Chương 299: To the brim

Upon a small island somewhere in the southern Sea of Storms, a salamander had just crawled onto a rock in the shade among the tropical trees when it stopped suddenly, looking up towards the sky with its round glossy eyes. To an observer it might even have looked perplexed, as if the distinct sound of thunder that had stopped it in its tracks went against its instincts of how the weather should have progressed that day.

The sky was indeed overcast, but for once the winds were rather calm, awaiting the next storms that were ever so frequent in the region, but the telltale flicker of lightning high among the clouds spoke clearly enough. So, as it tended to do, the salamander crawled around on the top of the rock until it found a suitable angle where it used its suctioned feet to anchor itself properly while extending its many frills in preparation of catching as much of the incoming mana-charged water as possible.

Then it waited patiently. The rain should start falling any minute now, after all. As he saw one of the pirate assault craft being all but smashed in two by the avatar of roaring winds and crackling thunder that had emerged from the thunderstorm conjured atop the sea of clouds, Kite said a short prayer to Fortune in his mind as he hoped dearly that there wasn't anyone or anything below them that might risk having the ruined vessel fall on their heads.

Only a miniscule part of his mind could be dedicated to the task however, the rest completely swept up in maintaining focus and doing what he could to ensure that the boarding skiff he was currently on would reach its target as it traversed an ever more chaotic battlefield in the skies." Wall!"

With a quick spell chant he conjured a wall of force that intercepted a few homing projectiles that had caught their trail, making sure that the barrier dispersed immediately after absorbing the detonations as he did not want any of their allied vessels to accidentally crash into them. Above and to the sides, the larger sky ships had begun exchanging fire in earnest, and Kite could feel the shock waves even through the shielding of their craft.

There were gold-rankers in the sky as well, but fortunately the adventurer side had more than enough of their own to make sure that none of the most powerful pirates could run rampant. On the contrary, it was obvious that the better equipped and much more skilled members of the Sapphire Crown Guild were pressuring their foes hard right from the start.

While it felt long, the group were swiftly drawing close to their destination - the largest pirate skyship - within less than a minute of flying through the turbulent battlefield. They had to circumvent the still remaining shielding, but their pilot proved skilled at his job as he deftly brought them close to one of the openings which had previously housed a pirate shuttle, and it wasn't his fault that they were greeted by a pair of defensive emplacements lighting up at their approach.

However, they were also close enough for the passengers to make a difference, and a quick trio of pinpoint beams caused a silver-ranked pirate to stumble back from the glowing circle and the crystal construction she had been pointing towards them, now sporting three holes in her head.

At the same time, a cage of lightning enveloped the other emplacement and the two bronze-rankers manning it, and said cage erupted in cascading lightning pulses for each crackling blast that Ceasar then launched towards those trapped inside.

The silver-ranked pirate - a core-using human woman - was heavily injured and disoriented by having parts of her head missing, and the difference in discipline between the rank-and-file of the pirates and what Kite had gotten used to in the task group showed itself as she started spraying continuous jets of fire in every direction while throwing out firebolts as quickly as the simple yet potent spell could be cast.

Already riding towards the opening upon Glint's back, he struck some projectiles from the air before they got close enough." Dissolve the Patterns of Power!" The rest of the flames were extinguished as the dispelling wave washed over the entire small hangar.

While the spell was indiscriminate when cast in its wave form, Kite did not bother trying to aim around Ceasar's cage as the pair of bronze-rankers inside were already dead, and three simultaneous projected attacks carrying Void-Sunders-Firmament later, the thrashing silver-ranked woman joined them. They weren't alone in boarding the vessel either, but most of the other craft aimed for the main decks where the pirate concentration was the greatest.

Hopefully this would also give the team an easier time in finding their target as they headed into the ship's depths.

"How can they even maintain a vessel such as this?" Kite murmured softly as they gathered, still trying to take in the scale of it all. He had been to plenty of places around the world, but his contracts with Gauntlet rarely took him to adventurer heartlands such as the Storm Kingdom as they tended to have the people and means to take care of their own problems through local talents.

Thus, he always marveled at the sheer scale of things and concentrations of magic to be found there, with even groups like pirates sometimes led by gold-rankers. Plural.

"Plenty of rogue elements and ports in these waters," Ceasar shrugged.

