Crossing the Sea

Paul said he would wait for us in Milishion.

Milishion was in the middle of the Millis Continent. From Zant Port, we had to cross the sea to West Port, then follow the Holy Sword Highway east. The journey took ten days on a fast horse. In other words, we had to cross the sea first.

The problem was that we were running low on money.

By the time we had traveled from Rikarisu City to Zant Port, food, lodging, and supplies for our commissions had used up the last of our savings. I searched every pocket: four Asuran silver coins and two copper coins. Four silver coins were enough to buy two tickets for the ship, but once we reached the Millis Continent, we wouldn't even be able to afford a meal.

"We need to earn some travel money first," I said.

Eris nodded.

For the next four days, we took every commission we could find around Zant Port.

On the first day, a dockside warehouse had an infestation of gray-bellied rats. The monsters were as big as cats, with teeth that could bite through a ship's planks. The warehouse owner offered a reward of three silver coins. I stood at the entrance and picked them off one by one with Rock Bullet, while Eris went after any I missed inside with her nameless sword. More than a dozen dead rats piled up, and they didn't smell good: a stench of sewage and rotting flesh. The job took less than an hour from start to finish, and we had three silver coins.

On the second day, we helped a fishmonger carry his wares. The fish market was three hundred paces from the docks, and we made six trips back and forth. Eris carried two crates at a time, and the fishmonger looked at her no differently than he would have looked at an ox. I carried one crate and nearly threw my back out on the third trip. Two silver coins.

On the third day, a swarm of venomous bees invaded an herb field outside the city. The queen was as big as a fist, and the sound of her wings was as shrill as a saw cutting through wood. I used thick fog to restrict the swarm's movement, and Eris charged into it and drove her sword through the hive. The queen fell to the ground, still flapping, and Eris crushed her flat underfoot. Five silver coins.

On the fourth day, we joined an escort. A merchant needed to take a cartload of porcelain from Zant Port to a waystation outside the city. It wasn't far, but the mountain road was rough, and he needed people to guard the cart against bandits. We spent half a day on the job and didn't see a single sign of a bandit. Four silver coins.

Four days, eleven commissions. We had saved nineteen silver coins in total. After buying tickets and supplies, we had five left, enough to pay for meals along the way.

Eleven commissions in four days. Back on the Demon Continent, Rujierd could take three or four in a single day by himself. Eris and I together could barely match his pace. Only after Rujierd left did I truly understand how terrifying his five hundred years of fighting experience were.

Early on the fifth morning, we bought our tickets and boarded the passenger ship Tailwind.

The Tailwind was a large vessel that carried both passengers and cargo, with a hull as wide as a fat whale. Wooden crates and sacks covered the deck, and sailors climbed about among the ropes, barefoot, their skin dark brown from the sea breeze and scorching sun. A flag hung at the bow, depicting a seagull with its wings spread against a blue background.

The cabins were below deck. We were assigned a small compartment with a wooden bed, an oil lamp, and a little table. A sailor was snoring next door, and we could hear him clearly through the wooden partition.

Eris tossed our luggage onto the bed and sat down. The bed creaked.

"We have to be on the boat for seven days?" she said.

"Yeah, seven days."

In seven days, we'll be on the Millis Continent, and Paul will be waiting for us there. It's been three years since we last saw him. What will he be like? The writing in his letter was all crooked. His hand must have been shaking. Did that carefree man suddenly burst into tears while he was writing?

We set sail in the morning. The mooring lines came loose, and the ship slowly pulled away from the dock, trailing a white wake across the sea. Zant Port's outline grew smaller and smaller, until only the tips of a few tall masts remained at the docks, like needles stuck into the horizon. Then even the needles vanished.

The sea breeze blew into our faces, carrying the smell of salt and fish.

The first two days were peaceful. There wasn't much wind out at sea, and the ship moved slowly but steadily. Every day, the sailors adjusted the sails, checked the ropes, and used long poles to push floating debris away from the hull. Now and then, dolphins leaped beside the ship, their gray-white backs flashing in the sunlight before they slipped back into the water.

I practiced wind magic on deck.

The wind at sea was different from the wind on land. On land, the wind had a direction, blowing out of the mountains or across the plains, and generally stayed consistent. At sea, it was chaotic, coming from every direction. Sometimes a gust from the left collided with one from the right, and they spun together. I used my mana to sense the wind's flow and tried to bring order to the chaos. It took two days before I could just about keep the sails at a fairly favorable angle, so the sailors didn't have to adjust them so often.

The captain was a short, stocky man in his fifties with a full beard and a voice as loud as thunder. He saw me practicing magic and came over.

"Boy, are you a magician?"

"Yeah."

"You can practice your magic, but I'm warning you, don't damage my sails."

"Don't worry, don't worry. I won't, Captain."

He grunted and walked away.

Looks like he's had a magician cause trouble on his ship before. Still, that's normal enough. Nine out of ten magicians these days have strange tempers, and the one left over has an especially strange temper.

