313 Irene Part 2 (1/2)

”This is too much. We can't accept your kind offer,” Irene said. Deep down, it was taking all her self-restraint not to eagerly pounce on Saleen and offer all the words of appreciation that existed in the world.

”Think of it as an investment from me… an investment on your clan, of course. If you feel that it is too much or too sudden, we can sign a contract,” Saleen said with a smile on his face.

”A contract?” Irene asked curiously.

”Yes, it's like a loan agreement. Don't worry, I won't be putting any interest on your loan,” Saleen assured the young female.

If Nailisi had still been in the tent, she would have been laughing uncontrollably at the notion of Saleen signing yet another agreement with some random stranger. The terms and conditions of Saleen's contracts were often fair, but somehow, the other party would always regret signing them in the end.

”Okay, sounds fair,” Irene said as she nodded. The situation was as clear as day to her now. Saleen did not seem to be the type of person who easily trusted other people. Even if he was not the kind who would extort the helpless, there was a high chance that Saleen would have refused to even lift a finger to help her.

Mages had no obligations to help those in need. Yet, if Irene did not accept Saleen's help, at least half of her men would have perished by now. In fact, she might even end up not having any more men to provide for. Now that everything was frozen over, it was almost impossible for Irene and her men to trudge their way through the Northern wilderness to get back to the Qin country.

As far as Irene knew, Saleen only owned one ship. Most of the men that she had brought along with her were skilled sailors. Since a pirate ship was only worth ten to twenty thousand gold coins, asking Irene to sign a loan agreement was a completely reasonable request. At least to Irene, it was a pretty good deal. If Saleen had given Irene a ship just like that, the latter would surely have been more guarded against the male mage.

Saleen's heart fluttered with delight as he saw Irene nod in agreement. He was not going to chase Irene for her debt. To Saleen, as long as Irene did not pay him back the money, she would owe him many, many favors. Saleen could also not be bothered to implement a ten thousand gold coin interest rate. In fact, the only thing he took away from the entire conversation with Irene was that the Oceanic Ice Block could potentially offer riches to him.

”Mage Saleen, would you mind letting me eat something first?” Irene asked politely.

Saleen clapped his hands to summon the swordsmen. Once they entered the tent, the male mage instructed them to make dinner for his guest. All Irene had wanted was a mere piece of bread to curb her hunger. However, she was not about to appear rude in front of Saleen. Thus, she could do nothing but tolerate her hunger pangs for the time being.

Nailisi boarded the pan's turtle alchemical boat along with a Sregl Island mage that she had chosen to accompany her. She told the winged skeleton about Irene's sunken ship before setting off. Because of the fact that Irene had not revealed the exact coordinates of the place where her ship had sunk, the winged skeleton could not do much except scout the entire northeastern shipping route. Technically, she had indicated that it was to the northeast, but that was a pretty useless piece of information.

At this point in time, the bone spirits were released as well, and were being controlled within a two-mile radius from the ship. As of now, their role was to assist the winged skeleton in searching through everything that lay on the ocean floor.

The sunken ship, according to Irene, was six hundred miles from where they were. The pan's turtle alchemical boat was able to maintain a speed of at least sixty miles per hour, and this meant that they could cover this distance within ten hours. Nailisi, however, was starting to become suspicious of Irene's claims. After all, it would be very challenging for someone like her to row a lifeboat six hundred miles.

As the alchemy ship travelled towards the northeast, Nailisi suddenly noticed the ocean becoming deeper and deeper around the four hundred mile mark. In fact, the deepest part of the ocean was about eight hundred meters below the surface. Ordinary ships would only be able to travel about thirty meters underwater before breaking apart from the sheer force of the water pressure. However, since the pan's turtle alchemical boat was built entirely out of the pan's turtle shell, the ship could be submerged eight hundred meters below the surface and still maintain its current speed.

Now that Saleen was not here, Nailisi was effectively the captain of this ship. The winged skeleton was truthfully a little afraid of the demon. Thus, he made sure that every single one of Nailisi's requests were fulfilled to the best of his capabilities so that he would not have to suffer Nailisi's wrath. The grade-3 mage was only there to help Nailisi observe the pictures of the ocean floor that the eye of the dead would send back. He knew that Nailisi was a very important person to Saleen. There was definitely not a simple master-maidservant relationship between them. Thus, he also obeyed Nailisi's commands as if they were Saleen's orders.

After travelling about eight hundred miles away from shore, the ship started travelling along the arc of a random island in search of Irene's ship. Ten hours had passed. Yet, no one found anything. The grade-3 mage was so tired that all he wanted to do was sleep. However, just as he was about to doze off, he heard the winged skeleton yell, ”Found it!”

Under the control of the winged skeleton, the alchemy ship sped towards the ocean floor. Nailisi walked towards the magic images, and upon seeing the pictures captured by the eye of the dead, her body tingled with excitement.

As the black-and-white pictures became clearer and clearer, Nailisi discovered that the images projected earlier had not been that of Irene's bounty-hunting ship. Not even close. The piece of the sunken ship photographed earlier was far too big. In fact, it was over three hundred metres long. Plant life was growing through the body of the ship, turning it into a beautiful floating forest. As the winged skeleton steered the ship to get a better view of its base, Nailisi discovered that there was a huge tear on the bottom of the ship. It was this huge fissure that had caused a gigantic metallic ship like this to sink in the first place.

Just then, a small shark emerged from the huge hole. As soon as it saw the enormous hull of the pan's turtle alchemical boat, it turned around and swam away frantically. Even though small sharks were considered just as ferocious as the bigger ones, they were far smarter than their larger counterparts. They knew that it was probably a bad idea to try and take a huge chunk out of the ship.

Nailisi had expected the ocean floor to be so dark that she could not even see anything. In fact, she had even expected to be unable to see the silhouettes of anything here. However, the entire ocean floor landscape had been illuminated by some type of bright blue seagrass that surprisingly did not shine too brightly, though it glowed bright enough for Nailisi to see that it was all over the ocean floor. These plants, which looked to be over ten meters tall, swayed gracefully with the currents. There were thousands, no, probably millions of colorful fish weaving in and out of the seagrass. However, Nailisi was not awed by the spectacular sight before her. In fact, she had sensed some kind of dangerous presence hiding beneath the sand of the sea bottom, waiting for the right moment to attack.

”Master Saleen is so lucky!” the grade-3 mage exclaimed, feeling a flurry of emotions overwhelm him at the sight of the ship.

”What do you mean?” Nailisi asked, pressing the mage for an explanation.