Chapter 448 - The Festival and the Skyward City V

  The fox-eared trio thanked the old snake as they observed the spears in their hands. Their status as artifacts was clear from up close. Each of the three magical sticks had a series of runes fired directly into their clay bodies. They weren’t exactly the highest quality items. Fully functional souvenirs were being sold to the crowd on the other side of the dock, and they were cheap enough for many of the participants to be using their own. That much was clear from the extensive customization. Some had their names inscribed upon the grips, while others put sights or other modules on top of them. One man had even overvolted his by modifying its circuit, but no one seemed to care.

  There were a handful of women standing among their ranks, but most of the prospective sailors were large, muscular men built heavy enough to sink the boats that they were assigned. Unlike the magical spears, the rides were not at all allowed to be customized. They were standard issue wooden vessels enchanted for greater buoyancy.

  Such spellwork was often required for any sort of watercraft meant to hold a party of horse-men. Warriors were especially heavy, with particularly tall and beefy specimens like Durham weighing well over three thousand pounds. That, however, was the extent of the magic employed. All locomotion was done by way of oar. Each ship had six of them sitting within the hull, with attachment points on both the boats and their rowing devices to facilitate greater ease of movement.

  They were just wide enough that it wasn’t practical for a single person, even a particularly girthy horse, to grab oars on both sides of the ship at once.

  “You girls new to this?”

  One of the men standing nearby called out to the trio as soon as they picked a dock. He was a peculiar cottontail standing on a pair of stilts, one painted to look like a rabbit’s leg and the other made of bare wood. For clothing, he wore a loose, leather jacket that almost seemed to resemble a trenchcoat, as well as a collared shirt and a pair of puffy, vomit-green pants. Lana surely would have given him a sour look had she the misfortune of being present, for he was dressed as the world’s single ugliest privateer.

  “Yup!” said Sylvia.

  The bearded pirate laughed. “You might want to wait until later in the afternoon then. Early morning, when the sun’s still rising, that’s when the real sailors come out to play.” He pulled a darkened bottle out from within his pants and brought it to his lips. “You don’t stand a chance, not against the likes of Bartholomew the Great!”

  Claire narrowed her eyes, but another unfamiliar man spoke up before she could open her mouth.

  “God fucking damn it, Normen! Cut that shit out before I smack you upside the head!” The voice had come from a reverse centaur. The much more sensibly dressed man, who wore an ordinary tunic, stood by the docks with his arms crossed and his foot thumping the dock in annoyance.

  “Oh, come on!” Complained the not-so-great not-so-Bartholomew. “I was just having a little fun!”

  “Yeah, and we told you that we weren’t running it back this year unless you cut out the fucking roleplay! Keep this shit up and we’re backing right the fuck out!”

  “Alright, alright, relax.” Normen sighed as he took off his hat and hopped off his stilts. “There! You happy?”

  “No! Fuck you, Normen! And fuck your stupid ass acting! Dweeb ass cunt!”

  Claire and Marie held back their laughter, but Sylvia was unable to resist. She practically fell to her knees as the angry rabbit made an unintelligible noise and threw his stilts at his horse-faced friend.

  “Anyway, ignoring that idiot,” he spun back around and coughed as he removed his eyepatch and dodged a thrown oar, “I’m Normen. My wife and I run a small weapons shop by the southern gate,” he said. “Norman’s Big Sticks, it’s called. Stop by sometime. We’ll treat you right.”

  Sylvia blinked as she looked between the ordinary family man and the rabid wolves on the water. “Uhmm… are you sure this is a good idea? You seem kinda… normal.”

  The man paused for a second to follow the fox’s gaze before tapping his fist against his palm. “I know it doesn’t look like it, but they’re all regular townsfolk too.”

  “They are?”

  “I know they look a bit rabid right now, but that’s just, y’know, in the spirit of some good old fun.” He laughed as he put his hat back on. “This your first time spending the solstice in Amrinia?”

  “Mhm!”

  “Well that explains that then,” he said. “This is just how we get when we cruise the high seas.”

  “Goddammit ! I told you to knock that shit off!” A stool flew into the back of Normen’s head and sent him plummeting into the water. “This isn’t a fucking sea, you moron!”

  Claire shook her head as she looked between Marie and the unconscious, self-proclaimed pirate. “Your people are deranged.”

  “Oh, shush. I will have you know that he is widely recognized for his eccentricity.”

