Royce is woken up by a sudden rough wave. He looks super sick and his body refuses to move as he’s feeling the soreness from his adventitious stupidity. He’s pretty sure it's been almost a day. Still clutching the items Kuroi headshotted him with. His ears are ringing as well. He groans as he clutches his face.

  Hesitantly getting up and out of the hammock, he sees the two bodyguards sitting around, having a chat, holding out their swords as they point at the blades, he doesn’t much care for hearing their mumbling but he locks eyes with the duck as he has either a charter or some high nobility responsibility written on the large parchment. Royce sighs as he drags his feet over to sit across from the duke, who looks like he got a replacement wig while Royce was sleeping.

  Royce slams his hands on the barrel that was holding the paper up, startling the duke and the bodyguards.

  “Information.” Royce says flatly, trying to get comfortable from sitting on a barrel.

  “I quite frankly don’t know what you want.” The duke says as he straightens his wig.

  “All of it, all information you could possibly think to be helpful about the entire empire, this entire ring.” Royce says as he points a finger at the duke, right now, Royce is completely in the dark about his surroundings and beyond.

  The duke sighs, scratching his cheek as he looks over the paper before him, “This is both the charter and map that which this vessel may travel, it can only travel up the desert coast and can only cross the Sunveil river once, deliver and trade goods once, and may only board it a handful of times before handing it off to the next duke. It helps competition and gives a boost to the income of everyone for a set period of time.”

  “What if someone decides to hold off on using the ship? Delay the usage of goods of another duke’s goods?” Royce says as he looks over the charter and map, it really was just a circle, well, rectangle technically.

  “I was getting to that. One loophole is that once you cross the river, it’s unlawful to stall inside the river or turn around. It's happened a few times. But you could stay right outside the river entrance and send in smaller ships to sell the goods that have an expiration date and slowly trickle in goods of importance. But we only have three months with the ship, so trying to stretch out the usage is difficult given how slow traveling is when in Sunveil, but in the Congealed Waters, we go faster for some reason, we’re not too sure why yet. But the boats also start breaking down faster, so it may be due to loss of weight we go faster. But the main part is that this boat breaks down in these waters, so the other dukes slow down, letting the boat become damaged, so the next duke has to pay repair costs if they time it right when they hand off this stupid scroll to the next duke in rotation.” The duke crosses his arms, looking even more mad about it, his foot tapping impatiently.

  “Is the rotation set indefinitely or can you change it?” Royce says as he looks over to the Boa empire coast line, seeing a big patch of the map just a blank land mass, “What’s here?” He says as he points to it.

  “Oh, that's the pale forest, damn near kills everyone who enters, plate armor is expensive and even then we lose hundreds trying to protect ourselves from it’s growth, we have no clue what it really looks like on the inside. Everything leeches off of everything, apparently that's why it's pale. But! AS for the rotation, its tied to the success of each duke or their importance, the biggest hitters get it first, then pass it down.” The duke wipes his forehead of sweat.

  “So what position are you at?” Royce says while trying be open and not trying to hurt the duke’s feelings, thought the state of the private section of the ship tells him all he needs to know.

  “Tsk!” The duke looks the other way, his arms tightening while crossed, Royce hears the stretch of his dusty robes.

  “Dead last?” Royce says almost sympathetically, but not completely, he’s already got a suspicion that the duke has probably got his hand dirty to stay afloat, which means he has more guts than the others, and probably desperation.

  “Once you get past the river and the Congealed waters, you get to a special port in the Boa empire, since, we only have one river that reaches only half way, boats made by the Boa empire can be hauled up by the pulley system into the Chissel river, then you hand off the boat, and the cycle repeats itself.” The entire boat jolts, but no one except Royce seemed concerned.

  “What was that!?” Royce says as he gets up, there's no windows on this level so he can’t check.

  “Its just the Congealed waters. You and your fellow alchemists of the Mamba ring dump all their garbage into these waters, hence the name. What specifically? Might be a statue of god, those tend to get swept up by floods, we are still somewhat close to the coast.” The duke stands up, rolling up the parchment before seemingly unrolling it, “Argh! Always forget to fold it first!” The duke comments as he folds it in half long ways, rolling it up and putting it in a little wooden cylinder.

  Royce gets up with a hand out, he clearly wants more information, but the duke quickly steps past him, “Carl! With me!” He says as one bodyguard gets up, the other one sulks a little, “he never calls on me for help…”

  Royce immediately springs up to stand next to him, a gentle hand on his shoulder. Sensing an opportunity for more info.

