novelraw Chapter 681 : And Once Again, By Them!
Chapter 681 : And Once Again, By Them!
Chapter 0681 And Once Again, By Them!
Translator: Jay_Forestieri
Editor: Tseirp
“And once again, by them!”
Ryo said resentfully.
Yes, the ‘them’ Ryo was saying resentfully... needless to say, there was only one group like that.
“The Kraken swarm was troublesome.”
Abel said, shaking his head.
Yes, the ship the two were riding had once again been attacked by Kraken.
And this time, by a swarm.
It was one hour after leaving the port town of Hoi An.
On the deck of the long-distance cruising ship heading north with the continent on their left, Ryo and Abel were spending time peacefully.
Their beloved horses, Andalusia and Feiwan, were also basking in the sun contentedly.
The first to react were those two horses.
They suddenly stood up and neighed.
The two men, and the crew of the long-distance cruising ship, were startled.
Only then did Ryo notice it too.
“Something is coming up from beneath the sea!”
The next instant, something white pierced from the ship’s bottom all the way to the deck.
“That is!”
“It is a kraken arm!”
Ryo and Abel understood at once.
A long kraken arm.
There must now be a huge hole in the ship’s bottom.
Naturally, it would sink.
“Come forth, Neil Andersen-Mod!”
Ryo chanted, and a submarine, generated by alchemy, appeared on the sea beside the long-distance cruising ship.
Almost without pause, Andalusia and Faiwan leapt aboard.
They must have instantly judged, by wild instinct, which was safer: the ship they were on now, or the submarine generated by Ryo.
If anything, Ryo and Abel were the slower ones.
The moment the two leapt aboard, several Kraken arms sprouted from the deck of the long-distance cruising ship.
A Kraken has two long arms that it uses for attack.
So if several arms appeared, that meant there were multiple Krakens beneath the sea.
Not long after Ryo, Abel, Andalusia, and Faiwan boarded the Neil Andersen-Mod, the long-distance cruising ship folded in on itself and sank with a thunderous crash.
“Ugh, we’ve become the target!”
Probably because the long-distance cruising ship had sunk, a group of Krakens began attacking the Neil Anderson-Mod.
“Damn it, we’re bolting!”
Ryo declared with a distorted expression.
Abel had noticed, even before Ryo made that declaration, that Ryo had glanced toward Andalusia and Faiwan riding in the rear.
He had chosen a safer course of action for the sake of his beloved horses.
To Abel, that judgment looked favorable.
“I support Ryo’s decision.”
He said it clearly.
From there, the Neil Anderson-Mod devoted itself entirely to escaping.
The Kraken swarm pursued them one after another.
While fending off repeated attacks with the ‘alchemical armor’ generated by the Neil Anderson-Mod, they gained distance with a rearward suppressive attack using Mark 256 torpedoes...
And it was only one hour after the long-distance cruising ship sank that they finally shook off the swarm.
“We barely got away, but...”
“The pressure from the swarm closing in from behind was incredible.”
At last, Ryo and Abel let out a breath of relief.
And once they felt safe, anger began to boil up inside them.
“Those guys again!”
Ryo said bitterly.
“The Kraken swarm was a pain.”
Abel also shook his head as he answered.
“Well, the Krakens came after us, so the crew of the cruising ship should have survived.”
“They were thrown into the sea after losing the ship, but the shore wasn’t that far away anyway.”
Both Abel and Ryo could think it a good thing that, by serving as bait, they had saved the crew’s lives.
Suddenly, Ryo looked toward the rear cargo hold of the Neil Anderson-Mod.
There sat their two beloved horses, obediently.
“Compared to us, Andalusia and the others have steadier nerves.”
“Yeah, I think so too.”
Ryo and Abel nodded as they looked at the two horses, who sat there gazing back at them with trust.
“Still, this ship... was it a submarine? It’s a lot bigger than the previous one.”
“Yes, yes. This Rondo-class third ship, Neil Anderson-Mod, had its size recalculated on the premise that it would carry Andalusia and Faiwan. Since I needed both the forward cockpit, where we sit, and the rear cargo hold, where they can also fit... once I made the old tank section larger, it inevitably had to become much bigger. But the cargo hold can also store food, so long-distance navigation became possible as well.”
“As long as there’s food.”
“Yes, as long as there’s food...”
Abel and Ryo simultaneously looked toward the rear.
There were Andalusia and Faiwan.
And there were bags of cash frozen in ice.
“You really brought the money you got in Darwei, even in that situation. Impressive.”
“Money is important.”
Abel praised them, and Ryo nodded as if it were only natural.
There are worlds where people even kill one another for a tiny amount of money.
“But there’s no food...”
“Right. We weren’t able to recover the food that had been loaded onto the cruising ship.”
“Because of those guys?”
“Damn you, Krakens! This grudge... I’ll never let it go!”
Ryo voiced his resentment.
“For now, let’s surface. There might be an island nearby.”
“True.”
And so the Neil Anderson-Mod, carrying the two men and two horses, surfaced.
