Ravensdagger_Cinnamon_Bun - страница 229

Chapter Four Hundred and Twenty-Eight — Adrenaline Crash

Chapter Four Hundred and Twenty-Eight — Adrenaline Crash The rest of the day was surprisingly calm.The pirates swiftly disappeared over the horizon, but I still found myself pacing the deck anxiously. It wasn't until an hour had passed with no sign of their reappearance that the nervous energy left me, replaced by a sudden wave of tiredness that made my limbs feel a million times heavier. I could've almost fallen asleep on the spot.Still, as much as I would have adored a nap, there was work to be done. The Beaver had sustained some damage, and I’d promised Awen that I wouldn’t overwork her, so I had to do what I could to help.Then, out of nowhere, it hit me.Bing Bong! Congratulations, your Cinnamon Bun Bun class has reached level 16!Health + 5Resilience +5You have gained: One Class PointYou have unlocked: One Class Skill Slot“Oh,” I said to no one in particular. How long had it been since my last level-up? Some time, actually. Well, only a week or so, actually, but it felt like it had been forever ago.Amaryllis still complained that we were levelling up at an insane pace because of all the trouble we ran into, and I supposed this just proved her right.

Name

Broccoli Bunch

Race

Bun (Riftwalker)

First Class

Cinnamon Bun Bun

First Class Level

Second Class

Wonderlander

Second Class Level

Age

Health

160

Stamina

185

Mana

155

Resilience

Flexibility

Magic

Skills

Rank

Cinnamon Bun Bun Skills

Cleaning

S — 19%

Way of the Mystic Bun

C — 100%

Gardening

D — 49%

Adorable

D — 100%

Wonderlander Skills

Mad Millinery

D — 100%

Proportion Distortion

C — 37%

Social Butterfly

F — 87%

General Skills

Insight

C — 100%

Makeshift Weapon Proficiency

C — 100%

Archeology

D — 100%

Friendmaking

C — 100%

Hugging Proficiency

C — 100%

Captaining

D — 100%

Cinnamon Bun Bun Skill Points

Wonderlander Skill Points

General Skill Points

First Class Skill Slots

Second Class Skill Slots

General Skill Slots

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.I looked over my stats for a moment, then frowned. Had I increased a few skills to their next level? Friendmaking and Makeshift Weapon Proficiency were both at their cap? Had that happened during the fight?“Hey, Mister Menu, what’s up with the lack of notifications?” I asked.Congratulations! Through repeated actions your Friendmaking skill has improved and is now eligible for rank up!Rank B costs 2 General Skill Points!Congratulations! Through repeated actions your Makeshift Weapon Proficiency skill has improved and is now eligible for rank up!Rank B costs 2 General Skill Points!Oh, there it was! “Thanks,” I said.“Are you okay, Broccoli?” Caprica asked. She was nearby, sorting through one of the toolboxes with all of the balloon-patching supplies. She didn’t have the skill or Skills to help with the actual patching work, but she was helping by keeping everything sorted.“Just talking to, uh, myself, I guess? And the system. I levelled up!”“Congratulations, then,” she said. “That’s not too surprising, I suppose.”“It isn’t?”“You were the captain of a ship attacked by three pirate ships, and we made it out of the fight mostly unscathed. Captains, generals, commanders and the like gain lots of experience when leading others through harrowing or challenging experiences.”“Oh, but I’m an airship captain, not a military one,” I said.“Is that what your skill is called?” she asked.“No, it’s just Captaining,” I said.She shrugged. “Then it should apply to any time you lead a small troop of soldiers. Or I suppose a small group of like-minded individuals? I don’t know the exact limits of the skill.”That... actually sounded really cool!I had a few general skill points to spare. They weren’t a renewable resource, but it felt like it was safe to spend one here.Congratulations! Your Captaining skill has improved and is now Rank C!CaptainingRank: CThe ability to lead and take charge through smooth sailing and rough patches. You have a magical awareness of your ship and crew.A magical awareness? What did that mean— oh!I jumped as something tickled the back of my mind. It felt almost like someone was tugging at my ears, but not quite. I worked my jaw, then reached up to check the base of my ears, but there was nothing there. And yet... there was definitely something going on.I focused on it, and then felt a wave of vertigo pass through me. In that same moment, I felt the Beaver. The entire ship was just... there. I could feel it under my feet, but it felt like I had a sort of feel for the entire airship. I could have walked from bow to stern with my eyes closed, and I could point to every crack and splinter in his hull.It wasn’t so much a mental map as it was an extension of my own sense of self. I knew where my own fingers were, and I didn’t need to look to touch my own ear or nose or whatever, I had an awareness of where my own limbs were, and now that sort of extended to the ship.And my friends.I could tell that Awen was coming up the stairs near the engineering area, that Joe was clinging onto the side of the balloon above, that Clive was... oh, I could tell when people were using the head, which was a big nope.I pushed the sense away and it receded, turning into something like an itching feeling at the base of my ears.“Neat!” I said.“Did you improve a skill?” Caprica asked.