  “Wait, you know this guy?” asked Sylvia.

  “Not personally,” said Marie. “But he often makes himself the talk of the town. Believe it or not, he attempted to market a fifty meter-long greatsword after hearing about the incident that was Tornatus’ destruction. I believe he planted it in the middle of the square. It took a few of the soldiers to get it pulled back out.”

  “Oh yeah, I remember that,” said Normen, as he climbed back up onto the docks. “Have to thank the wifey for burying that thing in the fountain. Couldn’t have done it without her.” He gave the sore spot on the back of his head a rub. “Anyway, it’s nice meeting you and all, but no hard feelings. This is a contest, and we’re about to give it our all, even if it means ploughing through a couple of newbies.”

  “None taken!” said Sylvia. “I bet we’ll give you a real run for your money!”

  “Heh. That’s the spirit.” The man shook the half-elf’s hand before getting back onto his stilts and wandering towards another group of fresh arrivals and performing much the exact same routine.

  Claire climbed into the boat in the meantime and grabbed one of the ropes hanging from the mast. By the looks of it, it was probably a backup in case something went wrong with the sails, but she used it to tie two of the oars together instead. Manipulating the newly constructed object proved much easier than expected. Her weapon mastery skill kicked in for some odd reason and provided a perfect understanding of exactly how she needed to whip it if she wanted to break the oars on her opponents’ faces.

  Incidentally, it also came with a rough understanding of what she needed to do in order to row it, and testing it, with the boat still anchored, revealed that it was every bit as easy as it’d been in her mind.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “I’ll move us around,” she said. “You two can focus on fishing.”

  “Okay!” Sylvia poured some of her mana into the artifact and turned into a lightning spear. “So we’re just supposed to like…” she made a throwing motion and launched a blast into the air, “do that, right?”

  “Hitting a target is more difficult than it appears,” said Marie. “But yes, that is the gist of it.”

  “Mmk! I think I’ve got the hang of it,” she said, as she nailed one of the buoys floating nearby.

  Marie smiled awkwardly as she looked towards her own rod. “That was awfully quick.”

  “She’s an aspect,” said Claire. “And you’ve always been a weakling.”

  “Oh, shush.”

  It took another five-odd minutes before the previous competition finally drew to a close. The winner, a group of cottontails wearing disproportionate inflatable tubes, were briefly crowned on a podium while the staff resuscitated the fish with a magical device and threw them back into the water. It looked like there were still three or four slots missing at first, but several of the teams that had just wrapped up, including the winning team, scuttled back to the docks whilst chatting about the previous game. The referee waited for them to board their ships before quickly going over the rules again for anyone unfamiliar and blowing the whistle that signalled again the event’s beginning.

  Claire nearly joined many of the other newcomers in shooting off into the lake, but stayed her hand after noting the veterans’ slow pace. They rowed gradually, taking care not to scare the fish as they slid their way through the water.

  They made catches along the way, with their members firing their lightning at the shadows that lurked beneath the pier. Sylvia and Marie both quickly caught on and started to do the same, albeit to limited success. Both were missing most of their targets.

  “I thought you ‘got the hang of it,’” said Claire.

  “The spears slowed all the way down when they hit the water!” said Sylvia.

  “You have to throw them harder. They’re meant to imitate real spears,” said Claire. “Don’t worry about breaking anything. Their output is limited.”

  “Oh! That’s pretty convenient,” said the fox, who stunned a fish after another three tries. “These artifacts are a little weird… I wonder how they work.”

  “I believe they read data from your circuits directly,” said Marie, “but unfortunately, I am not privy to the particulars.”

  “Less talking, more spearing,” said Claire. She lifted one of the oars in the meantime and knocked out a particularly unfortunate fish with a good old-fashioned bonk.

  Though Sylvia started pulling up a fish with almost every throw, they fell behind the other parties by sheer virtue of the weapons’ limits. They produced only one blade per second, seemingly tuned for the once-ascended. It was both a boon and a bust. Though they were unable to stand near the top of the leaderboard, neither were they the first to suffer from a violent attack.

  The entire last place group suddenly stopped fishing and sat down. Their hands firmly on their oars, the men and women on board rowed as hard as they could. The party in their sights, the group in first place, quickly caught on and started paddling away, but the flooded colosseum was only so big, and the last place group had long picked up their speed.

