The cabin didn't smell like home anymore. The sharp, pine-needle scent of resin had been choked out by the dry, suffocating odor of ancient parchment and decay.
Elisabeth sat in the center of it all, a porcelain doll broken at the waist, propped up in the wheelchair I'd cobbled together from driftwood and iron bands. Her eyes were rimmed with red, fixation burning through the exhaustion as she stared at the wall of books I'd salvaged.
"I can't just sit here counting dust motes, Ray," she said. Her voice was thin, scratching at the air. "My legs are dead meat. If my mind rots too, you might as well throw me in the pit with your pets."
Xavier paused, the linen bandages half-wrapped around his knuckles. "Lis, stop. You were screaming in agony forty-eight hours ago. Your nerves are still fusing. You need sleep, not work."
I didn't look up from the grindstone. Shhhk. Shhhk. The rhythm of stone on steel was the only clock that mattered.
"She's right," I said, testing the edge of my cutlass against my thumb. A thin red line appeared instantly. "Pity is a luxury. Utility is survival. If she wants to work, let her earn her keep."
I sheathed the blade and kicked a heavy, leather-bound tome toward her. It skidded across the dirt floor, stopping inches from her wheels.
"Open it."
She leaned down, wincing as her spine protested, and flipped the cover. The pages were yellowed, covered in angular, aggressive script that looked less like writing and more like claw marks.
"Harga," I said. "Dead language said my master. At least, that's what the surface world thinks. To me, it looks like chicken scratch. To you?"
Elisabeth ran a trembling finger over the ink. Her eyes widened, the pupil dilating as she engaged with the text. A flush of color returned to her cheeks—not health, but obsession.
"It's not just Harga," she murmured. "It's the High Dialect. Our tutor... he used to beat us if we mispronounced the gutturals. He said it was the tongue of the First Kings."
"First Kings, Dragon-kin, call them what you want," I interrupted. "Can you read it?"
She looked up, and for a second, she wasn't a cripple. She was a scholar looking at a puzzle. "I can translate it. But the syntax is archaic. It encodes mana concepts into the grammar itself."
"Even better. Xavier is useless for this—he was too busy chasing skirts to learn his declensions—so you're the designated cryptographer." I pointed to the stack. "That pile contains schematics for alloy compositions and atmospheric mana currents. I don't need poetry. I need technical data. Synthesize it. If you find a formula, write it down. If you find a prayer, burn the page."
Xavier tied off his bandage with a savage tug. "You're a bastard, Ray."
"I think you are forgetting too quick who I am."
"I'm a project manager," I corrected. "And we're behind schedule."
The training grounds were a stretch of tidal mud that smelled of sulfur and crab rot. It was the perfect place to learn that the world hated you.
"Sit," I ordered.
Xavier sat. The cold sludge seeped instantly into his trousers, sucking the heat from his legs.
"Meditation in the Academy is about finding your 'center,'" I said, pacing around him. "It's about peace. Harmony. Bullshit."
I kicked a spray of wet sand into his face. He didn't flinch. Good.
"Here, meditation is autopsy. You are the butcher, and your mana is the knife. I want you to feel the blockage in your circuits. Feel the resistance. Mana isn't light; it's a viscous fluid. If you let it sit, it coagulates. If you push it too hard, it ruptures the vessel."
"I feel it," Xavier gritted out, his teeth chattering. "It's heavy."
"Heavier," I commanded. "Now, the Elements. You have an affinity for Earth. That's structure. You're learning Water. That's flow. Right now, you're trying to keep them separate in your head. Stop it."
I grabbed a handful of the muck. "What is this?"
"Mud."
"It's conflict," I corrected, squeezing until the dirty water wept between my fingers and only dry, cracked clay remained. "Earth resists. Water evades. To master the swamp, you have to force them to copulate. Be the pressure."
We spent four hours like that. By noon, Xavier was blue-lipped and shivering violently, but the ball of slurry hovering between his hands wasn't collapsing. It churned. It was ugly, brown, and chaotic, but it held its shape.
"Up," I said. "Combat."
He scrambled to his feet, stiff and clumsy. I didn't give him a second. I lunged, a straight jab aimed at his solar plexus.
He tried to raise a stone wall. Too slow. My fist connected, driving the air from his lungs. He folded.
"Dead," I said.
He gasped, rolling away, and tried to whip a water lash. I stepped inside the arc and swept his legs. He hit the mud face-first.
