3 bar menu

Volume 5 Chapter 2 Part 3

「Maybe it’s always been like this here… 」

Siluca muttered.

The Forest of Eternal Darkness, which Theo used as a territory before Vilar’s death was also a place that could only be called a Demonic Realm. Chaos concentration was incredibly high there, and various Chaos-related phenomena were a daily occurrence. The sky was always red, and the trees in the forest itself were all strangely mutated.

But here, it was as if the Chaos was in the earth itself and was slowly bubbling up before bursting. Such an idea popped into Siluca’s head while her hand which was tightly gripping her magic wand was all drenched in sweat.

Everyone was nervous and everyone was silent, concentrating only on making the ship continue sailing forward. However, this seemingly ordinary sea seemed far more dangerous than it was at first glance. Siluca also felt that the tidal current in the blue-black sea was getting faster, but that is a common occurrence in the straits, so maybe there was no reason to…

「The tide is strange. 」

After a while, Aishela muttered while looking down at the sea.

「Strange how, exactly? 」

Siluca asked.

「Until a little while ago, the tide was flowing from west to east. But now it starting to turn towards the north, albeit only slightly. 」

「What do you mean by that? 」

「I mean that the tide is beginning to swirl. 」

The usual brightness was currently gone from Aishela’s face.

「… The whirlpools! 」

Siluca gasped. The words「Chaos Vortex」 came to her mind. That’s what the giant whirlpools that occur around the region of Sistina are called.

Engulfed in the giant maelstroms, many ships are being swallowed all the way down to the seabed. It is rumored that these Chaos Disasters are caused by a giant squid named Kraken, which is said to be a projection from another world in the form of a demonic octopus.

「Yeah, maybe we’re about to happen upon one of them. 」

Aishela nodded.

「Where’s the Chaos Core?「

Maybe it’s going to turn out that Aishela’s fears are unfounded, but if they do end up getting caught up in the middle of a Chaos Disaster, there’s going to be no escaping it.

If they don’t find and disperse the Chaos Core before it converges into the maelstrom, this ship is going to be doomed. However, Siluca couldn’t feel anything that seemed to be the core of the Chaos Disaster anywhere around the ship.

「Irvin! Give me my broom, on the double! 」

Siluca looked back at Irvin and called out to him.

「Understood! 」

Irvin had already prepared a broom for Siluca ahead of time and politely handed it to me.

「Be careful out there! 」

Sensing the situation, Theo called out to her.

「I will! 」

It was a pretty simple thing to say, but that alone was enough for Siluca to feel as if she had gained a great deal of courage.

Siluca mounted her broom and concentrated her mind.
She uses Still-Moving Magic to enable her broom to fly. And like it was stated before, it took some getting used to, but it’s definitely easier to make an object like a broom fly than to make herself fly through the air.

Siluca soared into the air and looked around her, and she found the thing that she was looking for soon enough.

Looking at the sea from above, she could see that a deep whirlpool was formed at a distance from the ship, as if a pit had been dug into the sea.

It was drawing in the surrounding seawater and gradually began to take the shape of a funnel.

「Does that mean that the Chaos has already converged? 」

Siluca muttered in a trembling voice, and she returned to the ship, describing to everyone that the Chaos Vortex had already been created. And once a Chaos Disaster of such caliber is created, it is extremely difficult to disperse.

「We’re still far from the center of the vortex, so we might be able to escape if we’re lucky. 」

「I hope so. 」

Aishela muttered anxiously.

「Lord Theo, please turn the bow of the ship downwind. Let’s use the power of the tailwind to leave this place at once. 」
「Okay, I’m on it! 」

Hearing Siluca’s call, Theo immediately nodded and steered the ship in the specified direction with all his might.

The ship slowly began to change direction.

Irvin was giving orders to the twins, and the two of them operated the fails exactly as instructed. The cross sail received a tailwind and swelled greatly, and the speed of the ship increased.

「Once you’ve gained enough momentum, change your course to cross the tide! 」

Siluca continued to issue instructions to Theo.

Theo operated the rudder, and Irvin and the others were adjusting the direction that the sails were facing. Aishela and Priscilla were also helping with that.

Siluca soared up to the sky on her broom once more and took another look at the ship.

She suspected that the vortex must’ve now stretched itself from one end of the channel to the other, and her guess wasn’t that far off, because the ship was completely caught in the maelstrom at the current moment. The sea surface sloped towards the center of the vortex.

The current was terrifyingly fast, but the ship was still on the edge of the vortex, where the lean and the current weren’t as bad as in the center.

「“Everyone, do your best… 」

Siluca felt like muttering a silent prayer to her companions. However, the ship didn’t seem like it was any farther away from the vortex. Siluca decided to go backwards before she would end up getting swept towards the center of the vortex herself, and so she has returned to the ship once again.

「Let’s give up on this ship. 」

Siluca made such a suggestion upon landing.

「I am fine with that, but still, how exactly are we supposed to escape the vortex? 」

Theo asked.

「Everyone, get in the boat. I’ll fly it. 」

「You can even do something like that? 」
‘
「It’s going to be a little harder to pull off than flying with a broom, but it’s definitely doable. 」

Siluca smiled and nodded. She has anticipated that a situation like that might happen, and that’s why she purposely had a small lifeboat stowed onto the ship. She felt good knowing that this insurance paid off after all.

「Then please do that. 」

Theo looked around and called out to everyone to move to the boat.

In response, everyone boarded the lifeboat one after another in an orderly fashion.

Siluca, who still had some of her luggage left on the ship was the last one to board it, and she stood on the bow, readying her magic wand. She then concentrated her mind and create an image of the boat floating in the air.

Chaos is a force that disturbs the natural laws of the world. A Mage who can predict exactly what kind of disturbance will occur can induce the phenomenon precisely as they envisioned it. That’s what using magic is all about.

And in the case of Still-Moving magic, it governs things like gravity, inertia, and movement of things..

「A ship floats on the sea. Sometimes it floats in the sky…. 」

Siluca manipulated the Chaos around her while chanting the spell and solidifying the image in her mind.

This huge Chaos Vortex they’re trying to escape is also a phenomenon created by the convergence by unnatural laws. A small boat flying through the air is no much different from it.

The moment she felt the buoyancy has been added to the boat, Aishela flashed her glaive and cut the rope that was connecting the lifeboat to the ship.
At that moment, when the small boat floated high enough into the air, Siluca stopped the boat in place and imagined a gentle slope in the sky, and then pushed the boat forward so that it could slowly descend down that slope.

Siluca kept the skiff in the air until it was out of the maelstrom’s reach. However, in the end she ran out of energy and they fell from a considerable height to the surface of the sea, but at this point they had no choice but to endure it.

「Well done. 」

When Theo helped Siluca settle down, he immediately took up a paddle and began to row the boat. If they let their guards down, they might be pulled back into the vortex, or a new vortex may be generated right in front of them.

Everyone took up their oars except for Siluca, who was exhausted after using such an advanced magic for so long, and they rowed the small boat with all their might toward the land that has now faintly come into view.