42. We're Setting Sail!
42. We're Setting Sail!
"Whoa, this is a ship? It's huge!"
"First time seeing one?"
"Yeah! First time!"
Millia cried out brightly as she wandered around the ship, peering at everything in fascination. She seemed quite excited to be boarding a ship for the first time in her life. Cute little thing.
Seeing her that happy was a relief, I supposed.
I stared at Millia's retreating back. I'd thought it many times already, but her revival had been practically a miracle. Without the item Skullhead had handed me at the end, Millia wouldn't have survived. Honestly, I never expected to find one here.
The Mercy of Kalon.
If memory served, it was an item that could be obtained at most twice per playthrough in Survival Academy. You could get more by exploiting bugs, but normally you received one during a playthrough and another for taking a specific Route, for two in total. Its effect was to revive a dead NPC.
I never thought I'd use an item meant to salvage a quest line tangled during a blind playthrough like this... Skullhead might have been a better guy than I'd thought. Creepy, though.
...Well, it was in the past, so I'd leave it buried. I probably wouldn't meet Skullhead again.
Right now, I needed to focus on finishing the ship we needed to escape, so I had to get back to work. I resumed hammering nails into the planks I'd made with my Skill. If I didn't finish the day's quota, our departure would be delayed even further. I had to keep my hands moving if I wanted to launch the ship within a reasonable time. Even if the whirlpools had vanished, the shitty weather wasn't going anywhere.
"I wonder if Reni's doing all right."
...I was a little worried she'd gotten too into brewing booze, but I was sure it'd be fine.
If she got drunk again like last time, a few of Karina's precious smacks to the back would sober her right up. You didn't get to see a Saintess cast magic through back smacks just anywhere, so it was entertaining every time.
And besides, I wasn't the one getting hit.
Letting my thoughts wander wherever they pleased, I resumed building the ship that would carry us off the island.
-----------------
"Welcome back! Did the work go well?"
"Looks like I can get the ship launched in about a week."
"That's a relief! I want to leave this island as soon as possible!"
"So we're finally leaving. Things are going to get insanely busy once we get back."
Karina, her face brimming with delight, set the food on the table made so the four of us could eat together. It was only rabbit stew, mushrooms Reni had personally tested for edibility before they were grilled, and fruit cut into manageable pieces, but on an uninhabited island, that was practically a feast.
"Thank you for the meal."
No sooner had the words left my mouth than I scooped up a spoonful of broth from the stew made with two rabbits. The clean, mild flavor unique to rabbit broth flowed over my tongue and down my throat, filling me with satisfaction. A glance around showed that the others seemed equally pleased with the generous lunch.
Karina's cooking skills had really improved.
At first, she'd often gotten the seasoning wrong or failed to control the heat, making the food taste a little strange.
"Yohan, is it to your taste?"
"It's good."
"Karina, it's sho good!"
As always, the atmosphere was warm and cheerful. Since there was nothing to spoil it, that was only natural.
There were no more monsters on the island threatening our survival, the dungeon had ceased to function and would produce no more zombies, and every fruit and resource the island had to offer belonged to us. We would soon set sail for the continent, and before long this would become an island inhabited only by rabbits. After ten years, it would finally become a truly uninhabited island.
I hoped it would, and so did everyone else.
After all, everything that mattered would happen on the continent, not this island.
Ah, was it over already?
I'd finished eating while lost in thought. I considered having more, but decided against it; overeating might upset my stomach. Besides, I had things to think about while I walked.
"I'm going for a short walk."
"Would you like me to come with you?"
"Oh, then I'll come too—"
"I have some things to think about alone."
When I gently declined, Karina nodded with a slightly disappointed look. Reni, however, gave me a suspicious look. It wasn't anything like what she was thinking, so she needed to stop staring at me like that. Remembering what she'd said before still made things awkward.
"Have a good walk!"
With Millia's peppy send-off at my back, I quietly walked toward the beach.
My footsteps stopped when I reached the boundary of my territory after following the beach. I looked around, then quietly uttered a word I found awkward to say in front of the others.
"Status Window."
[Yohan Quartz]
Age:19
Sex:Male
Race:Human
-Traits-
Insight:B
Shoveling:A+
Carpentry:A
Processing:A
Pharmacy:C+
Dexterity:B
Anatomy:B
Survival:S
-Skills-
Craft:A
Repair:B
Dismantling:B
Auto-Translate:A
-Mission-
Return to the mainland.[Reward:???]
Distance:910km
"Why is my age nineteen..."
It threw me off every time I saw it. Did my life on the island not count? I should have been at least around this age when I first washed ashore, yet it still said I was nineteen. Granted, if I shaved my beard, I didn't look all that different from ten years ago... and Karina had said I looked young.
So what were my ten years?
It wasn't going to give me a mission to enroll at the academy, was it?
I'd seriously hate that.
...I decided to set that aside for now. I couldn't learn what came next until I returned to the mainland anyway.
The part that screwed with my head even more was the Traits.
