The Way of the Clan 9

by Dem Mikhaylov

  “We’ve got bait — “the spirits of Roska rose again. She took the meat from Orbit. “And where is the big sinker? Rotten herring! Where is it? And how much does one mammoth tusk weigh? Oh…”

  The elf managed to find the huge sinker, while diligently making threatening signs to Kolyvan, so that he did not come closer. Probably reasonably feared that Roska might not have a strong enough fishing line or a large enough float, for which the tendon and the skull of a mammoth were perfect.

  This fishing comedy amused and distracted, and even reassured. But it was time to return to the numbers.

  Life: 1299 1299 Mana: 4733 4733

  This was with the effects already obtained, as well as the blessings. But without the most important effect. If we add to this the power of the effect “The Living Blood of the Great”, it turned out even more interesting:

  Life : 1507 1507 Mana : 6059 6059

  And now let us look into the wisdom and the bonuses given by it. Plus, my specialization was a support mage. Thanks to the attainment of “Wise man” of the fourth rank, my saving of mana reached eleven percent. Thanks to specialization, another minus five percent.

  And as a result, I did not need 10,000 mana points, but 8455, to activate the spell.

  So, I had 6059 mana, but I needed 8455. But I had not yet drunk elixirs and had not eaten other “trophies” collected during my epic hunt for mana. They would raise my mana level by at least twenty to twenty-five percent by the roughest estimates. I would have at least seven and a half thousand points of mana! And if more than a dozen damned equipment items were added to this — voila, it is done, my mana would be more than enough to cast a spell.

  That is — I was ready. I was ready to rip the covers off the lost continent right now — just let me drink some assortment of liquids.

  And there was insurance — in the form of swapping me with other support mages. And some trump card mentioned by Malice. But this was in the worst case. And yet — I did not plan to stop there. I was going to raise my character as many levels as possible. I would use all the remaining days before the end of the campaign. This would increase the size of the safety buffer. Bravo, Ros! You are the Great Navigator! Just do not die too often and the money will be yours.

  But then, why did Malice try to persuade me to take the unnecessary class?

  Suppose the class of “living ship engine” gave a much greater increase to my mana. But why should it have to? After all, it was not needed anymore. For an additional warranty? Another security? A weighty argument. Really a valid argument.

  But my instinct did not agree that everything was so simple. In childhood and adolescence, I was used to solving all problems with my fists. And I was always very sensitive to my own weakness. Strength was what I worshipped. And when Malice mentioned that, after the transition to a new class, I would lose my “fangs” — the strength and rate of combat magic — I was already shaking with an almost physical disgust. Losing power was not an option for me.

  I agree to be the most stupid in the team, I agree to be the most shortsighted, impulsive and conflictual. In a word — not social and not adaptive. Let everyone scold me, let everyone reconcile with my stubbornness with difficulty, and with my unwavering desire to go far on the wrong path, as long as It is chosen by me, and not by anyone else. I agree I am such a person. But I do not agree to be the weakest. Never.

  Yes, I can be weaker than everyone in my team at some point. Why not. But there was always a chance to catch up, to become stronger, to build up muscles and grow clawed feet and fangs. But if you are just a pot-bellied ship engine with two buttons “to swim” and “not to swim” — you cannot do anything anymore. It WAS a real miracle that the local head of the Guild of Mages agreed to take such an unprecedented step.

  I would swim to the mainland; remove the covers … what next? Nothing. I would be nobody. They would immediately forget about me. Ship loads on your catamaran.

  But that’s not the point. It is not my feelings that persuade me.

  Malice wanted to deprive me of power. That’s what it seemed like to me. What for?

  Why make me almost helpless social? There were such players, I had nothing against them. They wanted to live in a magical world, they wanted to see miracles, they wanted to make money, but they did not want to kill anyone. Digital pacifists. Virtual hippies. Yes. Their right. But I am not like that.

