Chapter 408

Chapter 408: The Roar in the Sea Mist

The deep, solemn sound of the steam whistle echoed over the sea. Sacred steam gushed from the ship’s core compartment, shaking the tall smokestacks of the Sea Mist and every intricate pipe inside them. As the whistle blared like a war horn, all the sailors moved into action.

Hoists creaked to life, sending propellant charges and heavy shells into the combat magazines beneath the gun turrets. Steam lines roared without pause, driving sacred vapor into key mechanisms and blessed sections of the ship. Sailors ran along the decks and corridors, heading for their battle stations.

When the whistle sounded a second time, the small Cathedral at the Sea Mist’s stern rang its bronze bell. The bell, symbol of the Storm Goddess’s divine blessing, called Gamona’s grace down upon this fearsome warship that the world knew as “The curse”.

On the other main battleships of the Sea Mist Fleet, similar bells and whistles sounded in turn. The bells of each shipboard Cathedral echoed through the fog, faintly resonating with one another in some strange way. Their joined peals even began to disturb the Mortal Realm itself, so that the thick mist over the sea seemed to thin and scatter just a little.

At the same time, as the Sea Mist Fleet moved, the Frostholm Navy patrolling the nearby waters also answered. Flags went up, signal lights flashed, and the blast of whistles and the ringing of their own shipboard Cathedrals’ bells echoed through the fog in response.

At that moment, the two fleets set aside fifty years of tangled grudges and hatred before the Visions that had come down on everyone. Under the strange and deadly fog that sealed the sea, the navy of the living and the fleet ruled by the Undying had become the only forces that could still rely on one another.

No one knew when the enemy would appear or in what form, but everyone knew that from now on, every unfamiliar ship that showed itself on these waters was an enemy.

Even any so-called friendly ship that refused to answer signals was also an enemy.

The enemy was the sea itself.

Every nerve on every ship was taut as they waited for some change in the fog, waited for new messages, orders, any scrap of information from Frostholm Island itself. No one knew how long that crushing wait lasted. Then Tyrian, who sat in command on the Sea Mist, suddenly felt something strange.

It was as if a gaze had fallen on him, yet it did not come from any clear direction. It felt like a look that crossed time rather than space, cast from the distant past to rest quietly upon him now.

He looked up in shock and instinctively glanced around the Sea Mist’s bridge.

First Mate Aiden was talking with the boatswain. The communications officer was exchanging coordinates with the Frostholm Navy. The elderly black-robed priest had already hurried over from the small Cathedral and now sat beside the gunnery officer’s station with eyes closed in prayer. With the thick fog blocking all view of the sea, the priest’s Spiritual Insight would be the warship’s greatest reliance when fighting the enemy in the mist.

Farther away, a figure stood quietly by a porthole.

In a daze, Tyrian remembered a scene from fifty years ago. In that yellowed memory, Her Majesty the Queen had personally come aboard this warship. Back then the Sea Mist had not yet grown through those fifty years. It had been older and more weathered in a different way, and the Queen had stood in that very spot, her gaze fixed on the distant sea for a long time.

It was from that place that she had given the order for the Sea Mist Fleet to leave Frostholm three days later.

Now that figure slowly turned its head and gave another order.

“Tyrian, defend Frostholm.”

After half a century, the second order had finally arrived.

Tyrian jerked awake. His heart hammered, and his eyes burned and stung as if he had just stared straight at some knowledge close to the Truth itself. Noise roared in his mind. Before he could even think about whether what he had just seen was an illusion or something else, the urgent alarm bell suddenly rang on the bridge, cutting off all his thoughts.

As the bell clamored, he already caught sight of something on the distant sea out of the corner of his eye. Amid the swirling fog, a massive ship’s silhouette was rising out of the thick mist, as if the sea itself were bulging upward to shape a Ghost from days long past.

The Ghost’s masts stood tall, and its old-fashioned funnels jutted up like coral growths on the back of a sea beast. It slowly adjusted its heading and moved toward the flank of the Sea Mist Fleet.

It was so close they did not even need the priest’s Spiritual Insight to find it.

“Visual contact! Silhouette identified, third-party vessel!” the lookout shouted.

“Open fire,” Tyrian said as he strode back to his captain’s chair, his voice as cold and heavy as an iceberg. “Anything that appears on these waters and is not already on our identification list is an enemy.”

In an instant, the guns roared and thunder crashed.

On the Sea Mist, the three main turrets that had the best angle opened fire one after another. The heavy armor-piercing shells, already primed and waiting, shot from the barrels with a peal like thunder. In the thick fog they became blazing meteors falling from the sky, slamming toward the silhouette in the distant mist.

