Reincarnated Into A Dead Woman's Body In Another World-Chapter 458: Arc 6, - 74: Lightning’s Stride

"Get as close as possible to any of those ships," Jotou ordered.

"Jotou, we’re not taking prisoners," Hotaru furrowed her brows.

Jotou shook her head, "No, not that. Just let me get onto a wrecked ship and I can make my way to Beauregard, she left me a trail straight to her."

"You’re going to waste your mana getting there."

"What’s the problem, don’t trust her anymore?" Fumeko snarked.

"Don’t you start," Hotaru pointed a finger at the brunette. "I’m just wondering how this would be practical."

"The ship’s not gonna get close enough anyway, I have to get to Beauregard somehow. This way, the ship can get close enough, but not in direct harm.

Those warships are huge, they have enough real estate for me to make my way across from the side. Not that flanking’s gonna matter to something that big, but it’s not a bad idea.

Also, if there’s anyone trapped, injured or about to die, I could probably also save them. I know it seems pointless, but think about it.

What better way would the Malecise Regime be convinced that the Burntish government didn’t mean for any of this to happen. It’d credit the cult as the culprits, not the nation.

Maybe it might even, I don’t know, gain the trust of the people of the Malecise Regime? That’s a longshot, but I think it would help in the long term.

All the rest of you will get there after me, and if I can get Beauregard out of the way first, I can get back on the ship and we can escape before the Malecise Navy could do anything about it," Jotou spouted.

"Your plans are messier than ever today," Fumeko crossed her arms.

"I’ve been winging it so hard for the past week detective; it’s not like I’m making the problems that need to be solved," Jotou admitted with a thousand-yard stare at the ship’s floor.

"Go on then, let’s do it," the brunette continued.

"Captain?" Hotaru looked to.

"Our orders were to escort the lot of you all the way out here, the Thundering Blade can act as she wishes. If you want to be dispatched at the closest ship ma’am, we can do that," the captain gave a nod.

"Then make it so," Jotou broke out of trance.

_

A few minutes later, the ship slowed down greatly to allow the blonde at the bow of the ship to hop off. Jotou climbed onto the edge of the SS Narwhal and balanced on it to test herself.

"Good luck," Fumeko wished.

"May thy return be swift and thy attempt at deicide be efficacious," Tiffany bade.

Hotaru took a deep breath, "I don’t know why, but I don’t feel worried about you; like you have a glint in your eye that’s reassuring."

Jotou looked back and smiled, "I just had a good night’s sleep~"

"Have you now," the redhead’s fangs glistened.

With a small hop, Jotou landed onto the mast of a warship and held the side. "I’ll see you all later." She put her foot on the Narwhal and kicked it away, causing the ship to change trajectory and drive away from the majority of the shipwrecks.

Jotou glanced at the maze she would have to traverse and her target in the distance. "Swish!" Her sword came out of its sheath and with a huff, she dashed forward.

Her boots sparked, evaporating any drop of water they stepped on. Each step rang with a heavy clang against metal; the smell of fresh salty air was on the breeze as it hit her face.

"Hhuh!" she leapt from one sinking ship onto another, landing on the tips of her toes and continuing her dash. The wind blew past her ears, giving her a sweet rush she had to let out.

A smile played upon her lips and she leapt forward again, landing onto a metal surface and sliding down before she put her shoulder to the side and charged across the water’s surface with the aid of a spell.

"Kickbolt," she hoisted herself up and grabbed the edge of a sinking vessel to land onto its deck. She weaved her way through crates leaning to one side and slid underneath the fallen part of a broken roof.

She simply leapt from the deck of one ship onto another, this time the ship being slanted down. With her feet parallel to one another she slid down the deck of the entire ship and pushed herself off before she hit the crack in the metal and avoided the sea.

Her open hand grabbed onto a ship and she flipped herself up using some momentum and a lightning-charged kick. Her path had to take a left onto the sideways-leaning railing which she effortlessly balanced onto.

Journeying forward, nothing stopped her stride. A few navy soldiers were fleeing towards the Malecise Regime in a small lifeboat; they saw above them a blonde with an armite blade leap from one ship to another and sprint away.

She landed onto a capsized ship that bounced upon her added weight. Only then did she take a pause as she saw a young man holding onto some of the ship’s framing; everything from his neck and below was submerged till the blonde approached with haste.

She grabbed his arm and hoisted him up. The navy soldier, barely even registered another person present, but clung to her helping hand and got onto the floating hull of the ship.

His other arm was mangled beyond natural repair and he panted, looking up to mutter a thank you to what he expected to be a comrade of his, only to see a blonde ponytail ending in blacks flutter in the wind as Jotou continued her stride.

Onto a ship she went; a ship that seemed, intact? It was however crashed and crumpled against another wrecked ship so it was unable to move from its position.