  “Maybe you could help me then!” Royce says with a bright smile on his face.

  ‘R-really?” The bodyguard says with a little sparkle in his eyes.

  “Yes, really.” Royce says with a fake little smile, “Could you perhaps tell me of anything about magic and combat?”

  “E-err… Not too much, but I know a little.” Karl responds with not much confidence

  “Like!?” Royce responds a little excitedly

  “Well, I’m not like the duke, I don’t have manifest. But I know very little Zuneigung. My brother and I have been practicing a move, but we never get to try it out for real.” Karl says as he sheathes his sword.

  “Zuneigung?” Royce asks, a little puzzled.

  “Dedication, or was it devotion? The word is a little old, so some people confuse it with Hingabe. It's hard to remember for me, since they are very close in definition. But put it simply, Zuneigung is your skills becoming inherently magical in nature, like how you swing your sword a particular way. Or how a blacksmith forges armor. I’ve heard that due to the intense magic enriched items alchemists have to deal with, that they typically don’t have any Zuneigung.” Karl says as he gets up

  “What about Hingabe, then?” Royce asks as he scratches his head trying to catalog the information.

  “Hingabe is magic brought forth from devotion and worship, or an idea, it's how the church of fire gets their powers, a little disturbingly, actually.” Karl says as he looks a little impatient.

  “The church of fire? What are they like?” Royce looks around for some sort of paper and pencil to write on, maybe a little journal for all this new information.

  “The church of fire get their power from the shared hatred for god, apparently its so strong it burns.” Karl's foot taps a bit in impatience, “Look, I know you wanted me to tell you some things, but I feel bad if I leave my brother all alone.” Royce holds his hand up with a soft smile, both from satisfaction and understanding.

  “Go ahead, I don’t mind. You’ve helped a lot.”

  Karl gives a small bow and excuses himself out of the dusty room. Royce checks the items that Kuroi gave him immediately, they look untampered with, the coin purse feels the same weight, at least he hopes it is. But the other item, he isn't too sure how to check, its basically a wooden tube wrapped in brown cloth. He picks both of them up, hiding the coin purse somewhere on the inside of his clothes, he just puts the wooden tube on his belt, after fiddling with it to make sure it didn’t spin around when he tied it up.

  Royce pokes his head out of the room, just seeing crew members sleeping, some eating or drinking, mainly chatting. Royce walks out of the room, trying a bit too hard to look casual, looking stiff instead. A few just look at him like he had been walking on peg legs, Royce was still getting used to seeing humans, his mind isn’t totally in tune with the new world yet, so he doesn’t know how high or low to put his expectations.

  He gives little waves and little smiles to some of the crew as he passes. Some of the crew seem a little uncomfortable and unnerved by Royce, specifically his skin, his skin looked so much like smooth marble, yet it moves like royal cloth. His nearly gem-like eyes make some of them flinch if Royce glances at them.

  Royce doesn’t really know why they keep looking at him like that, he just ignores it as he gets on deck, surprised he hasn’t gotten seasick yet. The wind blows strong as he instinctively tries to hold his hold to grab a turban that isn’t there anymore. But his eyes widen when he finally sees the water around the ship. He wasn’t sure what color to think of, but it was certainly polluted. It was primarily a dark purple, there was all sorts of debris in the water, combined with dead fish and barely surviving fish.

  Royce looks around, finding the coast, instead of desert, it was a big wall of stone, several towers embedded into the wall. But there were huge sheets of bark tied to the walls, all carved with elaborate figures, maybe the emperor or current one, several figures that Royce doesn’t know, but they were all holding a chisel and other woodworking tools. He can’t see all the details, but he could see some people on planks being lowered down, doing what he can only assume is maintenance on the giant murals. The bottoms seemed the most damaged, the almost gooey water seems to have made chemical burns to the bottoms of each giant piece of bark.

  Royce would take the time to appreciate the massive sheets of art, but the boat creaks and rocks, making him fall over and hit the deck face first, at the moment his brain isn’t truly registering much of his new surroundings, feeling incredibly passive about all of it, but whenever he thinks too hard about it, his head gets a splitting headache, making him stop thinking about it, like now when his face got toothful kiss from some wooden planks. He clutches his head as he gets up, feeling more groggy from the head ache than from waking up on a sail ship.