Almost at the same time as the Sea Mist opened fire, a series of cannon blasts rolled out from that bank of fog as well. They sounded like distant thunder. In a chain of flashing fire, lines of flame tore through the mist and plunged down toward the sea around the Sea Mist.

Tyrian sat quietly in his chair, eyes half narrowed, listening to the distant rumble and calculating the shells’ flight.

It was an old 356-millimeter main gun, four triple turrets… which old friend was it?

The Rune Duke, which had once escorted the Queen? Or the Knight, which had bravely gone down in a storm fighting the Deep Sea Spawn? Or… the Warrior?

The howling of the shells was like the wail of a banshee. Thunder falling from the sky shattered what little calm remained on the sea. Huge explosions threw up waterspouts dozens of stories high, and even the fog hanging over the water was ripped apart by the shockwaves, torn into countless pale, swirling currents.

Not a single shell from beyond the fog landed near the Sea Mist, and the Sea Mist’s first salvo was the same.

“It’s the Knight. Watch its broadside quick-firing guns,” Tyrian said, opening his eyes. His voice was not loud, but it carried clearly to every sailor. “At this range those quick-firing guns can already do real damage. Increase pressure in the steam core and open the distance.”

“Aye! Increase steam core pressure! Open the distance!”

Deep within the Sea Mist, its “heart” let out a low roar. The whole ship began to accelerate and slowly turn. On the nearby sea, great sheets of drift ice also began to surge forth, spreading in all directions like some living thing to shape a battlefield favorable to the Sea Mist.

As the ship began to maneuver, Tyrian suddenly noticed fire flaring outside another porthole at the edge of his sight, along with a distant shadow.

First Mate Aiden shouted at once: “Second vessel sighted! No response on radio, not on the identification list!”

Before Aiden finished speaking, another low rumble came from afar.

“Third vessel! Not on the list!”

“Signal from the Sea Crow! They have already engaged multiple enemies!”

“Message from the Frostholm Navy! Fighting has broken out in the waters near the city-state!”

“First and second main batteries prioritize the Knight. Third main battery and long-range secondaries handle any other enemies that enter range,” Tyrian said. His voice did not change at all as more and more enemies appeared on the sea. He simply kept his calm gaze fixed on the silhouette within the fog that was still firing and pushing through the ice toward them. “Do not worry about how many enemies there are. Everything unfamiliar that appears on this sea is an enemy. This is only the beginning.”

First Mate Aiden also shouted: “You heard the captain! Whatever shows up out here, we hit it! Even if these old relics have come back to life, they are still no match for the Sea Mist Fleet. Keep firing!”

With the orders from the bridge, all the Sea Mist’s main and secondary guns began firing salvo after salvo. Blazing fire again and again lit up the dark, chaotic fog.

Amid the thunder of guns, more and more unrecognized ships kept appearing on the wide sea.

Just as Tyrian had said, this was only the beginning.

mirror world Frostholm was rising. The border of the Mortal Realm was blurring in the fog. Things that had once sunk beneath these seas were now entering the Mortal Realm in great numbers as replicas.

And from now on, everything that appeared on this sea would be an enemy.

“Let’s raise hell!” Aiden’s hoarse bellow rang across the bridge. The bald giant wore a grin that was almost feral. Clearly he had not enjoyed a fight this fierce in a very long time. “Let out fifty years of pent-up fire, brothers! Show those navy weaklings what the Sea Mist Fleet really—”

Suddenly the noisy First Mate’s voice cut off. It was as if an invisible hand had grabbed his throat. Aiden’s eyes flew wide as he stared fixedly in one direction, and a second later, Tyrian knew why he reacted that way.

Another ship’s silhouette suddenly appeared in the nearby fog and then shot straight across the battlefield at almost unbelievable speed. That silhouette was unlike any of the enemies that had appeared so far, unlike any famous vessel Tyrian knew.

It was a mass of solid black mist, a patch of tangible shadows, a hazy, unreal thing that only vaguely took the shape of a ship. It burst out of the fog like some eerie shadow cast backward out of a mirror, howling as it rushed straight toward them. Yet more than the strange shape of this “shadow ship”, what truly struck the Sea Mist’s crew into instant silence was the “shadow” reflected on the sea beneath it.

It was clearly another ship, one wreathed in eerie green flame, a “ghost ship” that looked even more uncanny and terrifying than a mirage to everyone in the Sea Mist Fleet.

This twin ship, using the sea as a mirror, burst out just like that and howled across the water. One hull raced above the waves trailing billowing black smoke, while the other rushed below the surface streaming pale green flame. It almost scraped along the Sea Mist’s side as it sped past and, in the blink of an eye, had already reached the far side of the battlefield.

Tyrian could have sworn to his Father that he had never in his life seen a large ship move at such outrageous speed.