Drifting: The Tedious Middle Ages
The tedious Middle Ages. A damned crusade. The hollow pretense of chivalry. An age where the tales of noble knights could only be heard through the fanciful ballads of wandering minstrels. I mulled over the past as I stared blankly at the gently swaying blue sea.
The weather was foul, and so was my mood.
My loyal subordinate, Hans, approached me with a question.
“Sir Knight, the masters are struggling with the oars. What should we do?”
“Tell them to row with everything they’ve got before I feed them to the sharks. And how many times do I have to say it? Call me Captain, not Sir Knight. I’m not a knight anymore.”
His words were dredging up some truly irritating memories.
“M-my apologies, Captain!”
“Forget it. Are our masters working hard?”
“Of course! They’re sweating buckets as they row! They’re absolutely terrible at it!”
Hans answered with gusto, his face beaming with happiness. The task suited him far too well.
“Captain! I think that slave trader has real talent! When we get back, I’m going to become a slave trader myself!”
Now that was going too far.
“You want to end up like those masters down there?”
“No, sir!”
“Then stop spouting nonsense and serve your masters with all your heart! They brought us this far, so we owe them that much!”
“Yes, sir! C-Captain!”
The dim-witted Hans scurried back into the ship. I leaned against the railing and gazed out at the deep blue sea.
“When will we see land…”
It had been over a month since I last saw land. That was only a rough estimate—I hadn’t been counting the days properly, so it could have been longer.
We could still manage with the food by rationing, but staring at the sea from this rocking ship made me long for solid ground. After all, humans were creatures meant to live on land. Only when your feet touched soil did you truly feel human.
“What a damned life…”
Two years. That was all it took to go from a squire to the captain of a slave ship through a mutiny. My rise and fall had been a rollercoaster ride. Life really was exhausting.
“But it’s over now.”
I had seized every last coin from those cursed slave traders. It was enough to live in luxury for the rest of my days. My goal was to settle somewhere remote and spend my life as a wealthy idler. I was sick of pointless crusades and the like. I would live quietly in a place untouched by war.
“…Though the ship seems to be rocking harder than usual today.”
Was misfortune striking again?
I had felt this ominous premonition too many times before. Fiddling with the mercenary’s sword the slave trader had carried, I looked up at the sky. An ominous sound rumbled across the graying heavens.
“Hah.”
The ship rocked as if it might capsize beneath the murky sky. It was the sign of yet another stroke of bad luck.
I had finally clawed my way to a reversal of fortune, only to drown here? Not a chance.
“Hans! Tell everyone to prepare to run at full speed! Have the rowers throw out the masters and take the oars themselves! If we leave it to those useless bastards, we’re all finished!”
“What should we do with the masters we throw out, Captain?”
“If the ship isn’t moving, toss them overboard! No one wants to become a ghost ship crew because of those pigs!”
“Wouldn’t being a ghost ship crew be kind of cool?”
This guy’s dream job must be turning into a barnacle-covered corpse.
“If you don’t want to become shark bait before you can be a ghost ship sailor, then get to work! Call Georges and have him take the helm!”
“Can we trust that guy?! Because of him, we haven’t seen land in a month! He lied about knowing how to sail when he doesn’t even know the first thing about it!”
“Then you take the helm! There’s no one else who knows how to sail besides that bastard!”
“I’m sorry!”
“If sorry fixed things, your sailor days would be over!”
“No, sir!”
“Then get moving and help!”
“Yes, Captain!”
After chasing off the dim-witted Hans, I infused my voice with mana. It was a simple technique—reinforcing my vocal cords to amplify my voice. I roared like a lion toward the crew.
“Move it! One mistake and we’re all shark food! If you don’t want to meet again inside a shark’s stomach, stay sharp!”
“Yes, Captain!”
“Even if we die, we die with our feet on land! Understood?!”
“Yes, Captain!”
At my resolute command, the former slaves who now served as sailors began to move with urgency. As long as they kept up this pace, we still had a fighting chance.
“Let’s see what we can do.”
We glared at the increasingly violent waves and began our desperate struggle for survival.
But our resolve was rendered meaningless as a massive wave rose and shook the ship.
“If it was going to end like this, I should’ve just escaped when I was captured as a prisoner…”
The cold seawater welcomed me.
“Hmm~ Hmm~”
Walking alone along the beach bathed in morning sunlight was part of Lim Hye-ryeong’s daily routine. The soft sand cushioning her steps seemed to make her training flow more smoothly afterward, so she had long made this her way of starting each day. If nothing happened, she would simply walk to the end of the beach and lightly use her lightness skill to head toward the Hainan Sect’s training grounds. Yes—if nothing happened.
“…Huh?”
At the edge of her vision, she spotted a lump that wasn’t usually there. Narrowing her eyes, she realized it had a human shape. Half-buried in seaweed and sand, her first-class martial artist’s eyes could tell even from a distance that it was a person. But not an ordinary one.
‘A Westerner…?’
Here, of all places?
Questions filled her face. Though people occasionally washed ashore on Hainan Island due to accidents, a Westerner was a first.
She moved with rabbit-like agility toward the Westerner half-buried in the sand.
‘A martial artist?’
She first checked the solar plexus point. It was the easiest way to identify a martial artist. Unless they were a master who had reached a high realm, a protruding solar plexus was the simplest way to detect the presence of internal energy.
After confirming the protrusion, Lim Hye-ryeong hesitated briefly.
‘Should I take him?’
She had heard rare stories of orthodox sect members suffering harm after rescuing martial artists and getting entangled in grudges. She wavered for a moment. Fulfilling one’s duty as a human was the spirit of the righteous sects, but prioritizing one’s own sect was the way of martial artists.
After some deliberation, she made her decision.
‘I’ll take him for now. Since he’s a Westerner, he probably came from far away. There shouldn’t be any problems.’
Lim Hye-ryeong slipped her hands under the Westerner’s armpits and dragged him onto the shore.
“He’s way too big…”
She groaned as she hoisted the unconscious man onto her back. Though his waterlogged body was heavy, yielding to this much weight would mean she couldn’t call herself a master of the Hainan Sect.
Carrying the Westerner, Hye-ryeong began using her lightness skill to head toward the Hainan Sect.