  There was no one else around him, except maybe the captain, and the duke and his bodyguards. Looking over at the giant, vast sea bubbling and churning with chemicals. He half expects some part of the sea to start boiling like it was on a hot plate. His feet slightly unstable as he walks on the deck, the boat rocking hard to each side every few seconds, Royce thinks this is how it must be to be absolutely hammered. Constantly stumbling, now feeling a little sea sick, the air also didn’t feel that great in his chest.

  Finally hanging onto some wooden railings, he inches up to the trio who were staring at the wall as they sailed past. Clearly more interested in it than Royce, who can’t really get any paler so he just looks uncomfortable as he tries to stand next to them.

  “I… I-I still want more info!” Royce says as he clings to the wooden railings looking a little worse for ware now.

  “He is rather persistent.” Carl says to the duke.

  “Knowledge is power.” The duke responded, “Fine! Over there is the Boa empire, it's where I live. More importantly, everyone there knows a lot about trees, woodworking and carving. I'm a carpenter, my bodyguards are carpenters, the emperor is a damn carpenter. Now go below deck, your pale skin is actually starting to creep me out.” The duke says to Royce with a dismissive wave.

  Royce holds his tongue, mainly because he was getting more sick then he was able to tolerate. And because he was sick, he couldn’t think of anything witty to say, so he just falls over onto the deck. The duke and his bodyguards just ignore him and walk back to the lower deck.

  Royce shuts his eyes, he doesn’t plan on sleeping there, it was mighty uncomfortable, but he plans to think. Think about magic or some other long term plan that he probably can’t fulfill. So he’s more or less being a giggly little gremlin about magic.

  He crawls away from the edge of the ship, with his luck, he’d probably somehow climb over it and fall ito the disgusting sludge of chemicals that these people call a sea. His hand lazily slaps at one wooden board, his thoughts completely split on thinking about magic, and hoping he just passes out so he doesn’t have to worry about sea sickness. His hand just get pushed up about an inch, he looks at his palm, seeing the yellow ring.

  “Oh… right. Magic circles are physical.” He lazily rolls over onto his back.

  Royce simply grabs it with his other hand, he pauses in silent shock, because he didn’t know he could just grab it like that. The ring suddenly disappears as it leaves his palm. So he just lays there, making magic rings in his left as he yanks them away with his right. He starts tossing them up into the air, seeing how the little mana in them makes it glow a bit, with each toss of a new ring he puts a little more mana into each ring than he realizes. After about a dozen tosses, each ring getting a little brighter, the thirteenth one to make it a baker's dozen makes a loud pop and a little explosion of light, he had accidently casted light grenade but it was out of his control on that one.

  “HEY!” The captain’s voice rang across the deck, making Royce flinch, “ Get outta here! Don’t do that so close to the sails!”

  Royce quickly scrambles to his feet and runs below deck like a little kid in trouble. He feels much more tired than he was expecting, maybe from just a few careless uses of magic, but it felt disproportionate to suddenly exhausted he was feeling, needing to lean on the hull wall as he took a breather. He wanted to figure out this magic thing so badly, it intrigued him, well, most people are probably intrigued about the concept of magic, but he doesn’t have all too much information about it, maybe that's why it is almost obsessively captivating to him. He at least wanted something to tickle his brain a little.

  He shuffles about, seeing only the crew just sitting around, there were cannon ports, but they were all boarded up and no cannons, or cannon balls, their just using the barrels of supplies as table stands to put things on, maybe some carpentry tools here and there for the emergency repairs- wait they have cannon ports? Royce suddenly thought, another thought coming to mind.

  “So they have black powder?” He mumbles, the crew members still a little unnerved, trying to ignore his ramblings.

  One crew member nudged another, “what’s black powder?” The crew member just shrugs, but they try to ignore Royce, but Royce quickly spots them and walks towards, they worry that he overheard, but he reaches a pale hand on their shoulder.

  “Pardon me, could you answer a few of my questions?” Royce says with a devilishly little smile. Making them gulp.

  “Y-yeah?” One crew mate says out of reflex, getting elbowed by the other in response, “Maybe…” He says to correct himself.

  “First! Why don’t you have cannons?” Royce points to the boarded up aiming ports.

  “U-uh, the cannons were too expensive, it's a bit hard to replace them after a few trips on these waters, the water splashes on the metal and corrodes it, so we boarded up the ports so we would hopeful stop any burns on our skin.”

