Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 26 The voyage of the Blue Marlin began with the heavy tolling of the bronze bell hanging at the bow.
At the captain's command, the anchor was weighed and three massive sails were unfurled. The canvas snapped taut as it caught the wind, surging the vessel forward into the open sea.
While the sailors busied themselves with their duties, Turan lay relaxed in his cabin, passing the time with a book.
The first volume he picked up detailed the regulations of a sailing vessel. After explaining the various roles—starting with the captain—it listed several unwritten rules and superstitions, many of which were quite peculiar.
No women on board; never look down at the dark water at night; whistling is strictly forbidden…
There were so many prohibitions that Turan wondered how the crew managed to get anything done at all. Furthermore, the punishments for violating these rules were uniformly grim, often involving being lashed while bound to the mainmast.
Next, he turned to a book about merfolk. Perhaps because it had been written near an actual merfolk habitat, it contained details far more specific and concrete than those found in the Orem City library. It covered everything from the legend of a magic mirror connecting the North and South Seas to stories of merfolk royalty capable of transforming into giant, monstrous fish.
For books he had bought on a whim, they were surprisingly engrossing and served as an excellent way to kill time.
After a few hours of reading, the cramped cabin began to feel stifling. Turan closed his book and headed up to the deck.
The land had long since vanished beyond the horizon, leaving nothing but deep blue water in every direction. Because of the vast, empty expanse, it hardly felt as if they were moving at all, despite the ship cutting through the wind at a steady clip.
"Ah, Sir Knight! You've come out!"
As he stepped onto the deck, Osban, the first mate, greeted him. Thanks to the book he had just finished regarding crew ranks, Turan knew that this man held the highest authority on the ship after the captain. He was responsible for everything from cargo management to commanding the vessel in the captain's absence.
Despite such heavy responsibilities, the man's excessively fawning attitude made him seem somewhat flighty.
"It was getting stuffy inside, so I came out for some fresh air."
"The cabins are a bit like that, aren't they? Haha… To be honest, merchant ships aren't usually quite that cramped."
Osban excused the situation by blaming the greedy shipowner, who had expanded the cargo hold excessively to cram in more goods. Normally, senior officers would have rooms slightly larger than Turan's, but on this ship, they all had to share one large, communal berth.
Turan decided to be grateful for the fact that he had a room to himself.
"I heard it takes twenty days to a month to reach the Enril Desert."
"Yes. Provided the winds and waves are in our favor, of course. The North Sea is a notoriously temperamental place."
Osban mentioned that he had sailed the South Sea in his youth. There, the waves were small and the winds weak; ships moved slowly, but the voyages were predictable. In contrast, the North Sea was a place of extremes. With a tailwind, one could practically fly across the waves, but the slightest mishap could lead to a major course deviation or a catastrophic shipwreck.
And that was saying nothing of the pirates and merfolk that swarmed the waters regardless of the region.
"Still, having a knight like you with us this time makes me feel truly secure!"
Even though he had never seen Turan's skills in action, Osban boasted loudly that with Turan on board, neither pirates nor merfolk would dare touch the ship. Turan gave a wry smile at the embarrassing flattery but didn't tell him to stop. Doing so would only sour the mood, and more importantly, he noticed the junior sailors nearby looking visibly relieved as they listened to Osban's bluster.
It seemed the mate was intentionally exaggerating to put his subordinates at ease.
In truth, regardless of how flimsy the evidence was, Osban's confidence wasn't entirely misplaced. There weren't many enemies capable of threatening a merchant ship guarded by a combatant of mid-to-high noble caliber.
After enduring the continued praise for a while, Turan asked Osban something he had been curious about.
"Actually, I don't quite understand why the fees for knights here are so high. Wouldn't it be more profitable for the Carmine family to station knights at a reasonable price to prevent merchant ships from being plundered? They must collect taxes on every trade anyway."
In Arabion, knights from vassal families even performed in plays. Though he hadn't looked into it deeply, surely a theater troupe wouldn't be paying salaries so high that even a merchant ship couldn't afford them.
"Well, that is…"
At the question, Osban scratched his cheek and answered in a cautious tone.
"This might sound a bit disrespectful, but life at sea means never knowing when you might die. For us sailors, if we don't hear from someone for a few years, we don't think they've gone somewhere far away—we assume they're dead. Because of that…"
"Are you saying that even as knights, they're afraid of dying if the ship sinks?"
"I—I didn't mean it quite like that!"
"No, now that I hear it, it makes sense. There really is a reason for everything."
Come to think of it, even Turan wouldn't feel confident about returning to land if a ship suddenly sank in the middle of the ocean. Water was everywhere, so he could refine it for drinking with magic, and he could catch and grill fish for food, but how much effort would it take to swim to land? And where would he sleep?
If even Turan felt that way, an ordinary knight would likely run out of mana before long, become no different from a normal human, and drown. Perhaps the Carmine family had actively placed knights on merchant ships in the past, but the losses became unbearable, leading to the current exorbitant prices.
"It seems the atmosphere is ripe for some interesting stories."
Just then, Captain Pires climbed up from below deck, adjusting his eyepatch as he spoke. He bowed his head to Turan first.
"I've welcomed a distinguished guest and haven't been able to greet you properly for hours. I hope these idiots haven't made you uncomfortable?"
"Not at all. I've been hearing many useful things."
"I'm glad to hear it. Osban? It looks like water might leak into the wheat storage. Rearrange the layout."
"Aye, sir!"
At Pires's command, Osban struck his chest with his fist and hurried below deck. Turan turned to Pires and asked the question he had been meaning to pose.
"By the way, what do you usually sell in the Enril Desert? I don't know much about that region."
