Chapter 207

Chapter 207: A Loving Father and Filial Son

The encounter had begun.

The battle opened with the Sea Mist’s first salvo. Thunderous booms shattered the calm over the whole sea. Shells howled through the air and plunged into the water at the ends of their arcs, throwing up towering columns and chaotic waves.

The first salvo missed completely. The second salvo missed completely. Only with the third barrage did the Sea Mist’s shells finally scrape past the Vanished’s side.

Spectral spirit form flames blazed between every seam and mast on the Vanished. Duncan gripped the wheel, driving the massive ghost ship forward like a moving mountain of fire. Her towering bow cleaved the waves, sending up rows of white foam and ripples along both sides. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a black shape streak toward the aft deck.

It was a shell from the Sea Mist. After missing several times in a row, the ironclad warship finally seemed to have corrected her aim. One projectile came screaming in, heading straight for the rear half of the Vanished. This time, there was no way to dodge.

Those dramatic “twist the wheel to dodge the shell” moves did not happen in the Mortal Realm. When the Vanished sailed in the Mortal Realm, her huge hull still had to follow the basic laws of physics… probably.

The ship was about to be hit.

But in the next instant, Duncan suddenly felt his vision sharpen to a painful clarity. He could track the shell’s entire path as it tilted slightly and fell toward them. He saw the distorted heat waves around it, the air driven aside by the shock, the red-hot tip of the shell, and even the faint grooves etched into its body—he cast his gaze upon that burning steel, and the steel responded to his call.

The moment before it struck the Vanished, the shell from the Sea Mist suddenly flared with a ghostly fire. It was as if the spirit form flames around the Vanished had instantly infected and assimilated it. The shell quietly turned into a streak of green light and dropped in a slow, uncanny arc into the sea of fire above the Vanished.

The shell, wrapped in eerie green flames, crashed onto the deck with a heavy thud. The whole ship shuddered—yet there was no extra damage at all.

“A beautiful catch!” Goathead’s voice suddenly rang in Duncan’s mind, snapping him back to himself. “Captain, how did you do that?!”

“…Reflex. I didn’t really think,” Duncan answered offhandedly. At the same time, more howls came screaming across the sky toward them.

He tensed again, controlling the Vanished’s giant hull to make small course adjustments while his gaze tracked the dark shapes dropping from above. A second later, one green “meteor” after another suddenly appeared in the sky above the blazing hull of the Vanished.

But Duncan’s ability to “catch” shells was not limitless. As the distance between the Vanished and the Sea Mist shrank, the ironclad’s barrage grew more accurate and more ferocious. Her many secondary and close-in guns finally entered effective range as well. When the sky filled with falling shells, some finally slipped past Duncan’s eyes and slammed into the Vanished’s hull.

Amid the constant thunder of explosions, Duncan saw a section of the nearby bulwark suddenly take a hit. A dark shape tore through the planks, ripping them apart before plunging into the sea. The impact blasted that part of the railing into countless fragments—

The shattered pieces flew outward and up, shooting into the air. Then they simply stopped. They hung there, frozen in place, maintaining the same motion as the Vanished herself.

It was an impossibly strange sight. It was as if the sections of hull that had been smashed apart in the Mortal Realm still formed one whole ship in some higher dimension. They only looked shattered to the eye, but the fragments were still tightly bound together.

This instantly made Duncan think of the hull below the waterline, of those broken yet fully functional bulkheads that soaked and sailed in Subspace.

The next second, he saw the fragments slowly fall and drift back. In a rush, they reassembled, the restoration looking like time itself had reversed to an earlier moment.

Duncan finally pulled his gaze away from the bulwark.

It was his first time seeing the Vanished take damage, and also the first time he had seen her repair herself. The ship could heal with incredible speed. The “healing” looked exactly like rewinding the hull to its state before the damage.

Now he understood why a seemingly far more advanced and heavily armed ironclad warship like the Sea Mist still could not win against a ghost ship from a century ago.

Subspace had completely rebuilt the Vanished, placing the whole ship inside a bizarre spacetime structure. In the Mortal Realm, it was simply impossible to destroy her with ordinary firepower.

Goathead’s voice echoed in his mind, smug and pleased: “Captain, the Vanished is the best ship in the world, right?”

“…To be fair, she really is.”

“So what’s your plan next?”

Duncan lifted his head and cast his gaze at the rapidly approaching Sea Mist: “…We beat the child while we’re on the way. We’ve got time to kill anyway, don’t we?”

