The System allowed anyone with drive to achieve power. It also allowed those already in power to crush those who would challenge them. A balancing act, one that tilted towards those already in power. The [Biomancer] who helped Iona out when she was young was an excellent example of ways the powerful stayed in power.

Right when Iona judged them to be close enough, she unfurled from her kneeling position behind her shield, and shot off across the deck, the wooden planks beneath her creaking in protest. As she got near the edge, she took a mighty leap, soaring through the air with a tiny boost from [Snowflake Drift]. It wasn’t a particularly strong skill, but every little bit helped.

As Iona mostly-hurtled, partly-floated across the gap, her perception sped up, making everything seem slower. It was a strange quirk of the System, and how massive vitality and perception worked. Everyone talked and saw things at roughly the same rate, until they needed the increase in speed. From attacks, to being late, to running fast, to wanting to have a super-quick conversation with someone else with equally high vitality – or wanting to talk deliberately fast to screw with someone.

Either way, however vitality worked, the world now looked like it was moving slowly for Iona, giving her all the time to think and process as she drifted between the two ships.

A great white shark leapt out of the water on an intercept course for Iona, moving quickly – from the perspective of an outsider. For Iona?

She twisted in the air, and with the axe still in her hand, she punched the shark solidly on its nose, knocking it back down into the sea. It wasn’t dead, but it was stunned, and whatever pirate was companion to the shark wasn’t going to be too pleased – nor was the shark likely to do it again.

Still would be worth remembering. Extra motivation not to fall into the water.

However, the punch completely threw off her trajectory. She was still going to land on the ship, just not in the optimal landing spot.

Oh well. It didn’t matter.

Iona twisted again, activating [Moon’s Descent] to increase her weight, landing feet-first on some poor unfortunate pirate, his neck cracking as Iona’s speed and mass was far too much for him.

Then she was in the midst of them, and a wolf among sheep would’ve had a harder time.

No, she was like a tiger amongst lambs. The pirates moved slowly to Iona’s perception, each blade like it was dragging through water. Each shield was too slow to block her, as she simply performed her [New Moon’s Dance], weaving her axe around their swords, spears, and other weapons. Every slash found exposed flesh, every blow went straight through the pathetic excuses that the pirates called ‘armor’.

In contrast, Iona moved like lightning, her axe flashing out to rip out a vulnerable neck, her shield striking forward to crush a skull. The whole time, the pirates moved in slow motion, and Iona didn’t need to worry about parrying, blocking – any of it.

Just. Chop, dead, slice, kill. Bloody butcher’s work. Man, woman, human, dwarf, orc, beastkin, ogre, young, old. Iona didn’t discriminate, she tore through them all.

There was no contest once the Valkyrie closed the distance to the pirates.

She had significantly more respect for the pirate's attacks once she was close though. There were a number of magic spells and skills that had great power, but terrible range.

Iona bit off a curse as one pirate brought to bear some sort of darkness magic, and tried to slice her in half. Her helmet blocked enough of the attack, but it still slashed her nose open horizontally.

She dampened down a flare of concern as she made sure to kill the mage with extreme prejudice. This wasn’t the Wobby Pass, it wasn’t Goblindeath, as the songs were calling it. It was just a single cut. Iona was roughly half-done with this wave of pirates to boot.

She wasn’t going to die screaming like most of the Valkyries had, a thousand small cuts chipping away at her until she had nothing left.

Iona was a blender of death, Celestial and Ice whirling as she slaughtered the pirates. There was a tense moment as one mage, further back than the rest, managed to encase Iona in a watery sphere, lifting her off the ground and cutting off her air.

Iona immediately began to struggle against the attack, thrashing with her whole body in an attempt to break the skill, flickering [Moon’s Descent] on and off to bobble herself in the water, making it harder and harder for the mage to keep enough control to hold onto her.

Then a pirate, seeing his chance at local fame and a silly number of levels, tried to stab Iona with a spear. Letting go of her axe, Iona grabbed the spear, and used it and the pirate as leverage to finally break out of the watery sphere.

Iona liked axes the most, but all Valkyries had been cross-trained on a wide variety of weapons. That’s why her skill was the broader [Weapon Mastery], and not the narrower, stronger [Axe Mastery], or some Celestial variant.

So while it’d been a few months since she last held a spear, much less practiced with one, she still felt comfortable hurling it with all her might at the Water mage who’d bubbled her, the spear utterly annihilating his chest, the planks of the deck creaking under the sheer force Iona subjected them to. The mage wasn’t even pinned or dragged along, the sheer force just ripping a massive hole through him without resistance, painting the deck with blood and gore.

Iona caught her axe on the way down, punched her shield through another pirate, chopped a third in half, head-to-groin, and the fight was back on.

She distantly noted a number of pirates abandoning ship, jumping off the sides, but she gave them no mind. She had bigger problems to worry about right now, and if she smashed the majority of the pirates – and more importantly, their ships – the few loose pirates who escaped would barely be a threat.

In a maelstrom of blood and steel, the surface of the ship was cleared, and Iona went to clear the lower decks of the ship.

It went about the same as the deck, Iona bursting into a room, killing pirates waiting in ambush with a single strike, or holding back her blow as a pirate cowered, no longer a threat. The only twist was a kid, no more than 10, trying to stab her in a room.

Iona had a small amount of mercy for plucky kids, running to their doom. Even when said kid was trying to knife her to death. She defenestrated him after checking that he had a [Swimming] skill.

Iona did need a new crew for this ship.