  Just for the fun of making me out of the mattress there was no sense, like.

  Then why?

  Well … again, only one option was visible — to make me even more addicted to the Sleepless. If I lose all my teeth, I’d be like an invalid who needs a constant help from a brawny nurse. And then I’d begin to ask the Sleepless for more and more — protect my daughter, help her, but my friends would be offended, I should be able to protect them, I myself could not, my hands would be weak.

  Fancy that …

  But why would they?

  Why make me even more dependent on them?

  So they need something from me …

  But what?

  I gave them everything I had. Besides my daughter.

  Did they need Roska? Easily. A manual goddess always comes in handy. And if she saw that, at the request of her weakling daddy, the good Sleepless always rush to the rescue — it would surely imbue her with deep sympathy.

  Was it because of Roska?

  Hmmmm …

  No. the Sleepless necessarily had some plans for Roska, but that was ok — because they always had some plans, with anything and anyone. Sleepless reminded me of the country of Great Britain, described in one very thick and somewhat tedious book I read once on my northern vacation. Not England in the present, but then — lots of grandiose plans, a huge fleet, a bunch of overseas colonies, a huge influence on European politics and not only European. And the Black Baroness — Queen Victoria, ruling by her hand, clad in soft silk.

  Again I got carried away …

  What for? What for? If they wanted to take my strength from me, to make me more dependent on them, then they need something from me. In addition to my Great Navigator spell — because it was already in their possession. Wait … maybe they want to lure the spell out of me? Nonsense. They certainly were afraid of my betrayal, but turning me into a thick punching pear did not add to their cause. Having understood what they had done, I would definitely go for revenge. So here the Sleepless would have miscalculated. They should not have tried to tear my fangs from me. It made me angry.

  But what then? If not a spell and not Roska … what?

  I had nothing more. This was my word of honor. There was nothing. And there would not be — how would I possibly find a permanent stay on the team bridge? I would hang out there until the mainland and then I will read the spell and turn into a normal mortal, having successfully completed my work and gotten a considerable amount of real money for it. Wait, … but if I had something else? And not in the real world, but in the virtual world— here in Valdira. They would give me something.

  For example, a gold cup. And a medal on the neck. Marking the achievement. Or something else. Or nothing.

  Now I was definitely confused.

  The simplest and most logical option — the Sleepless did not care about my future, because they always thought only of themselves. Therefore, offering me a class that gave me more mana was the logical move of hard pragmatists, which they were. Well, in almost everything. But Whisper was only a clan warrior, he did not solve political and strategic issues. Such guys like him were sent to crawl in the swamp and collect mosquitoes and leeches.

  The Sleepless offered — I refused. They waved a finger in front of my face and softly threatened me — again I refused. Then they threatened me again, but immediately noticed — nothing personal brother, it is just a business. And then they took their leave. And that was all. This ended the scheme, and I become paranoid, seeing universal conspiracies of a global scale everywhere.

  I had to distract myself, and rejoice. I had rea
ched the goal. A great goal! I really became the great Navigator! And to hell with everyone’s insidious schemes!

  “What is the matter with the fish?” I asked at the top of my voice. The good thing was, that there was absolutely no one here. They were at the tournament. There were prizes promised. And the fighting was cool — Two by two, three by three, five by five. And at the very end — one on one. That was something to see.

  “There are so many fish here! I do not had time to throw them in the tank!”

  “I will help,” I said, heading to the shore, stretching my shoulders and leaving the catamaran in shallow water.“Now dad will show you how to throw fish! Throw me a fish!”

  “Yes, Dad!” Roska, bent like a battle bow, threw, and a black shadow flashed in the air. A huge tuna of three meters in length dropped in front of me. Maybe four. Weighing probably half a ton.

  “Dad cannot pick up raise this fish,” I confessed bitterly. “But dad is very clever!”

  “Huh ...”