  “Second! Thank you for also answering the other question I had so I’ll go into the next one. What do you’re cannons look like? What do they use as ammo? How do you make them fire?” The crew mate feels a little overwhelmed as Royce leans in closer and closer, clearly trying to utterly squeeze all the info he could out of him without giving a break.

  “W-well… Our cannons like pipes, but a bit bigger. There’s a hatch at the end, so we can load it from the back instead of using the old ram rod cannons, swiveling one of those ones around always me nervous when I had to reload one… B-but then we got the ones with that fancy hatch and lock, all we had to do was put a ball and a mana charge into it and hit it.” The crew mate says as he backs up to breath a little, feeling strangely overwhelmed more than he’s ever been by someone smaller than him.

  “Mana charge? What’s that?” Royce asks insistantly , he really feels like he needs a notebook now to write all this down.

  “You… don’t know?” The crew mate says with an eyebrow raised, of all things, he’d expect Royce, who he thinks is a textbook definition of an alchemist, to know what a mana charge is.

  “Nope.” Royce quickly confirms, making the crew mate even more confused.

  “It’s these cylindrical things. They're weird, too. Completely white even if you rub dust and grim on them, but they change colors sometimes. Only people with manifest can make ‘em. Feels like a really big punch if you manage to make one release it’s power. So we use it to lunch cannon balls at other ships, or any big sea beast. But we stopped using them. They expire in like a week, bad for long term. And there really expensive to get, thankfully Duke Koffman makes ‘em for use when we need them for free. But it tires him out too much, he can’t do too many.”

  “Why not? Why do they expire so quickly?” Royce feels like tearing out hairs, it’s probably mundane information to the rest of these people, but its all very exciting to me.

  “Well… they explode once they expire, all the energy in that charge is released once it shows any sign of decay, breaks like a crystal…” Royce’s ears wiggle a little when he hears that it breaks like a crystal, “ Secondly, the cost for gettin’ those silly little racks feels like its scamin’ us, they got these padded sockets and they weigh more than a cannon sometimes, so we just decided to not have any of that anymore.” The crew mate watches as Royce seemingly bolts around the moment he was done, looking around impatiently, making other crew mates jump and flinch as he seemingly rummages around.

  “Don’t you guys have any paper around here!?” Royce says with a puff, he could start pouting, but he doesn’t want to give up yet.

  “N-no?” The crew mate is completely puzzled by Royce’s suddenly and strange actions, he feels like he isn’t even talking to a human with him.

  “Why not!?” Royce says with a huff.

  “B-becuase it’s expensive?” The crewmate says cautiously, feeling like he should be avoiding some sort of tiny wrath that might be produced from Royce.

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  Royce just sobs a little as he scratches his head insistently with both hands. He feels such gnawing boredom and yet when he gets what he wants for just a minute it never lasts. He just needs a BIG book to write in forever at this point. He just sits down, he luckily sits on a little wooden block, the crew members were using them as stools instead of supplies for cutting wood pieces. Royce is ready to throw a fit, but a chess board and a few decks of cards on the makeshift tables around him. He crosses his arms with pout. He points to the chessboard, clearly irritated.

  “You! Chess!” Royce pointed at the crew member

  “U-uh, me!?” He says as he takes a step back, but Royce grabs him by the collar of his tunic.

  “YEAH, you!” Royce says as he releases his collar, sitting down with a thud on the wooden block.

  Royce quickly sets up the board, the crew member cautiously sits across, feeling extremely pressured by Royce, he complies and sighs, seeing he was using the white pieces, he hovers a shaky hand over the pieces, he barely knows how to play, just as he was about to make a move, the duke gently shoves him off the wooden block, “shoo!” He says as he sits down, both hands on his knees as he looks over the board.

  “I turn around and you end up terrifying everyone on board!” The duke makes a show of moving his pawn in front of the king up two.

  “Becuase I don’t have anything to do!” Royce says as he doesn’t even look at the board as he moves his own pawn in front of his king to block the duke’s.

  “That doesn’t mean you can just go around and start tearing up my ship!” The duke says as he moves his bishop to c4.

