Grand Voyage : Surviving on a Ghost Ship-Chapter 249 - Days at the Lookout
With their movement restricted to the lookout post, there wasn’t much Yang Yi and Suna could do.
There were advantages though.
From this height they didn’t need to worry about the darkness for quite some time. It crept upwards very slowly, although it spread sideways with frightening speed.
Once it reached the deck, it took less than a minute to engulf the entire surface of the Nightmare Star. Then it began to climb the mast at a rate of three centimetres per hour.
The mast was nearly thirty metred tall. As long as the spread didn’t accelerate, they could stay up here for a month without trouble.
Yang Yi tried commanding the ancient bone arms and found that they weren’t affected by the darkness at all. But the sticky black mist resisted them, and they couldn’t push it back.
The vines, however, fell completely inert. Only those attached to the sails and the lookout post were still under his control.
The ship’s durability dropped sharply to 9427. Damage exceeded 2500, and it could no longer repair itself.
“The durability loss must be from the vines. The cabins are probably filled with darkness already.”
Yang Yi checked the ship interface and made his guess.
The composition looked roughly three parts bone to one part vine.
Two days ago, when the lookout skill cooled down, Yang Yi used it again. All it gave him was another blank sea chart. Not a single mark on it.
But with an entire month ahead, it seemed impossible that every scan would be empty. If so, this ocean was beyond desolate. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮
He switched to the world map.
The Nightmare Star had already sailed more than five thousand nautical miles to the east, about the width of the Pacific.
In all that time, he hadn’t seen another ship. Not even a trace of an island.
Combined with what other players reported, the conclusion was clear. This world was absurdly vast, probably without continents, and islands were rare.
Up to now, only a small fraction of players had found islands.
It wasn’t surprising to see so many uninhabited ones either. Most probably lacked even basic conditions for survival.
Fresh water alone excluded the majority.
Even so, one lucky player reached a native settlement and shared a flood of information, including photographs.
The images showed a primitive tribe. Simple clothing, houses of stacked clay and stone.
Yet even that settlement had a surprisingly ornate chapel, with a statue of a goddess inside.
One look was enough for Yang Yi to recognise the figure. It was the Radiant Goddess. Armless, but standing as though she embraced the world.
Players also mapped out how exposure increased.
On populated islands, it rose ten percent per day. On uninhabited ones, anywhere between two and five. Only one person had reached a settlement though, so the numbers weren’t solid.
Yang Yi and Suna compared the information they’d gathered over the past few days.
Later, at Yang Yi’s suggestion, she began training to build attribute experience. There wasn’t much else to do. They just needed to keep their stamina above sixty and rest when needed.
Before long, Suna even picked up fishing.
You could fish from the lookout post. With enough line, the hook just needed to reach open water. And if the cast fell short, the bone arms below could help.
Life on the narrow platform found its rhythm. They rested in turns. Sometimes they fished, sometimes they trained. A quiet understanding formed between them.
Yang Yi had packed all the food and water ahead of time. Supplies weren’t a problem.
Two days passed like this, and the lookout skill was almost off cooldown.
At two in the morning, they’d be able to scan again, covering an eighteen hundred–nautical-mile radius.
By his count, this was their seventh day in the Lightless Sea. Six if he started from the moment of the trade.
At most, tomorrow the items he purchased should arrive.
If the delivery came today, the system would notify him before eleven at night to prevent missed pickups.
【You have a trade delivery scheduled for 23:00. Please be ready to receive it.】
At 22:50, the notification appeared.
It seemed his trades were delayed by six days, not the full seven.
He turned towards Suna, who was still fishing.
In the past two days she hadn’t caught much fish, but she had hauled up quite a few monstrosities.
Three drowned corpses, five skeleton creatures.
Each one, sensing the pull of the line, climbed onto the deck where Yang Yi shot them down with his flintlock.
And so, the deck was littered with headless abominations.
One of them was larger than the rest, its body bristling with jagged bone spikes and four mismatched arms taken from different creatures.
It was clearly a higher tier skeleton, as it took five bullets to bring it down.
Its bone spikes could launch like arrows and even regrow. Several were still stuck in the deck.
“Stop fishing. I’m heading down. My delivery has arrived.”
Yang Yi said this to Suna.
She had grown dangerously fond of fishing, even catching more than he had. But she lowered her rod at once. She drew her Salt Bow and nocked an arrow.
Yang Yi used his Longevity lighter to ignite it.
The arrowhead was wrapped in oil-soaked cloth meant for fire. The targets were the small campfires he had set below around the mast.
Eight arrows in a row. All struck home, lighting every fire he had placed in the central courtyard of the Nightmare Star.
Flames roared up at once, the heat distorting the air. The darkness around them receded, leaving the area beneath the mast visible again.
This was the plan he and Suna had prepared.
Use fire to carve a temporary safe route straight to the bow and retrieve the delivery before returning.
Naturally, Yang Yi would be the one to go.
By 22:55, five minutes before the drop, he had strapped on the greaves and leg armour of the Penitent set.
If he brushed against the darkness, the armor might offer some protection.
Then he shifted into wolf form, stripped off the rest of his clothing and soaked his fur with seawater from his stomach pouch.
22:58.
Yang Yi threw four burning bottles made from craft-brewed charred liquor. They shattered along the starboard deck, forming a blazing path straight to the vending machine.
“I’m going.”
He told Suna, then leaped down into the bonfire below.
The flames were dense and fierce, the oil making the temperature climb close to boiling. Without water-soaked fur, he would likely have been burned, maybe even ignited.
But he had prepared. The wet fur shielded him from the worst of it, and the heat felt almost pleasant.
He fixed his bearings and sprinted toward the bow.
Thank you for reading! We hope you’re enjoying the story at iNoveltranslation.com :)
There’s now a Patreon, so feel free to check it out! You can read up to 12 chapters in advance!! :D
Please give the novel a rating and a review on novelbuddy. It will help the website and also help people find this novel!