  Heavy Kolyvan was obviously going to play the role of live crane and show everyone who was the strongest. Again, I was wrong. I simply did not expect that a fragile girl could pull out such a fish from the water! Fine — I would act as a support. And I would not pay attention to the mysterious drawings inscribed on the sand. It was more like the incomprehensible writing of some dead language. And the elf did not conjure anything, but simply wrote out some information, thought a little over it, erased it, and wrote something else. In a word — our crazy visionary decided to systematize the chaos of information that was boiling in his head.

  “You did good,” I smiled diligently.

  “Yeah!”

  “And I?” Asked Kirea, holding a line on which two fish fluttered at once, but with scarlet gills and fins.

  “Wow!” I hurried to agree. ”Come on! Let us put the fish in the bucket.”

  “Dad! Dad! Another fish! Oh! And more fish! Damn! They sure are biting!”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I nodded. “Exactly, exactly. Shit!”

  I rushed back and forth between two brave fishermen, collected the catch, and hid it in a huge bucket lying in the shallow water. When I could not pick up some monstrous fish, Kolyvan came to help me, taking a break from eating algae and picking up the catch with his trunk. I did not know that fishing could be so tedious.

  I would rather sit on a pebble, drink a margarita. Where was rest for the tired hero? Where was mercy? Bloody fish … it was being caught so quickly that I felt like a worker in a conveyor belt. But I wanted to swim on my catamaran, peacefully and quietly pumping my spells …

  “Oo-ooh!” Roska let out a joyful and slightly disappointed sigh. “This was the same fish, right? Oh well … and I was expecting something special ...”

  A well-known fish was on the hook— with its very interesting and promising name, fish-chest. The fish looked as if it had accidentally swallowed a large cube. In each such fish there was some pleasant and often profitable surprise — a pair of coins, a precious stone, a gold button, a scroll, something else. Fish were found everywhere. And found in any water — whether it was clean or dirty, marshy or flowing, fresh or salty.

  Any player could catch a “chest”. But they also differed in the category of complexity. Some fish were more precious than others. There were some whose scales were like the stripes of a rainbow — a gold strip, then emerald, then ruby, then sapphire and gold. And the colors seemed to be “precious” — not just blue, red or green. The eyes shone with the same gold color, the mouth was fringed with crimson, and the tail was like the tongue of a raging flame. A miracle, not a fish. I was so amazed that I immediately took a screenshot.

  Roska was breathing heavily, and the holy rod was trembling with tension. The line was ringing — apparently, pulling the fish out turned out to be a very difficult matter, and the young goddess had to exert a lot of effort, and all her s kills. But she was indeed a great fisherman …

  “Good?” correctly understood my daughter, waving the fish.

  “Yes, very. It is an expensive fish. And inside, there could be something very good.”

  “I know! The fish-box! A lot was written about it in the fish encyclopedia of Valdira! Did you want it?”

  “Me? It is your catch, Roska.”

  “If there are hooks or a map of treasures buried by vicious pirates — I take it,” Roska decided after a moment’s thought. “If it is money, jewelry or other nonsense unworthy of the attention of this sailor— leave it for yourself.”

  “Hmmm … okay …”

  Only a fool would refuse. I took the fish, dragged it to the catamaran, threw it into the net between its floats and looked at Orbit, the calligrapher of sand, and asked:

  “Help them with the catch.”

  The elf waved his hand and Kolyvan left the remains of a sorry flower bush alone. The poor bush — grew up quietly and steadfastly from between two stones, and then the bloody mammoth came…

  I activated the magic of the “propeller” again and began to spin around the shore, winding out one nautical mile after another. I wanted the second rank of the spell … but for now I had to see what was hidden in the stomach of the fish. Perhaps there was still some kind of spell — a special one, or even a unique one. Or maybe there was a powerful artifact that gave a bonus to mana or intelligence. I would not give it up. Well then…

  Pages.

