This was Shallow Gray Bay. A fleet lay quietly moored in the thin mist, the long outlines of the Dragon Head Battleships faintly traced behind the fog as they rose and fell with the waves. The soaked wood was covered in crisscrossing scars, some of them still bearing sharp teeth that had not yet been removed.
The Tirmosians' sea shanty drifted faintly from the mist. It was a song that came from the soul, answering some ancient melody as though it had crossed through time, like another legendary seafaring people sailing across the sea.
They dragged their heavy prey ashore through waist-deep seawater with ropes made from Sharp Seal hide. The largest among them was a squid nearly as large as a ship and several stories tall.
It lay limply on the beach. Its dozens of tooth-lined tentacles no longer seemed so threatening after dehydration, while its soft outer flesh had dried and shriveled. Its enormous eyeballs bulged from their sockets, making it look like the remains of a sea monster that had lain dead on the beach for several days.
But this was an Aether Predator, a descendant of Wulamo. It was not the largest prey the hunters of the Mist Clan had ever caught, but it was unquestionably the most valuable.
It had provided one hundred and thirty-three times—or perhaps one hundred and thirty-four times—the experience. The total experience was twenty-seven million four hundred thousand.
Brando tilted his head back and looked at the colossal creature. Together with the Tirmosians around it, it formed an utterly unreal scene—a picture both magical and primitive, as though he were witnessing the seafolk of the Ice Sea hunting in mythology.
Those fierce and ruthless Norse sea raiders sang sea shanties, carried magic spells, and ran through the forests in pursuit of