“Die!” my opponent screamed in a desperate octave, his blade slicing my light armor as I tried to dodge. There were some times – lots of times – where I wished that I had any talent for using a shield. I wouldn’t ask for much … just a single level with the skill so that the vitally important piece of defensive gear would be more useful than a training weight. But no, of all the areas I had a talent in that skill was missing. Many experienced trainers had tried at this point. I was doomed to go without, forever trying to dodge, parry, run away, or otherwise avoid the damage people tried to inflict on me.

I found myself backpedaling a lot more in this fight than others. The reason was simple: our enemies were prepared for us. We had taken down several vessels in the last 3 weeks, and though I’d tempered Gnar’s reaction of capturing every vessel we sighted, we couldn’t be successful without being found out. First it had been a wind mage with a communication spell getting out a last word, then ships that were overdue were presumed missing, all steadily adding up to a fleet on high alert.

I supposed that the natural effect of our underwater attack operations would be ships congregating in convoys, and was already seeing the navy beginning to employ the tactic merchant ships often depended on. Tradition was that a ship with a strong threat level could roam alone. While landlubbers swallowed the romantic stories about a high-leveled crew manning a sailing fortress, the fact was that if a kraken decided to pick on your ship, it was better to have an ally nearby than to have a deck filled with onagers.

The navy hadn’t surrendered their wide net of ships across the sea yet, but they had started to give isolated vessels a trick: an expensive beacon linked to a central command. When they broke the beacon on the ship its companion at command would shatter, letting the admirals know immediately that they had a ship lost. This had limited use, but I feared whatever trap they could lay with creativity.

I’d yet to see the Emerald or any of the other ships that had been tasked with capturing me. Hopefully, their previous failure discouraged future attempts.

That wasn’t to say they didn’t deploy countermeasures against me. Some I saw and just chuckled to myself – like the depth charges they were using around sensitive areas, and which I was waiting for a ripe opportunity to usurp. Others were much, much more annoying.

Like the blessed weapon that had nearly filleted my ribs a moment ago.

In a near ubiquitous advantage, I had gained resistances to all general types of damage. The caveats were with cursed weapons which inflicted damage on me normally, and blessed weapons which made up for the resistances in all the other categories by piling on a massive damage bonus against us. With my fighting style of speed, magic and traps, I’d gotten used to being able to harm groups while operating solitarily. When faced with a simple cut that took nearly a quarter of my health, I was forced to fight much more conservatively.

That meant standing with the orcs holding the quarterdeck, Drese behind us all and constantly healing us. We had the advantage of position; we held the quarterdeck and each opponent was forced to climb the ladder to us. They had the advantage of weapons that inflicted a huge percentage multiplier against us.

It meant that for the first time in forever, I wasn’t fighting as a skirmisher. Instead I engaged the terrified, half crazed fighter who was unlucky enough to be next in line on the ladder and baited him back. He probably thought he was establishing a foothold on the quarterdeck, but he moved too far from the person behind him and exposed himself to the orcs waiting for exactly that. While we might be suffering from greater damage during this fight, their blessed weapons did not mean they bled less.

My endurance meant I could stay in an extended engagement without running out of stamina, but I still substituted with another orc when my turn came.

This fight was moving from ‘boarding action’ to ‘battle’.

We’d boarded the galleon in the dark just before sunrise. Mirash – one of a half-dozen orcs Gnar had pegged as a talent for stealthy work – and I had snuck aboard and quietly killed the watchman they had on the quarterdeck. They’d started assigning someone just to watch for boarding from the rear! Thankfully, this guy was more interested in waiting for the sunrise and we were able to lower ropes to our waiting force without any issue.

The issue had come when the alarm was raised and the contingent of soldiers sleeping with their weapons swarmed the deck.

There was a reason this ship had a threat level of 5, and is wasn’t just their artillery. They had a fighting force of a hundred and fifty men on board. Compared to our thirty fighters, they were overwhelming. We had avoided casualties so far because of their early success; they had pushed us from the main deck. A handful of orcs who’d been caught at the forecastle had dove overboard to escape and circle around to the ropes still trailing from where we’d boarded, but their pursuit had downed some vials and dove after them.

My warriors were among the best undersea fighters in the sea at this point, so they didn’t fail to turn the tables on their pursuit. However, I didn’t like that there were so many apparently ready to take the battle to the depths. If I could fight a defensive action with the advantage here rather than letting them chase us to the Roc’s Eye, I would. Military commanders often wrote about the difficulties of breaking contact or a fighting retreat, but this was the first time I faced that in a conflict I’d instigated. I knew that if I ran for the safety of the depths, I’d lose some of my fighters.