“I did! I ranked-up Captaining. I can feel where people are on the Beaver now, and where it’s damaged.”“Oh, that seems very practical,” she said. “I think captains in the army have a sense of where their squads are. The skill might give you the ability to communicate with others at higher tiers. It costs a fair bit of mana, but for most martial classes that mana wouldn’t be used otherwise.”That sounded like a ton of fun! A sort of magical skill-based telephone, maybe? It would be nice to be able to talk to my friends from the comfort of a pillow fort. Although... no, that was silly. If I had a pillow fort, then I’d want my friends in it too.“Right, back to work,” I said. “I’ll try to stay up for a while, but I think we should do rotations.”“Like a watch?” Caprica asked.“Yeah. I’m really tired, and I bet I’m not the only one. We all got woken up early and then it was a lot of stress. Giving everyone a few hours for a midday nap can’t hurt.”That was easier said than done, of course. The first step was making sure that everything outside of the ship was good. The Shady Lady had come up and was now hovering some fifty metres off our port side. Raynold was at the helm, and Abraham wasn’t visible. Maybe he was taking his own nap?Cholondee wasn’t around anymore. I suspected that she’d flown ahead because the Beaver was just too slow compared to a dragon. I couldn’t blame her, it must have been tiring to keep up with someone slower, like a really lame escort mission.I was sure she’d come back around. Besides, she needed lunch and we certainly didn’t have the stuff to feed a dragon on board.Speaking of lunch, I figured that with everything that had happened, the crew would be rather hungry, so I grabbed Oda to help me, then went down to the kitchens, and we started on a big stew. Just something quick and easy to keep warm.Carrots and potatoes were chopped up, a stick of celery got ripped apart into chunks, and I tossed in a few minced cloves of garlic. Then Oda emptied the end of a bottle of wine into the mix. The alcohol would get cooked out and the tasty bit would remain. Then more seasoning, because there was no such thing as too much rosemary. The onions in our pantry were starting to go green, but I think we’d picked those up in Sylphfree a long time ago, so it was about time that we used them.“Lunch is ready!” I called out across the deck. My new skill was actually coming in handy already, since I knew that some of the crew on the far end hadn’t heard me.I had to wonder what it was like for people with main classes that revolved around doing airship stuff. Did they have a heap of really powerful skills that’d let them pilot a ship really well?As people came over to eat, I asked each how they were feeling, and then divided up the nap rotation based on that. It would only be about an hour of napping for each, but hopefully that would be enough to keep everyone going until nightfall.I got the middle nap, so after lunch I waddled my way back up the deck and started cleaning up whatever messes I could find. The broken rails had been neatened up, with unfixable parts sawed off so that they could be repaired once we were back in a port. I stripped off the scorch marks on the deck and hull with Cleaning magic until they were gone. Some of the paint had been removed though, so we’d need to give the Beaver a fresh coat too.“It’s not all that bad,” Awen said as she came up behind me.“The damage?” I asked.She nodded. “A few holes here and there, but nothing structural was hit. The engine is intact, so are all the mechanical parts. One of the wing-flaps was pinned in place. We’ll need to replace the sail unless we want to fly with a patch, but otherwise we came out of it okay.”“Good,” I said. “That’s really good.”Awen nodded. “Do you think we’ll have time to fix things at the next port?”“We’ll be at Port Royal. As far as ports go, it’s probably the one I know best.” Which really wasn’t saying all that much. “I’m sure we can find some nice people to help us with the Beaver. Maybe your uncle knows a few? He hangs around there a lot, yeah?”Awen nodded. “He likes the grenoil. A lot of his first adventures were around Deepmarsh, and I think they think he’s some sort of old hero.”“I bet he did do some heroic stuff,” I said."Well ... it's complicated." Awen shrugged her shoulders. "He tells this story about how once, he saved the capital from a horde of undead that had emerged from the eastern swamps."“That does sound very heroic, though,” I said.She shook her head. “He’s the one that woke up the horde by poking around; they followed him to the capital because he stole some lich’s phylactery.”“Oh,” I said. “Well, that makes it a lot less heroic sounding.”“I know!” Awen complained. “It’s not like he even hid the fact that it was his fault. But I guess he’s kinda strong, and he does a lot of adventuring stuff, so people always treat him like a big hero.”“Are you upset about it?” I asked.She shook her head. “No, not at all. It’s just the way uncle is.”“Hmm, well, as long as he’s not doing that kind of thing anymore, it should be okay.”“You do know that he really wants to get into a fight with a dragon, right?” Awen asked.“Maybe we can arrange a spar?” I tried.Awen looked a bit dubious at that, but she didn’t say it was impossible. I decided to hope for the best for the moment. In any case, we were going to a wedding. It would be very rude of Abraham to challenge the groom to a fight before he had time to say his ‘I do.’