"If you've got golds among your ranks, you can take on gold problems, meaning gold-ranked payout for scum such as these until they tip their hand enough to end up on the list of problems for the truly mighty."

"Can't exclude foreign funding either," Léon added while he fell in formation with them as Amica started bending a door open.

"Plenty of rival nations want to put pressure on the Storm Kingdom, so making sure that there are pirates to cause trouble is a nice and disconnected way to go about it." Before Kite got to continue his lesson in geopolitics and proxy wars through criminals, the metal door was bent open enough to allow them to slip through and into the ship interior and its cramped hallways.

The general madness of auras surging everywhere - especially those of the golds - limited their senses greatly, but Kite could still pick up enough to get the feeling that the vessel was like a small town in and of itself as plenty of normal-rankers worked frantically within its depths while others hid away. Many of these were slaves, and Kite could only send another quick prayer to Fortune that some of them might be spared the calamity that unfolded around them as the whole ship shook with the battle taking place.

With Amica on detection duty, the group moved swiftly as they started mapping out the interior. They stumbled upon the occasional group of pirate defenders, but as most of these were bronze and below they proved little challenge to the team's momentum. Kite and the rest of the team had to put them all down no matter their lesser ranks however, as there was both the risk of them interfering at a later stage and simply to lessen the risk of anyone giving away their position to other defenders too swiftly.

Normal-rankers whose initial reaction was that of hostility instead of only fear were instead knocked out en-masse as Spirit Singularity easily drained the little mana they possessed. Leaving them to their fates was possibly cruel in and of itself, but even though Kite and the team were killers - and even butchers to some, given the lower-ranked pirates who fell before them - mowing all of them down as well just felt like a step too far.

Things did get more intense again, however, when they passed through a cargo hold and several crates containing metal goods such as rivets suddenly caught fire and were torn asunder as their contents had started glowing red-hot and tearing themselves out of the containers to strike at the adventurers." Wall!" Leyline Warding appeared to enclose the whole team in layers of barriers before Kite gave a mental heave as he pushed the segments of force outwards.

This left space for the team to slip out of the enclosing barriers as they had each detected the ambushers now that they had made their move. With a shout and a spiritual heave, Amica telekinetically caught what looked like a hybrid between a clawed lizard and burly hulk of a man as he attempted to drop down from the grating above, only to be abruptly turned around and slammed back upwards with Amica in hot pursuit.

Ceasar caught another two incoming shapes in cages of crackling lightning while Léon shimmered and disappeared, no doubt finding some kind of vantage point that - contrary to most snipers - did not need to have a clear line of sight to their targets. This left Kite facing two more silver-rankers that came rushing in from around a corner. Both shot forwards with speed-increasing powers, only for one of them to run head first into one of Glint's conjured spheres of water.

The leonid man's momentum was enough for him to actually break through the restraining globe, splashing out the other side robbed of most of his momentum, only to be enveloped by a second similar sphere. This left Kite facing only the lone foe - if only for a short time - and he meant to capitalize on it.

From the set of tongs glowing red hot that she was preparing to swing towards him, he made the assumption that this was the same person responsible for the earlier assault by the metal cargo, proven true when a gesture from the pirate caused the material of the deck beneath Kite to suddenly warp to form fangs that tried biting onto his lower legs.

A screech of twice-distorted metal later proved that Implacable Motion was the spell's match, the power draining a bit of mana from Kite to help his feet break through the vice that failed to find purchase. Staff met glowing tongs a moment later, the tool-turned-weapon proving to not be a conjured one as it did not shatter before Pattern-Shattering Counter, though the magical superheating did not survive the impact.

Kite managed to land two solid mana-draining strikes before the pirate could recover from the failed attack but then was forced to shift one of his wards to block a huge armored arm that had formed out of some other metal and swung in from the side. It was stopped dead as it crashed into the almost impervious center of the barrier before Kite started delivering a punishing flurry of strikes while simultaneously tapping the magical construction with one of his spectral arms that caused it to fall into pieces.

He needed to make as much of an impact as he could in as short a time frame as possible before the other pirate that Glint was restraining broke free. This was not something his path was the most suited for, but over the years Kite had to give himself that he had managed to adapt at least a few tricks.