  Royce rolls his eyes at the duke move, scholar’s mate? Really? Royce moves his knight to f6, already expecting the duke to move his queen. He remains silent, which irritates the duke since he was expecting more banter, making him move his queen to h5. Without blinking, and more of a disappointed sigh, Royce blocks the queen with a pawn. The duke just grumbles and takes Royce’s pawn at f7, Royce takes his bishop with his king, making the duke cross his arms a little. The duke then moves his queen to g6 taking a pawn, but he face palms as he watches Royce take his queen with the pawn at h7. The duke moves a pawn to h3, Royce can see that the duke has kind of already given up, since his opening didn’t work. Royce rolls his eyes.

  “I take it you don’t like games of skill?” He says as he moves his bishop to h6. The duke just grumbles, if he said anything, Royce didn’t understand it.

  The duke moves his pawn to a4, though his hand looked awfully unmotivated as he placed the pawn down. Royce moves his pawn to d6. The duke’s eyes look around, landing on a deck of cards.

  “I could beat you at that, too, if you like.” Royce says with a smug little grin, making the duke furious. But he doesn’t lash out at Royce, instead he grabs the deck of cards and grabs a crew mate by the collar and hands it to him.

  “Shuffle it.” The duke says with his arms crossed

  “What are we playing?” Royce asks as he leans in, trying to irritate the duke.

  “Twenty one. Someone as confident as you should be able to guess the goal.” The duke says as he snaps his fingers at the crew mate he handed the cards to, who remembers he had to shuffle them.

  “Yes. if it's the one i’m thinking about, count to twenty one, face cards are worth ten, correct?” It’s blackjack, hopefully nothing really changed, but the deck does look like it has extra cards. Royce thinks as he has his hand on his cheek in boredom as he waits.

  He watches the cards be slid across the table, one face down, then to him, then to the duke, one face up for the crew member, a king of hearts, Royce gets a seven of spades, the duke gets a eight of clubs. Royce takes his two cards close to his chest and peeks under his hidden card, a king of stars? Well that threw his card counting out of the window for a second. Enough to confuse him to forget a strategy. His gaze looking at the black and red of the king of stars, but his focus snaps back to the table.

  “Soft seventeen? Sixteen?” Royce asks, the duke mulls it over.

  “Sixteen” The duke responded.

  “Hit.” Royce says confidently, even though he thinks it's a bad idea, luckily he gets a two of hearts, making him inhale louder than he intended, “I’m gonna stay.”

  “Hit!” The duke says, anything Royce does aggravates him beyond reason, he gets a ten of clubs, for some reason, he just makes a small jeer, “hmph! I’ll stay.”

  The two just glare at each other a little as they all flip their cards up, Royce has a nineteen in total, the duke has nineteen as well, all clubs. The crew member just gulps as he doesn’t raise his voice about the ace and ten he flipped over, seeing as the duke was already giving Royce murderous eyes, that or he was just being grumpy again.

  “E-excuse me…” He says as carefully as he can, getting both of their eyes locked onto him before they look down, Royce shrugs, he would’ve been a little mad if he lost to the duke. Oh, and the duke’s furious of course.

  “Again!” The duke says as he slams his arm onto the table. Making the crew mate jump a bit.

  “How about something to lose other than your ego, man?” Royce says as he fans himself with his cards.

  “What would you even offer!?” The duke barks back at him as the crew member takes their cards slowly to shuffle the deck.

  “Not much, is there anything you could want?” Royce says as he leans back, only a little as he realises that he's sitting on a block of wood and not an actual chair, just looking up at the ceiling instead.

  “Many things a commoner like you can’t fathom!” The duke crosses his arms.

  “Yeah, no, I’m gonna call you out on that. I don’t know anything about your wants or thinking because I’ve never been to your homeland, but I know for a fact you got different values, you look like a decently smart guy with a small ego and a big anger issue. So I bet you seeth after any and all defeat and inconvenience. So maybe I’ll just wager some advice, does that qualify as being able to fathom your o so holy rage of not having your silver plate for your tea set?” Royce says as he flutters his fingers towards the duke, he was a little tired already since there was no real fun going on and he just wanted a good book or something at this point, the duke was too easy to provoke, “But hey, at least a human saved you, right?” Royce added, remembering that he had “saved” him.

  “Give me my cards!” The duke says as he grits his teeth a little, making the crew member shudder and quickly give out the cards.

  The duke gets a five of clubs, Royce gets a two of stars and the crew member an ace of spades. But before anyone could say anything, the boat rocks violently, scattering loose objects and those with poor footing, so Royce and the duke get flung off to the side, scraping up on the floor boards.

