Chapter XXVI: A Little Piracy III

The Wildlands South of the Heian Kingdom, The Great Plateau

Month of the Garuda 37, 172 ,328 DE

Whup! Whup! Whup!

A stairwell near the front of the airship leads to the passenger deck. Before I reach it, the steam engines engage the propellers, and the airship lurches into motion. I hurry up to the passenger deck and enter the bridge.

Her hands hold the wheel steady, the first mate stand at the airships controls. The scraps of her pants and jacket, which I had used to up her legs, lie on deck behind her. Her bare arms and legs reveal the pale skin of her nicely shaped, well-muscled arms and legs. Unlike most female Cultivators, she has not stinted on her muscular development. Compared with other female Cultivators at the same level of Cultivation, she should have around half-again their physical strength.

Vorn sits slumped in the captain's chair, with one massive leg draped over its arm. As his eyes stare appreciatively at the first mate, a slight smile turns up the corners of his lips. His nose twitches, and his head snaps around to stare at me.

"You should learn to make a little more noise when you enter a room." As Vorn frowns at me, a hint of irritation seeps into his scent.

Hearing Vorn's words, the first mate's head snaps around to stare at me. Her eyes open wide, and the acrid odor of fear returns to her scent. Ignoring the bruise covering the left side of her face, she could be called a more than just slightly pretty woman. More than likely, she gets quite a bit of attention from human men, but I have no real interest in her. She does not meet my standards for mating, and if she did, I would not sire cubs on her in a Realm sealed by the Daos and the Dragon Gods.

"In Scientific System measurements, do you know how fast can this airship travel?"

The Scientific System is the only standardized system of weights, volumes, distances, forces, etc. recognized by all the human polities on the Great Plateau. According to Old Man Jones, its measurements match up almost exactly to a system on his home world and hundreds of other worlds he has been to.

The first mate swallows before speaking. "Her crew claimed, without any headwinds or tailwinds, the Silver Princess can travel almost a hundred kilometers an hour."

I did not notice any name stenciled on the airship, but I suppose Silver Princess must be its name. After seeing the bitch princess dropping corrupted fruits from the other airship, the name strikes me as surprisingly fitting.

The Silver Princess' performance ranks near the top of non-warship airships. A hundred kilometers an hour is very fast for an airship. The major benefit of airship travel is not the speed of the airships, rather it is their ability to avoid terrain obstacles.

"What about that troop transport you were on?"

"Forty-five to fifty kilometers. With no winds."

"Do you know the heading for Shizukana Gake?"

The first mate nod. "Yes."

"Set course for Shizukana Gake."

Looking at the compass on top of the wheel pedestal, the first mate turns the wheel. After a dozen seconds, she turns the wheel back to it original position.

As I move next to the first mate and check the compass, her body tenses up, and the odor of fear in her scent increases. I cannot see any reason for her level of fear to increase. The heading she has the airship on should be correct. If the heading is off, it would not be by enough to be a problem over the three hundred, give or take, kilometer journey to Shizukana Gake.

After a few minutes, red light flashes behind us. Looking out a window in the side of the bridge, I see a lurid red fireball filling the behind us.

Boom!

Follow three or four seconds later, the sound of the explosion washes over the airship.

Vorn chuckles. "Looks like no one will be chasing us in those airships."

"Only one blew up."

"We killed the other crew. Who's going to pilot the second? Even if they have crew, will they figure out how you sabotaged it?"

I shrug. "Depends on if they have an Engineer who actually understands the firebox's sigils."

With her eyes wide open, the first mate turns her head enough to look at me from the corner of her eye. More fear and a mix of shock and surprise fill her scent. I do not know what she might be thinking, but I seem to be overturning her preconceptions.

"Beast. The starboard side window." After a few minutes, Vorn's voice breaks the relative silence of the bridge.

I look around. "Starboard side?"

"Right. Starboard is right. Port is left."

Visible far to the southeast, the airship, which bitch princess used to drop the corrupted Blood Fruit, sails serenely toward the mining compound. It looks like she was out in the Demonic Wildlands.

The first mate looks out the window, and the tension in her body increases. "The War Knife is a warship. It's heavily armed for its size."

"Who's faster?"

"This airship is faster than any I've ever flown or seen, but that the War Knife is not much slower."

As we watch, the War Knife changes course and accelerates in our direction.

"Beast? Fight or run?" As Vorn speaks, a mix of excitement and nervousness fills his scent.

After a moment's thought, I frown. "Run. We have to get the chest to Old Man Jones."

I put my hand on the first mate's shoulder, and she flinches at my touch.

"Get us to Shizukana Gake before that airship can catch us. If they do catch us, you'll be the first one to die." As I speak, I smile.

Seeing my smile, the first mate shivers. Hoshi has told me more than once that seeing me smile is like looking at Ferocious Beast sizing him up for a meal. From the fear in her scent, the first mate must feel about the same.

The bow of the Silver Princess turns a few degrees more toward the north, angling further away from the War Knife's line of travel.

Fwoosh!

A lump of metal, glowing red from heat, streaks through the sky. Thicker around than Vorn's thigh, the cylindrical projectile tapers to a sharp point on at the front. If it hit the Silver Princess , it would tear through the metal hull as though it were wet rice paper.

Boom!