It was only when she got to the lowest level of the ship did a painful, high-pitched whine start, causing Iona to bleed from her ears. She grimaced, and looked around.

No pirates here. Normally Iona would assume a "surrendering" pirate would be quietly using a skill on her – more than one had tried something similar – but no, there was nobody.

Nobody visible.

Mirage mages. Iona gave a sigh, and rearranged her helmet slightly to catch the blood coming out of her ears, going as deaf as a doorknob. She didn’t want the Mirage-Sound mage to see that he was succeeding at hurting her. Right now, Iona’s best bet was to make it look like the pirate was utterly failing, and get them close enough for her to handle.

Iona strode back up to the deck, grabbing pirates as she went along.

"Hey! Need you to sail this ship where I say!" Iona grabbed a pirate by the scruff, yelled her orders, and continued up. She would’ve ignored his protests, even if she’d heard them.

Damn Sound mage. Iona could feel his attack in her teeth.

Iona continued through the ship, gathering up her new crew, entirely, literally deaf to their cries and protests.

She left the kids alone.

One pirate found his courage to try and backstab Iona. His knife just slid off her armor, and she whirled around, snapping his neck with a casual backhand.

She waited a few heartbeats until she got the kill notification, then carried on.

She made it back to the stairs leading up to the deck, and turned back around and faced the crowd.

"Stay here until I call for you!" Iona yelled, then walked back onto the deck.

The ship looked like it’d been rotated a quarter-circle, and while Iona was bad at ships, she wasn’t that bad. The mage was obviously creating an illusion, hoping Iona would just walk right off the boat and into the sea below.

Iona had no idea how he was doing it, but the Sound mage was still attacking her, and his weak attacks were starting to stack up and cause her problems. Iona had no idea how he managed to hide in the crowd – probably disguised himself as just another pirate – but since nobody else was clutching their ears and bleeding, he or she probably had line of sight to her.

Iona went onto the deck, the floor slick with way more blood than most people would believe could fit in that many bodies.

Not Iona. She’d seen how much people bled. Had literally seen people drown in blood.

She casually put her axe away at her hip, and slung her shield over her back. This next move would be difficult.

She walked down the deck, doing her best to act natural, like nothing was wrong. It only took a few steps into "open air" for the pirate to drop the "twisted ship" image – it must’ve been expensive to maintain, and had clearly failed. Iona’s acting was fairly bad, and the Sound-Mirage mage was persistent. It’d boggle the imagination that a persistent attack was doing nothing, and both Iona and the unknown mage knew that she was on a timer.

Iona made it to the bow, then carefully walked along the jutting bowsprit, balancing on the thin wooden spur.

She made it to the end of the bowsprit, looking like a maidenhead. Then in a single fluid motion, she took the bow off her back, drew the string back as she summoned an arrow with [Ice Arrow Conjuration], and fired an [Blizzard Shot] down the deck of the ship, thousands of tiny ice shards turning the top into a brief blizzard.

Iona was already running down the bowsprit as she fired the arrow, and carefully watched the storm. The icicles weren’t moving right in one spot, vanishing into a random space in the air and not coming back out the other side. Iona reached there, grabbed with both hands, felt flesh under her hands, and tore the mage in half.

The infernal ringing in her ears stopped. It wouldn’t heal her, or fix the damage, but it was done.

Iona took a moment to compose herself.

Safe. Not going to die.

She needed to spend some time with one of those people who claimed they could heal the mind. Iona was a hair skeptical – after all, most healers were instant, or nearly instant, but mind-healers claimed they needed months or years to work – and needed to be paid the entire time, of course, and made no promises they’d work. Iona was also crazy busy. Still, it was on her to-do list.

Iona shook her head, mentally resetting herself. She inhaled, and yelled down at the pirates cowering below decks.

"Get up here, you scurvy lot!" Iona said, having no idea if they were actually scurvy or not. She knew it was a term healers used now and then, but didn’t quite know what it meant. Still, sailors mentioned it constantly, and Iona was trying to communicate with them in a language they knew.

"Right! I’m Dread Pirate Iona, and I’m in charge now! Sail back into the cave!" Iona yelled, literally deaf to the complaints all around her. She simply pointed at the cave, and kept yelling until the pirates reluctantly turned the ship around, fixed the damage Iona had done to the ropes, and got it sailing back the right way.

Iona could kinda see why these pirates in particular had been left to fester until now. The Valkyries, for all their training in a dozen different disciplines, never bothered to cover water travel. The Wakacola sea was the only significant body of water in the area they protected, and even then it was at the edge. There were just too many other useful skills to learn – and Skills.

Hence, the finer points of sailing a galleon were ignored. One or two Valkyries got lessons on sailboats and other small craft – Iona in particular had taught herself how to row a boat, for romantically related reasons – but nothing approaching this size.

However, the pirates put their back into it. The steely-eyed Valkyrie who’d carved through them like a knife through butter was there, completely ignoring every word they said, covered in fresh blood and small shreds of flesh, menacingly stroking the blade of her axe with an armored thumb. They didn’t want to find out her method of enforcing her orders.

A [Pirate Captain] would flog them, deprive them of rum, or have other, more cruel and inventive punishments.

The Valkyrie? She’d started off murdering most of the crew, and no pirate wanted to be the first to discover how she handled minor infractions. Not yet. Not when the decks were still soaked in blood, not when the bodies of a dozen pirates were still tripping hazards.

The commandeered ship sailed right back into the cave, Dread Pirate Iona at the bow.