  One crew member comes up from a hatch in the floor putting down buckets filled with water in a rush, “HULL BRECH!” He shouts, taking everyone out of their shock, the duke's bodyguards take the duke up to the deck, all the crew mates were rushing to toss supplies down the hatch to the hull compartment, planks, nails, a few hammers and as many buckets as they could as maybe a dozen formed a line to toss water buckets to each other back and forth up to the deck. All Royce can hear is the sound of erupting water below him, against his better judgment he scrambles to his feet and jumps down the hatch.

  There's just this violet sludge gushing in from the floor, nearly straight down the middle of the ship’s belly. The crew members are pushing several planks down as they could, the water singes and smolders with no fire, each crew member has to back away for a few seconds as it burns their arms, which explains all the pink spots on their forearms. They hammer planks in the middle and lay one or two planks on top and smack nails into it to stop it from leaking in, giving how thick the water is, even with finger wide gaps, the water just bulges in the sides but doesn't seem to.

  Royce yanks the hammer out of one of the crew members hands while he was recoiling from chemical burns, filling in his spot at the line of men pushing on the wooden planks to stop any potential water from coming in.

  “Hey! What are you doing!? Go to the back of the ship if you wanna help! Theres a big gash that needs to be filled in!” The crew member next to him says, panting heavily as his palms are being splashed with the corrosive water.

  Royce doesn't question it and sprints over the the back of the ship, seeing the vertical line of splintered wood. He picks up some of the nearby planks and holds it up, looking for nails. Looking on the floor for any he shouts out.

  “What happened!?” Royce is kneeling on the creaking boards as he finds a few nails spinning in circles near his feet.

  “Don't know! Best guess is some big statue or a really angry beast!” One crew member responded, panting heavily as he holds a section of planks down.

  Royce finally manages to pick some nails up and starts to hammer them into the planks to keep them in the wall.

  “Looks like the silhouette of a finger!” Royce calls out as he has his legs spread out wide while the water flows between his legs like an inflated syrup, he’s about a few planks in, nearly juggling nails as they stab his palm slightly as the boats rocks, scraping along something now.

  Royce gets his footing and continues to hammer in nails and planks, finally getting the last one on as he crouches down to hammer in the last two nails. He falls back a little exhausted, the rumbling stops, the others are still holding the planks down, but not as hard anymore. They slowly lift their hands and the planks hold the water back.

  “Good work, men, though i think we might have to skip out on pay this month.” One crew member says, getting knowing groans from the others.

  One member pats Royce on the shoulder, he’s busy trying to calm his heart rate down, feels like he didn’t have a sternum at this point. He slowly climbs to his feet, now that his body isn’t crisis mode, he’s shaking now, the last thing he wants is to sink or go overboard, but after seeing how the water burns skin like that, he’d rather not.

  “Nice work, man! If one of the duke’s bodyguards did that, maybe we wouuldn’t be too scared of these waters.” Another crew member says as he pats Royce on the shoulder, the pat much harder than Royce was expecting, almost knocking the wind out out of him.

  “You guys do this as your job!?” Royce says as he sighs, trying to steady his breath.

  “Only people willing. Pays good, enough to tolerate the job too.” He says as he walks off.

  Royce stumbles up to the ladder to finally climb to below deck, his feet heavy as he flings himself back into the hammock of the duke’s private room. His back lands on the package and coin purse, hurting his back and making him jump up.

  “Come on, dude…” He says as he moves them gently, trying to get comfortable.

  However, a bunch of crew members burst into the room, all looking around and quickly surrounding Royce. Royce is already laying down, eyes closed, trying his hardest to play dead at the moment. But one of them lightly punches his shoulder.

  “I'm up! I’m up!” he says as he clutches his shoulder, groaning in annoyance.

  “Hey… we heard you wanted information, right? Well, what is it? Let's talk.” One says. Royce has never seen this many burly men basically kneel before him.

  “What? Why?” Royce asks as he swings around in the hammock, letting his legs hang out.

  “Well, you helped back there when the ship got damaged-” A crew member pushes the other by the face to state his case

  “You put up like a dozen boards perfectly tight on the damaged part of the ship! All the nails were perfect!” he says quickly

  “Yeah! Only our spots have small leaks! Your’s isn’t letting anything through, man!” Another man said.

  “Really? I thought I only put like four or five.” Royce rubs his head a little, any physical activity always makes him so unnecessary tired.

  “You did a much better job than us. At least at that end.”

