JaceVAmor
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Chapter 141: Legend of the Nomad
🕑 Added 2023-10-06 15:11:00 +0000 UTCThe entire galleon lurched as Coop launched his spear from the bow. The spear raced over the sea, invisible against the dark backdrop of the night, but with the sound of it tearing through the air making it obvious that something was moving fast, but only after it had already passed.
Coop timed his mistjump so that the spear didn’t accidentally blow a hole through the cruise ship, aiming to teleport above the open rear deck instead, where, in past times, vacationers would have enjoyed relaxing by pools and hot tubs with tropical drinks and music playing. This was meant to be a scouting and potential rescue mission, so he didn’t need to jump in with guns blazing.
From his perspective, the world transformed into monochromatic mists as time slowed and he was dragged toward the missile. The black sea melted into the black sky, but the horizon was illuminated by the white glow of mists as his teleport shoved him through space. After only a few seconds, the spear was firmly held in his hand while he fell from forty feet above a partially emptied pool in the cruise ship’s central gallery. He fell between more than a dozen deck balconies on either side that overlooked what was essentially a mall full of lounge areas.
When he landed, one of his feet and his other knee crashed through the synthetic teak decking, adjacent to the pool, cracking the planks with enough force to alert anyone nearby of his abrupt arrival. He held his shield protectively, anticipating an attack. The spear that brought him to the cruise ship was held tightly in his hand as he prepared to retaliate. Coop was completely surrounded.
Rather than attacks, gasps and mumbling came from all directions as Coop found himself encircled by people, wearing dirt-stained clothes, huddled against each other as they balanced against the ship’s one sided tilt. There were groups of hundreds of people leaning against each other, watching from each of the upper decks, hanging onto railings, and otherwise looking more like stowaways that had squeezed into whatever space they could find than a potential fighting force.
It was clear that none of them had any inclination to fight, so Coop relaxed before he scared them any further, yanking his foot out of the hole he created in the floor and standing up straight. He almost demanded to be taken to their leader, but caught himself from sounding like he came from another planet. Instead, in his hesitation, he started to recognize the mumbling for actual words as a consensus slowly built among the witnesses of his arrival. Using his aura, he thoroughly scanned the crowd, discovering that none of them were far above level 25 and many were as low as level 10. These people didn’t have much chance of survival on their own.
“It’s the Nomad!” Someone whispered clearly, hissing louder than the rest of the murmuring, as if they had a revelation. “The Nomad!” Another repeated from behind Coop as they arrived at the same conclusion. “No, the Nomad is seven feet tall and music plays wherever he goes.” Someone adamantly disagreed. “The Nomad carries a glowing sword and has angel wings.” Another added, but the rabble’s excitement started to build, and Coop had no idea what was going on. “The Nomad! It must be!” The voices were coming from all around and people started a slow surge toward him, like they were desperately parched and he held water. “Nomad!”
“Hold on.” Coop demanded, raising his arms, still holding his ethereal equipment, to ward them off, and to his surprise, they all stopped. The whispering about how the Nomad was there on the boat and that they had a chance after all continued, unabated. They questioned each other as to where he had come from, how he had found them, and on and on, but they all kept their voices low, as if they didn’t want to disturb him directly.
Coop pointed at a middle-aged man who had clear eyes as he stood in front of two children and their parents, pressed against some railing at the head of the mostly empty, tilted pool. He was level 26, among the highest in the crowd. “You.” Coop got his attention. The man pointed at himself and Coop nodded. “Tell me who you all are and what’s going on.”
“Uh,” He looked around and others nodded at him encouragingly whispering for him to speak with a cascade of support. “We were residents of Empress City.” He began, taking courage from the crowd. “The revolutionary army took us in and protected us during the siege event. A few days ago, once it became clear they were losing the civil war, they evacuated us and prepared to make their last stand.”
“Where are you going?” Coop wondered, temporarily forgetting his mission as he faced a curious situation. These people weren’t fighters at all. They were more like refugees.
“To find safety!” Someone shouted from an upper deck balcony, high above Coop. “To find the Nomad! He’ll save us!” Someone else shouted from the opposite side and dozens more agreed from all around. “He saved all those other people! He’ll help us!”
Coop realized just how many people were watching him as he glanced toward the raised voices. Every deck had people clustered against each other, doing their best to balance against the angle of the leaning ship. An explosion rocked the ship, but they just held on, waiting to see what would happen.
“I don’t know about a Nomad, but if you need rescue,” Coop angled his thumb behind him, to where the Tempest Fleet was closing in, lit against the dark horizon with small torches in their rigging, “Ghost Reef is here.”
“Ghost Reef!” Someone exclaimed. “The Nomad is from Ghost Reef?” He heard others ask. “The subcommander was right!” The whispers built up again. “We can evacuate,” someone decided and others agreed. “Let the children use the lifeboats.”
