Wild Era 3, Ch 25: Pirates

As Kelin jumped out of the hold, broken shards of the hatch flew in every direction. He levitated until he was floating a dozen feet in the air. 

The sun was bright and the ocean made everything seem blue and intense. Sparkling silver fish leapt through the swelling waves and white birds swept through the air above the water that seemed to stretch out forever. 

The ship was heading toward an island that rose out of the waves and Kelin could make out the blue-tinted sand on the beaches that gave the Isles of Azure Sand their name, but it wasn’t there yet.

He ignored the scenery as he rose higher until he was standing at the same level as the forecastle. Shouts from the pirates filled the ship as they raced toward him.

Their words were mixed with curses, slang, and hurled spells and items. There was everything from wind blades to broken bottles and belaying pins.

“A prisoner escaped!” The shout rose up. “Kill the bastard!”

“Take him down!”

“That’s not a prisoner, you idiots!” One of the mates shouted. “He still has his gear! Take him down and kill him!”

As the attacks arrived, Kelin’s mana field filled the deck and slammed down on everything, sending pirates tumbling away and crushing them into the wood. 

His words rang out across the deck.

“You have broken the Edicts of the Path. Submit or die.”

Magical laws and runes spun out from his words as he spoke, washing over the ship in waves of light as the Path’s attention fell on the pirates. Their statuses began to change as one after another was marked as a criminal.

Engaging in slavery and kidnapping was forbidden by the Path. 

The pirates were still shouting about killing him, even under the effects of his mana field.

“Who are you?!” 

“Die, shitbag! You were stupid to come here!”

“Screw off, you sanctimonious prick! I’m going to rip your skull off!”

“I want his skull! I’m going to make a cup out of it!”

“I’m going to rip his bones out one by one and make a chair out of them!”

“The hell with that! I want him handless and footless. Then I’m going to cut out his tongue and make him drink my piss!”

There were about three dozen pirates and their language was colorful. Most were completely suppressed, but that didn’t stop them from screaming like raging monkeys.

Kelin unleashed a wave of Soul Paralysis that froze everything within thirty feet. It wasn’t enough to get the entire deck, since it was a long ship, but it caught about a quarter of the pirates.

Then he released a wave of soulfire that flooded the deck with an inferno. The spell turned into twisting currents like an ocean of flames washing over the ship.

Magical runes and intense golden flames leapt upwards, twisting around the pirates like a living thing as it followed the flow of Kelin’s mana field and incinerated one pirate after another.

Here and there, he hurled a more intense Soulfire Bolt or a soul arrow, but his mana field and flames were enough.

Now that he’d reached the Second Evolution, his mana field allowed him to control his spells much more precisely within the local area. 

A fraction of his old abilities had come back.

It was no difficulty to keep the inferno from touching the wood and the sails and to only burn what he wanted to burn. His senses had expanded as well. 

Everything within range was under his command.

Within seconds, the lower-level pirates burned away to ash and their insults and shouts vanished on the wind.

There was only the captain and eight other pirates at the First Evolution left, most of whom had been at the resort. 

The weaker ones couldn’t move at all, but Kelin wasn’t planning to kill them yet. He was going to search their souls to see what was going on.

A wave of Soul Paralysis locked them down and with the help of his mana field he shaped a variant that kept it there, a version called Soul Lock. 

The pirates slumped to the deck, unable to control their limbs or mana and barely able to think. 

They wouldn’t be going anywhere until he released them.

Only the captain was still struggling, so Kelin turned his attention to him.  

The man looked different than at the resort, his features slightly altered and his clothing changed to wild-colored silks that were heavily enchanted with spells for the wind and waves.

He was Level 210 and he was struggling against the weight of the mana field as he tried to summon an attack. He was stronger than the manager and the guards at the resort had been.

The pirate snarled as he forced himself to his feet.

His mana field was full of arcing lightning and raging waves and he had an enchanted trident in his hand that was bolstering his strength. It was the reason he was able to stand up at all.

Based on the aura radiating from it, it was a Third Evolution weapon, one that was a perfect match for his affinities. He couldn’t use it to full effect, but it was enough.

He pointed at Kelin and a swirl of dark blue water and lightning crackled along the length, forming into a deadly spell. Combined with the energy around him, it made him look like a lord of storms. 