  “Did we figure out what hit us?” Royce asks as he has his hands up in front of him, feeling like his personal space was a little bit invaded.

  “More than likely a statue of god, we are close to the coast and that is where they typically wash up.”

  “Alright, alright…” Royce thinks for a moment, since they’d like to pay the favor, “Could any of you tell me about Hummingbird? I also have other questions, but I’ll go one by one.”

  “Hummingbird? Why do you want to know about him? He’s apparently got skill, buts he’s super old now…” all of the crew members around Royce are scratching their heads, chins, and cheeks in thought.

  “Isn’t he blind now?” “No clue, he went missing.” “When was that?”

  “Didn’t he win a few of the sculpting tournaments?” "Isn't he the dark horse of them all?”

  “That short old man?” “Where did the barbed hummingbird live again?” “The bird or the old man?” “Either one.” “I’m pretty sure he was in that ricky old house near the pale forest."

  “That place?” “The bird lives in that forest, too.” “Maybe he got lost in the forest.” ‘Think his doors are unlocked?”

  “ALRIGHT! Alright… one at a time for you guys, please?” Royce says as he scoots up on the hammock, “One at a time, important information only– you! Tell me what you know.” Royce suddenly point to one crew member off in the back.

  “A-alright… I'm pretty sure no one knows the guy’s name. So he’s known by his sculpture name, Hummingbird. He went blind a few years ago, he’s got skill, but he doesn’t like the Boa style, so he’s always the less liked. He disappeared not too long ago, well, a year ago.” The crew member scratches the back of his head, “That’s about all I know, I might be wrong with the timing, though.”

  “Does he use magic?” Royce says as he crosses his arms, one leg over the other.

  “W-well… Zuneigung maybe. But any pro at their profession is bound to have a bit of Zuneigung. Other than that, I don't think so.” Royce groans a little, a finger tapping on his arm impatiently.

  “Do any of you have magic?” Royce says with a glare, he really needs the info he wants.

  All of the crew members shake their head solemnly, clearly aware of the disappointment in royce’s eyes

  “Do you have any information about magic?” Royce asks with a slightly irritated shrug.

  “All of the dukes and the direct family of the Emperor have lightning magic.” One crew member speaks up from the back. Royce doesn’t press him, because he has a pretty good feeling he doesn’t know the dinner points. So Royce scratches his chin for a moment before getting an idea.

  “What’s your country’s main product?” Royce says with a pointed finger, like he just had an epiphany.

  “Wood?” One responds.

  “But what's special about it!?” Royce says as he shakes him by the shoulders.

  “We use it for nearly everything, I guess. Some of them bear fruit.” another man says quickly, “some actually make berries as well… U-uh…” the man scratches the back of his head. Royce looks like he's ready to give up and cry.

  “W-well… the military is huge. Our soldiers are all like ten feet tall. Apparently we use a pinch of alchemy to make them that big, does that interest you? Even a little?” Royce immediately jumps up, basically faceplanting onto the planks.

  “Where!?” He says as he springs up to his feet.

  “P-probably in the royal capital, Boa. That's also where the emperor is, so you can try to get lightning magic… maybe…” the man says with a sigh, the other crew members sigh as well, seemingly obvious that Royce was, to some degree, satisfied.

  In fact Royce hopped over them, running up to the deck with a kiddish jump, fist in the air. Doing a little dance, his brain seemingly just finally content with a side quest or two. Which makes him pause before he could yell anything in excitement. What the hell does he do? Just dropped into a new world, his memories are extremely hazy, he can't remember anything of “home” he probably can if he finds something that reminds him of home.

  He waves off the thought for now, because he feels like he could sing! Which for a split second he almost does. A hand on his chest and his other out wide, he lets out a single, surprisingly stable note, maybe baritone, before he covers his mouth, because he did not know he could do that. The captain, the duke and his bodyguards are there, who saw and look equally surprised as Royce.

  “Are we there yet?” He asks to try and cover up what he just did.

  “No.” The captain responds firmly.

  Royce just kicks the dust on the planks with his hands in his pockets, “ok…” he responded with a bit of disappointment. He just sits down on the deck with his legs crossed. He notices that the captain has a firm eye on him, probably so he doesn’t start to use magic and accidentally make a hole in the ship.

  He starts to reflect, on nothing in particular, on whatever is in his head. Which the first two things that pop into his head is: side quests, get lightning magic, TRY NOT to make an electric revolution in the process, learn a bit more of alchemy, preferably through the process for the land's soldiers. Wait! There are three side quests, get that thingy Kuroi needed. Almost forgot about that one. But the story mission can wait, since there isn't one yet.