“Remarkably... it is the vast open sea.”
“There isn’t a single island.”
What came into view from the surfaced Neil Anderson-Mod was a horizon stretching in every direction.
What was more, thick clouds covered the sky, so they could not even confirm the sun’s position.
“This is a problem. I do not know our bearing.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to just keep moving on the surface?”
“Yes, that might be best. If we keep going and see an island in the distance, we can stop there. If we turn back, we might run into the Krakens again. But...”
Ryo frowned.
“Is there something wrong?”
“Sonar is difficult when we’re on the surface.”
“Sonar? Ah, the thing that uses magic to determine whether enemies are around?”
“Yes, that one.”
“Hm?”
Abel tilted his head, unable to understand what was difficult about it.
“When you’re on the surface, you have to detect both attacks from the air and attacks from under the sea, right?”
“Well, yes.”
“The density of water molecules in the air and the density of water molecules in the sea are completely different. So the information received from each is completely different.”
“Yeah, I have absolutely no idea what you just said.”
At Ryo’s explanation, Abel answered with a big nod.
It was wonderfully refreshing.
“Originally, sonar is something that detects the movement of an opponent in water-rich situations like underwater.”
“I see, that part makes some sense.”
“I adapted it so that I can detect the movement of an opponent even on land, using water molecules in the air too... tiny, very thin water.”
“I see, that part doesn’t make much sense.”
“So on the surface, I have to deploy both of those at the same time, which makes it hard.”
“I see, it’s hard. Good luck.”
“...”
Abel patted Ryo on the shoulder to encourage him, and Ryo was left speechless.
“I thought that if you couldn’t do it, there was nothing to be done, but if it’s only hard, then it should be fine, right?”
“Fine... I wonder?”
“Ryo can do it. It’ll be fine.”
Abel stated it with certainty.
Ryo looked at him with a suspicious, sidelong stare.
Then Abel delivered the decisive line.
“It’ll be fine if it’s for Andalusia, right?”
“Of course it will! That’s easy.”
A complete about-face. A full retraction.
Ryo nodded once, emphatically, then gave Andalusia, seated in the rear cargo hold, a thumbs-up.
Seeing that, Andalusia neighed happily.
“I’ll take advantage of the good fortune.”
Abel said so with a wry smile.
It might be fair to say luck was on their side.
Six hours after shaking off the Krakens.
“What is that...?”
“An island.”
Ryo asked in question form, and Abel answered with certainty.
Abel had good eyesight.
“We should be able to reach it before dark.”
“As long as we don’t run into ‘them’, right?”
“That sounds ominous, Abel...”
Abel said with a shrug, while Ryo frowned in complaint.
“Those guys... the Krakens really are troublesome.”
After traveling for a while longer, the full view of the island came into sight.
Of course, only from this side. They had no idea what the other side looked like.
Then—
“A ship ahead...”
“It emerged from behind the island.”
“There’s not just one, is there?”
“There are three.”
“And those are, as I thought...”
“They’re heading straight toward us.”
Both Ryo and Abel recognized that the three ships were coming their way.
“This Neil Anderson-Mod is transparent, too. And out on the sea, if a person were floating there, you probably wouldn’t recognize them very well either, right? How did they notice us?”
“There might be a watchtower or something on a high point of the island.”
“Ah, I see.”
They might not be recognizable from the sea, but perhaps the island had something like that.
“Even if there’s a possibility that the island is occupied by pirates, I wonder if it’s really a good idea to launch a preemptive attack.”
“Yeah, you sure make it sound like I proposed that, but I didn’t propose anything like that. Definitely don’t do it, okay?”
“And by ‘definitely don’t do it’...”
“It is not ‘go ahead and do it’! ”
“I’ve been foiled in my gag... terrifying, the gag-crushing Abel.”
Ryo tilted his head with a clunk to show his disappointment.
While the two were talking about that, the distance between the Neil Anderson-Mod and the three ships rapidly shrank, and at last they met.
But...
“They’re speaking to us, but I can’t understand them.”
“Could that language... be something like the Archipelago language?”
“Archipelago? Like the Suje Kingdom or the Komakuta Principality?”
“Yeah. Come to think of it, we had a translator...”
“Mine broke after repeated fierce battles.”
“Mine too.”
Ryo and Abel sighed.
In the Komakyuta Principality, the two of them had bought an alchemy tool that translated the local language, that is, the Archipelago language, into the language of the Central Countries.
But when they crossed to the continent, both of them learned the language of the Eastern Countries, and since then, the eastern language had been enough, so they eventually stopped using the translator...
“Come to think of it, when we met at the meeting in Kwebasa, didn’t Queen Iliaja speak the language of the eastern countries?”
“That’s right. Then shall we try speaking to them?”
It worked beautifully.
“We are the northern navy of the Suje Kingdom.”
A man dressed in the finest clothes, more like a squadron commander than a ship captain, introduced himself.
“I am Northern Fleet Commander Mebeli. We will now conduct an inspection. Remain calm.”
