The Fog Sea ran deep, mist hanging thick over everything, and a black three-masted ship sat silent in the pale gray haze.
On the deck of that dark vessel, a man and a woman sat facing each other. The two of them reached out and finally clasped hands.
"!"
The instant their skin touched, Antia's body gave a small, sudden shiver.
A moment later, she smiled, her expression complicated, and said, "So warm..."
Across from her, Silas felt as though he were holding a piece of soft ice.
After drifting through this cold sea for a hundred and fifty-two years, this angel ship spirit's body had gone thoroughly cold, inside and out.
As if greedily trying to draw in that warmth, Antia's fingers tightened, gripping Silas harder.
"Clink..."
Metal rang out.
From Silas's palm, the chain formed from the black key emerged on its own, climbing forward along his wrist. In answer, the black chain around Antia's neck began to stretch outward as well.
The two chains met in midair.
"Boom!"
Silas immediately felt some indescribable connection form, the two of them achieving resonance on a spiritual level.
"Let me introduce myself again. Antia Trois, soon to be your flagship, sailing the seas for your victory and glory."
The black-haired woman spoke softly.
"I'm Silas Londor. Thank you for your trust. I'll be a responsible holder of this ship."
Silas answered solemnly in turn.
Antia's fine eyebrows furrowed slightly.
"Your name is Silas Londor? But you introduced yourself just now as Alexander Gascoigne..."
"The one I gave first is my identity at sea. The name I just told you is my real name."
Silas replied.
Antia looked at him, and her grip suddenly tightened again, hard enough to make the joints of his fingers crack.
"So you mean you originally had no intention of telling me your real name?"
An invisible pressure spread across the deck. The wistful, sighing look on her face from a moment ago had vanished completely, replaced by a cold, unmistakably displeased smile. "Even after I'd already shared my own story with you?"
"My apologies."
The pain in his fingers was nothing to Silas. He kept his composure and said, "I need to protect myself. That's a reasonable choice to make. Besides, that name is also a legitimate identity of mine. Even my crew doesn't know my real name."
"Then I hope that, as my ally, you'll be more honest with me going forward. Don't lie to me again."
The grip on his fingers eased slightly. Antia looked straight at him, her crimson eyes meeting his deep blue ones.
"Understood."
Silas nodded, thinking it was a good thing she was willing to talk, and so he went ahead and asked, "Any other requirements? Better to lay them all out now."
"Don't hurt each other, don't force me to do anything against my will... those basic things go without saying." Antia said. "Aside from that, I only have one request: stay by my side."
In the cold sea wind, she sighed and said, "I don't want to be this lonely anymore."
The Sonia Sea, Black Lake Island.
Around the black lake at the island's center, heads bobbed in a dense crowd, and stalls packed both sides of the streets that had sprung up automatically along the lakeshore. Noise rose constantly, chaos broke out everywhere: walk a few steps and you'd see a stall owner and a customer with reddened faces arguing, walk a few more and you'd see people locked in a brawl.
Unlike the refined decor of shops in the big cities, dirty canvas sheets were laid out on the ground side by side, packed with a dazzling array of goods, all of it plunder the pirates had looted. Some were crafts with strong foreign styles from various countries, some were crates of tea leaves, salt, minerals... and some were simply gold jewelry, or strange, eerie objects giving off peculiar auras. These last two kinds of stalls were usually watched over coldly by pirates cradling steam rifles.
Filia was standing in front of one such stall right now, arguing with the stall owner.
"This is a scam!"
He shouted, "Give me my money back!"
In his hand he held a talisman carved with strange patterns. The patterns were glowing, but the light flickered on and off, growing fainter and fainter.
"A refund? Are you dreaming?"
The stall owner dug a filthy finger into his ear, wiggled it around, then blew on the fingertip. "There's no such rule at the Pirate Convention. If you want to blame someone, blame your own poor judgment for not spotting the problem with it."
Pirates always settled things with their fists. This young man in front of him was clearly fresh off his first voyage, green as could be, and he didn't take him seriously at all.
"It's obviously your fault for being a swindler, and you're blaming me instead!"
Filia shouted angrily, but the pirates passing by just grinned and watched the show.
Their fleet's two ships had docked under the guidance of the reception staff, and aside from a few left to guard them, most of the crew had gone ashore. Except for Boatswain Walter and a few old pirates, the rest of them were attending this gathering for the first time and were quite curious about it. The captain and first mate had gone deeper into the island, and the rest had scattered on their own, wandering through the market the pirates had put together themselves.
After this stretch of adventuring at sea, Filia had come to admire people like the captain and first mate more and more, and dreamed of becoming one of them. So after landing on the island this time, he'd wanted to use the money he'd saved up over this period to try to get his hands on something that might turn him into a Beyonder.
Unsurprisingly, he'd ended up getting scammed.
The pirate running the stall had sworn up and down that the emblem he was selling could awaken the mysterious power within him. In reality it was nothing but a broken piece of metal that happened to glow. For that scrap of metal he'd spent most of his savings, a full twenty pounds, and naturally he was furious and wanted an explanation.
"You already used it. Of course I can't give you a refund."
The pirate stall owner ignored his anger and simply repeated himself.
"I said, give me my money back!"
Filia grew angrier still. With a ring of steel, he drew the knife from his waist.
"What, you want to fight?"
The pirate stall owner wasn't the least bit afraid at the sight of the knife. Instead he sprang up at once, casually reaching a hand behind his back. The pirates watching had no intention of breaking it up, either, instead egging things on with excited looks on their faces, it would be far more entertaining if someone actually died!
Just as the tension was about to boil over, a man pushed through the crowd and stepped in.
He had a mop of messy blue hair, dark skin, and deep-set eyes.
"What's going on?"
Alger Wilson, carrying the pressure of a Beyonder, brought the whole scene to a halt at once. Glancing around, he spotted Filia and quickly recognized him as one of Silas's crew, having seen him at the harbor earlier.
This might be a good chance to fish for some information, he thought to himself.