A second later, the report from the fire-powder gun that fired projectile reaches our ears.

Vorn frowns. "What is that gun's range?"

"Five kilometers. It's one of the new designs created by Grandmaster Engineer Jones."

Vorn looks at me. "I bet you never expected to be killed by one of your own guardian's weapons, did you?"

Hearing Vorn's quip, I can only smile bitterly. "More or less."

Old Man Jones does not design weapons for sale. I designed and built the prototype for that cannon based on the shitty old man's stories about wars in worlds where people have no concept of how to use Mana, Psi, and Ki properly, if at all. When I was younger, every night around dinnertime, I would badger him until he told me war stories.

I point to the northeast. "Take us down behind that hill. The mouth of a deep ravine lies behind it. It stretches almost ten kilometers to the northeast."

The first mate frowns. "It'll take us further into the range of their guns. The war knife has two forward guns. Three or four would sink this airship."

"Just do it."

The first mate turns the Silver Princess into a broad sweeping turn toward the hill, which lies almost three kilometers to our northeast. We will be under the War Knife's guns for two minutes, and with a skilled crew of three men, my cannons can be fired three times a minute. If they decide to sink us, they can easily to it.

Fwoosh!

Boom!

Another cannon shot streaks past the nose of the Silver Princess . This one only misses us by ten or so meters.

Strangely, though the tension in the first mate's increases, the fear completely disappears from her sent. With a grim expression on her face, she looks back and forth between the War Knife and the hill.

Vorn chuckles, but it does not sound like an expression of humor. "That traitorous cunt loves this airship. Sinking it will be her last resort."

Boom!

After two more shot streak past our nose, the Silver Princess jolts and shudders. As she looks at the plates in the control panel next to the wheel. The first mate's expression turns grimmer, and the tanned skin of her face pales. "We took a hit to the lift bag superstructure. We use a nonreactive gas. But if we take one or two more hits like that, we won't be able to stay aloft."

"The propeller steam engines have an overheat function. My traitorous cunt aunt used to brag about it. Open that rad panel." Vorn points at the control panel to the right of the wheel.

Reaching around the first mate, I turn the latch and open the panel. A red crystal sits inside of it, a Mana conduction crystal. "You'll need to use Yuan Ki to activate that overheat function. It will probably take a continuous supply to keep the overheat running. I'm no Cultivator. You'll have to do it."

"Useless boar." While shaking head, Vorn steps up to the control panel and places his hand on the red crystal. His Mana begins to circulate inside of his Body.

Even though my Mana has been fused with my Body, I am still able to sense its flow within Beasts and Cultivators. Perhaps it is because my Mana has been fused to my Body that I can sense its flow in others. From what Old Man Jones has dug up on Cultivators, they can only sense the flow of Mana within another by using special techniques. Since I seldom get such a good opportunity to just watch a Cultivator circulate and control Mana, I focus my awareness on Vorn.

As I watch Vorn's Mana circulate, I am reminded of just how stilted and unnatural the ways that Cultivators use Mana actually are. They only use and circulate Mana with their Body. I think the Mana is being directed by their Mind, but I cannot be sure. But no matter how they control their Mana, they use it exclusively within their bodies. In Old Man Jones' books, I have read about Martial techniques that appear to be attacks on the Mind or Soul, but the circulation methods of those techniques still completely restrict the Mana used to the Body.

Cultivation is broken, deliberately broken. When the Daos and the Dragon Gods created Cultivation, they designed to limit Cultivators. By Cultivating, there is no way to achieve Transcendence. Mana within a Cultivator's Body even looks a little bit off, as though something has twisted or warped it. It almost looks like a form of corruption. I just cannot identify what that corruption would be.

After circulating his Mana a few times, Vorn forces it into the Mana conduction crystal. In just a fraction of a second, the Mana transforms so that it contains a Fire affinity, and exits the crustal via the wires beneath it.

Whup-Whup-Whup!

The Silver Princess' propellers accelerate by a factor of several times, and the airship springs forward. The ground appears to hurtle toward us at more than the speed it was just a moment before.

Boom!

The report of another cannon shot reaches our ears, but there is no sign of where the shell went.

As we close in on the ground, the Silver Princess levels out and the tops of the taller trees pass by less than a meter beneath the bottom of the airship. The airship tilts from side to side as the first mate sets a weaving course. It should make it much more difficult for the War Knife's gun crews to hit us.

Boom! Boom.

A fiery explosion blasts apart the trees a few dozen yards to the left, or port, as Vorn called it, of the Silver Princess. As wood fragments patter off the outer hull, the report of the cannon's fire sounds muted compared to the detonation of the shell. The War Knife has changed from solid shot to explosive shells.

Boom! Boom.

Another fiery explosion destroys the trees just to the starboard. As the explosion's flames engulf the gondola section of the airship, the force kicks us off-course to the port.

Vorn stumbles, almost losing contact with Mana conduction crystal, but I slap a hand on his shoulder, bracing him.

"Damn Hog, you were holding back when we fought!"

I snort. "I told you I had a bit of a breakthrough."

While chasing the War Knife in the Demonic Wildlands, my strength must have increased more than I realized.

Boom! Boom!

As we skim around the side of the hill hiding the mouth of the ravine, two more shells blast apart the trees on its top.

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