Five days have passed since the encounter with the pirates. Five days of being on edge and in suspense. Vorin wasn’t sure if the pirate captain had lied to them with his last breath or if they gave the armada the slip already, but he wasn’t going to let their guards down.
This unfortunately left the passengers huddling below deck. They could come up for a few minutes with only a couple of people at a time, except there was nothing to see. The thick fog covered the ship thanks to Kumo. She couldn’t keep it up forever though. Every thirteen hours they would have to let the fog dissipate and give Kumo another five or so hours to rest. Even with mana potions and mana regenerating fruits, she had to rest to keep her mental health up. These five hours were now called frosty fives because they all had to stay on high alert.
It had been an eerie week. No one was allowed to speak unless they were below deck and even then, it had to be a whisper. Sound carried in a strange way over the ocean and with the pirate’s perception abilities it could be dangerous to speak. This voyage had gone from laid back tropical cruise to a silent slow creep over the ocean. The fog didn’t help with this. You could still tell it was sunny outside of the fog, but within it would be gloomy. At night, when most of the frosty fives happened, it was pitch black. Even the cloudless night sky wasn’t enough to light their way.
Zul’s hawk had only reported seeing two ships in the five days. Neither looked like a pirate ship. Vorin said they could be using illusion spells to mask the real look of their ship, although it was unlikely. They kept their distance and moved on towards their destination.
Prith’s formation around the ship helped them navigate without their usual sight. They only had to deviate a few times to avoid an island or rock formation. It didn’t cost them anytime and they were still expected to reach Port Palm in another six weeks. If they could stand six more weeks of this that is.
Synexus had spent this time understanding his new abilities better. When he selected the class, it had given him an inherent understanding, but until he put them to use it would all seem jumbled. It had given him a sense of what elements did, even the ones he hadn’t heard of before. Using the skill revealed more and he found it interesting that he could touch organic materials and get a breakdown as well.
For example, before when he touched a tree, it logged into his Genome Library by taking in that tree’s genome. Synexus then could look at the genome and understand what genes were doing what within it. Now when he touched a tree the information would start to fill in his Material Database as well. He understood what the wood would be made of at its base. This would often be different variations of percentages for carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and then some smaller trace elements. Synexus would then be able to look at this makeup and know what function each element was performing within the wood. The whole thing was quite fascinating.
His Material Manipulation skill would then allow him to alter these percentages or rearranging the trace elements or create different compounds to manipulate how the material behaved and the properties it had. This worked in conjunction with this Genome Refinement skill by allowing him to read and refine the blueprints of a plant or animal and then manipulate the material to further improve it. He could refine the genome of a tree to make it stronger by manipulating the makeup of the bark the genes had instructions to grow.
He still couldn’t log any material belonging to people though. That was the first thing he had tried after realizing he could log organic material. It did work on animals, so he logged owl, fox, hawk, turtle, wyvern, and jellyfish skin. As well as the feathers/fur, shell, and scales of any animal he had to experiment with. He hadn’t tried to use Body Transmutation to turn his arms into feathers yet however because he was afraid what the repercussions would be if he accidentally broke one or cut it off while the transmutation was active.
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When he had logged the wood, the ship was made of, as well as the steel of the rails, he went around and used Accelerated Repair to fix the damage that the pirates had done. The skill actively took the elemental makeup of the material and replicated it with mana to fix the holes or cracks. It was all new and exciting to Synexus. Now he could learn the blueprints of a living organism, and the base elements that made up everything around him.
The others were excited for him. Gene looked relieved when he told him about the legendary skill he turned down. Vorin thought his new abilities would be extremely useful going forward with fixing the ship or being able to improve existing materials. Zuls, Kumo, and Prith just thought it was awesome. It wouldn’t be super helpful in combat yet, so he thought they would be disappointed, but they all congratulated him.
In the past five days, while he was getting to know his skills better, he had gotten one level in Body Transmutation, one in Material Manipulation, two in Material Database, and two in Accelerated Repair. His progress was coming along at a good pace. Kumo and himself would have to work hard on these new skills to catch them up with the others in order to gain anymore class levels. This is why there was a bit of a wall to overcome.
Every time you get a new skill, you have to push harder to level your class. Once you got through that first class level, you’d be over the wall, but it still wouldn’t be easy to level up. Each level in a skill took more experience to obtain than the last. Adding skills added more to focus on if you wanted to gain level. Now Synexus would have to collect genomes, manipulate genomes, use Extreme Growth on genes, collect materials, manipulate materials, and find materials to repair to gain a class level. He would have to use Body Transmutation every chance he got to keep leveling that up. With more properties to choose from it was a more versatile skill and he was having fun turning his arms or feet or torso into metal or wood.
Kumo has been busy these last five days with keeping the fog going so she didn’t get to play around with her new skills like Synexus did. Her days were waking up, conjuring the fog, keeping it going, and then going to sleep. It was good practice at keeping focused on the skill and pushing it to its limits. She had already gained a level for it on the third day.
This was obviously an awful time because there was this looming danger. Any minute the armada could show up and they would have a huge fight on their hands. Synexus liked the silence though. He could focus on his skills and on his progress. The unending fog was a little rough, but they were alive and leveling up. What more could he ask for?
Vorin knew it was horrible to ask Kumo to keep this up for five days. He knew they were probably clear by now, however, there was this feeling he couldn’t shake. There was something off about the pirate encounter and the last words of the captain. It was like the armada knew of the Windswept’s existence. Why hadn’t they attacked already? Or made themselves known? It didn’t make any sense.
He had run ins with pirates before, but they were normally simple fights and that was it. There were reports of a pirate armada forming, but no one put any serious thought into it. The pirate factions wouldn’t ban together unless something big was happening. Vorin figured the Windswept would be much too small for any attention of an armada that big. Now he was on edge every second of every day. Every sound made him jump, every ship sighted made his heart skip. He wanted to protect everyone onboard, but five against an armada was too much to ask. They wouldn’t last if it was six more weeks of silence and fog though. Something had to give soon.
It was the middle of the night. The morning of the sixth day had just officially begun when Vorin heard the screech of a hawk.
