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Salt and Blood - Chapter 72
🕑 Added 2024-11-12 16:23:25 +0000 UTC<< Chapter 71 | Table of Contents | Chapter 73 >>
1.72 - You’ve got two hands, so use them!
If you ever see strange islands at sea, ones that don’t appear on any map—avoid them at all costs. I know the temptation of discovery and treasure is powerful, but your life is more important.
-Excerpt from ‘Guide to Getting Rich at Sea’ by Quiccash Goldentoe
The force of the explosion threw her into the ocean and her face slammed into the water. It felt hard as stone and she barely clung to consciousness.
Rose’s entire body was on fire. The last of her tidal energy had run dry and her thighs burnt from being overworked.
Blood trickled from the wound on her leg into the ocean, but despite all that she felt a comforting sense of peace. Since she had the vision from Sylack, the seas were like a second home to her.
Flashes of orange and white lit up the murky darkness as flaming debris from the pirate ship tore through the ocean around her. It took a colossal force of will to tear her arms from the water and start dragging herself back towards Liberty.
Thanks to Yasmin’s explosive entry to the battle, it had managed to break away from their two pursuers despite the fierce headwind. With every stroke her body protested, the multitude of splashes from both the tide and the sea around her echoing through her head.
She realised she’d received more than a few levels in the seconds after the explosion but her mind was too tired to trawl through them until she was on solid ground—or the deck of a ship, at the very least. I don’t think I can swim the whole way.
One more stroke was all she managed before her arms gave out. It took another few seconds for her flailing legs to finally still and her head sunk below the rolling waves.
The sea around her turned dark as she lost consciousness. Wait, I'm not quite gone yet, so why is it pitch black? Something cold wrapped around her waist right as she passed out.
***
She lifted an arm to rub the sleep from her eyes and immediately regretted it. Every muscle in her body ached and even the tiniest of movements set off a cascade of fiery pain.
Eventually she managed to sit up. A few agonising stretches later her body was loose enough to actually get out of the bed and walk around the cabin. Her cabin.
Somehow she’d managed to get back to Liberty after passing out… She rubbed her temple, a vague recollection of black tendrils carrying her through the sea right before she lost consciousness.
Yasmin must have carried me back after I blew up the ship. Rose let out a dry chuckle. It seemed like the cunning woman had planned everything from start to finish, but made it seem like a spur of the moment plan.
Whatever it had been, it worked wonders. Rose had been terrified as she sailed through the air towards the pirate ship and wracked with nerves even as she started killing them, but the improvement to her skills was well worth the chaos.
And she had a wall of whorls to trawl through. Towards the end of the battle and following the colossal explosion she’d caused, Rose had begun to ignore the splashes in favour of survival. Now though, she had time to take stock of her gains.
Skill up!
Endurance 8 > 10
Cooking 7 > 8
You have earned a new trait!
Thick Skin: Going through many gruelling battles and experiences has forced your body to adapt. Your skin is tougher to cut and resists both heat and cold better.
Another extremely useful trait had joined her growing collection. All of them had their uses and she was grateful for the incremental boost they provided when combined with her skills, but traits that directly boosted her survivability like this one were her most treasured.
Rose didn’t even want to think about the implications of her cooking skill levelling up… It seemed as though the tide counted incinerating a ship full of pirates as cooking, which meant there were surely more insidious ways of levelling it up.
Not that Rose ever planned to use Cooking in that manner. It did give her a healthy new appreciation for how terrifying Nasar could be. Carving a giant serpent into fillets with just a chef’s knife seemed to be the surface of his skills…
Along with the few skills that had levelled up after her escape, there were her combat skills which had been constantly improving as she sliced and diced her way through her foes. Pulling up her status, she marvelled at her progress.