As she landed onto the slightly angled deck, a dozen or so Malcesian navy soldiers all turned to face her. One of them confusedly shouted, "Hey, who’re you!?"

Before the question was even uttered, many of them already unsheathed polished sabres and the rest had a hand on their belts ready to unsheathe theirs as well.

Jotou stood upright and upon the sight of her sword, every single one of them present furrowed their brows and brandished their weapons guardedly, "Well then!?"

"Just catching my breath," the blonde replied and exhaled. "Right now, I’m someone making her way to that thing to kill it. So let me pass; unless you want your entire country to be terrorized by it."

One of them shrugged and looked to the rest, "Alright, then go, it’s your funeral." One by one, they all shared the same sentiment, not caring to stop the stranger amidst them.

Jotou jogged past, keeping an eye on their drawn blades in case one of them thought they could get a lucky strike in. All she heard were whispers of her identity and confusion.

As she reached the stern of the ship, she looked down and then turned to face the ship’s navy. ’Might as well.’ "For the record, I’m Jotou Howllett, the Thundering Blade of Kria and Cravolta," she smiled and fell backwards off of the edge of the ship.

They all turned to each other with widened eyes and rushed to the side of the ship. Looking down, they watched as Jotou kicked her foot against the side of the ship she was on and launch herself with a kick of electricity onto the deck of a ship way below.

She landed and sprang through the broken windshield, rolled onto the floor, and with a bit of lightning charged through the door and busted it off its hinges before continuing her dash up the ship that had taken a nosedive.

Her journey took her up onto the stern of the ship where she clambered on top of and gazed down. A ship lied in the water, broken in half by some force no longer present; it was quite a ways down.

Taking a deep breath she leapt off of the ship and entered free fall before she spun herself with an electrical kick to halt her momentum and land onto the crumpled roof.

Through the cracks, she saw a woman of the Malecise Navy breathing heavily as she held onto the side of her stomach. The floor beneath her was beginning to drift and any movement would cause her to be unable to return.

Jotou let herself fall down and did the same trick again to land in front of the navy soldier. However, the navy agent immediately grunted and pulled out a pistol which she aimed and pulled the trigger of.

"Wait-" the blonde’s entire form sparked the instant the gun was aimed at her. However no blast came from the waterlogged pistol; what the blonde did see was a piece of metal impaled into her side. "Let me help, I can at least cauterize the-"

"Aghhh!" she then resorted to pulling out her dagger and moving forward which caused the bit of the ship she stood on to not only start drifting, but go under the water.

The navy soldier barely was able to lunge forward and stab her dagger near Jotou’s feet and pierced into the metal of the remaining ship. Half of her body sploshed into the water where the blood began to disperse into; she yelled as the salt water stung her further.

As Jotou reached a hand down, the navy soldier pulled her hand away and let herself sink further into the seawater. It was then that her vision grew blurry from the pain and her head hit the metal before going unconscious.

She sheathed her sword, "Ai, ai, ai..." Jotou pried the woman’s hand off of the stabbed dagger and drag her body onto the remainder of the ship. She examined the piece of metal stabbed into her; it was deep, suggesting she might have been thrown onto it by turbulence from the crash.

’Okay, but how the hell’s that supposed to help me?’ Channelling all her medical knowledge, she grabbed the metal piece and yanked it out; blood began to pour out of the gash. "Oh no." Granted, her medical knowledge was not exactly vast.

Sparking up her hands, she reached at the wound with a low charge and covered the gash with her palms. There was a sizzle as the gash began to rapidly cauterize; if she was not unconscious, she would have been screaming louder probably.

’At least she’s breathing.’ She lifted her hands and saw that the bleeding had stopped entirely, but what was leftover was an awful-looking burn mark... "Better a scar than dead, sorry I’m not a healer."

With a quick fix to what would be a lifelong scar if the woman survived, Jotou hoisted the soldier up and lifted her onto an upper deck of the ship, away from the crumbling metal beneath. She grunted as she pushed the body further in while on the tips of her toes-

"Crack-splosh!"

The metal beneath her feet went as well, dropping Jotou halfway into the water. She grabbed onto the side of the remaining floor and that chipped away as well.

Thrashing in the water, she managed to get a hold of the frame by the side to help her float. She crawled onto more stable flooring and remained halfway in the water, nearly going into a panic. ’Oh right. Minor oversight. I don’t know how to swim...’

She sparked herself dry and climbed the rest of the way onto the floor of the other half of the ship. Taking a breather, she glanced around the vicinity. Only the sound of the waves hit her ears, but she saw the SS Narwhal in the distance; it was slightly behind.

At least her route seemed to be faster, even with her checkpoints. She exhaled and... Jotou knitted her brows and took a deep breath to exhale again, only this time to fully notice the cloud she made with her breath; a chill was in the air—one all too familiar...

"Frost."