And while Gnar and I would both sell the lives of the fighters under us, we would never sell them so cheaply. If we were going to order our comrades to die, it would be for a purpose.

My focus was drawn to the ladder on the starboard side, where another group of orcs were luring a warrior to his death. This warrior was more seasoned, however, and had a profession. When he stepped forward clashed his dual-wielded swords together and shouted, suddenly flashing with a bright light and stunning all those who were looking at him. I was only spared because right before his flash, I saw the man behind heft a tower shield and move to the top, turning immediately to the side. They were establishing a breach.

I had a blade in my off-hand within a second, one Jorgagu had prepared.

Unstable Cursed Throwing Knife: This blade has been imbued with cursed energy, and an enchanter has sacrificed the stability of the blade to create an incredibly damaging weapon – one likely to fail the hand that wields it.

Damage: 17-31

Durability: 1/3

Many of the weapons Jorgagu gave that enchantment to had warning about their instability and how they’d break in the hands of whoever wielded them. I found when throwing the blade, that wasn’t a concern.

My knife hit the professional warrior in his hip, which had stuck out to me as the obvious target since his torso and head were well armored. I’m certain it was painful, because of the fact cursed damage was extremely uncomfortable in and of itself, but it didn’t seem to be too critical. The man knocked the blade out from where it had lodged in his bone with an instinctive swipe, and there wasn’t much blood to be seen. That was all an illusion. The damage had been done. The cursed weapons Jorgagu made had a rather scattered range of damage, but the volatile ones always had a high potential. That particular throw had robbed 28 HP from the warrior’s max of 290. For a non-critical single hit from an off-hand throw, that was very good.

What mattered more was it gave the warrior’s potential victim a moment to blink his eyes and prepare, which saved his life. A few more moments and there were three orcs falling upon the man, while Drese slid in behind and gave powerful healing spells almost as fast as the warrior inflicted damage.

I wasn’t paying any more than cursory attention to that fight after I’d thrown my blade, though. I was dealing with the more insidious threat, the man with the big shield trying to protect the next man with a shield coming up the ladder, setting up a foothold to turn our chokepoint into a level playing field.

I couldn’t have that. Fighting fair was for those willing to lose.

I stepped forward and channeled my lightning touch through my metal sword and poked the big metal shield. The easy damage the spell did to the man’s health pool was secondary to the secondary shocking effects I was going for, and a moment later the shield was pulled forward by a hulking orc and the limb strapped to it severed. While the man looked at his squirting stump in stunned horror, the orc adjusted his hold on the tower shield and swung it like he was trying to knock the man into orbit. He succeeded in knocking the man off the quarterdeck, and the thrown shield caught a pair of men on the ladder.

Positively vicious. There was a reason I was still betting on my 30 against the navy’s 150.

The orc’s disruption on the ladder meant there was one more man with a shield left at the top. He must have realized their action had failed, and tried to go out in glory as he charged me with a shield-bash skill.

I avoided him. Not by dodging to the side, a skilled shield bash was difficult to avoid that way. I used the dexterous control I had over my water whips to grab the mizzen mast above and pull myself upwards. While the startled fighter followed my ascent, I lashed another pair of whips at his shield.

I could tell by the look on his face he understood the implications of what was happening even as he experienced them, but could not surrender his shield with the knowledge that it was his life. I almost felt pity for him, but the strain of pulling him up as hard as I could eclipsed that. He just passed twenty feet of altitude when he let go of the shield. Once momentum bled off, he pin-wheeled downwards with a drawn-out scream. If he’d held on to his shield a bit long he might have adjusted his course enough to make it over the side – a fall into the water would have been kinder than the hard deck and waiting orcs.

I had the thought that while I had a bird’s eye view, I would look for any other attempts at strategy like the professional warrior and shield men had displayed. No sooner did I think of my great vantage than a crossbow bolt punched through my light armor and embedded itself in my gut.

I lost focus and the whips keeping me in the air turned into drops of water falling to the deck with me, right behind the shield-man. The deck rushing up to me prompted me to flex my will on a different spell, one that was instantly cast and didn’t require constant focus: feather fall.