The food aboard was hard bread and salted fish soup, much like what we'd had at inns on the Demon Continent. The bread was hard enough to use as a weapon. I tapped it against the table, and it made a dull thud. Eris glanced at it, took it from me, and broke it in half with her bare hands.

"...Thanks."

"Mm."

On the third night, the wind and waves were calm.

After dinner, I went up on deck for some air.

The moon was full. A layer of silver light stretched across the sea from the horizon to the ship's stern. Nothing was visible on the distant horizon but the hazy line where sea and sky met. The air smelled of seawater and wood, with a touch of the coolness peculiar to nighttime.

Eris leaned over the railing, gazing into the distance.

She doesn't get seasick anymore? That's Eris for you!

The moonlight was bright. Her deep crimson hair had turned dark red in its light, and the sea breeze blew it against her cheeks. Her sword leaned against a barrel beside her.

I walked over and leaned against the railing beside her.

Neither of us spoke.

The waves splashed against the hull, like someone slowly turning the pages of a book. Seagulls cried overhead, their shrill voices cutting through the night sky.

"Hey, Rudeus, my grandfather took me to see the sea once when I was little," Eris said suddenly.

Her voice was much quieter than usual. The sea breeze carried half her words away, but I heard every one of them.

"From the walls of the City of Roa. I was probably five or six. You could see a long way from the walls, all the way to the line of the sea. Grandfather said the Demon Continent was on the other side, and that really scary demons lived there."

She paused.

"Then we actually went to the Demon Continent."

I couldn't help laughing.

"What's so funny?" She glanced at me.

"Nothing. I just think fate is strange. Your grandfather said there were scary demons across the sea, and then you not only went there, you stayed for three years."

"Demons aren't scary," she said. "Rujierd isn't scary."

"Yeah."

Rujierd really isn't scary. A five-hundred-year-old Superd warrior who traveled alone for four hundred years, all to clear his people's name. What's scary is whatever turns people into demons.

We fell quiet again for a while.

"What do you think is on the other side of the sea?" she asked.

I thought about it.

"Places even farther away. There's the Demon Continent, the Begaritt Continent, and lots of places we've never been."

"After we find your family, let's go together."

I looked at her. Moonlight lit her profile, its outline clear. There was a tiny freckle on the tip of her nose that I'd never noticed before.

"We will," I said.

She turned to look at me, her red eyes dark and deep in the moonlight.

"It's a promise, then."

"It's a promise."

The corners of her mouth curved. It wasn't quite a smile, but her expression was a little softer than usual.

Eris rarely smiles. I can count the times she smiled during our three years on the Demon Continent on one hand, but I remember every one. The first was when she had hot soup in Port Wind. The second was when Rujierd praised her progress with the sword. The third was... probably when I had a fever in Rikarisu City and she stayed by my side. I smiled at her when I woke up, and she smiled back. And whenever he mentions me in front of other people, he always says proudly, "Rudeus is really amazing."

"Rudeus."

"Yeah?"

"Have you ever been somewhere really, really far away?"

The way she asked caught me off guard. "Somewhere really, really far away" was a strange way to put it.

Is she asking about my past? She doesn't know what I used to be like. All she knows is that I'm Rudeus Greyrat, a thirteen-year-old magician, an adventurer who spent three years traveling back from the Demon Continent. What she doesn't know is that I lived for thirty-four years in another world, holed up every day in a room six tatami mats in size, playing games. I barely even went to the convenience store. That world had seas, but I never went to the shore.

I opened my mouth and almost told her. I almost said, "I used to live somewhere really, really far away."

But I swallowed the words.

"No," I said. "I've never been anywhere far away."

Eris looked at me for a while. Then she turned back and went on watching the sea.

"Liar," she said.

Her voice was soft, with a hint of amusement.

She doesn't believe me. She probably thinks I'm brushing her off. Eris never presses for answers. When she wants to know something, she looks with her eyes and feels it with her body instead of asking. That's what makes her different from other people.

The sea breeze blew her hair onto my shoulder. A few red strands clung to the collar of my robe.

I didn't move them.

The night grew deeper. The cries of the seagulls faded into the distance, leaving only the sound of waves against the hull. The moon rose directly overhead, and silver light covered the entire deck.

Eris's breathing slowed. She leaned against the railing, her eyes half closed.

"Are you sleepy?" I said.

"No."

Three seconds later, her head tipped sideways and came to rest on my shoulder.

"...Never mind."

I didn't move.

The sea was quiet, the moonlight bright, and the wind warm.

Just then, a low rumble came from beneath the ship.

I looked down at the sea.

The moonlight couldn't penetrate the deep water. But about thirty meters off the ship's starboard side, a dark shadow was moving slowly. It was huge, enormous, so large that I couldn't make out its edges at all.

It was swimming underwater, toward the ship.

"Eris, there's something underwater."

She woke instantly. Her eyes opened, she sprang up from my shoulder, and her right hand was already gripping the hilt of her nameless sword.

"What is it?"

I didn't answer. My left hand rested on the railing, and mana had already begun to gather.

An unusual wave rose on the sea, pushed up by something from below. The ship tilted sharply, and barrels rolled across the deck.

There was something underwater.

And it was huge.