After transforming back to his human form, Jack stepped out of his personal cabin. His boots clicked rhythmically against the enchanted wood of the Silent Mermaid.

He felt different. It wasn't just a sense of being refreshed. It was a physical sensation of density. His mystic power reserves had already been formidable due to his high attributes and unique leveling system. But now it had doubled. It felt like his current energy had been expanded and then packed tight with high-pressure steam power.

The air in the main cabin was thick with the same sensation.

Reina was there. Leaning against a bulkhead with an elegant, focused poise. Her eyes seemed to glow with a renewed intensity.

Not far from her, the rest of the crew looked as if they had just woken up from the best sleep of their lives and then drank five shots of thick black coffee afterward.

"Everyone looks like they're about to burst." Jack commented. His voice was level but carried a new, resonant weight.

"Dear!" Reina said. Moving toward him with a fluid grace. "The fruit... it works extremely well. It feels like... I can use [Absolute Blink] for hours without stopping and I'll still have plenty of mystic power reserve left."

Jack nodded. "It's an illusion, Love. Rapid increase of power tends to do that. But, the fruit does improve our energy capacity greatly."

He looked at the others. Chloe was sitting on a crate, petting Sparkle. The little lightning kirin cub was literally sparking. Tiny blue bolts jumped from its fur to the floorboards.

Chloe herself looked more alert. Her young eyes were scanning her grimoire with a look that suggested she was planning to inscribe more powerful spells in it.

Baroness Artheim stood with Leon and Barnaby. The three of them discussed the plan to utilize their significantly improved mana capacity.

Even Rune, the tiny steamrune fairy, was buzzing around energetically. With a luminescence so bright that she looked like a miniature sun.

"Alright, Ladies and Gentlemen!" Jack called out. "We've gained our first fortune here. Let's continue our voyage, shall we?"

"Understood, Captain!" Leon said. His deep voice was appreciative. He flexed his hands. His knuckles were cracking loudly. "The gain this time is amazing though. I feel like I could punch a hole through a ship hull easily."

"Don't try that here!" Jack replied bluntly. He then turned to Rune. "Rune! Is there any other treasure you can detect?"

The fairy pulsed a deep, steady green. Then the color shifted to a vibrant gold. She pointed her tiny arm toward one direction. She couldn't speak, and she didn't need to. The direction was clear. More treasures in that direction.

"Anchor up!" Jack ordered. "Argust! Go back to the control room. Rune, show the direction to him. Everyone else, back to your task. We're moving. And let's maintain the invisibility cloak. There's no point of attracting trouble."

...

The Silent Mermaid glided forward. Its hull was silent against the thick, dark water. Days passed. But the Grim Spirit Sea was quite similar to the Purplesky Realm in one thing. Time here was more of a suggestion rather than a law.

The sky in this realm remained a permanent color of twilight. And there was no sign of time moving or changing.

And the color of twilight in the sky was not only on the western horizon. In fact, they had no way to determine direction here. No sign of north, east, south, o west. Without Rune’s guidance, they would have been sailing in circles until their supplies, or their sanity, ran out.

Jack spent most of the time these days in his workshop. He was mostly in his mysterious specter form. Working on restructuring the spells in his grimoire.

He didn't make rapid evolutionary change in the runic inscription. Instead, he mainly modified the mana intake and the power output. Focusing on managing the utilization of greater mana to produce greater result.

...

On the fourth day of travel, the realm revealed a different landscape other than just black sea and the permanent twilight sky. But for sailors, it was a landscape of nightmares.

"Ship graveyard..." Argust Osprey whispered when he first looked at the sight.

Jack stood on the deck with the other crew members but Moby, who was currently tasked for navigating the ship from the control room. His steamrune binoculars were pressed to his eyes.

Ahead of them, the sea became shallow. Barely deep enough for a frigate to pass. Rising from the silt and stagnant water were the skeletal remains of hundreds of vessels.

Some were ancient galleons with rotted wood that looked like bleached bone. Others were more recent. Their wooden hulls were mixed with iron parts that were rusted into jagged, orange teeth. They were piled haphazardly. A chaotic junkyard of maritime history.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

"There!" Jack said. Pointing to one direction.

Tucked into a natural harbor formed by the wreckage of two massive dreadnoughts was the target of Wellcrow's current mission. The treasure galleon. The Golden Seagull. Its golden-leafed trim was slightly tarnished. But it remained the most magnificent thing in this graveyard.

But it wasn't alone...

The three surviving ships from Captain Wellcrow's original fleet... the White Crow, the Blood Butcher, and the Morning Light... were anchored nearby. They looked battered. Their sails were torn and their hulls were scarred. It should be from the encounter with the spectral hydra and their further adventures these days in the realm.

"Argust! Move to the control chamber and take over the navigation. Get us close to the Golden Seagull. But not too close." Jack commanded the navigator next to him quietly. "And keep the invisibility cloak on. Let's observe from the distance first."

As the Silent Mermaid drifted closer, the sounds of combat drifted over the water. It wasn't the sound of cannon shots in an organized naval engagement. It was the frantic, screaming chaos of a boarding action.

Jack adjusted the focus on his binoculars. The deck of the Golden Seagull was a slaughterhouse.