* * *

Chapter Four Hundred and Twenty-Nine — Last Leg

Chapter Four Hundred and Twenty-Nine — Last Leg Even with our unfortunate meeting with pirates done, we still had a couple of days of travelling left before we made it to Port Royal.In that time, we did what we could to make sure the Beaver’s repairs held up. That meant checking on the patches at least a few times a day, which turned out to be a good move when we discovered one of them quietly leaking out some of our precious lifting gas.The rest of the damage was easy to work around since it was mostly superficial, but it still bothered me to have the Beaver so damaged. I wasn’t the only one. Orange was quite miffed that one of her two favourite sleeping spots (the head of one of the two duck figureheads) had been blown apart in all the fighting.The morning of the day after our big fight, I walked into the captain’s office at the back (we needed to rename the place, since we didn’t really use it as a captain’s cabin at all) and checked out the navigation charts.We had turned westward during the chase with the pirates, and had pushed the Beaver to move as quickly as it could. Then the fight itself had us manoeuvring this way and that. Instead of charting the entire fight, Amaryllis had drawn a circle around the spot where it took place, then a fresh line below that up to where we were now.Or where she thought we were.We had the mountains to the west to act as landmarks, but it was kind of hard to tell how far they actually were, and the ground didn’t have that many landmarks visible from so high up to use. So our exact location wasn’t super precise.I folded up the map, then left the cabin and walked around the outer edge of the ship’s deck, poking my head out over the side every so often while looking for something to compare our location to.There was a big plain below, and a few encroaching bits of forest. There was a road nearer to the edge of the mountains. The biggest landmark was a long, rocky foothills of the mountainside that spilled out into the plains and that only seemed to be covered by sparse greenery. Comparing that to the map was enough to give me a decent idea of where we were.Another day or so and we’d be seeing the mountain pass that separated Deepmarsh and the eastern part of Mattergrove away from the rest of the world. Fort Cherryhold was around there, but I didn’t think we’d stop at the fort, even if it was supposed to be a popular gateway into the region.We didn't need to stop, so it was easier to skip past it and head straight for Port Royal.The closer we came to Port Royal, the less we had to worry about any additional encounters with piratical sorts.“Hey, capt’n,” Calamity said as he joined me by the ship’s figurehead (the one that still had a head). “Had a good rest?”“It was nice,” I said. “And probably more than a little needed. I think I fell asleep the moment my head touched my pillow.”Calamity chuckled. “Yeah. Well, to be fair, yesterday was pretty exciting, so that was probably called for. N’ya feeling better?”“Much!” I said. “Ready for the next big pirate fight!”Calamity shook his head. “I don’t know about that. The ship looks a little banged up.”“Ah, that’s true. I don’t actually want to get into another fight with pirates. Or even non-pirates,” I said. And it was entirely true. Fighting wasn’t something I liked doing, even though it was undeniably very exciting. “You’ve never been to Port Royal, right?”“Never been this far south before,” he agreed.“Oh, you might like it! It’s a nice city. Lots of grenoil. Though it is kind of humid, I guess. It reminds me a bit of home that way, but I imagine it might be annoying for, uh...” I gestured at his fur.“It’s not that bad,” he said with a grin. “Worst-case I look a bit fuzzier than usual, which isn’t so bad. Ladies love a fuzzy guy, especially if he’s got some toughness to back it up.”“Well, if you say so,” I said.Calamity huffed. “I do say so,” he said. “But n’yeah, the way you’re talking, you’ve spent some time there?”“A little? You know that I’m not from around here, right?” He nodded, so I continued. “I showed up in this little ghost town-as in, a town full of mostly impolite ghosts-somewhere in the Darkwoods. I ended up making my way north towards Port Royal. It was the only place I could see from where I started that looked like there were people. I saw an airship!”“You sound very excited about seeing an airship for someone standing on one.”“I’d never stood on one back then,” I said. “We don’t really have airships where I’m from. Not the way we have them here. Instead there are planes, which are also cool, but mostly noisy and cramped. Anyway, I was very excited, and Port Royal turned out to be a lot more than I expected. There’s a village at the base of the mountains, and cable cars up to the city, and there’s lot of people from different races. Mostly it’s harpies and grenoil, since they’re both close, but there’s humans too, and because there’s so many ships coming and going, you have all sorts of people from elsewhere.”“That does sound mighty interestin',” he said. “And we’ll be staying there for a bit, from the sounds of it.”“Well, at least until the wedding’s done,” I allowed. “If we’re even invited. We, ah, never did get an invitation.”Calamity blinked, then laughed. “That’s right, we didn’t! No offence, Broccoli, but I’ll laugh the loudest if n’ya get to the gates and they turn ya around after all this trouble.”This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.