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Salt and Blood - Chapter 122
🕑 Added 2025-02-05 14:58:14 +0000 UTC<< Chapter 121 | Table of Contents | Chapter 123 >>
2.28 - Bitter Victories
There are moments in life when we claim a great victory or achieve a goal we’ve long aimed for, yet find ourselves feeling hollow in the aftermath. The only solution is to pick yourself up and take another step forwards
-Quoted from Castell Saltbeard
Rose coughed, waving the thick smoke away from her face. Her lungs burned from inhaling the smoke. It was crackling with arcane energy, but it felt burnt and used.
Rather than refreshing her it made her circuits burn. She suspected it was an after effect of the cannons the ship had fired at them. Or perhaps their crash had damaged something essential.
She looked around her, making sure that her crewmates weren’t dead or too injured to move. Being caught frozen on a ship with hundreds of enemies ready to come down on them like the executioner’s axe was not an ideal situation.
Most of the soldiers would be the fodder, but she was not invincible. Without the gift of divine energy it would be hard. However, she felt that her own strength had grown a great deal.
While she’d been teaching the others how to fight, she had not been idle in her own training. Rose had spent her free time practicing how to manipulate her arcane energy and improve her strength beyond the confines of the tide.
She heard a loud groan from the prow of the ship and frowned. Rose vaguely remembered crashing into something as they hit the deck.
After checking that Jason, Daniel, the prince, and his guards were all alive, she tentatively walked towards the crumpled prow of Silent End. The smoke was still billowing from below, but she was able to make out the vague silhouette of a person.
She felt the ship tremble as someone behind her leapt out of the bowels of the ship which they’d crashed through. That was fine. They could handle themselves.
Rose stepped out of the cloud of smoke and saw a bloodied soldier wiping ash from his eyes. Looking over his uniform she realised he was a Commodore.
Her lips curled upwards. The last commodore she’d fought had been the hardest challenge of her life and she was a little excited to face one again.
Perhaps that was a selfish feeling when the stake of thousands of her countrymen was at stake, but Rose was ultimately no patriot. She was a pirate.
She had no desire to drag the battle on. Reaching deep inside she pulled on her deep reserves of arcane energy. It hadn’t been that long since she awakened her core, but she felt herself approaching a limit in her gains. Her most recent practice session had led to little growth.
The clash of steel rang out above her as the battle between the navy and her crew began. She would have to rely on their strength.
Her arcane energy swirled through her body and through her raised arm. In her hand she gripped Divine Serpent’s Lure. It wasn’t ideal to use a fishing rod in close quarters, but lacking a suitable cutlass made it a necessity.
If things became dire she could always use Nasar’s knife. She held off for now. It was more a memorial to the man than a weapon she felt comfortable using.
“You!” the commodore roared as he caught sight of her and ripped his cutlass from his belt. He stepped towards her, staggering with an awkward gait.
Rose imagined he took a heavy hit. Getting struck head on with a ship and smashed through three decks of a ship wasn’t an easy thing to recover from. That he was still standing was testament to his willpower and durability.
However, she had almost finished gathering her energy. The serpent fang at the end of the rod began to shimmer with power, but she pushed more and more into it.
His pace quickened as he saw this, his eyes narrowing as he threw his arm back. She could see the elegance in his movements despite his injuries. Giving him everything she had was more than necessary.
When he was a few steps away she flicked her wrist and in the same motion cracked her arms downwards. As her swing reached ninety degrees the commodore slashed out with his cutlass.
There was a powerful arcane force behind his lightning fast swing, but when the serpent fang struck the blade of his cutlass it was the commodore who found himself lacking. His sword was smacked aside as the fishing line swung like a pendulum between the two combatants.
Skill up!
Precision 11 > 12
You have earned a new skill!
Two-Handed Weapons 0 > 1
Skill up!
Two-Handed Weapons 1 > 4
That seems a little late… I was beginning to wonder if it even existed, Rose frowned as she saw the whorls. Perhaps dual wielding was interfering. Better late than never.