My crash landing turned into soft bump that was still too painful around the bolt in my gut. What was my HP at? Oh, it was going up. That was Drese then, fixing me up. It was climbing from an awfully low place, though!

A moment later the madu was kneeling beside me. With my near weightlessness, he easily turned me to put his hand on the bolt. He cast a spell that made his hand glow golden, and after three seconds slid the wickedly barbed bolt out of my gut without any tearing whatsoever.

“Can you finish closing the wound?” Drese asked. It wasn’t because he couldn’t, but because healers often had difficulty focusing on a spell casting when it was on their own body. Healing myself was good practice.

I was a healer now. Drese had helped me unlock my life magic, and I had the ability to cast a weak heal. The magic was amazing to wield, giving me the same sense of awe that I felt looking at a magnificent sea creature, the same sense of tenacity that I felt when dragging a drowning man to the surface.

With all the harm I’d done, having a magic devoted to healing felt very, very good.

Thankfully my weak heal only took a second to cast, and I was as good as new – minus the bloody hole in my armor.

The madu matriarchs were devious people. Knowing I had an irrational bias against their kind, they gave me Drese: a highly disciplined, intelligent, capable master of magic who had saved me from losing crew many times over. And now he helped heal me in a few seconds with hardly any pain, while I knew I would have had to tear that bloody arrow from my gut and channel all my mana into my most powerful healing spell to achieve the same result.

It was impossible not to feel gratitude and thankfulness to the guy that saved you from that. Even if I’d been set on maintaining my racial grudge, Drese would have reformed me.

He hoisted me to my feet, and as he turned to continue healing the orcs I placed a mana potion in his hand to help his constant expenditure. Most boardings he could keep everyone alive without using any potions. This time I was certain he’d already used some.

I took a quick sip of my own mana potion before Gnar grabbed my shoulders and gave me a quick-once over. He then demanded “They’re getting ranged fighters set up on the forecastle. Take Mirash and disrupt them.”

I nodded. Captain I might be, but after several boardings and after-battle debriefs, I trusted my lieutenant with directing me around a fight.

I called Mirash and pointed towards the forecastle while I summoned more water whips. He understood and didn’t flinch when one of my whips encircled him. He leaped with me over the gunwale and I lashed a pair of whips to the spar of the main mast and swung down alongside the ship, dipping below the artillery deck before swinging back up. Some sharpshooters tried to pick us out of the air but once we were back in sight, swinging above the gunwale again, I was using other whips to grab spars, masts, and rigging to pull us erratically forward. I was very good with these whips.

The archers would have been a turning point, providing fire on our position and letting the melee fighters push us off. As a rule, however, ranged fighters were at a disadvantage once you closed with them. I dropped Mirash into their midst and he set about with a bloody fury. I dropped on the other side of their line and did the same, using my war trident to stab or bludgeon everyone in reach. A few tried to swarm me off the bat but a half dozen water whips lashing out along with my trident disabused all but one berserker, and that one I threw over the side to be dealt with later.

The melee fighters rushed to defend their back line, but the two of us had thoroughly squashed it by that point. One warrior shouted a name as he charged me. I'd gathered that when people did that it was on account of a friend or relative who’d died by my hand. The orcs would see that as both a challenge and a weakness to exploit. I couldn’t help but feel a bit of loss, knowing that I’d killed some relationship. I refused to gloat or turn it into a mental weapon, as the memories of pirates killing my own friends were never too far away.

But I wouldn’t show mercy to the forces who declared war on me. All of humanity could be free of my surprise attacks quite simply: leave my seas.

I threw out a few traps, things that had either been treated with alchemical solutions or enchanted by Jorgagu. The effects of magical cursed traps were … terrifying. One trap I threw out was stepped on by an onrushing soldier, and as his foot left it a wave of black-green spikes materialized from the deck behind him. The one who set it off got away clean, but the 4 behind him were crippled.

Another one – an alchemical one I hadn’t meant to throw out just yet – squirted out a bladder filled with white powder. At the end of the powder came a spark, and only because I knew what was coming with the cloud did I know to cast a water shield and freeze it. The explosion fractured it, but it had served its purpose.

I straightened to a deck filled with suddenly hesitant warriors who’d realized the deck had suddenly become very dangerous and backed away. All except one warrior: a mattock-wielding giant in heavy armor.

He pointed his weapon at me. “We are your judgement!” he bellowed.

“You’re not judgement,” I said, shifting my stance with my trident, my water whips waving around me like the flowing arms of a sea anemone. “You’re practice.”