Captain Wellcrow was in the thick of it. He had fully unleashed his primal sorcery. His current body was a three-meter-tall shark-man, with wings His skin was a rough, sandpaper grey. His huge wings were of the same color. And his maw was filled with rows of serrated teeth.

The ship captain was holding a massive chain-and-anchor as a weapon. He swung it like a flail. Smashing through men and wood alike.

Opposing him was the captain of the Blood Butcher. Jack recognized the man's style immediately. He was a high-level primal sorcerer with the power of telekinesis.

Twelve jagged, rune-etched blades hovered in the air around him like a lethal halo. They blurred through the air. Parrying Wellcrow's anchor and darting out to disembowel the White Crow's sailors. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

The Blood Butcher's crew were pirates to the core. They were fighting with such a desperation that suggested they might be told this was their only way out of the mist as rich people.

"Are they fighting over the hoard?" Leon muttered, standing beside Jack. "Idiots! Can they battle later when they were out of the realm?"

"It's not just White Crow against Blood Butcher." Jack commented. His gaze shifted to the third party.

The crew of Morning Light had also joined the fray. They were siding with Wellcrow. Presumably because the Blood Butcher was the first to attack or had tried to pull a double-cross.

Leading the Morning Light's contingent was a teenager who looked entirely out of place in this hell-scape.

He wore rune-etched plate armor that gleamed with a clean, silver light. In one hand, he held a mechanical sword that hissed with escaping steam. In the other, he wielded a masterwork rune pistol.

"He was actually a better fighter than I'd thought." Leon whispered. "That's Arthur Vance."

"No!" Jack corrected him bluntly. "That's the Sixth Prince of Elrush. Arthur Elrush. I've seen him once in Sapphire City, being targeted by the cultists from Eternal Soul. What the hell is he doing out here?"

"Slumming it for adventure, most likely." Baroness Artheim said. Her voice was dripping with helplessness. "I've heard of him. The boy has more ridiculous passion than sense."

The Prince was protected by a tight circle of elite transcendent bodyguards. Expert soldiers disguised as mere ship officers. They moved with a precision that the pirates and Wellcrow's thugs lacked.

And the prince himself wasn't a helpless person. Every time a member of the Blood Butcher got close, the prince's sword would hiss. And a flash of mechanical brilliance would sever a limb or pierce a heart.

But, the chaotic fights had caused a disturbance that awaken certain things. The battle was about to get a lot more crowded.

From the dark, yawning holes in the surrounding shipwrecks, things began to move. At first, Jack thought they were survivors. But the way they moved... jerky, stiff, and utterly silent... told a different story.

"Undead!" Reina said. Her hands immediately moved to the holsters of her handguns. "The inhabitants of the graveyard are waking up."

Hundreds... probably thousands of zombie-like sailors began crawling out of the rotting hulls. Their flesh was grey and waterlogged. Some were missing limbs. Others had sea animals grew out of parts of their bodies.

They didn't make any sound from their mouths. But they swarmed the Golden Seagull with surprising speed.

The three-way battle between the White Crow, the Blood Butcher, and the Morning Light ground to a sudden, screeching halt. The crews of all three ships quickly realized they were being surrounded.

"Form a circle!" Captain Wellcrow roared. His shark-voice booming across the water. It could be heard even from the Silent Mermaid. "Back to back! Kill anything that doesn't have a pulse!"

For a few minutes, the scene was one of desperate cooperation. Pirates, sailors, and royal bodyguards stood shoulder to shoulder. Hacking away at the endless tide of the dead.

The Sixth Prince was a blur of silver and steam. His steamrune pistol barked as he blasted the heads off the approaching ghouls.

"The prince's good for his age." Jack admitted. "But the rate it's going, they are all about to be out of luck."

"Really?" Leon raised his eyebrows. "Even though the zombies are a lot, they are weak. I think many of the crew from the three ships will survive."

"I think the leader of Blood Butcher will be out of luck first, Dear." Reina commented. "Wellcrow doesn't seem to be a person who will forgive his enemy."

"That's what I mean." Jack said. "Killing the Blood Burcher's captain was a bad idea. A very bad idea."

The tide really turned like what Jack predicted.

Wellcrow had finally closed the distance to the Blood Butcher's captain. The telekinetic pirate was distracted. Trying to keep his blades spinning to ward off a dozen zombies.

Captain Wellcrow didn't miss the opening. He lunged. His massive shark-jaws snapped shut around the pirate captain's torso.

There was a sickening crunch of bone. The telekinetic blades fell clattering to the deck as the captain was bitten nearly in half.

Wellcrow spat the mangled body onto the deck. His chest was heaving. "Done with you!" He seemed to growl.

But the dying body didn't stay still.

Instead of being dead, the captain of the Blood Butcher began to twitch. His blood, instead of being red, turned into a thick, bubbling black tar.

His skin split open. Not from the bite, but from something pushing out from inside him.

The transformation was instantaneous and horrifying. The human form of the pirate captain burst apart. In its place rose a five-meter-tall monstrosity.

It was an ugly, grey-skinned demon with a face that was nothing more than a vertical slit filled with needles. From its back and shoulders, eight massive, muscular tentacles erupted. Each ended in a hooked claw that gleamed with a greasy, necrotic light.

=====<O>=====

If you, dear readers, enjoy the story, please share a review.

And if you are willing to support my work, please visit and join /Alkrishna. It should be about 15+ chapters ahead there.

=====<O>=====