That was why he could manage to keep up his offense by constantly shifting barriers around himself to take care of the lesser attacks while using his dispelling, mana-draining power to further turn each attack delivered inexpertly against him into something that only hastened the process. Just as the metal shaper started to flag, the leonid finally broke free from Glint's restraints and resumed his charge.

The familiar had not been idle, however, as she had constantly drained the pirate's health while he had remained stuck. This was followed by Glint changing from her draconian form into a serpentine one that barely fit the corridor along which the pirate was advancing.

This proved to be the point as the dragon dove into the corridor like a living barricade, and a moment later a brilliant flash could be seen in the small gaps around her form which indicated that Glint had used her karmic breath to retaliate against some kind of attack. By now, the space had also started being crisscrossed with reflected and ricocheted precise beams of light that came angling in from around a bend in the corridor, from the grating overhead and even from the smaller air vents in the room.

Léon did not prioritize Kite's opponent though, the group having long since learned that trying to whittle down the health of opponents Kite was trying to down through draining their mana was rarely helpful. Not that Kite had any ambition to actually spare this pirate in the long run, but anyone dropping unconscious in a battle like this could still be a source of information, and even if that was not the case it was often inefficient to work on downing an opponent in two ways simultaneously.

But with Glint handling the approaching leonid, Kite was left free to further increase the pressure. The Veiled One's Decree was already helping to obfuscate the woman's own condition from her, which was why she looked very surprised when an unassuming random strike simply had her drop unconscious. A mental command caused Glint to reassume her small carp form and shoot back towards Kite, revealing a very wet and partially destroyed corridor in her wake along with an even wetter leonid.

The cold shower seemed to have made him reevaluate his situation too, as he took in his rapidly falling comrades for another moment before turning to flee." Wall! Léon!" Conjuring several force walls to hinder the pirate's escape, Kite barely had time to finish calling for the sniper before several beams struck the leonid at once.

Some kind of emergency armor power activated, creating a durable glass cocoon around him, and while Kite suspected that it would also help heal and restore the pirate, it at least kept him in place. The rest of the attempted ambush was quelled as Kite turned to help Amica finish off her own opponent before both of them directed their powers towards those still caught in Ceasar's rotation of restraining and damaging spells.

So while the leonid pirate looked fresh and empowered when he eventually emerged from his cocoon, his day still ended up going from bad to disastrous in short order, courtesy of his Gauntlet greeting committee.

"We have one here for questioning," Kite noted, and as he got confirmation from Amica he then collared the unconscious metal-shaper and threw her into the air for the telekineticist to catch and drag behind them while the others stored the dead pirates in spatial bags given to them for just this purpose. They did not tarry though, moving on and waiting to perhaps question the unconscious pirate when she woke up. The team still had their target to find.

"I should have jumped ship. I really should have jumped ship," Roberto Amorim muttered to himself as he did his best to blend in among the scared crowds.

This latest development was just one in a long line of regrets - like not getting a portal or teleportation power, not taking up the offer to join his uncle's adventuring team a decade back, or not telling Ana how he felt when they stood on that pier all those years ago - but Roberto would make sure that he lived through this ordeal too so that he could keep adding to it. Better regret than death. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

He had really thought that he had a good thing going, having a nice position and contacts with several important merchant guilds and companies in the Sea of Storms while occasionally taking business trips that had him happen to stop by certain unmarked ports and leave choice pieces of information with some well-paying… entrepreneurs.

Roberto did not know when he had been discovered, but thanked Fortune everyday that he had managed to slip out the tightening net he had found around him and escaped to hide out with said entrepreneurs. It was supposed to have been only for a short time, but it turned out that certain pirate captains were rather opposed to the idea of skilled informants and investigators taking their leave as they pleased.

Thus, Roberto had ended up staying on the Sky Devourer for longer than he had liked, and given the fierce shaking and the roar of combat outside, that time had proved too long.

Pushing along with the throngs of people trying to make their way toward the lifeboats - even against the protests of the pirates' leadership, who were fortunately busy fighting for their lives rather than making sure that the rabble knew their place - Roberto frantically tried to remember how much longer he had to walk through the winding tunnels when he felt the crowd stop, and he did not need to use his thoroughly hidden aura to recognize the sudden fright spreading through the people around him.

