heard it’s not the engine itself that had malfunctioned but the equipment responsible for controlling the engine,” Miranda answered. “That said… it was not the only equipment that had malfunctioned,” She added.
“Rennel, what do you think?” Pina turned towards her friend and asked her opinion.
Hearing her friend’s question, Rennel thought for a while before replying. “I have no evidence to support my claim but think it has something to do with the landmass itself.”
“The landmass?”
The two girls contemplated Rennel’s words for several minutes before nodding their heads almost simultaneously. If one thinks about it, her words did make sense. After all, only after coming close to island did the airship’s equipment starts to malfunction.
“Sigh… why am I still surprise? We’re in the Dark Sea, one of the most mysterious regions in the world where all kinds of weird things keep on happening.” Pina lamented with a wry smile on her face.
“Isn’t that so?”
One of the features of the Dark Sea was its unpredictability. It has gotten its name not just because it was covered in thick fog all-year round but of the ocean’s unpredictability as well. Moreover, the things they knew about the mysterious ocean since it was first explored were very limited to begin with.
So a landmass that could disable a vessel’s equipment isn’t really too strange if one thinks about it.
“Have you girls rested enough?”
Sorceress Cassandra followed by the gnome envoy Lucata approaches the girls and asked how they were doing.
“Teacher!” Miranda and Pina who were seating on the floor quickly stood up and greeted their teacher while the sorceress nodded with a curt nod.
“Has our next move been decided?” Rennel asked after greeting the sorceress and the gnome envoy. The sorceress turned towards the envoy, urging her to explain what had been agreed upon on the meeting.
Lucata nodded her head slightly before opening her mouth. “Thanks to the sorceress’ effort, the location of the prince and the other people stranded on the island had been discovered,” she started.
“According to Lady Cassandra, the prince and the other seemed to be inside a building or to be more precise, a ruin. They’ve been inside that ruin for a while now and are most likely unaware of our arrival. That’s because if they were aware, then we no longer have to look for them as they would have welcomed us by now.”
The three girls nodded with understanding. It was obvious what the female envoy was implying. Since the prince and the others didn’t seek them out, they could only enter the ruin to look for them.
“Lady Cassandra, has the identity of the dozen humans you detected earlier been confirmed?” Rennel asked after listening to the envoy’s explanation.
“My apologies… I only know that there were a dozen humans; three were females while the rest were all males,” answered the sorceress looking quite apologetic. “That said… many of those people possessed a strange aura that seemed to have come from the same source. One of them even possessed quite the amount of that mysterious aura,” she explained further.
The three girls looked at each other with confusion. Since the sorceress especially mentioned the strange aura, then there must be some significance to it.
“We could only know the significance of the mysterious aura that the sorcerer mentioned once we personally meet the people in question. For now though we could only speculate and endure that out vigilance are up to guard against the unexpected,” understanding what's on the girls' mind Lucata explained further. “Also, please be ready since we’re going to enter the ruin in an hour," she added.
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To be continued
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