…

“Captain! That ship is charging straight at us!” First Mate Aiden’s voice rang out on the bridge, with a trace of tension in it. “Something’s wrong… our fire is doing even less than it did in that rushed battle fifty years ago. More than half our shells are just vanishing into the flames around the Vanished!”

“I can see it,” Tyrian stood rigid on the bridge, his eyes locked on the ghost ship that was speeding toward them and already edging into a slight turn. His hands gripped the rail in front of him. His face was as dark as a coming storm. “In half a century, ‘he’ has grown even stronger than before…”

“Then are we still fighting?” Aiden shouted. “At this rate, I don’t think we can drive that ship back into Subspace like last time! And I feel like your father must be really angry right now… the speed of that ship is damnably unnatural!”

Tyrian only stared grimly ahead. After a few seconds of silence, he finally spoke in a deep voice: “…We continue the engagement.”

As he said those words, his gaze stayed fixed on the burning, gigantic sailing warship—on her stern deck in particular.

He knew that was where the Vanished’s wheel stood. In his distant and yellowed memories, his Father had always stood there.

Was he standing there now? Was he casting his gaze at the Sea Mist?

Thick smoke rose from the sea’s surface, and a distant rumble drifted faintly over the waves.

“The Vanished has opened fire!”

A sailor shouted in alarm.

Tyrian stood firm at the captain’s station, like an iceberg rooted in the Frost Sea. But he frowned.

The Vanished had not turned fully to present the best broadside angle. Instead, she cut into the Sea Mist’s path along a slightly oblique arc and opened fire while still maneuvering.

That meant only about a quarter of her broadside guns could fire effectively.

Was she just returning fire symbolically? Did she have no intention of fighting the Sea Mist to the bitter end?

That was not Father’s style, and it did not match the battle from fifty years ago. In that encounter, the Vanished had fought the Sea Mist to the very last moment, and both ships had been left in ruins.

That battle ended with the Vanished’s healing reaching its limit, forcing her to retreat to Subspace for a time, while the Sea Mist nearly sank and spent three full years before she appeared again on the Boundless Sea.

But Tyrian had no time to keep thinking.

The Vanished’s counterattack arrived. Unlike the Sea Mist’s first and second salvos, which had all missed, every shot from the ghost ship after entering effective range hit with chilling precision.

More than a dozen blazing green fireballs streaked through the air and slammed into the ironclad warship’s hull. In an instant, the world exploded with sound. Spirit flames boiled.

Layers of radiance floated up around the Sea Mist. The shipborne Cathedral and various sacred relics activated on their own, trying to block the spreading corruption. But even so, the ironclad’s hull was riddled with horrific cavities in a heartbeat. The burning cast-iron cannonballs were like clumps of fire landing in snow. Anything that touched those flames, whether wood or steel, melted away and vanished in an instant.

No armor mattered anymore. The Vanished’s attacks did not rely on kinetic force or explosions. They worked through higher-dimensional devouring and transfer. Under the continuing rain of shells, the Sea Mist became like a pencil drawing under an eraser. The falling projectiles “rubbed out” more and more of her. The first volley erased half her main guns. After the second, several gaping holes appeared in her sides—enough to sink any ordinary ship.

The Sea Mist’s attack faltered to a stop. Even her propulsion was more than half crippled at once.

Tyrian’s eyes widened.

Something was wrong… completely wrong. This was nothing like last time.

He did not recognize this ship. This was not the Vanished from his memories.

And in that stunned moment, he noticed that the Vanished had suddenly ceased fire.

The ghost ship swelled with wind. Every sail billowed. She dragged up a wall of waves as her speed surged to the limit, and she charged straight at the Sea Mist.

“…Hard to port! Dodge her! Dodge!”

First Mate Aiden roared. The helmsman was already straining at the wheel, trying to turn the warship aside to avoid the imminent collision—but all their efforts failed.

“The helm isn’t responding!” the helmsman cried in panic. “It’s turning on its own! We’re steering right into them!”

Just as the helmsman said, the Sea Mist was steering herself toward the ghost ship.

Tyrian had already sensed the anomaly. He heard the machinery under his feet screaming in protest. He heard every window around them click and rattle. He saw the remaining turrets on deck droop their barrels one after another. In the great hollows blasted into the hull, emerald flame surged higher and higher.

This was a nightmare that had not appeared even in that brutal battle fifty years ago—

The Sea Mist had recognized her flagship.