“I’m sure Booksie wouldn’t do that,” I said. “Amaryllis, Awen and I were kind of the ones to help her find Rhawrexdee, you know!“I’m sure she’ll let you attend,” he said with a pat on my shoulder.I didn’t want to be mean, but I would probably be a little bit upset if we couldn’t at least sit in the crowd to watch. I’d never been to a wedding before, but they sounded magical and very romantic!I left Calamity with his watch and returned the map to the captain’s office, happy that I’d confirmed our location, more or less. I glanced up a moment before Amaryllis opened the door into the room, then smiled and explained what I’d been up to. My new Captaining skill was nice, if a little weird. I’d told the others about it, of course.It was only creepy if people didn’t know that I knew where they were. Or at least, I hope that’s how it worked out. The Scallywags were a little annoyed, but I suspected it was because they tended to be up to mischief when I wasn’t looking.In any case, the day went on to be pretty normal. By the end of the day, I was no longer searching for pirate ships coming around every cloud in sight.The Shady Lady came closer that evening, and we moored the two ships together with some long ropes and shut the Lady’s engines off for the night. Raynold and Abraham joined us for a big dinner, and he shared stories, including his own version of the pirate fight which included a lot more action and swashbuckling and had maybe more dragons in it than I remembered seeing.The laughter and camaraderie that night was the salve we all needed after the previous day’s chaos. The night sky above us was a vivid tapestry of stars, and the cool evening breeze felt like a gentle caress as we sat on the Beaver's deck, trading stories and enjoying good food.As the evening went on, Awen pulled out a small flute and blew a few notes, then Abraham launched into a very bawdy song about the open skies and the freedom it promised and all the scantily clad ladies that could be found in port cities. It wasn't long before others joined in, their voices rising and falling in harmony.Raynold, who turned out to have a surprisingly good voice, sang a sombre tune about lost love and windswept shores.By the time the moon peaked in the sky, the shared joy of the evening had driven away the shadows of the previous day entirely.“Alright, enough singing for one night!” Abraham chuckled, rubbing his stomach contentedly. “We've got a big day ahead. We're nearly at Fort Cherryhold, and then it's just a quick hop to Port Royal! Haha! I have friends to meet! They'll be surprised to see that I'm still alive, haha!”True enough, the next morning, as dawn painted the sky with shades of pink and gold, we found ourselves gliding towards an impressive fort.Cherryhold was a sight to behold. Built into the heart of the mountain pass that nestled between the Harpy mountains to the east and the imposing Seven Peaks to the west. The walls of the fort weren’t all that high, but they made up for that by bridging across the entire kilometres-wide valley, with frequent towers rising up from the wall.A couple of small villages were built along the length of the wall, close to a single large hold atop a spot where the wall rose along with a big hill.Fort Cherryhold, for all its impressive structure, was just a fleeting glance as we continued our flight eastward towards Port Royal.As we flew, the terrain below shifted from sparse woodlands to a much thicker forest with a canopy that was impossible to see through from above and ancient trees that had been rooted in place for centuries. The edge of the Darkwoods, the natural barrier between Mattergrove and Deepmarsh.The sun began its descent, casting a warm, golden hue over everything by the time Calamity shouted and pointing ahead. “City in sight!”In the distance, nestled against the side of a mountain, was Port Royal.Port Royal was built in layers, the houses closer to the passive dockyards were a maze of narrow alleys and bustling markets, while the upper levels of the city had more room between larger homes. Wide avenues marked paths across the city, and there were several parks in the upper sections. All walled off from the lower parts of the city, of course.“We’ll be docking soon,” Amaryllis informed everyone. “Remember, Port Royal's docks can be a bit rough, but the city watch keeps things mostly in line. Just stay sharp.”“I remember,” I murmured. Last time we’d come here we’d ridden a dragon, so I wasn’t entirely sure about the docking procedures for arriving in Port Royal, but I figured it couldn’t be all that different from some of the other places we’d been to.The Beaver slowly descended towards one of the free docking spots after communicating with a tower via flashing lightball spells. I think they recognized the Shady Lady at some point, because the berth we were told to go to changed at some point. Instead of one of the normal commercial berths, we were redirected to one of the nicer ones a little higher up.“Alright everyone! Best behaviour now!” I said. “We’re going to be guests. We’re here to attend a wedding, meet some old friends, and... oh, right, there’s an assassination to foil too!”I’d almost forgotten about that!

* * *

Darth Bunch can't hurt you...

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