Name: Rose Everblue
Blessings: Minor Blessing [Sylack]
Race: Human
Occupation: Apprentice Scholar 21
Title: Quintessential Skill
Available Titles: Murderer, Apprentice, Quintessential Skill, Ambitious Harvester, Godtouched
Bound Items: Sunsplitter 51
Skills: Cleaning 12, Reading 12, Fishing 24, Swimming 10, Writing 16, Butchery 10, Cooking 8, Herding 2, Focus 16, Drawing 19, Sailing 15, One Handed Weapons 5, Blades 16, Pistols 11, Firearms 5, Unarmed Combat 2, Endurance 10, Precision 8, Arcane Attunement 8, Light Attunement 6, Stealth 8, Athletics 11, Toxin Resistance 2, Appraisal 1, Climbing 1, Crafting 1, Dual Wielding 12, Arcane Resistance 1, Divine Attunement 1, Water Attunement 4
Traits: Sensitive Line, Deft Hand, Good as New, Tunnel Vision, Endless Inkwell, Quick Consumption, Knot my Problem, Reliable Duelist, Steady Slash, Smooth Strokes, Agile, With the Grain, Ambidextrous, Thick Skin
With the gains in Fishing, Rose was fast approaching her first level 25 skill. That was monumental. At that level it would give her another trait—her first second tier trait.
Back home in Fairwater Bay, most of the fishers didn’t reach that point until they were in their thirties or forties. That along with almost every day spent at sea, trawling for fish to feed their families and sell to the bigger towns and cities.
She’d accomplished the same feat in just a few months, albeit with much bigger and deadlier catches than her contemporaries. Rose couldn’t stifle her smile and it beamed ear to ear.
Five titles and fourteen traits were hers too, a staggering number compared with most of the people she knew. However, she was aware that her perspective needed to change. It already had, being around monsters like Trent and Nasar every day and seeing the shocking things they pulled off with ease.
While she’d eclipsed the limits of her birth, she was far from the level she needed to reach in order to achieve her ambition. If she started to gain a name for herself, navies and bounty hunters would start to seek her head.
When that time came she would need the strength to fend them off without relying on others. Not to say that a crew wasn’t meant to help each other through adversity, but you couldn’t always lean on the people around you without becoming a burden.
Oddly, she was grateful to Yasmin for tossing her into such a dangerous battle with so little warning. There was no opportunity to refuse or escape, but in the end she’d discovered that taking on all those pirates hadn’t been so difficult.
The leader, that guy with the red mohawk, had pushed her to the limit. However, once she was able to take him down the rest of the battle relied on her willpower and endurance.
As long as her goal remained to reach the top, nothing at this level would be able to stop her or slow her down. Yasmin’s actions had reminded her of that essential truth.
If there was one negative to come from the battle, it was that she realised how big of a mistake she’d made by taking apprentice scholar as her first occupation. In her rush to choose an occupation before she wasted too much time she’d chosen one that was difficult to grow at sea.
It was easy to tell herself that she’d dedicate time to drawing, reading, and writing. The truth was unexpected dangers were lurking around every corner and the life of a pirate was all-consuming.
Well, there’s no time like the present. Rose took out her sketchbook and logbook, along with her pencils. I wonder how well the Ambidextrous trait works?
Taking a pencil in each hand, she started to experiment with drawing and writing at the same time. Her first attempts were hideous.
The handwriting was little better than chicken scratches in the dirt, utterly unreadable, while the drawing of a ship she’d attempted looked more like a disfigured whale. However, she was nothing if not determined.
An hour later she was startled from her intense focus by a splash in her ears. Reading the whorl she couldn’t help but laugh at the irony.
Skill up!
Focus 16 > 17
It didn’t take long for her to slip back into a state of dedicated work and even though her work was still far from legible, the quality was steadily improving. Another hour passed by and a second splash broke her concentration.
Skill up!
Dual Wielding 12 > 13
Drawing 19 > 20
Even though her most recent sketch was a far cry from the intended goal, a dolphin with one too many fins was a definite improvement over the horrors she’d been drawing before. And, if she squinted hard enough, Rose could read one in every three words she’d scrawled.
Satisfied, she was about to return to her practice when a loud bang came from above, followed by a series of quieter thuds. A moment of silence hung in the air and then the door to her cabin was practically blasted off its hinges.
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