  Lightning spears flew as soon as they entered each others’ range, but as expected of weapons barely capable of stunning fish, they were far too weak to do any harm. At worst, they were a deterrent, convincing some of the less-pain-resistant to foolishly drop their weapons ahead of any meaningful exchange.

  The eventual collision was hardly the most powerful or otherwise significant, but the resulting waves disrupted the fish, sending them far deeper into the water while the seafarers fought it out. It was a veritable brawl. No one seemed to care enough to hold back. Unconscious bodies flew into the water, filling the pool with half-drowned idiots and broken oars. It was a messy melee, but eventually, the aggressors won out and emerged from the mess with their opponents’ catch.

  The freshly made last-place team quickly put itself back together and woke its unconscious members before charging another group, and they weren’t the only ones. There were two other fights ongoing by the time they picked themselves back up.

  Claire’s group kept fishing in the meantime, with Sylvia pulling up target after target, until they found themselves with a pile larger than any other. Naturally, they were soon made the target of an attack, with freshly-robbed teams engaging from both port and starboard.

  “What the heck!?” cried Sylvia, as she looked at the incoming centaurs. “Is it just me, or do they look totally rabid?”

  “That’d be because they are,” said Claire. “You’ll want to put up a barrier.”

  “That kinda seems like it’d be cheating,” said Sylvia.

  “Magic is allowed as long as it is not used for offense,” said Marie.

  “Yeah, but still! My barriers are super strong!”

  “Then make it so they don’t block anything underwater,” said Claire, with a shrug.

  “Oh, good idea!”

  Sylvia quickly threw up a dome that would prevent a boat, but not a person from getting through, only to freeze again when the enemies made contact. The cottontails had, evidently, overheard the discussion. After explaining the shield to their confused horse friends, they quickly jumped off their ships and started swimming straight for the foxes’ boat.

  Their breaths were heavy and their eyes were bloodshot, and to make matters worse, few had ever swam. They were improvising their techniques, wildly flailing their limbs in the ships’ general direction, looking more like deranged predators than competitors in a friendly, local event.

  The one real foxgirl flapped her lips open and closed, eyes wide as she continued to watch their disturbing approach. The fake half-elves, however, were much less concerned. Both grabbed their spears and started throwing them towards their targets, striking them exactly as they would a school of fish.

  Marie’s attacks were haphazard, but Claire was careful and meticulous. She landed strikes in their opponents’ mouths whenever they came up for breath and otherwise struck delicate parts capable of eliciting pained groans.

  She waited until they drew much closer before finally busting out the oar and thwacking them over the head. Her strikes were made with such pinpoint precision that she was able to knock them out without breaking the brittle wooden implement. Each target she smacked floated to the surface, face down and half drowning. And yet, the number of attackers only increased. Many of the other teams started to converge upon spying their rock solid defence and the pile of fish that came with it.

  In just five minutes, Claire had bonked every sailor twice and doubled the size of their catch.

  Triumphant, she started rolling back towards the pier, ready to turn in her catch and seize her victory, but a sudden burst of magic stopped her before she could pull up to the dock. Looking in the caster’s direction, she found Normen already standing beside the turn-in point with a bucket of fish in each hand. His fingers were still glowing, alight with the thieving magic that he had used to commandeer their quarry.

  He showed both buckets to the referees, but Claire launched off the ship and kicked him in the face before he could complete the transaction.

  She caught the buckets out of midair and presented them in the fake pirate’s place, but another pair of spells stopped her from turning them in. The first healed her fish, returning their ability to move, while a second invigorated them, filling them with energy and bravery alike. They hopped from their gaols, but Claire grabbed them out of the air, squeezed away their consciousness, and returned them to her bucket, only for the man she had kicked into the water to steal them from her again.

  “Be free, friends!” His voice was too distorted to interpret, but Claire read his lips as he dumped the contents of her bucket beneath the pier.

  The message was clear. If he couldn’t have them, then she couldn’t either.

  The only thing that rang any clearer was her irritation.

  Not thinking for a moment to hide it, Claire leapt into the water feet first and sent him plummeting into the colosseum’s depths.

  “Uhmmm… I think that was a bit unnecessary,” said Sylvia, when Claire surfaced again.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Claire magically retrieved her buckets whilst pulling their fish back inside, only for one of Normen’s buddies—the one that had spent all morning insulting him—to repeat the rabbit’s thievery.

  Claire sighed. But with a smile on her lips all the while, she grabbed a spare oar, leapt off the dock, and prepared to show the fool his place.