Chapter 146

Zea wasn’t paying much attention to what was going on around her. The sailors were doing their jobs, Luke had fucked off to somewhere else and left her to her work, and she was entirely focused on compensating for the gentle rocking of the ship as she carved tiny runes into the steel. Unlike an enchantment forged with [Ghost Script], the real thing couldn’t be altered once she’d started. She had to do it all perfectly from front to finish, or she had to start over if she made a mistake. Worse, she would lose the material she was engraving the runes on.

Thankfully, her rank upgrades in [Engraving] and [Runeforging]were more than up to the task, and she was so close to being done. Another ten minutes of work, then the final mana sealing to empower it, and it would last at least a year. Then again, Luke got into a lot of fights. Even if he used it multiple times a week, it would still hold for six months. Of course, he’d really only need it fighting opponents above level 30, which happened a lot nowadays. It might only run for three months if it had to keep him safe against powerhouse fighters.

She stared down at the chain. “Shit.”

It wasn’t a waste, but it probably wouldn’t last as long as she’d initially expected it to. There was practically no risk of the enchantment fading away before he burned through the mana she was pouring into it. Hopefully, it’d come in handy.

Just as she was finishing it up, she heard a lot of people jumping down into the hallway and running past her door. Curious, she poked her head out and said, “What’s going on?”

“Some guy attacked the boat. Your friend is fighting him up top,” a sailor said as he ran by, barely even slowing.

Zea cast a horrified look at the stairs. She didn’t need to climb them to know what she’d see. Luke and that inquisitor would be dancing around each other, each moving so fast that it was all but impossible to even keep track of where they were, let alone individual attacks. She’d seen that show already, and it was as impressive as it was scary.

Out on the water, on a fragile ship made of wood and nails and tar, all it would take was one bad block or one missed swing, and the Silk Lady could end up crippled beyond repair. Zea could easily picture the two combatants smashing through floor after floor until they crashed into the bilge, then breaking through that and continuing their fight in the water while the ship slowly sunk below the waves with her and everyone else still on it.

If there was ever a time that Luke needed her help, it was right now. He was not good at finesse. All of the tools, all the strategies, those had been the result of her work. She snatched up the chain, pushed past the remaining few sailors and made her way to where the Captain was standing at the base of the stairs.

“They’re fighting,” the tall woman said, giving Zea a look as she hustled over. The Captain had to have a bit of ostol blood in her, with that coloring and her overall size, but maybe a few generations back.

“He needs my help,” Zea said, making to walk around the Captain and jump the first five steps. A few months ago, she wouldn’t have had enough agility or strength to even consider that. Now, the thought of making a jump over the head of the average human wasn’t particularly daunting.

The Captain caught her shoulder before she could move. “Can you? Those two… they’re both monsters.”

“I’m not sure,” Zea said. She held up the chain. “I need to get this to him.”

“What does it do?”

“Takes damage and spread it across the entire body to mitigate it, kind of like wearing armor.”

The Captain gave her a sharp look. “Does it only work on people?”

Zea had designed it for Luke specifically, but now that she thought about it, there was no reason it couldn’t be used on an inanimate object. It didn’t actually interact with whoever was wearing it other than to coat their entire form in protective magic. She could tie it around a weapon to make it more durable, but there wasn’t really much point in that. It was easier to just inscribe durability runes directly into the weapon itself.

“No,” Zea said. “You could use it on something else too.”

“Something as big as the ship?”

Zea started to say that of course it couldn’t, that the ship was far too big, but when she stopped and thought about it, that wasn’t necessarily true. It would be either a far weaker shield, something that only transferred a fraction of the strain instead of all of it, or it would only work for a few hits instead of thousands, but it would technically work.

“I see. You’re concerned about damage from the fight.”

“Of course I am. Either of them could sink us.”

“It could work, but I didn’t make this chain long enough to really wrap around something bigger than a human,” Zea said. “And the enchantment won’t activate until the ends touch. If it’s going to protect the ship, it’ll need to go around a piece of it, not just some random rope.”

The Captain eyed up the chain and said, “The wheel or the baluster. It’s not going to fit around any of the masts.”

“The wheel would be better. That’s got a stronger connection,” Zea said. “Someone will need to get it up there.”

From what Luke had told her, Zea knew she had the highest agility and stamina on the ship, though not the highest perception. She trusted Luke to intercept any attacks Lath might send her way. Plus, she knew how the enchantment worked. There was no question of somebody screwing up and failing to activate it as long as she was the one who did it. That just left one final detail.

“Eighty gold,” Zea said.

The Captain’s eyes bulged. “What!”

“I’ll sell you this chain, including installation on your ship, for eighty gold.”

“That’s your enemy tearing through my ship! Looking for you! Why should I pay you to fix it!”

