Chapter 411 – Minor problems.

Chapter 411 – Minor problems.

“Could you please?” captain Sealy asked. “Either of you? Pretty please?”

He was addressing Maximillian and John, both of which were just lying in the sun, covered in girls. While John was being cuddled by Salamander, her new fire dress had the nice property of not burning people (as long as she didn’t want to), and a deeply flustered Gnome, stun locked by embarrassment, Maximillian had gotten himself two new girls. Stef and Lala were still around, just not right now.

“So, let me get this straight,” the Gamer asked after taking a sip from his glass and then putting it back on the salver Aclysia was holding up. In the background he heard his girlfriend’s laughter. They were busy playing in the pool again. Something that John would much rather be watching right now than to have this conversation. “You are telling me that one of those pirates I caught on the first day escaped their cell and that she,” it was the one girl in the group, “is coming back here with a fleet.”

“That’s what her captain told us upon interrogation, yes,” Sealy answered.

“Interrogation being you asking where she was,” Maximillian pointed out and flicked ashes off the joint he was currently smoking.

John gave him an annoyed glance, “You know that thing reeks, right? What reason is there for you to smoke it right next to me?”

“...You have a lighter,” Maximillian answered after a 5 second silence.

“I am a unique kind of fire elemental, not a fucking lighter,” the short-haired redhead growled back. “Call me that again and I will show you a REAL hotbox.”

“Sure thing,” the king didn’t seem to really understand what she was complaining about. He took a hit from the blunt and then passed it onto one of his girls.

“Okay, so that guy is obviously too high to help you,” John sighed, “which leaves only me.” There was also Tilgun, but he was Tilgun. “Just two questions, number one, you have a giant fucking cannon, why not just use that?”

“Captain Boss Senior spoke of a fleet of two-hundred vessels, our cannon is only helpful against big targets,” Sealy answered.

“Okay, then I actually have a follow-up question before my planned second one... why does this ship not have safety precautions against large numbers?”

“Well... we do have some...” Sealy’s body language was pretty dodgy, him wringing his webbed hands and all that, “there is a small army of golems that we could unleash, buuuut the activation console was damaged when that higher dragon climbed around.”

“...Mhm,” John looked at the guy for an extended period of time. The seal head was wiggling from left to right nervously. “No, I don’t believe that,” he finally declared. He could practically see the cold sweat developing on the guys face. “You know what I think? That you thought that there will be several thousand Abyssals on this ship, so nobody would be stupid enough to even attack because of the sheer fighting force that presents. Your emergency protocol would be to just appeal to everyone’s want for self-defence.”

“Whaaaat?” Sealy barked in panic a few times. “Nooooooo, we would never do that!” his head waved from side to side even faster as if he was on the lookout for some predator. “It’s not like Amalia is trying to fix our war-tax deficit by striking a few unnecessary things from the budget. Never!”

“Okay, my second question then,” John continued on, shifting a bit in his seat to get more comfortable. Was a bit hard with Gnome holding onto him as if her life depended on it, somewhat of a shock reaction to being seen in her swimsuit by a relative stranger. “What’s in it for me?”

“We won’t be rationing your energy consumption if you do,” Sealy promised.

“Why would you even need to do that?” John furrowed his eyebrows. “Seriously sounds more like a threat than a reward.”

“Well... you know how we are currently towing a higher dragon because he is interested in you?” the cruise’s captain pointed out. “We might run into some problems at the last day.”

The word towing here was absolutely accurate, as Tilgun had gone to sleep following yesterday’s events with Salamander. As he still had to follow the boat somehow, he had threatened to hook one of his hands into the back of the ship. Sealy, on the basis that that would cause even more property damage, had hastened to deliver a stammered proposal involving a giant metal rope. Thus a higher dragon was now getting pulled on said rope behind them.

‘U-hu...’ John thought as a single ship suddenly entered the barrier.

A man’o’war was a heavy battleship from the 16th century. The giant kind often seen in movies, mighty wooden beasts that earned their name by transporting heavily armoured soldiers across the oceans, outfitted with rows of cannons and high masts, a true warship.

What he was looking at was a medium sized mega-yacht, or just a giant yacht, whatever one prefered. Not unimpressive, not at all. In fact, John was rather impressed. A clean blue and black hull with enough space for 40 people to live in apartments lower income families would marvel at the size alone. Without a doubt a kitchen was somewhere in the almost 100-metre-long ship, with enough storage space to last them for a long time. The thing had several decks with blackened windows, and a small pool rose out of a heightened part of the front end. It was all around pretty awesome. John wasn’t quite sure if it was advisable to cross the ocean on that yacht, he didn’t have the expertise in boats to make a claim for or against that, but he could certainly see a rich person using it to party out in international waters for a few days. That was just for a normal yacht of that size, magical enhancement notwithstanding.

John waited for a second ship to appear as they began moving towards the localized attacker. Jack flew over the ship and spied, aside from the attractive looking woman that had kicked this whole chain of events off, a tentacle bearded fellow who was wearing a comically big hat and an outfit that John was sure was based on some caricature of Blackbeard. He too was a kraken-person, albeit of blue colouration instead of his father’s red. A quick Observe revealed him to be level 52. While that was above average, it was below John-verage.

“You are not the captain yet, Captain Boss Junior,” the women reminded the blue kraken and took the hat off the guy. Jack landed on a seat nearby, unnoticed.

“As long as my father remains in captivity, I am the stand-in!” came the retort, quickly taking back what he thought to be his. “Therefore, I deserve to wear this hat!”

‘Well, there is my entry into the banter,’ John thought and looked at the water below. There was distracting shimmering on the surface, distinctly different from just water. ‘...Say... Aclysia... can you ask him if he meant PORTUGUESE man’o’wars specifically?’

A moment later he received a ‘Yes, Master. Why do you need this information?’

‘Because that’s a name for a type of jellyfish,’ he answered and looked at the, most likely 199, translucent gelatine marine-lifeforms floating on the waves. One ship moving in an individual barrier made way more sense, all of these Portuguese man’o’wars keeping up less so, but they were probably some kind magical being.



Yup.

“Okay, this is stupid, take off that hat and get into the cell with your father,” John just delivered his demand the moment he got close enough.

“That’s the guy, that’s the man who wanted to seduce me!” the attractive looking woman said.

‘And here come the weird allegations,’ John sighed. “Look, lady, you look good, but I have enough good-looking girls with me. Right?” He gestured at Sylph and Salamander flying next to the boat and then at Undine when she poked her head out the water. “So I didn’t try to seduce you, because I really didn’t need to.”

“I would never believe someone who molested dear Susie!” Junior said.

“You have some circular logic there, because the only way you wouldn’t believe me is if I molested her, which I didn’t, but you don’t believe me because you think I did, but I didn’t. You see the problem there?” John pointed out, whilst thanking all the gods that existed that at least this one hadn’t taken to his father’s habit of forcing pirate clichés into every sentence.

“Lies and slander, lass, I shall cut you with this cutlass!” everyone around Junior groaned as he delivered his old man’s joke. “I shall release the...”

“Let me guess,” Salamander drily stated, “Kraken? Very creative, octopus face, are you going to show us your dick?”

“No, not the kraken, you burning buffoon, what I have in store is much more dangerous than a kraken... I shall release the... technically-not-a-true-jellyfish-but-actually-a-siphonophore!”

“Are you being serious?” John asked and then almost fell over on his boat as the waves rose.