“Take him to Javier!” A voice shouted from out of sight, on the bottom deck, before anyone had begun to take action. Even more voices chimed in. “Show him the way!” “Tell Captain Javi we can evacuate!”
The man that Coop had singled out nodded to himself, like he was gathering more courage through the voices. “Follow me.”
He turned and started walking. The crowd shifted and made space, shoving deck chairs and umbrellas into pools and hot tubs to get them out of the way, spontaneously creating a lane. The man kept moving forward, and the crowd formed the path so that he didn’t need to slow down.
“Follow him!” The crowd encouraged, as Coop hesitated, still putting the pieces together to figure out what they were going on about with this Nomad character.
Coop had to jog through the narrow path that the people had made in order to catch up with his guide. The man was running, waving his arms to either side, by the time Coop caught up, shouting, “The Nomad is here! Make way! The Nomad is here!” The people looked exhausted and stressed, but they reacted instantly with the mention of the Nomad, perking up and quickly making room as if they all knew exactly where he needed to go. The whispering followed them as they moved. “The Nomad is real?” Someone asked as they went by. “That’s him? I thought it was just a story.” Another voice wondered.
As they went, the crowds eventually thinned out, and the sounds of battle grew increasingly close, if sporadic. Coop realized that all of the people had gathered as far away from the fighting as they could. They ended up squeezing into the rear and middle of the cruise ship, avoiding the sides as much as was feasible.
Along the way, his guide led him into the dim interior corridors of the ship. Coop followed through carpeted hallways, wide enough for a crowd, like a central concourse that branched toward venues, spas, and restaurants, with large paintings framed on each side, mostly of the enormous ship itself. They were the only ones moving through.
Coop still had his shield and spear equipped as he jogged after the middle-aged man. They made their way into a grand hall, designed to accommodate masses of tourists, then through a series of luxurious ballrooms decorated with different themes, each more lavish than the last. All of the furniture was piled into the side of the boat that was angled down. The disarray combined with the darkness left a strangely deserted impression, like they were moving through some kind of gargantuan haunted house.
Coop continued to follow as they ran up a spiraling set of stairs in what must have been the center of the ship. Marble busts remained on the fancy black bannister railing with nametags of the captains they represented and a giant crystal chandelier leaned into one side of the stairs from above, resting the hanging crystals against the stairs as the ship kept listing to the starboard side. It glittered in filtered moonlight from caved in portions above and blast holes pockmarked along the sides. Coop and the man made their way toward the top of the ship.
The man rounded a corner, breathing heavily, before the top, into a hall that was marked private, gliding on the carpet. Something crashed through the wall with a burst of sound, adding another hole, ripping the detailed wallpaper and revealing solid steel walls, warped and twisted around the tear that had formed. The man yelped as he was lifted into the air for a moment, knocked off his feet, backwards behind Coop.
Coop pierced the tentacle with his spear, reacting to the wall crashing into them as if it was an attack, but the prehensile surface continued straight through the opposite wall. They hadn’t been targeted in the first place. Whatever it was had simply been crashing through the ship. Presence of Mind failed to reveal any information.
Coop quick swapped to his war fork and cleaved straight through the green limb with the outer edge as it continued to extend through the holes it had created on either side of the hallway. One portion quickly retracted while the other fell to the ground, hanging limp through its exit. The man looked up at him with wide eyes, gasping in shock.
“Is that what you’ve been fighting?” Coop asked, pointing the prongs of his weapon toward the dismembered portion lying inert across part of the hallway. He thought he recognized it, but they were more than 50 miles from where he had seen something similar, and they were so far above the surface of the ocean on the huge ship, he doubted it could be what he was thinking.
The man nodded sheepishly, still with his wild eyes. “Sea monster.” He declared with a slightly crazed voice.
Coop nudged the torn limb with his foot, comparing it with his memory. This was much too large, five feet wide, and surprisingly sharp at the edges, but it had a flattened leaf-like structure that was familiar enough. “Seaweed, actually.” Coop observed.
It had been a while since he encountered the unusual enemy, back when he was on his way to the oil rig on the yet to be named Windchaser, but he wouldn’t forget how it grasped the ship and stalled them out until he was able to cut them free so that Charlie could slip them out of its range. It had been the one time he engaged with something that he believed was not an animal or a monster, so it was unlikely he would forget. He poked at it with his war fork, wondering if the seaweed had been expanding its domain this whole time. His guide just looked confused at Coop’s correction.
“The tentacles snared the ship and started pulling it down. Captain Javier took anyone that was willing to fight while the rest of us fled to the back.” The man explained, still staring at the dismembered portion.
“Let’s hurry, then.” Coop helped the man up, unable to ignore how far the ship was leaning. He was getting worried it would roll while they were still trying to navigate the interior and he didn’t want to end up in the deep, dark water with the aggressive seaweed. The ship seemed big enough that only the front half was within range of the enemy, but that would probably change if they sank.