  Three ragged pages with the remnants of an almost fully eroded text. These were not magical scrolls, and they did not contain spells. They did not contain anything except text, and a few water-stained drawings. Restraining my disappointed sigh, so as not to upset all that noticed Roska — I began to figure out the text. Soon it became clear that these pages were torn from a ship’s log. At the top of each page there were notes indicating that the pages were from the log of barkentine Thanollah, and Captain Don Klock had filled it. The handwriting was not hard to make out in places where it had not been washed away by water. The drawings were sketches, but also quite understandable.

  The papers spoke about the journey, or rather the wanderings, of Thanollah, once attributed to the port of Akelrome. One day, mysterious clouds thickened around the ship — the wind howled — and then a whirlwind exploded over it, and the Thanollah was pulled into it. But the ship did not perish — when the clouds disappeared, and the waves died down, they found themselves in unknown waters and under strange stars. And a long maritime odyssey began. Trying to find the way home. This concludes the first sheet of my three.

  The second and third were from much later time — the beginning of the hundredth day. Miserly entries were crowded on the pages, and they talked about the importance of the campaign, the problems with fresh water, and the monsters they met in route. There were also coordinates — nothing making sense to me, personally.

  I read every word I could make out. I looked through each picture. And I came to the conclusion that I had never seen such sea monsters in my life. It said that very large fish and giant sea urchins lived in the shallow areas. And these creatures, at any movement above, immediately rose from the bottom, opened their terrible mouths, and simply swallowed their prey entirely. This was the way that, right in front of captain of Thanollah and the team, a large whale was swallowed, twice the size of their ship. And the sides of the fish were transparent and the sailors saw the terrible death of the unfortunate whale, literally dissolved alive — the swollen monster rocked on the waves and could not go under the water again until the end of the meal. If one of these creatures swallowed the ship, then it might seem, from the side, that a giant bottle with a toy ship inside was bouncing on the waves. Only on this ship, the living team rushes around and screams …

  No sooner had they recovered from the encounter with this nightmare, did they stumble upon a black liquid poured over the water — a living substance capable of crashing into a ship in billowing waves, and making its way into every crevice…

  Then there were more monsters. Thanollah moved almost at random — the cap
tain stubbornly composed a star map, marked the coordinates, and drew a map using his notes.

  The last entry read as follows: “They are coming straight at us! The end of the road? Glory to the bright gods! How many ships …. Dozens. Never before had I seen horizontal masts, and at such a length. Ships are flying along the waves like birds spreading their wings. And they fly straight to us ..”

  That is it…

  The ship’s log was cut off.

  I stiffened. I was holding a priceless treasure. An information bomb. We had not encountered such monsters. We saw a lot – horrible and nightmarish. We defeated many terrible creatures. But the creatures described by Captain Don Klock we had not met. I was sure of this.

  And hence the conclusion was simple — we would meet them. Ahead of us. First, the unknown creatures able to swallow ships whole — then there would come the tide of “black waves”, and then new living obstacles. And then some ships which spread their wings and glided over the waves. The journal was interrupted, but the very existence of the torn, wet sheets of the ship’s log indicated that Thanollah probably did not survive the meeting.

  The clan leaders would give away a lot of money for this. Because it indicated the speed of the monsters, the tactics of their attacks, their ways of dodging and methods of counteraction. It was clear that the creatures studied by Klock would be dangerous. This way, the leaders would be able to prepare. Now, everyone walked blindly. Those who walked behind us already had some information and were ready.

  So the information was very valuable. What was the chance of catching this fish-box? Not great. Oh, not great at all. No more than one percent out of a hundred. But Roska was not a simple fisher — she was a fishing fanatic with divine power and a wealth of experience. After all, they fished for days on end. And at night they caught fish too. And my daughter’s gear was special, expensive, elite. It all came together for the catch. Whether it was planned, or the fish swam by here only by accident — it had happened.