"Dead again."
He scrambled up, spitting black grit, eyes wild. "You're faster than me! It's not a fair test!"
"Fair?" I laughed, a dry, barking sound. "The Drake that eats you won't care about weight classes. The pirate who guts you won't count to three. Magic isn't a spell you cast, Xavier. It's a punch you throw with your mind. Combine them!"
I came at him again. This time, he didn't try to build a wall or a whip. He panicked. He shoved his hands out, screaming, and the mud at my feet liquefied.
My boot sank. I stumbled, just for a fraction of a second.
It was enough. Xavier scrambled back, creating distance.
I stopped, pulling my foot from the quicksand he'd momentarily created.
"Better. You stopped trying to be a mage and started being a problem. Finally, we can speak about improvement now.... Hmmm... It's time, let's go. We have trees to kill."
The "Forest of Crooks" earned its name. The trees here didn't grow up; they grew wrong. The oaks were twisted into agonizing spirals, their bark grey and hard as iron, looking like arthritic fingers clawing at the sky. The air hung heavy, yellow with pollen that tasted like copper and bad dreams.
Thorg stood next to me, his massive arms crossed over a chest that looked like a beer keg made of muscle. He watched the trees warily.
"Bad spirits here," the barbarian rumbled. "Wood screams when you cut it."
"Then we won't cut it," I said, adjusting my goggles. [Analysis] vision painted the world in wireframes. The oaks were dense, their grain saturated with natural iron deposits sucked up from the volcanic soil. Perfect for a hull that needed to survive the crushing depths of the sky.
"Six thousand," I said.
Thorg laughed. It sounded like rocks grinding in a crusher. "Six thousand? It would take the tribe three moons to fell this with axes. And we would break many axes."
"No axes," I said. I turned to the squad of thirty barbarians behind him. They were looking at me with the mix of curiosity and hunger that predators reserve for prey that talks too much.
"Listen to me!" I shouted, my voice cutting through the hallucinogenic fog. "You want meat? You want the xenia mammouth flesh that makes your blood burn with power? You want enough ale to drown a whale?"
"Listen, I've noticed that you're intelligent, Thorg, and that you deserve to be more valued in the village. All you need to do is follow my instructions. "
"Imagine the drawing: the warrior Thorg bravely and skillfully slaying a mammoth Xenia. Close your eyes and see how they all cheer you and want to serve under your command."
"Now you understand what you still need to do."
A rumble of assent.
"Then earn it. I don't want these trees chopped. Sawing breaks the grain. It kills the soul of the wood." I walked up to the nearest twisted oak, a beast of a tree three meters thick. "I want them ripped out."
Silence. Then, laughter.
"You are crazy, little man," Thorg sneered. "Roots go deep to hell."
"And you are weak," I countered, locking eyes with him. "I thought I hired giants. Maybe I should have hired your wives? They seem to do all the real work anyway."
Thorg's grin vanished. His face went purple. He didn't speak; he roared. He charged the tree, wrapping his arms around the trunk, his muscles swelling like cords of steel. He heaved.
Nothing happened.
Then, a groan. Not from Thorg, but from the earth. The ground cracked.
"Help him!" I yelled at the others. "Or is he the only man among you?"
They swarmed. Chains were thrown. Shoulders were braced. It was a scene of primal chaos. Thirty men, chanting in a rhythm older than civilization, heaving against the stubbornness of nature.
CRACK.
The sound was like a cannon shot. The taproot snapped. The giant oak lurched, tipping slowly, tearing a massive clod of earth with it as it fell. The crash shook the fillings in my teeth.
Thorg stood panting, covered in dirt, bleeding from scratches on his chest. He looked at the fallen giant, then at his hands. He roared again, this time in triumph.
"Again!" I ordered. "Six thousand more! Prove you deserve the feast!"
They attacked the forest like a plague of locusts made of muscle.
The beach had become a vision of hell's own shipyard.
I had rigged a system of pulleys and counterweights using the cliffs as leverage, but the motive power was purely biological. The barbarians hauled the massive iron-wood trunks, stripping the bark with knives the size of shovels.
We were laying the keel. It was a single, monstrous beam of elm—the only wood flexible enough to serve as the spine.
I watched from a high rock, chewing on a piece of dried kelp. Down below, a young barbarian—one of the teenagers trying to prove he was ready for a mate—was struggling. He had a support strut across his shoulders, legs trembling.