They rushed through another set of doors and found themselves in a stark, utilitarian hallway, clearly not meant for the general public. A black rubberized lane on the steel floor allowed them to move efficiently despite the unnaturally angled halls. There were holes punched through the austere surfaces as they passed, with more blades of seaweed still present in a few of them, rigid as they were pulled taut, creating barriers. Coop led the way, cutting through where it was necessary, and kicked through the final door.
They had arrived at the bridge of the cruise ship and were greeted with a rush of salty air. The wide glass windows, wrapping the entire captain’s headquarters on three sides, were smashed a hundred times over, exposing the large room to the night. Large piles of seaweed blades were scattered across the edges of the room, where they had been chopped off, but the room was entirely devoid of other signs of life. When Coop glanced through the windows on the right side of the bridge, he could only see the darkness of the ocean and the occasional white capped wave, while the left side revealed the starry night sky.
“Crap.” The man that had guided him the entire way mumbled with discontent. “This is where the leaders were supposed to be.”
They both watched as giant seaweed blades flailed in the sky in front of them, whipping through the air near the front of the ship. Spells were being tossed through the air at the tentacle-like limbs, but most missed, flying harmlessly in high arcs toward the sea, looking like bottle rockets as the distance grew. Shouts echoed as the battles raged all around the bow of the ship.
“I’m sorry, Nomad. I can’t take you further.” The man stated, unwilling to enter the battlefield.
“This is far enough.” Coop assured him with some false confidence. “I’ll take it from here.”
The man nodded and ran back the way they had come, planning on evacuating the cruise ship as soon as he returned to the rear deck. Coop stepped forward, peering above the lower threshold of the broken windows, his eyes following the seaweed blades down.
Below the bridge, on each side, almost a dozen terraced decks ended with open balconies. Each one was occupied by groups of people who were in desperate battles with blades of seaweed. Some of them were holding their own against one or two by teaming up, but others were being overrun as multiple seaweed blades flanked them, tearing through walls where they hadn’t expected to be confronted. He watched as a blade bowled over an entire squad like they were unable to provide any resistance at all, then latched onto a massive column that held separated decks, coiling around multiple times.
The seaweed didn’t actually seem to be targeting the combatants in particular. It was simply reaching out and grabbing at everything it could anchor itself to. Most of the time, that was parts of the ship. Railings were wrapped up, and giant chunks of the ship were looped by seaweed, as if the blades of seaweed were green laces holding a giant shoe together.
At the bottom, on the bow, engaging with the source of the seaweed were some familiar enemies. Ones that Coop never expected to see again, and didn’t have any particular desire to engage with at all.
They were facing off with a gigantic brownish red crab that was clinging to the starboard bow of the ship, exposing its tan underside to their attacks as they tried to prevent it from boarding. If they had any actual impact on the crab’s attempt to climb aboard, it was hard to tell. Any damage they dealt appeared to be totally insignificant.
The crab was so large, it was the actual cause of the ship’s tilt. Its oversized, black tipped, pale pink claw was clinging to the side of the ship, pinching massive gouges through the steel, springing enormous leaks in the hull, while four legs struggled to hoist the rest of its body out of the water, scraping across the bow in search of leverage. Each time it heaved itself up, the boat listed and water rushed across the lower deck. After each attempt to climb aboard, the ship sat a bit lower in the ocean.
Its other claw was tiny in comparison to the main grabber. It splashed in and out of the water while it tried to swim with the rest of its legs to propel its carapace above the edge. Coop estimated the cruise ship to be over 1,200 feet long, and that meant that by his judgment, the crab was at least a ridiculous 200 feet wide.
The seaweed was growing out of its back, with long jointed rhizomes creeping through the crab’s outer carapace in a thousand places, like gnarled white roots. Each blade whipped around on its own, seemingly in an effort to stop the ship and let the crab climb on top. The lamina were like grasping vines being used to grapple the crab’s target, and in this case, that was the ship itself.
Coop tried inspecting its aura, acknowledging that he was probably too far, but the crab was clearly something special. He was surprised to receive information across the distance anyway.
[Mercenary Stone Crab (Level 152)]
[Abyssal Sporomancer (Mind)]
[Collector (Covetous)]
“Would you look at that?” Coop raised his eyebrows as he observed the incredible progress of yet another animal.
Coop swapped his war fork for a heavy spear, giving it enough density to hopefully knock the crab loose if not destroy it outright. He decided if he was going to enter this fight at all, he might as well introduce himself by taking out the biggest, baddest dude on the battlefield. He would deal with the rest after showing himself not to be trifled with, whether they considered him this Nomad or not. It was a page straight out of Captain Kayla’s playbook.
Comments
Nyroe
GIANT ENEMY CRAB!!! Attack its weak spot for massive damage!
