Silas stood upon a sea surface of extreme heat.
A faint film of golden light wrapped around his body, shielding him from part of the light and heat cast off by that miniature sun.
He wasn't the target of that Sequence 0 sealed artifact, but even its mere ambient influence demanded he take it seriously.
Even so, the expression on Silas's face still looked pained.
Long-familiar hallucinations and phantom sounds tormented him at the same time.
"The Lord said, let there be lights in the heavens, to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs, cast across the sky, giving light upon all the earth..."
Amid hymns of praise from some ancient age, a towering figure enveloped in sacred radiance shone in the sky, receiving the reverence of countless people.
In the next image, a father in white robes, his face indistinct, sat before a desk, writing Ancient Feysac script onto plain sheets of parchment. Those words recorded scripture both obscure and holy.
Suddenly, the one writing the scripture stopped his pen, paused for a moment, and turned to look at Silas.
He was looking at Silas!
That father's eyes were calm and pure as a child's, his gaze seeming to cross a thousand years to meet Silas's own.
An intense pain instantly filled his head; Silas felt as though his very spirit might burst apart.
A rush of sound surged in, like the roar of waves.
The illusory sound of tides rose up rapidly, driving out every hallucination. The white-robed father's calm gaze was swallowed in that tide and vanished.
"So, are you going to move or not?"
Medici's languid voice drifted out from within him. "Drag this out much longer and your ship is going to be gone."
"Quiet."
Silas said in a low voice.
Gazing at the distant ships and the sphere of tremendous power gathering in the sky, he drew a deep breath, then turned his focus to the head in his hand.
Lieutenant Philip's face was frozen in confusion and terror, long since dead, nothing left of him but a severed head.
In his final moment, he could never have understood why his own body had simply burst apart for no reason, why the flying flesh and blood had somehow become another person entirely.
That was right. Silas had released his deep parasitism, broken free of Philip's body, and returned to reality.
Because the situation had grown worse and worse.
The Black King, entangled in countless chains, couldn't bring its true strength to bear at all, thoroughly suppressed by Archbishop Pierre wielding that Sequence 0 sealed artifact. And now, above all, the situation had grown critical: if he didn't act, this ghost ship really was going to be in serious trouble.
Even Silas himself was powerless against a combination like Sequence 3 backed by a Sequence 0 sealed artifact. Fortunately, an idea came to him quickly.
All he needed to do was undo the chains binding the Black King!
That was it. She was clearly having her true strength sealed away by those chains.
If he freed her from that binding, the Black King would immediately recover angel-level strength, and the crisis at hand could be resolved with ease.
But flying straight over there himself would be nothing short of suicide.
He needed a method, ideally one that could throw the ship into chaos.
So after a brief exchange with Medici inside him, Silas had an idea.
Silas pressed his hand to the ear of Philip's remaining severed head, at the same time releasing the restraint on the boundary within him, letting Medici's spirit form come close to his palm.
The sea was currently saturated with holy light aimed specifically at the undead; the "Red Angel" evil spirit didn't dare come out at all, and could only move about by this method.
"This'll work. The owner of this head used to be part of a hunter's team. I can use him to reverse-influence that hunter over on the ship."
That was what Medici said, and that was exactly what he did.
He let his spirit extend outward through Silas's body, and using the occult connection between the dead man and that hunter, spoke into the ear, passing his influence across.
Before long, Silas saw great turmoil break out on the distant ship.
Whatever bewitching words Medici had whispered, that hunter suddenly launched a sneak attack, driving straight through the weak point on Archbishop Pierre's back while the man's attention was fully absorbed elsewhere.
"Now!"
Silas's spirit jolted, and he moved at once.
Boom!
He hurled a flintlock pistol toward the Black King, and in the same instant his body was swallowed in flame; the next moment, he emerged from within the flying pistol.
What was more, he used the pistol's considerable initial velocity to summon a fierce gale, lifting his body and hurling it forward, accelerating toward that three-masted black sailing ship!
Silas's appearance abruptly changed the entire situation.
Only now did both sides present realize that a third party had been hiding in the shadows all along, striking only now, all at once!
"Contemptible wretch!"
A flash of fury crossed Archbishop Pierre's eyes at the attack. Rear Admiral Francois's sneak attack hadn't done him much harm, but it had scattered the power he'd worked so hard to gather.
Watching that figure hurtling swiftly through the air toward the Black King, golden light suddenly blazed up in his eyes, and he raised the staff in his hand high once more.
A hum sounded.
In the midst of his high-speed flight, Silas suddenly sensed danger and forced his body to twist in midair.
A thick, powerful, blazing beam of golden light shot past, grazing his body, and plunged into the sea.
Boom!
Seawater surged skyward, waves crashing toward the heavens, only to evaporate rapidly in the air, turning into scorching steam that seared at Silas's body.
That was close...
Still shaken, Silas looked toward the Black King ahead and immediately summoned the black key, raising it high, showing it to the woman aboard the ship.
If he didn't, he suspected he'd have no way at all to cross the barrier between them.
The stunningly beautiful woman on deck noticed him, and the moment she saw the key in his hand, a storm of complicated emotion surged across her beautiful face all at once. Surprise, relief, anger, and something like quiet resentment, all at once.
A rushing sound swept through.
But whatever emotions were tangled up in her, the woman still raised her hand and pointed at him.
In the next instant, the once-considerable distance between them suddenly blurred together. Silas had only flown forward a short stretch, yet he found himself already above the deck, diving down toward the helm.
That was the source of every chain, where a great black lock hung!
"No good!"
Pierre's eyes narrowed sharply.
He moved to raise the staff again, ready to unleash another lethal blow, but it was already too late. Silas had successfully reached the helm, and driven the black key into the lock's core.
The key slid in smoothly. Though the thing was nearly a century old, it showed not the slightest trace of rust. Without wasting a moment, he twisted the key at once, trying to open the lock.
Clank!
And so, before the eyes of everyone present, the great black lock came free, falling heavily to the deck.
A great rushing, rattling sound swept through.
Every black chain loosened in that same instant, sliding free from the ship's hull. This vessel, bound so tightly for so long, was finally set loose.
The chains wrapped around the black-robed woman's body vanished along with them. Slowly, she raised her head, and looked across at him.