"Fuck," Roberto thought to himself as he saw the adventurers. Five silver-rankers, no less. Or was that four? It was hard to tell with the draconian clad in the glittering cascade of jewels as she did look a bit odd for her species. Their gazes swept the crowds, clearly looking for something or someone, and Roberto once again said his thanks to Fortune for the very well made aura mask he had procured last year.

It feeling like the spiritual equivalent of wearing a wet blanket suddenly wasn't so bad when the eyes of the runic in the group as well as those of the human woman with the strawberry blonde hair simply slid past him. The elf looked to be more on the lookout for other threats, and as they started waving people forward Roberto thought that he was in the clear. That was, until he found himself meeting the eyes of the armored human adventurer with the weird metallic tattoos and dark hair.

Roberto froze and tried to look like a man terrified in a more general sense rather than someone who had something to hide, but when the adventurer cocked his head while frowning slightly, Roberto knew that the jig was up. However, just as the man began calling out to his comrades while Roberto prepared to use one of his essence powers to shift into water and get out of there, another stroke of luck struck, albeit a double-edged one. Boom!

A crash much louder than any of the others caused the whole ship to shake with enough force that half the crowds were knocked off their feet and— Crack! This stumbling turned into a panicked tumbling as the ship started falling, with the adventurer's line of sight to Roberto suddenly broken by a mass of normal-rankers suddenly seeming to be thrown upwards even though it was rather the opposite.

Roberto tried not thinking of the short-term consequences of this as he shot away as a stream of water, because his most immediate need was at least fulfilled; a chance to make his escape. Kite swore inwardly as he felt the aura of the previously hidden silver-ranker burst out from beneath the aura mask which his now gold-ranked perception power had picked up.

It was well-made enough that even Gaze of Adamance had given only subtle signals at first, but the mask ripped like cobwebs in the wind when subjected to the mana of the man's essence powers. However, the calamity that erupted around them as some part of the ship that kept it aloft ceased functioning properly meant that he did not have the time to stop the man who Kite now recognized as Roberto Amorim - their target - as he turned into water and sped away while screaming people suddenly fell towards the roof.

Kite's stomach also lurched, but compared to lethal projectiles or similar hazards flying his way, it was easy to ignore. The people, however, were not, but Fortune at least smiled upon them somewhat given who they had with them. In an impressive feat of telekinesis, Amica grabbed most of the crowd within sight and stopped them from smashing too violently into the roof or ceiling while Glint did the same with conjured water that left them sputtering and coughing but much less bruised.

"You all felt him. Go!" Amica called even while she started shifting the crowds - and dropping the still unconscious pirate from before - to create a path for the group, and the rest of their team was already in motion, with Léon even teleporting ahead and firing a few beams down a corridor towards something Kite couldn't see. As he followed his team, Kite found himself once more lamenting his lack of personal flight power as it meant that he had to move while compensating for the descending ship.

Fortunately, it was not in complete freefall anymore as some kind of emergency arrays seemed to have activated that slowed the vessel's descent, but that still caused him to lose enough speed that he finally had to ask Amica to tug him along with her telekinesis. Their pursuit was even more full-blown chaotic than their previous time navigating these corridors as the failing ship had, understandably, caused even more panic.

Most of the lower-rankers were wise enough to not impede the group of very serious silvers chasing a sentient stream of water around, even though the chase was dragging on a lot longer than any of them would have liked. Through the use of small spaces and ventilation tubes, their target managed to stay just far enough ahead of them to avoid Ceasar's cages, and the flowing form proved difficult for Amica to pin down even with her powers while Glint was unable to affect water that was in reality a creature.

Still though, there was only so many places one could run on a ship, especially once Amica had gotten a proper lock on his aura, but further complications revealed themselves as the team found themselves basically running into a mixed group of pirates in a small mess hall just as they were gaining enough on their target to see the tail end of the living water slipping out into a side passage.

Even as essence powers started flying, Amica managed to take in the group of two silvers and eight bronzes, making a split second decision.

"Kite, forceful entry!" Spending a few years in one another's company, Kite had already started bracing himself as he felt himself speed up when Amica telekinetically launched him like a projectile across the hall.