"Various things. Since the desert is literally nothing but sand, cotton can't be grown there, so cotton wool and cloth sell well. Since land trade with Arabion was cut off, grain sells quite a bit too. But the real profit is on the way back."
"On the way back?"
"Yes. The goods needed in the Enril Desert are all heavy and bulky compared to their price, but the items coming from there to Abacha are expensive and easy to store. Most of it is spices or jewels, so I can sleep much more soundly on the return trip."
"It's a shame I won't be able to join you for the return journey."
Pires chuckled at Turan's banter and asked, "Will you be staying in the Enril Desert for long?"
"Yes, likely."
In truth, Turan had not yet devised a clear plan for how to find his roots in the land of Zahar. Charging into the main house without even knowing his father's status was like reaching into a box without knowing if it held treasure or a blade.
But if he excluded that method, his only clues were a portrait of his mother's face and a few keepsakes. Searching with only those might take years in the desert—or perhaps even longer.
*
Fortunately, Turan's first voyage proceeded smoothly for a week.
There were no storms, no tidal waves, and no attacks from pirates or merfolk.
Which meant that the days were quite boring.
"So this is the fifth rope?"
"Yes. When a strong headwind blows, you have to release this one and those two middle ropes over there to furl the sails quickly. Otherwise, the ship will just spin in place."
"I see."
Having finished his books, Turan satisfied his thirst for knowledge by catching sailors during their downtime and learning various skills, starting with the mechanics of sailing.
The sailors were initially flustered that a high-ranking knight was learning skills usually reserved for lowly deckhands. However, seeing how he listened intently and never forgot what he was taught, they generously shared their various tips and tricks. In terms of appearance, Turan was close in age to the youngest sailors on board, so there was little awkwardness in them teaching him.
"Mealtime!"
"Alright, let's eat! Everyone to the mess hall!"
Meals were served three times a day. As expected, they were poor in both quantity and quality compared to meals on land. The food storage hadn't been generously allocated to begin with, and most of the preserved rations were of low quality.
Since the captain's cabin wasn't very large, Captain Pires and Turan ate with the crew in the ship's largest mess hall.
"Still, it's a relief they didn't leave out the pickled cabbage! If it weren't for this, we'd all have died of the gum-sickness long ago."
"Gum-sickness?"
"Yes. A disease where your gums bleed and you die, but it gets better if you eat sour food. Fruit rots quickly, so pickled cabbage is the best. It tastes like hell, though. Keke."
Renak, the boatswain, laughed as he spoke, eating hardtack with salted meat and pickled cabbage. Perhaps because Turan had asked him so many questions about sailing over the past few days, Renak now treated him like one of his own junior sailors, despite still using formal titles.
"How strange. How did people find out about that?"
"Something like that probably spread after someone figured it out eventually. I heard that before it was discovered, people even ate raw merfolk to survive."
"Oh."
Turan, whose appetite suddenly vanished as he recalled the Dark Elf Necromancers who used to crunch on humans, set down his food.
Just then, a shout came from the sailor observing the surroundings from the crow's nest.
"Sail ho! Two o'clock ahead! Medium-sized vessel!"
"What?"
"Is it pirates?!"
As one of the sailors eating shouted, the answer came back a moment later.
"I don't know! There's no family crest on the flag!"
"I have a feeling it's pirates. I thought the weather was suspiciously good. Everyone, battle stations!"
At the boatswain's command, the sailors who had been eating scrambled onto the deck or began distributing weapons without hesitation. Osban, the first mate, tried to steer the Blue Marlin to the left to avoid the approaching ship, while Captain Pires sat at the table with a composed, if slightly tense, expression, watching his subordinates handle the situation.
Turan slipped past the busy sailors and stepped onto the deck, using detection magic to identify the approaching vessel. At a glance, it was slightly smaller than the Blue Marlin and had four sails. He estimated that its speed was a bit faster than theirs.
A moment later, the mysterious ship turned to the right, as if pursuing the Blue Marlin.
"Damn it, it really is pirates!"
"What shall we do, Captain? Shall we try to lose them? They're a bit faster, so they might catch us if the chase goes on too long. If the wind holds, we might be able to dock at a nearby island before they catch us."
Turan felt Pires's gaze flicker toward him. Though he had verified Turan's skill once, he hadn't seen his actual combat ability yet, so he seemed somewhat uneasy.
"Will you be alright?"
"As long as there isn't a knight or a noble on that ship, it won't be a problem."
"…Very well. Turn the ship! We engage!"
"Long live the Knight!"
"Kill them all, sir!"
At Turan's confident reply, the crew of the Blue Marlin showed an attitude of trust, despite their lingering anxiety.
A short while later, the Blue Marlin turned back, and the distance between the two ships closed rapidly. The crew of the opposing ship, likely pirates, seemed taken aback by the Blue Marlin's sudden turn, but they did not lose their aggressive momentum.
"Heave to! Do that, and we'll spare your lives!"
When the distance had closed to a few hundred meters, a man standing at the bow shouted in a booming voice. Hearing this, Turan grew curious and asked the boatswain beside him.
"If we surrender, do they really let us live?"
"I've heard it's entirely up to their whim."
"I thought as much."
Indeed, it would be strange for pirates who don't even follow the law to keep their word. Thanks to that, Turan could act without any hesitation. After all, humans who kill other humans for their own greed were nothing more than wolves to be hunted.
The two sailing ships drew closer and closer.
When the distance was about thirty or forty meters, Turan leaped with superhuman strength, soaring across the gap and landing on the deck of the pirate ship.
The pirates stared with blank, terrified expressions as they watched their deck shatter under his feet with a thunderous crash.
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