  Royce looked like he was deep in thought, well, he was, but everyone on the deck had different opinions on it, the duke just thought he was an idiot, the captain thinks he's dangerous, and the bodyguards are split between helpful and unhelpful. But Royce sits there, his clothes sag forward with his position. Every once in a while his mind gets hazy, his brain trying to remember something as he tries harder to think back, but nothing comes of it. He absent mindedly rolls around, trying to think of something productive.

  Honestly, he stops thinking pretty fast, his mind exhausted by anything he immediately thinks of. Nothing he deems practical at least.

  He gets up. Looking behind him to still see the big wall covered in giant strips of bark. Though he's suddenly more curious about the fact that he can see the bottom of the wall, while from this distance it's just poking out from under the bark, it's probably big enough for a ship like this to be under. Paired with the fact that it just looks like a flat wall on this side, built on the coast. Royce isn't too confident that the wall is going to do any real protecting.

  The boat rocks again, but seemingly a bit more in a mechanical way, two ropes seemed to have snared the front of the ship but no one seems to be panicking.

  “Did the rope extend this far before?” The duke asks, seemingly a bit confused.

  “They had a talk about extending them, guess we’re the test.” The captain says as he lets go of the wheel, letting the ship drift into the ropes.

  Royce peers over to see the ropes tightening, slowly coming up from the water as some sort of pulley is being turned on, most likely hand cranked as the rope vibrates erratically each time.

  “How did the ropes attach themselves to the boat?” Royce asks.

  “Apparently the guy who made it found a way to make metal stick to metal, one of the other dukes, I forget which one.” The duke responded while crossing his arms, he doesn’t want to look at the invention of another duke.

  Royce follows the ropes with his eyes, seeing a small structure on the coast, right next to it was a sizable ramp of wood and scaffolds with a port next to it. The little house seemed to have a few giant wheels sticking out, reeling in the ship, a big crank and a small platoon of people turning it to bring the ship in.

  “How does the rope not break or get tangled?” Royce asks as he leans on the railing.

  “They replace the rope weekly and get rid of knots every reel. The only thing that stays is the metal ends, which get cleaned in some way. I wasn’t told how to maintain the boat, just use it.” The duke says with a huff as he turns his back, clearly frustrated by the entire contraption.

  Royce stares at it, watching it for about the hour or so that the whole contraption, just pulling the boat closer and closer. He can hear all the men grunt and groan as they struggle on the crank the closer they got, it was clearly a labor intensive job; there was a small team of people near the docks, numbering a dozen, they all had supplies and tools, they looked impatient, the boat was damaged, so their all probably anxious.

  The whole crew of the ship suddenly started to unpack all of the contents of the lower deck, all the crates and barrels, all their cargo, even the tables. Well, they start cutting the tables into planks, the “chairs” too. He snaps out of his daze and rushes back into the private room, checking himself and the hammock for his goods, after securing the packages and the like, he looks around, the private room was empty but he quickly checks the table with the map, opening the drawers, finding nothing of valve, sadly. Well, not entirely, Royce opens one last little cubby and finds a very expensive looking quill, it was made of silver, “Oooo!” Royce coos as he strips the feather of its fluffy bits and just takes the silver. Oh, and the ink too.

  Royce bolts up the stairs to get to the deck, acting like nothing happened. All of the barrels have been rolled up in a few lines. A crate or two ready to be moved by the eight people standing next to it. Royce just scoots off to the side before someone starts shouting orders to him to pick something up. The boat tilts up, making Royce almost lose balance. There's a flat board of wood just under the water, slightly inclined to guide it up.

  The men on the deck jump up on the rope, crawling up the sides with their tool boxes. There were no words, a few crew members immediately pointed them to below deck. The repairmen rush down the clattering of their tools that get quickly muffled as they spot the patchwork of the ship. Their feet moving around swiftly.

  The duke and his bodyguards stepped onto the deck in haste, the board was barely down and they already got off the boat. A line of the crew members forms behind as they carry the cargo. Royce sneaks off to the side of the boat, jumping up on the side and leaping onto the deck, rolling on the wood and sprinting off past the duke and his bodyguards.

  “Did he steal anything?” The duke says with a frown, hands in his coat pockets.

  Both his bodyguards shrug.