“You think you can come here and kill my men?” he shouted. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with! I am Captain Stormcaller, the Death of a Thousand Ships! I’ll enjoy ripping you apart and torturing you.” 

The spell from his trident formed into a bolt of blue-tinted lightning backed by a storm of rain that split the air. It was strong enough to rip the ship in half and blow a hole a quarter-mile deep in a mountain.

The bolt slammed into Kelin’s shields and tossed him backward through the air, cracking half a dozen layers of the talisman shields he’d set up. 

A glowing blue arc was left along his mana shield, hissing and popping as the lightning continued trying to eat through.

Kelin had been knocked about twenty feet back, but he wasn’t bothered by it. He’d let the bolt hit, since he wanted to see how strong the man was. 

The captain was decent for his level, but it was thanks to the trident he was holding. He was on par with an average Level 250 enemy, a little weaker than Silas Crest had been.

“Not bad,” Kelin said, “but not enough.”

He glanced at the damage to his shield and then he reached out, pinching the lightning between his fingers as he crushed it out of existence.

Spell Disruption was useful like that.

Then he reached out with a hand of pure mana, which appeared in the air and wrapped around the man. It was formed directly from his mana field and the fingers blazed with soulfire. They looked like the golden fingers of a god sealing the captain’s fate.

Kelin felt the crackle of the storm from the man’s mana field, as well as bolts of lightning, wind blades, and more crashing against his grasp, but the durability of the hand he’d formed was stronger than the captain could endure.

The fingers closed around the man and crushed his mana field out of existence. The enchantments on the trident sizzled with force, but Kelin disrupted them with a wave of his hand and yanked it away.

The trident flew out of the captain’s grasp and landed in Kelin’s hand. He glanced at it before storing it away.

Trident of the Crashing Storm (Rare: Elegant). 

Third Evolution Artifact.

Enchantments: Self-Repair, Storm Caller, Intensify Storm, Wind Master, Water Spout.

It wasn’t terrible.

He didn’t bother walking toward the man. He jerked him through the air and forced him to his knees. 

“You’re only at Level 200!” the captain raged as he glared at him. “You’re a dead man walking! You don’t know who you’re messing with or the people behind me!”

“I’ll take care of them later,” Kelin said expressionlessly. 

Then he reached out and placed his hand on the captain’s head. Glowing threads of soul energy wove through the man’s aura and sank into his head as he began to scream.

Kelin wasn’t gentle as he ripped through the man’s mind and tore out information. 

He had no sympathy.

Just in the hold of this ship alone there were over a hundred people and who knew how many times the man had done something similar. He had kidnapped and murdered hundreds or thousands of people, if not more.

Images, names, and other information began to pour into Kelin’s mind, filling in more of what he’d discovered from the manager.

A few minutes later, he formed a blade of soul energy and sliced through what remained of the man’s soul. Then he released his grip.

The captain’s body shuddered as it fell to the deck below.

A wave of soulfire incinerated him as Kelin reached out again, seizing the few pirates still alive.

One by one, they met the same fate. Eventually, there were only currents of ash drifting away on the wind.

The deck was clear of pirates.

Experience flowed into Kelin, but its impact was minimal. It mostly proved that the Path had judged the pirates as criminals and that his actions were justified.

The Path wasn’t omnipotent and didn’t spend all of its time watching people. It usually only tracked their experience and assisted with training and Evolutions.

However, when its edicts were broken, it would help to set things straight, just like it had when it had appointed him as a Guild Inspector in the past.

Now that Kelin had drawn its attention here, it had reviewed their history. It was an extra step, but it was also an iron-clad judgment. 

Justice had been served.

Not even the guild or local governments could argue with what he had done.

Despite that, as he landed on the forecastle and looked out at the island ahead of the ship, his expression was troubled.

Killing the pirates had been satisfying, but they were not the main problem. They were only thugs for the people behind them.

Based on what he’d just learned, he knew a lot more about those forces and what they had done, but not much in terms of real proof.

The man didn’t even know for sure if it was Sarathia who was behind all of this. He’d only met a few people and guards. He’d never gone more than a quarter mile from the docks or seen the inside of a building.

Every time he’d come here, he was sent away again immediately after delivering his prisoners.

What he did know was how powerful they were.