He bellowed and stomped forward, displaying his confidence in his armor’s construction and his skill with it. He had a right to be: at level 17 in heavy armor his protection level was exemplary and his movement restrictions were light. The cursed spikes on deck were broken under his feet.

I briefly had a vision of dueling the man, picking out his weak points and using the spells n my arsenal to whittle his health down. I dismissed the fancy. The proper way of dealing with a heavily armored enemy on a ship was to knock him over the side and let the weight of his regret match the weight of his armor as he was dragged to the depths.

Knocking around a heavily armored opponent was easier said than done, however. He would be resistant to my air spells I used on lighter opponents. My best option would be to try and drag him over the side with a water whip or rope, but I expected he could sever anything I used first. I’d have to catch him off guard. And since he was currently expecting a trick or trap, it was time to subvert expectations yet again.

I used my whips to pull myself up to the spar of the foremast, above his reach.

I received quite a few jeers, but I mocked them back. “Hey down there! What am I going to do with a brute like you? I haven’t got anything to deal with someone with your gear, unless … what is this?” I started pulling something from my bag. “Oh my, it is! A net!”

Someone took a hasty shot at me that I had to dodge, my sea legs letting me easily keep my balance on the precarious vantage point. The armored brute didn’t seem at all worried about the ordinary fishing net now in my hands, but a lot of his backers were, and I was playing to the audience at this point. The assault on the quarterdeck had stalled.

And Mirash had dropped into stealth and ducked inside a hatch unnoticed, so whatever he was doing I figured I’d keep people’s attention away from him as long as I could. Battle plans were great, but successful improvisation was better.

I dropped the net onto the warrior below, who casually tore it apart without losing focus on me. I dodged another arrow from someone who thought they were being sneaky. It was difficult to gather details from Domain when so much was happening – particularly when I was in a fight for my life – but I could keep track of all the archers as well as the pair of stealthed rogues trying to climb the rigging and sneak up on me now that I was watching for them.

Their attack would have been good if I hadn’t seen it coming. A pair of archers, one using a multishot skill and the other some accuracy shot. I cast a water shield to help deal with them while I turned towards the striking assassins. The first one I used an air push on: the simple spell serving me well by knocking the man off balance and making him fall to the deck below. The one after him I tore into with all of my water whips, giving him a solid beat-down. He tried to rush me but still had to get through my shield. When he realized I was going to kill him before he could breach my defenses, he tried to flee. I lashed a whip around his ankle and yanked him off the spar, dangling him above his partner who’d been able to get back to his feet with injuries but alive.

Dropping the remaining rogue on his head with only a quarter of his HP left didn’t afford him the same opportunity.

The spectators roared in anger and indignation and were about to launch themselves into another blind assault when someone began yelling for order, pointing out how their tactics weren’t working and I was provoking them. He began to issues orders and was listened to.

This ship’s artillery had hard-stops constructed on them so they couldn’t turn far enough to point back at the ship. These were to be removed and the artillery turned against the orcs on the quarterdeck. The professional fighters were separated from those who only had fighting skills and organized into groups to withstand the orcs until the artillery could soften them up. Quietly, he had the remaining ranged attackers begin to form in teams below deck to spring out from the hatches at once and maintain a withering fire on me.

I was glad this person hadn’t gotten control of the mob sooner. It was a good plan, and the rapid-fire orders could turn the battle against us. Why wasn’t I doing anything to disrupt this competent leader? Because Gnar had motioned for me try and keep their attention. The orcs hadn’t tried to conduct a counterattack or anything, so I wondered what plan Gnar had up his sleeve …

Oh, Gerald climbed up on the quarterdeck.

Now I knew what was going on.

Gnar had his orcs lined up defensively and pointed out an area for the non-combat tarish cook to do his thing. Gerald cast his AoE spell ‘grease’.

I’d seen him use it when chased by a mob back before I boarded the Wind Runner. He wasn’t a trained mage, just a person with a trick. Against running foes, his trick had worked wonders at sending them sprawling. Now the enemy called out there was a grease spell and stepped carefully, only a single person slipping in the 8x8 field he created.

But as soon as the cooldown for the ability was up, he cast it again.

The leader cautioned his men to have a care, that the main deck was going to have treacherous footing. The hard-stops on the artillery were almost removed.

Gerald cast a third time. Then Gnar tossed a lit firebrand into the field.