The commodore was beginning to recover from the opening exchange, but Rose was prepared. Her arms curved back as she flicked the fang over her shoulder and then cracked her arms forward in rapid succession.
Commodore Pellan had barely gathered himself when he found the fishing hook slicing through the air towards him once more. He found himself burning with rage at the indignity.
A girl who couldn’t have been older than eighteen was fighting him with a damn fishing rod! And she was coming out on top…
He was the foremost officer of his academy class and had distinguished himself during his first six years of service in the Minenblum Royal Navy. Losing here was unacceptable.
Reaching deep into his core, he squeezed out every drop of arcane energy at his disposal. His blade began to glow with shimmering blue light as the hook struck the edge.
Despite exerting everything he had left in him, Commodore Pellan found he was still lacking. His arms trembled as his cutlass was blasted away once more.
However, he recovered faster than before and lunged towards the girl, thrusting at her heart before she could strike again.
Rose cursed internally as the man recovered faster than she expected and struck out. His thrust was shaky but his aim was true. If it landed it would pierce her heart.
She made a split second decision to return Divine Serpent’s Lure to her inventory and in the same moment pulled Nasar’s knife from his storage ring into her left hand. Using the other hand shifted her stance as she dropped down into her left thigh.
Her body twisted around the commodore’s cutlass and his eyes widened in shock and horror as she plunged the knife into his neck. The blade was buried up to the hilt and before he could move another inch Rose grabbed him by the hair and ripped the knife out, before stabbing him through the heart from behind.
Arcane energy spilled into the surroundings as he coughed blood and clutched at his throat. His cutlass clattered against the ground, the blue light fading along with his life.
He fell still, but Rose twisted the knife and left it buried for another few seconds. She gasped as she released his hair, drenched in his blood.
For a few seconds she panted with wide eyes, standing over the man’s corpse as it began to break apart into motes of arcane energy. She barely reacted as the gathered energy struck her in the chest and the rest fell through the hull and returned to the ocean.
She kept the knife and then slapped her cheeks twice with both hands. Spitting out blood, she exhaled and then glanced over the plethora of whorls that had bombarded her during the final moments of the battle.
You have slain [Arslan Pellan]!
Accumulated merit:
1 Occupations Completed
4 Titles Acquired
0 Soulbound Items
0★ Earned
Flowing Core
Skill up!
Blades 20 > 21
One Handed Weapons 9 > 10
You have earned a new trait!
Favoured Strike: You have grown used to weapons requiring only a single hand to wield. Repeated practice with a single area of your body has honed it into a powerful weapon. Strikes with one handed weapons deal slightly more damage.
Rose frowned. That fight had left a bitter taste in her mouth for more reasons than one. Commodore Foulter had been far more skilled than this man, as evidenced by his utterly shoddy merit.
He’d had less titles than her and not even possessed a single soulbound item. Was Minenblum that stingy with their officers? It hadn’t even exerted her that much to take his life.
The sounds of battle had crescendoed during their clash, but adrenaline had allowed her to tune it out. As her breathing steadied the clash of steel and the crack of gunfire rang in her ears.
She glanced back and saw Daniel and Jason fighting off a stream of navy soldiers on the deck of Silent End. They were outnumbered but handling themselves well.
Rose could help them but getting through this battle without her assistance would temper them well for the battles ahead. While this was far from an ideal situation, the clashes would only get more brutal and tough in the months ahead as Minenblum ramped up the intensity of their invasions.
Instead, she turned her attention to the deck below this one, where she’d felt overwhelming pulses of arcane energy for the past minute or so. They washed over her like waves, each identical in strength.
She raised her foot and then smashed it through the deck beneath her, opening a hole wide enough to drop through. Rose hopped into the hole she’d kicked open, bending her knees to absorb the impact as she landed on the deck below.
An echo rang out as she struck a metal floor rather than the wooden planks she’d expected. Looking around, she found the room illuminated by a vibrant blue glow, revealing metal walls on every side.
She was within the belly of the ship. Looking towards the centre of the room she found the source of the pulses. It shook her, throwing her back to the first time she’d met Trent.
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