Chapter 885 (1/2)

Randidly let his tongue taste the air; it was salty and full of particles dragged here by strange winds.

This place truly was a sea. It was easy to see how an image of adventure would quickly and naturally develop in Scant. There would be a darker underbelly of that, but if this process continued for a long time...

Behind him, the hunched and suspicious face of Kerrar glanced at him, then returned to his busy work around the boat. Chuckling, Randidly let the thoughts of Scant’s development slide away. Honestly, Randidly was relieved that the man was able to stop trying to upsell him on useless additional personnel after they began talking about the price for being rented out as Randidly’s personal ship for an indeterminate amount of time.

Especially when Randidly revealed how much he was willing to pay.

It was somewhat upsetting that Kerrar insisted on charging a bit more as “insurance” when Randidly wouldn’t pay for guards, but he could understand the other man’s point; if they really did encounter a sea monster, it was hard to simply trust that Randidly would handle it without seeing it for himself.

Which of course was almost comically easy for Randidly. That was just a difference in perspectives.

Yet Randidly said nothing about the ease he could manage it and instead engaged in the haggling. For two interrelated reasons. He very much wanted to actually have a local sail with him out toward where Neveah was located in order to know the gossip going around the islands about what was going on.

After all, Neveah ordered Thorn to both prevent the Frogpeople from landing, keeping them away from humans, and keep humans away from them. What was Neveah trying to accomplish with these interrelated by slightly different orders?

Understanding of the context of what Neveah was doing would be difficult to pry out by simply asking questions, and Randidly didn’t have much use for money at the moment; he didn’t mind paying a little extra for Kerrar’s presence.

The second reason was that because he truly wanted a pair of local eyes to give him context Randidly had spoken with several to find someone with which to work. And that Kerrar was the fifth captain that Randidly had spoken to. All the men that Randidly had met were all blustery and dismissive, sneering at Randidly and insisting that he pay for their guards and their guides and their oracles and their retainers. An endless series of kickbacks that even Randidly wasn’t so loose with money as to allow.

Such was the similarity of Kerrar’s demeanor to that of the half dozen shitty clones before him that Randidly briefly lost his temper during their interaction. Which wasn’t in an of itself special, he had lost his temper with the other captains as well.

But unlike the others, Kerrar froze like a mouse that had looked up to find a hawk sitting on a branch above it with a rumbling stomach. His instincts had detected the brief moment where Randidly had decided that he was done with the conversation and mentally dropped the guise of civility.

In that space, the images of Yggdrasil, Ash, and the Wild Phantom loomed heavy. And Kerrar was filled with fear.

Which made Randidly smile. Perhaps Randidly should be more disturbed about his casual reaction, but he hadn’t used a Skill against the guy; the other was just sharp enough to catch the shift and understand the danger it posed to him. A man with good Perception or a powerful Skill that would notice Randidly’s brief lapse was someone worth working with.

“Ah, It appears there’s… something coming,” Kerrar said, sidling up to Randidly.

Randidly did his best to suppress a grin. “You saw something? Or do you just… have a feeling…?”

Kerrar’s face flushed. For whatever reason, he was extremely sensitive about the treatment of his Skill. “I have detected danger in the direction you have indicated. Normally, we would ask a guide about the local currents in order to navigate around the impediment, but because you refused to pay for-”

“Don’t worry,” Randidly said lightly. He removed a wooden block from his interspatial ring and tossed it into the water next to the boat. “I’ll handle it.”

A pulse of Aether illuminated the surrounding area to Randidly’s senses and a second later thorny vines ripped out of the block and slithered down through the water toward the squid creature that was approaching them from below. Some part of Randidly was tempted to use the boat as the base for his attack, as a small spite toward this man who doubted him, but Randidly refused to let someone’s livelihood smolder to ash just because of disrespect.

He was not so mad with power to think such a reaction was reasonable. Not yet, at least.

But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t tease the man.

Kerrar was frowning, looking at the block that was bobbing in the waves. “What is that?”

Shaking his head, Randidly turned away. Better to show than to tell. It was difficult to see from the deck, but there were already three dozen thick roots heading downwards to deal with the squid. “Full steam ahead, captain. Problem solved.”

After a moment of internal turmoil, Kerrar turned and exchanged a long glance with a silent man named Mack, who was the only other member of his crew who Randidly had begrudgingly allowed. Mack spat over the edge of the ship and shrugged, as if to say, “in life, you can only have money or sense, never both. Did you expect anything less from your patron?”

So they sailed forward.

The squid was killed easily as the thorns punched large holes in its thick skin and allowed it to bleed out in the unforgiving waves. Then, because he wanted to make sure they wouldn’t underestimate him in the future, Randidly slowed pulled the large corpse of the monster up toward the surface.

Inwardly, Randidly wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t intervened and there had been guards to handle the thing; it was Level 39, and possessed an extremely large body. Although it would likely be possible to beat back its long tentacles, very little real damage could be inflicted on its main body from the deck.

So how would they have handled it?

In Randidly’s mind, it either meant the guards were more capable than he had given them credit for, or that Kerrar and his ilk possessed more methods than he was showing Randidly. It was likely a mixture of both. Still, probably wasn’t worth the effort to root out that truth.

“...Fuck…!” Mack swore. Randidly chuckled impulsively; that was the first word that he had heard the morose man say.