“Go right ahead.”
The Neil Anderson-Mod was floating on the sea.
Its forward cockpit roof was opened, so it looked like something that could pass for a ship... more or less.
Incidentally, the rear cargo hold still had its transparent roof in place because Andalusia and Faiwan were inside.
Since the deck of the navy ship was high up, it would not be difficult for them to board the Neil Anderson-Mod.
Commander Mebeli and six others transferred over.
“Who are you?”
Commander Mebeli asked in an extremely businesslike tone.
“Ah, we’re adventurers.”
“We’re sixth-rank adventurers.”
The two of them showed their adventurer cards, which they had not used much since entering Darwei.
“Hm.”
Commander Mebeli checked the cards, but his expression remained stern.
Ryo and Abel exchanged silent glances.
“Looks like we’re being suspected.”, “They don’t seem to have a very good impression of us.”
That kind of eye contact.
“I understand that there are people called adventurers on the continent, but I cannot judge whether you truly are such people.”
“Ah...”
At Commander Mebeli’s words, Ryo let the words slip from his mouth before he could stop himself.
Come to think of it, he remembered that there were almost no ‘adventurers’ in the Archipelago region.
Their adventurer registration had also been done only after they crossed to the continent...
One of the soldiers behind Commander Mebeli was arguing about something in a language Ryo and Abel could not understand.
Another soldier seemed to be agreeing.
“They must be trying to arrest us.”
“That may be so, but it may not.”
Ryo and Abel also whispered to each other.
“Even if that were the case, I do not want to resist by injuring them.”
“Why not?”
“At the very least, this captain looks serious. Even if they are going to arrest us, there must be some situation that led him to judge that he should do so.”
“Abel... maybe because you’re His Majesty the King who protects the order of the country, but you’re too soft!”
For some reason, Ryo criticized him.
“Too soft?”
“In this world, there are people called corrupt officials. Those people secretly torment ordinary citizens like us and do terrible things for their own selfish gain. They’ll surely seize our property and line their own pockets.”
“Well, there are certainly officials who can’t be called pure and upright... but Ryo’s claim is far too distorted.”
“Is it?”
Ryo pursed his lips into a frown, unwilling to accept Abel’s words.
But it was something else that Abel brought up.
“Hey, Ryo.”
“What is it, Abel?”
“Was the Suje Kingdom really this far north?”
“Huh?”
“We were taken to the autonomous city of Kwebasa by a Suje warship, remember?”
“Yes, yes. It was the Suje Navy’s ship, the Lone Dark.”
“The northernmost point of the Suje Kingdom was the city of Banra, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right, I remember now! We stopped there aboard the Lone Dark, didn’t we? That was where the swarm of crabs came!”
The crab soup was delicious...
“We departed from the city of Banra... and then, well, we took a huge detour east at one point, and there was even the ghost ship, but it still took us quite a while to get to Kwebasa, didn’t it?”
“Maybe about two weeks?”
Ryo counted on his fingers.
But this time it had only taken a few hours...
“Hoi An and Kwebasa aren’t supposed to be that far apart, so even if we assume the same scale... this is only a few hours from the southern part of the continent.”
“It’s too close. That’s strange.”
But the commander had said he was from the northern navy of the Suje Kingdom.
Ryo and Abel tilted their heads and thought about it in various ways, but no good answer came to them.
After listening to his subordinates for a while, the commander turned toward the two of them and spoke.
“I would like to hear your purpose.”
At Commander Mebeli’s question, Ryo and Abel looked at each other.
Ryo because he did not know how to answer.
Abel because he was about to answer himself.
“We were trying to return to Darwei from the Atinjo Grand Duchy when we were attacked by Krakens. We escaped desperately, but we didn’t know where we were going, so we kept running and ended up here. It seems we went in the exact opposite direction from the north we had intended, and came south instead.”
Abel answered very honestly.
The content was, in no small part, unbelievable.
The soldiers were discussing it among themselves.
Seeing that, Abel asked Commander Mebeli:
“We also have a question. We have visited the Suje Kingdom before. We’ve been to the capital, Purri, and we’ve also met Queen Iliaja.”
When Commander Mebeli heard those words, his eyes widened.
“Indeed, we left the Suje Kingdom many months ago... but at that time, the northern end of the Suje Kingdom was the city of Banra. That should be more than ten days south of here. So where exactly are we?”
“It used to be part of Bor.”
“Bor? That sounds vaguely familiar...”
At Abel’s question, Commander Mebeli answered, and Ryo tilted his head.
After a while, he remembered.
“The large archipelago-type vessel!”
“What is that?”
“You know, the one that was being attacked by ghost ship Ruri.”
“Ah, the country that ship belonged to.”
Ryo’s words reminded Abel, too.
The Lone Dark that the two of them were on had rescued a ship attacked by a ghost ship.
That ship belonged to a country called Bor.
“So Bor was an archipelago nation?”
Perhaps Commander Mebeli had heard that line, because he nodded.
Then he continued with shocking words.
“Bor has fallen.”
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