The captain’s trident had been a casual reward they’d given him. The man had also been terrified of the power on the island they were heading to. 

A few of his followers had been killed for trying to sneak inland on their own and he hadn’t dared to make a fuss about it, nor to ask many questions or to skim off the top of the payments. 

For a pirate like him to be so well behaved only came through fear.

There were only a couple of miles of blue waves as the ship moved closer to the island. Its sails had been fixed and there were enough enchantments that even without the pirates around to manage things, it was maintaining its course.

Kelin’s work here had been quick, but there was already a dark cloud forming above the buildings that were just barely visible on land, and he could sense a swelling power as some attention inside that cloud turned to look at him.

He’d been noticed.

If he’d been on his own, leaving would be easy, even if they had someone at the Third Evolution guarding this place, but now he had to decide what to do with a ship full of hostages and planned sacrifices.

That was something else the pirate had known.

Taren’s family was marked out as merchant hostages. The forces on the island would have held the kids prisoner and tortured them until the parents gave in and handed over all of their wealth and contacts, effectively giving their entire business up.

They weren’t the first merchant family that had fallen that way. It was how the master of this island was financing everything.

As for everyone else, they were sacrifices.

To what, the captain hadn’t known, but he’d heard them called that. He hadn’t cared to investigate or ask anything else.

Now that Kelin was closer to the island, he could sense massive mana flows in the earth here, as well as through a few of the buildings and deeper into the forest. 

They glowed in his sight like deep violet rivers full of life force and spirit. 

The energy was just on the verge of turning into necrotic energy, but it had a strong vital essence that hadn’t given in yet.

That was probably where most of the sacrifices had gone. 

Kelin’s eyes grew colder as he tracked the flows and looked for the overall pattern. He could see the structure of an enchantment, but he couldn’t make out what type. 

It was similar to a ward with nodes and they were slowly being powered up, but the energy wasn’t a perfect fit. It was missing something. He just couldn’t tell what.

Maybe a trigger or a ritual of some type, or maybe an artifact.

If he wasn’t wrong, the main issue was in converting the energy. As soon as that energy turned into pure necrotic energy, whatever was here would wake up.

Something big was going on here, and whatever it was, it was nothing good. 

He’d seen enough to give him some clues, so he suspected there was a relic or a dungeon that was gathering all of that energy. Perhaps these people were being sacrificed to wake it up.

He didn’t have a total number of the people the pirates had kidnapped, but the numbers were in the thousands.

That was enough to create these mana flows.

Either way, whatever was happening here, it was related to the undead, which was enough to tie it back to Sarathia and his overall quest to find out what was going on there. 

The Path had told him to find out why there were more negative classes and dungeons in Sarathia and surrounding countries. Their numbers had increased dramatically over the last decade. 

It seemed he’d stumbled onto a connection.

Even if it weren’t part of that quest, he’d still need to do something about it. Now that he knew this was here, there was no way he would allow it to continue.

As for why the guild hadn’t known about this and done something earlier...that was a different question. 

His suspicions were on Hugo Whitestar, but the man alone wasn’t enough to hide something like this. This was too big for one council member to conceal.

Sleset had been here as well and if the Herald had known about this, he would have slaughtered everyone involved with a wave of his hand.

It was probably Undeath who had hidden all of this or some power related to him. It would take something on that level.

But those concerns were for later.

Kelin’s eyes narrowed as he saw the power building above the shore. Then he picked out the form of a man in black robes flying up into the clouds. 

Greenish energy radiated around him and the clouds turned into screaming faces and the shape of skulls.

The man’s attention locked onto the ship and Kelin on the prow and a sneer appeared, one that was visible even across the distance.

Then he flew forward, pulling the storm of undeath along with him. Green and black lightning crackled, surrounding him in a shroud, and the waves below his feet turned pale. 

Bones appeared across the waters, surfacing like bubbles of ocean foam. Some of them flew upward to join the man in the storm, while others swiftly assembled into monsters and skeletons.

It was at the edge of Kelin’s range, but he still managed to analyze him.

Iskar Bonewalker. Devilbone Necromancer-Shadow Ritualist. Level 305. 

A curse escaped Kelin’s lips, but there was no time to waste. He only had a minute until the man arrived.

He had to figure out how to save the ship before the necromancer turned them all into skeletons.