The grease lit with a whoosh that spanned the beam of the ship and caught more than one person in its flames. All the fighters were able to scramble and roll free of the flames and their fellows helped them put it out. There were some burns and coughing, but no one died.

Fire was something you absolutely did not want aboard a ship. The galley was the only place for cooking fires, and those were very carefully monitored. However, the fear of a blazing ship could be assuaged by upgrading a ship or investing in fireproof materials. This galleon was protected, and the flames burned on the surface, but didn’t spread or damage the ship.

The leader was trying to coordinate for something to smother the annoyance when Gerald cast a fourth time, creating another zone of flames burning on deck. He could probably get 6 going before the first would die out.

Seeing what was going on, the leader ordered a withdrawal of the majority of the forces to the deck below until the flames died. Once they had, Gnar shouted and the orcs charged down from the quarterdeck and through the fire, driving the remaining forces below as well and cutting down those too slow or stubborn to retreat.

I dropped down to the main deck and approached my lieutenant. “Well Gnar, you got them bottled up below decks again, but what’s different about it this time?”

He grinned, a tooth-filled smile that stretched around his lower tusks. “Mirash pilfered their ballista bolts through the portholes while you kept their attention. They’re on an artillery deck with very few things to shoot.”

“That’s good, but we’re more concerned about the blessed weapons, right? They charge out in a mass and we’re back where we started.”

“Except …” Gnar said with a significant look towards the quarterdeck. Through the guttering smoke of the grease fires I could see the boarding lines being repurposed to lift crates from the Roc’s Eye below. I recognized those crates.

Those crates were labelled with the symbol for poison. Poison was not the most popular of munition rounds among the navy, but we’d gathered quite a number of assorted bolts through our raids. Poison was typically used by pirates and cutthroats, the reason being they wanted to kill the crew and leave the valuables intact. The wind at sea tended to make using them on an open-air deck more or less useless, but in an enclosed space …

“See you get my meaning.” Gnar said with satisfaction.

I looked at the crates, knowing that the navy would paint me as even more of a villain for using such tactics if word spread. Cutting people down with blades wasn’t any cleaner, though, and this assured me a win without losing my crew. In a different fight I might have made a different call, let my fighters earn their XP. The blessed weapons made it too risky in my eyes, though. My crew would be extremely vulnerable fighting in the enclosed spaces below decks, and Drese couldn’t save all of them.

“Do it,” I ordered. “Make sure Gerald and the other lowest-leveled members set it off. They might get reduced XP for doing it this way, but it’s still XP they need.”

Gnar nodded, and set his squad to blocking hatches and escape routes, leaving only a few access points to be poisoned and guarded.

The rest of the battle was an extermination, not a fight. It wasn’t long before I got the message I was waiting for.

You have captured an enemy ship with a threat level of 5! You have been awarded 43,000 XP.

I got less XP for taking ships with less of a threat level than my own, but the XP rewards for ships with such a high threat level were still substantial. Not as substantial as killing a lot of high-leveled enemies as a level 10, but I’d never look a gift fish in the mouth.

We pillaged the ship in our own unique way, opening up the hatches to let the poison vent and breaking holes into the bottom to let her sink. It took hours for her to do so, but as the water flooded the decks we entered from below, completely free of the poison that would have lingered in stale air. I kept the Roc’s Eye abreast of her as she sank until we’d taken everything of value. My little cutter was absolutely crammed with goods, and that was with several underwater caches set up!

Gerald, Drese, Jorgagu and Gnar surrounded me when we were done. “What are we going to target next, Captain?”

“No ship yet,” I said. “Hali is finally moving. She’s leaving the port where they were keeping her and moving out to sea. We’ll sail around Antarus and intercept them before they can reach Oorkom.”

“How long will that take?” Gerald asked.

I estimated the distance in my head, taking the weather into account. “We can catch up to them in 2 weeks, but I’d probably give them more time than that to make some distance away from their fleet presence.”

“Two weeks,” Gnar muttered. “Lads will go soft if we don’t hit any other targets until then.”

“We’ll run some drills, maybe do some sea hunting on the way. But I’ve got an idea of something else to do as well.” I smiled at them, thinking that I had remembered something important for morale that I’d neglected before – something that I’d been surprised to see actually recommended by the naval manual and my father.

“What is it?” Gerald prompted.

“A party!” I stated. I was met with expressions that ranged from surprise to shock that I would be the one to suggest such a thing. “What?”