Zea shrugged. “I’m sure we can swim back to land afterwards and find a new ship somewhere else.” At that moment, wood burst overhead down the hall and a foot stuck down through the hole. It disappeared as quickly as it had arrived, and Zea turned back to the Captain. “Well?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Eighty.”

“Forty.”

“Eighty,” Zea said again, enunciating the syllables. “This isn’t a negotiation.”

“That’s way too high!”

“Bitch tax,” Zea told her.

The big maybe-orsol woman looked ready to draw the dagger tucked through her belt and go for blood, but she managed to calm herself down with an act of will. “Eighty,” she agreed, “minus the cost of any repairs.”

“Any repairs to damages after the enchantment is activated,” Zea said.

“Deal,” the Captain said through gritted teeth.

Without another word, Zea leaped up the stairs. It only took two jumps to reach the deck, where she found Luke and something that looked like Lath, except with its head flopping around at an unnatural angle, busy trading blows. Fortunately, they were near the aft, which left Zea a clean trail to reach the captain’s deck and attach the chain.

* * *

Luke flinched back as Lath’s nails dug long, painful furrows down his arm. The man had grown bolder in the last thirty seconds after Luke had literally broken his neck and he’d realized it wasn’t going to slow him down. Defense was a thing of the past, and even with [Life Surge]singing in his veins, it was all Luke could do to keep Lath from tearing him apart.

One of the smaller masts was damaged from where Lath had slammed into it on a missed attempt at a tackle. The horizontal piece of wood near the bottom—Luke wanted to say it was called a boom—was broken six feet from the end. Lath had ripped it off and tried to club Luke down with it, but the mace had been the stronger of those weapons, and the splintered remains of the boom were now floating in the harbor.

Blow after blow rained down on Luke. He blocked and dodged what he could, but each hit was causing environmental damage. A trail of broken deck wood followed them like footprints across the deck as they fought, mostly from Luke setting his feet to take an attack. Lath didn’t seem to care if he was struck and went tumbling away as often as not.

Mentally, Luke was cursing both Zea and the Captain. He’d overheard their entire conversation and he was sure Lath had as well. As soon as she came up those stairs, the inquisitor was going to go after her. All Luke could do was try to drag the fight away from the stairs leading down to the crew quarters and hope that Lath didn’t get the bright idea to bust straight through the deck.

So far, the ghoulish inquisitor had been focused entirely on Luke. Whatever was going on with him, he wasn’t human anymore. A normal person would have died from the broken neck. Lath had kept right on going. Luke had also broken almost every rib in the man’s body to the point where four of them were now jutting out through torn flesh. Lath didn’t care. Hell, he wasn’t even pretending to breathe anymore.

Zea scrambled up the stairs into view, and Luke kicked it up another notch to keep Lath distracted. As long as the inquisitor was focused solely on him, Zea would be safe. Hopefully she’d finish doing whatever she needed to do quickly and get back below decks, where at least the rule seemed to be out of sight, out of mind.

It didn’t work. Lath noticed her right away, and the sly grin pasted on his flopping face gave away what he was thinking. In a flash, he’d pivoted and was halfway across the deck. Luke leaped, and here his superior stats gave him the advantage. He caught up to Lath half way to Zea and crashed down on the man with a mace strike that sent the inquisitor careening off course into the big central mast.

There was a resounding crack when Lath hit, but he bounced back to his feet without even slowing down and resumed his attempt to reach Zea. Luke pummeled him again, this time with a [Power Strike] angled to blow the inquisitor right over the side of the deck and into the water. Whatever had happened to Lath, he was still cunning, and attacks that could throw him off the ship were the one thing he still reacted too.

Lath twisted nimbly, avoiding the first attack and taking a follow up kick as Luke flew by that sent him skidding down into the deck. Luke landed, his own heels hanging over the edge above the water, and it was only a mixture of intense core strength and a free hand grabbing at the broken railing nearby that allowed him to pull himself fully back into the deck.

“Hah!” Zea called. “Ship should feel a bit sturdier now. Let him have it at full power!”

Luke pushed down harder than normal, felt the wood of the ship resist the pressure, and grinned. Lath came flying at him, scrambling on all fours and seemingly ready to throw both of them into the water. Luke leaned in to meet the attack and, both hands clenched on the handle of his mace, unleashed an attack infused with [Power Attack] and with the full weight of his [Life Surge] enhanced stats behind it.

Lath went flying backwards, struck the mast, careened off to skid across the deck, and crashed into the crank that the anchor chain was coiled around. There was probably a proper name for that too; everything on the ship seemed to have one, but Luke couldn’t recall hearing any of the sailors say it. Either way, it was sturdy enough on its own, and with Zea’s latest bit of enchantment reinforcing it, was barely dented from Lath slamming into it.

Luke charged forward, able to move at full speed without worrying about damaging the deck for the first time since the fight had started. He needed to finish this before the magic wore off. If that meant dismembering Lath and throwing him overboard piece by piece, then that was what he would do.