Chapter 232 – Making it out alive.

The message that Roland had destroyed the lesser abomination was displayed before him along with the experience points for it. Yet this was not something that he was preoccupied with. Instead, he looked onto the docks that they were leaving. There he could see more of those masses of tentacles arriving.

“Are they going to follow us into the water?”

“I don’t think they will…”

Senna asked Roland while watching along with him and the rest of the group. The only one not paying attention was Dalrak who was grasping his arm. After suffering from the carriage crash he was still feeling the after-effects.

“Har, those bastards can nah swim! Good riddance I say.”

Isabela spit out of the edge of the ship while also trembling slightly. It was clear that everyone that had made it to the ship was in the process of gathering themselves. They had been through a rollercoaster of emotions of being chased through tunnels and then the city by strange creatures. The same creatures were now on the pier contorting in unnatural ways.

“Raise the sails, we be gettin’ out o’ here!”

“Aye, aye Cap’n”

The ship started drifting away from the shore and allowed Roland to see everything clearly. Soldiers started storming the pier that they left to engage with the monsters that broke through the line. Various fires could also be seen from within the city along with the sounds of fighting. Just as he predicted the noble district didn’t seem to be suffering that much damage due to the lack of smoke.

‘The church shield is still there, the only ones suffering are the common folk…’

As long as the merchants and nobles that had their homes in the rich district survived everything would be fine. All the workers could be replaced and all the buildings could be repaired. This was the reality of this work where the common labor force was deemed dispensable. The business owners were probably more concerned about their stores than the people getting killed.

Roland, who had worked hard to become a business owner, didn’t quite like this approach. He knew the plight of the common laborer as he was one for a while. At his business, he allowed days off and even sick days, if he lost some money for a few days it was fine and nothing to lose sleep over.

Even to this day, he didn’t really understand people’s fascination with money as to him it was only a means to an end. Was living in a grand mansion with multiple servants so much better than just having a medium-sized family home? To him, there was always a limit where money started losing its worth. The biggest reason he was improving to this day was mostly for survival as without money he would not be able to gain the strength required to have a peaceful life.

“Awright watch it, ah think tis broken.”

“Think you need to work on your evasion skills.”

His attention was brought back to his new party members. Orson was all smiles when looking at Dalrak who was in pain. At this very moment, the dwarf was slowly getting help from Senna with his armor. If his arm was broken the bone would need to be set, this of course would be a very painful procedure.

“Yeah, this one is broken, tell me when you are ready.”

In this world filled with monsters and strife, it was quite normal to see a scene like this. Dalrak just nodded while biting down on a rolled-up rag. Roland would offer the dwarf some pain-numbing potions but he didn’t have any and neither did anyone that was here. Almost every adventurer had the first-aid skill, Orson was performing the bone setting and seemed to know what he was doing.

*Crack*

Just a little grunt escaped from his mouth as the damaged bone was set in place. Only after they were sure that it was aligned was Dalrak allowed to douse it in a healing potion that would turn weeks of healing into a day or less. Only thanks to these potions and healing arts could these adventurers be so daring in their quests for money and fame.

“Fuck, finally it’s over… hey, do you have any booze here? I could use a drink.”

“’Twould nah be much o’ a ship without some rum.”

Eve looked to Orson while winking at him with a bottle in her hand. It seemed that she was already downing it along with the other sisters. Dalrak was just leaning against the mast while the sailors worked on getting them out of here.

Just as anyone else Roland wanted to just sit down and rest but not long after they started gaining some momentum a strange howl entered their ears. At first, they thought that perhaps the abominations were just maddened by their departure but the sound was not coming from the city, it was coming from the sea.

“Ahoy, it’s comin’ from thar!”

The sailor that was up in the crow’s nest shouted out while pointing into the distance. Roland with the help of his suit of armor was able to zoom in to see another large monster flying up in the sky. It wasn’t alone as several smaller ones accompanied it.

“The heck, there are more of them?”

Everyone started panicking as the monsters appeared from behind the clouds that blocked the view. It would be impossible for the ship’s cannons to do much damage to these monsters or even aim correctly. It was designed to hide from large sea monsters and battle at most the mid-sized ones while retreating. If one of those large worm monsters decided to wrap themselves around the ship they would need to quickly abandon it as they lacked a holy shield to defend themselves.

“Wait, there is something else there…”

Roland called out and the man on the lookout point on top of the main mast did the same. Behind the group of flying monstrosities, three large ships appeared. They were different than the first one Roland saw but they were carrying the church’s flag. Soon enough their cannons started firing off and hitting the flying creatures.

“Helmsman!”

“I be on it cap’n.”

A large bald muscle man that had his body riddled with various tattoos quickly turned the rudder to make the ship turn to one side. The evasive maneuver positioned the ship away from the battle in the sky as they quickly tried heading away from the shoreline where the battles were heading.

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“Blasted wind ain’t pickin’ up, hey Wayland ye’re a mage can nah ye do somethin’ about this?”

“The Wind?”

It took him a second to process the information before quickly heading to the back end of the ship. He had read up about things like this, some ships utilized magical devices to produce strong winds. While his regular wind-based spells were meant to cut things or mix with his ice spells he could quickly alter their structure.

With the help of his Runic Restructuring skill, he was quickly able to alter some of the runes on his armor. This could be observed by everyone here as his armor started glowing and the runes started to slightly shift into other places. Soon enough he had a runic wind blower that he could point at the sails.

“Woah!”

Orson was the first one to stagger when the strong wind energy collided with the sails and made the ship jolt forward.

“That’s wha’ I be natterin’ about! Keep it steady helmsman.”

“Aye, cap’n”

Even for Roland, this was no easy task, most spells were made by a quick jolt of condensed mana but this one would constantly drain it at a rapid pace. But there was no other way, with his help the ship could quickly zoom through the waves.

This could not have happened at a better point in time as suddenly a large explosion caused their ship to tilt to the side. To everyone’s surprise, the entire area was getting riddled with explosions that were coming from the sky. The vessels that belonged to the church were pelting the monster with cannon fire and constantly missing.

The ride was quite rough but the helmsman was quite experienced. Somehow he was miraculously able to predict where the next close explosion would occur and react accordingly to dodge it. When looking up, Roland got a good view of one of the metallic golden ships that passed over them. It was accompanied by a strange humming sound and a monster trying to entangle it.