"I got it! I got it!" he yelled, waving off help.
He didn't have it. His knee buckled. He stumbled, and the strut slammed into the sand, bouncing.
I was on him before the dust settled. I didn't yell. I used [Gravity Press].
The boy collapsed face-first into the sand as the weight of the air above him suddenly tripled. He wheezed, pinning him like an insect.
"You think this is a game?" I whispered, leaning down. "You think because you have big muscles you can show off?"
I released the pressure. He gasped, sucking in air, terror in his eyes.
"That beam," I pointed to the wood he had dropped. "It is worth more than your life. If you drop it, you create a micro-fracture. If there is a fracture, the hull breaches. If the hull breaches at thirty thousand feet, we don't swim. We fall. And we die."
I looked around at the silent workers.
"We are building a machine that defies god," I said, my voice carrying over the surf. "Respect the material. Or I will bury you in it."
Xavier was standing nearby, watching the scene with wide eyes. He was holding a coconut he'd grabbed for a drink. He looked at the boy, then at me, distracted.
"Eyes on the work, Xavier," I said without turning.
I snapped my fingers. Vector Manipulation.
The coconut in his hand didn't just break. It imploded. Gravity collapsed the shell inward instantly, splashing milk and shell fragments all over his tunic. He yelped, dropping the debris.
"Focus," I said. "Or the next time, it's your skull."
Step three was the armor.
The island air was salt-heavy. It ate iron in weeks. It would rot my ship before we ever left the ground if I didn't seal it.
"I need metal," I told the tribe that evening. "Not ore. Refined metal. Scraps. Coins. Old jewelry."
They brought me garbage. Bent swords, corroded idols, copper coins worn smooth by time.
I set up the crucible. This wasn't blacksmithing; it was Alchemia.
I stood before the roaring furnace, the heat blistering my skin. I poured mana into the mix, breaking down the atomic bonds of the alloys. I separated the impurities—the lead, the zinc, the rust—and isolated the copper.
It was exhausting. My mana channels burned like I was pumping acid. But slowly, the molten river turned a pure, blazing orange.
"Pour!" I yelled.
We cast them into plates. Thin, overlapping scales.
The next day, the hull began to shine. I forced the barbarians to work with the delicacy of jewelers.
"Overlap them," I instructed. "Like fish scales. Hammer the rivets flush. If I can slide a knife blade under the seam, you do it again without water for a day."
The sound of hammers on copper became the heartbeat of the island. Clang. Clang. Clang. It was a rhythm of industrial conquest. We were armoring a leviathan.
Night. The silence was heavy, broken only by the wind whistling through the ribs of the ship. It looked like the skeleton of a whale that had died trying to climb the mountain.
I sat on the unfinished deck, a lantern flickering beside me. The maps were spread out—Marduk's legacy.
I traced the coastlines. They were wrong. The geography had shifted since the old man had drawn these, warped by the cataclysms or the drifting of tectonic mana plates. But the stars... the stars were honest.
I used my sextant, measuring the angle of the Red Wanderer against the horizon.
"Latitude 40. Longitude... unknown."
I picked up the letter. The wax seal was cracked, the crest of Catington faded but visible. A griffin clutching a coin.
"Catington," I muttered. The Hub. The Crossroads of greed and genius. It was a cesspool of merchants, but it had the one thing we needed: An Academy. And a market for S-Rank monster parts.
"We go there," I whispered to the map. "We sell the loot. We buy power. We survive."
Footsteps on the ladder. Xavier pulled himself up onto the deck. He looked like he'd been dragged behind a horse—bruised, muddy, smelling of ozone and sweat.
But in his hand, he held it.
A perfect sphere of water, spinning rapidly. Inside it, a core of compressed earth, rotating in the opposite direction. A gyroscope of elements. It hummed with stability.
"I did it," he croaked, holding it out. "It doesn't collapse."
I looked at the spinning mud-ball. It was ugly. It was crude.
It was beautiful.
"Good," I said, leaning back against the mast. "You've learned to make a marble. Now, go sleep. Tomorrow, we start rigging the sails."
"Ray?"
"What?"
"Are we really going to fly this thing?"
I looked at the copper scales glinting in the moonlight, then at the massive, twisted roots forming the ribs of the hull.
"Fly?" I grinned, and for once, the darkness in my chest felt a little lighter. "No, Xavier. We're going to hunt the sky."