The Status Window in Survival Academy as I knew it should have been plastered with numbers, so why the hell did mine use letter grades like a college transcript? It also bothered me that it was filled with Traits I'd never seen in the game. What the hell were these? The Skills had all appeared as expected, but... would it have killed the thing to give me even one Skill I didn't already know?
It hadn't accidentally given me a Status Window from a different game, had it?
"If you're gonna hand over a Status Window, at least throw in some cheat Traits or Skills..."
If I was going to survive the hellscape of Survival Academy, it should have given me at least one Skill so broken that everyone would say, 'Isn't this a little much...?' Something easy to use! Craft might have been unusual, but it was still a production Skill and difficult to use effectively.
There couldn't have been a more flavorless Status Window in the world.
No. It'd give me something good as the Mission reward.
An EX-rank Trait or Skill, a shape-memory alloy, a gun recipe... I thought even Survival Academy had flintlocks... Or had that been in a much older version? Whatever. I hoped it gave me something useful.
Indulging in pointless wishful thinking, I turned around.
I needed to hurry back and finish the preparations.
There wasn't long until we set sail.
----------------
"So we're really leaving..."
After nearly a month, the preparations were complete. Today was the day we would leave the island forever.
I stopped in the yard and looked back at the house. The home I'd built myself, the place that had sheltered me for so long.
Once we left, time would wear it down until it fell into ruin. Maybe the next person to wash ashore here would put it to good use. By then, though, rabbits would probably have overrun the entire island.
Well... it wasn't any of my business, I supposed.
I turned around. A ship floated off the beach in the distance. I'd built it using the boats from my old attempts to escape the island as reference. It was probably about the size of an ordinary sailing ship, though I'd never seen one in person, so I couldn't be sure.
"Yohan! Hurry up!"
"Don't run around too much! If your head falls into the sea, we won't be able to find it!"
Reviving her was wonderful, but she'd returned in a state much like the Dullahan in the dungeon, with her head and body operating separately. That made me nervous whenever I saw her running around. One wrong step and her head could pop off and be swept away by the waves.
"I know that too!"
Millia seemed genuinely thrilled to be leaving the island. She had spent her whole life in a dark dungeon, so perhaps she couldn't wait to see the outside world. I only hoped it lived up to her expectations.
I climbed the stairs I'd built and stepped onto the deck. Reni was bustling about, preparing to depart. She had been trying to haul up the anchor, but when she saw me strolling leisurely across the deck, she shouted.
"Yohan! Hurry up and give me a hand! No matter what, it's too much for me to haul up alone!"
"Got it!"
Together, we hauled up the anchor and checked the sails. I had no specialized knowledge, so the ship had been built rather haphazardly, but there was nothing I could do about that.
Still, perhaps I should have been grateful to have an immensely powerful engine right in front of me, one stronger than a bear. I looked at Reni, who had volunteered to be our power source throughout the long voyage. Whether from the heat or from sweating as she worked, her figure stood out more clearly than usual, giving her a sensual air.
Perhaps noticing my gaze, Reni looked at me quizzically and spoke.
"Is there something on my face?"
"...Ahem. Are you holding up okay? You'll have to pedal hard from now on..."
"Ah, yeah, yeah. I'm fine, I'm fine. If push comes to shove, Karina said she'd use her magic, so don't worry. The bigger problem is direction. None of us knows which way the mainland is, right?"
"...I have a rough idea."
"Really?"
The wrecks had always drifted in from roughly the same direction, so either another island or the mainland had to lie that way. Failing that, I could steer by watching whether the distance on the Status Window decreased. The real question was whether the wheel we'd cobbled together through trial and error would work properly. If we couldn't turn the ship, we might wind up a ghost ship ourselves.
I'd rigged up this and that to prepare for that, though. But I really didn't want to have to use them.
"Then I'll head to the helm."
"Yeah. I should get back to prepping too..."
I turned toward the helm. It had an old-fashioned look, like something out of an old pirate movie. When I climbed up, I found Karina leaning against the railing and gazing out to sea.
When I approached, Karina turned her head and smiled brightly.
She looked like a shot from a photo spread.
"Welcome. Are all the preparations finished?"
"We'll be departing soon."
"Will we be able to arrive safely?"
At those words, I met Karina's eyes and saw her wavering pupils.
Come to think of it, Karina had washed ashore on the island after being shipwrecked. Of course she was afraid of sailing. I quietly placed a hand on her shoulder and said.
"We'll arrive safely. Don't worry too much."
"We will, won't we?"
Karina smiled weakly.
I forced a smile of my own and turned around.
"We'll be setting sail soon. You should rest somewhere safe—the deck will be dangerous."
"Yes, Yohan. I'll see you at mealtime."
Karina headed below deck. So we were finally setting sail.
I leaned against the wheel and stared at the rolling sea.
An endless sea.
Would we really be able to reach the mainland?
And what would be happening on the mainland we fought so hard to reach?
Unanswered questions had piled up, waiting for me.
"Yohan! Preparations are done!"
"Unfurl the sails!"
I set the questions aside and focused on the task at hand.
As always.
And so, our first ship, the Wilson, began its voyage.