The door which Roberto Amorim had slipped under stood no chance against the combined force of her magic as well as Kite's own Implacable Motion, leading to him landing inside a storage space adjacent to the outer hull in a dramatic shower of splinters that would probably make for one impressive portrait, should someone have captured that moment in time.

"Wall!" Barriers appeared just in time to block off the mass of water trying to seep beneath another door, the sentient fluid even somehow conveying startled surprise in his motions as it shifted and dove for another opening in the shape of a ventilation grate, only for that too to be blocked.

Kite made sure to layer the panes of Leyline Warding properly to cover all obvious openings in the room to make sure that his liquid foe could not squeeze past while he started a steady stream of projected mana-draining attacks. As usual, his dispelling powers would not work completely against a fully transfigured being, but each disruptive strike did have some kind of effect if only for the small amount of disruptive force damage that kept his formless target fleeing from parts of his body being scattered.

Given that Roberto Amorim must have spent quite a lot of mana by now, it should only be a matter of time before– An arm suddenly materialized from the water, the watery appendage transforming into solid flesh once it reached the wrist and hand; a hand holding something spherical that started lighting up.

"Oh no you–" Kite thought, slashing through the arm and severing it with one quick stroke of a wavy-edged sword. But fast as he may be, he had not yet learned how to outspeed mana flowing through a body and thus got an up close and personal experience of what turned out to be a small resonating force bomb. Even though he managed to conjure Heaven-and-Void Warding, Kite still felt his body shake painfully from the rippling detonation, but the room and hull of the ship fared even worse.

While the door and vents protected by Kite's barriers survived surprisingly intact, the part of the hull acting as one of the walls did not. Kite found himself sucked out into empty air, the world suddenly turning very bright and disorienting as the raging sounds of combat returned in full force.

His expanded field of vision revealed that parts of the great ring that kept the pirate ship aloft had been cracked badly, and it looks like the gold-rankers from the Sapphire Crown Guild were in the end stages of dismantling the sky pirates. It also revealed Kite's target - a bit scattered but otherwise seeming to have fared very well as his liquid form must be great for absorbing resonating force - falling towards the clouds below.

Knowing that there was probably mostly ocean waiting for them beneath, Kite saw a whole world of trouble unfolding before his mind's eye if the water essence-user managed to dive beneath the waves. He could arrest his fall quickly enough, call for Glint and the others and start the search, where Amica's aura senses could hopefully help them, but still… It would be like searching for a particular few buckets of water in an ocean.

"Not today," Kite murmured through gritted teeth, sending a few images of what he was doing to Glint through their familiar bond while he started conjuring smaller panes of force through the variant of Leyline Warding that would normally be used as his method of air walking. Not to arrest his fall though, but to guide.

A quick handhold to right himself and allow him to dive face first in pursuit allowed him to speed up through the air while a small stream of carefully angled barriers helped him to make small - if a bit violent - corrections to his angle. It was with some relief that his foe also seemed unable to fly, and Kite could sense both a bit of frustration and fear in the aura of the man-turned-water as he had apparently noticed his failure to shake his pursuer.

The pair soon fell into the clouds - fortunately not into the area where lightning still crackled thanks to the storm mage from the guild - and as soon as they emerged below Kite started sending a stream of more mana draining attacks bound towards his fleeing target while facing return fire in the shape of pressurized streams of water, blinding detonations and even a few ice daggers thrown his way. Kite tore some of them apart, but coordinating the motions during freefall was not as simple as he would have liked.

More than a few of the blinding spells took effect, and being one of the few impairing effects that Kite's powers did not protect him from, they caused more than their fair share of attacks to miss. Kite frantically increased the pace of his efforts as best he could, because at the rate things were going it looked like even this most daring effort would not succeed in time as the vast ocean beneath drew ever closer.

In a last ditch effort he fed a charge from Potential of Stolen Power into Spirit Singularity, causing the three vortices to swell and intensify.

"Please, Fortune, I humbly implore you to keep smiling towards me, because I very much don't enjoy the thoughts of sifting through a literal ocean–" Phwap! Kite's silent prayer had apparently occupied his beleaguered mind enough that he failed to react in time when the mass of water ahead of him suddenly shuddered and reformed into the almost completely limp form of Roberto Amorim, only for the sudden increase in air resistance to cause Kite to catch up in an instant and a rather violent mid-air collision.

And seeing that there was no trace of actual divine intervention, Kite could only credit Spirit Singularity and its constant drain of mana to once again have saved the day while he wrestled with the limp form of his target, managing to collar the man using one hand from his mantle before preparing for the landing.

Through the use of a few more barriers Kite managed to direct himself and his unconscious captive towards a small island beneath, not daring to risk the ocean both for the risk of being separated from his target in the waters as well as the higher risks of monsters hiding beneath the waves and eager for a snack.

Reaching into a spatial pouch, Kite found one of the slow fall talismans that were standard issue provided him by the task group before each mission and when he judged that the timing was right he sent a small surge of mana into the slip of enchanted paper. The talisman was consumed in a puff of blue flames, and Kite's descent swiftly started slowing down.

As they were both silver-rankers, Kite suspected that both he and his captive would have survived even an unrestrained impact, but he had experienced enough violent landings over the years to know to take that more pleasant opportunity when given the chance. As such, they both touched down on the most idyllic beach with a good view of the ocean and the glowing clouds above that still hid most of the conflict in the sky with the exception of the occasional falling piece of debris far in the distance.

His mind abuzz with both triumph and something else, Kite couldn't help but smile as he dragged the unconscious form of Roberto Amorim up towards the treeline and seating himself next to a rock where a salamander of some kind stood looking up at the clouds above while seeming to be expecting something, all of its glowing frills extended.

"My apologies, honored host. I hope you do not mind us sharing the view." The lizard, of course, only stared blankly back at him with its bulbous black eyes, and so Kite sat down to meditate. Things had been swirling in his mind for a long time, but the series of events today had helped to drive home what he had started the last time Kite had met Ardent Horizon Seeker. Once again, his whole path had been on display through the hunt and confrontation that had led him here; to victory.

And once again it was the power of the void essence that let Kite close out the struggle and realize his ambitions. All of his path had contributed of course, but from Void-Sunders-Firmament finishing struggling pirates to Spirit Singularity doing the same in a different fashion just now… The void was indeed Kite's symbol of ambition, applying nothingness where needed to create the void which Kite could fill with his own intent as to how things would play out.

The thoughts weren't new, but it felt like the metaphorical cup - filled with drop by a drop over time - had finally been filled to the brim, each subsequent drop spilling over into something new. As such, Kite barely noticed when the salamander finally twitched and skittered away in fright as the silver light that had started emanating from him had a fourth streak of gold added to its radiance. WWJS: Congratulations! Your power [Spirit Singularity] has reached Gold 0.

[Spirit Singularity] has gained additional effects. - Spirit singularity - Special ability (Mana drain). Cost: None. Cooldown: None. Current rank: Gold 0. Effect - Iron: Create a small vortex hovering above your right shoulder, draining the mana of nearby hostile creatures. Gain a boost to mana regeneration depending on the number of creatures affected. The pace of both mana drain and the boost to mana regeneration is based on your [Recovery] attribute.

Effect - Bronze: Create an additional vortex, increasing the range and area of the ability. Spirit Vortex can now choose to focus its effect on a single target for greatly increased effect. Effect - Silver: Create an additional vortex. Focusing all vortices at a single target will inflict it with [Inescapable] for as long as it remains within range of the ability. Effect - Gold: When focused on a single target, said target will have to pay an additional surcharge of mana to activate abilities.

This surcharge is proportional to the original cost of the ability. In addition, anyone of lower rank than the user that is both the focus of the vortices and has had their aura fully suppressed by the user will have all their powers and magical abilities suppressed as well. Especially powerful creatures or abilities might not be entirely suppressed. [Inescapable] (Affliction, Magic): Subject cannot be affected by teleport or non-damaging dimensional effects.

Where he sat, eyes closed and spirit filled with the revelations of his freshly ascended power blooming in his mind, Kite's smile also took on a distinct note of great relief; one beyond mere everyday worry. Because while he was not there yet and still needed both trial and tribulation for some time, all four of his essences had now had a power which had reached gold rank.

And with that came a distinct sense that all he had to do was simply to continue striding along his path, climbing towards the heavens, and that that would give him a chance to keep realizing these ambitions of his in the years to come. When the direction and very future of his kingdom and home was at stake.