Time: Day 7 Post-Fall (10:00 AM).
Location: Open Waters -- Southern Sector (Towards Sulfur Belt).
The world didn't let us rest. Only six hours after I silenced the Titan Core's "song" with its lead cage, The Gilded Wreck's radar screamed.
Not a ghostly scream this time. But the coarse, urgent shriek of a sonar warning, signaling a physical object approaching with murderous intent.
"CONTACT!" shouted Jorah from the crow's nest on the main mast, his voice cracking with a panic I rarely heard from a veteran sailor. "Six o'clock! Speed 40 knots! The sky... my God, the sky is changing! Those clouds are falling!"
I was on the bridge with Sable. Sable snatched his binoculars, and for the first time, I saw the arrogant pirate captain's mechanical hand shaking violently. The sound of its gears was a grinding—krik... krik...—like the heartbeat of a terrified machine.
"Damn it," Sable whispered, his face losing color, his lips turning white. "That's The Iron Maw. That's Vargo."
I borrowed the binoculars, holding them steady with both hands.
In the distance, parting the morning mist, a black ship was moving at an unnatural speed. But what was more terrifying was the atmosphere around it. The ship wasn't just sailing; it was carrying its own ecosystem of death.
Thick, dark clouds rolled low, concentrated only above that ship, pouring down torrential rain that moved in perfect sync with the vessel as if its steel hull was the gravitational center of the storm. A 1 Kilometer radius around them was a magically isolated weather zone—a microcosm of a storm in the middle of a calm sea.
On the bow of the ship stood a giant figure clad in black armor. He wasn't holding the helm. He stood with his arms crossed, not moving an inch despite the ship's rocking.
What froze my blood was what was happening in front of his ship. The seawater in front of The Iron Maw's bow didn't break into liquid foam. Instead, it flattened, smoothed, and hardened into a solid, slick sloping ramp. Vargo was turning the ocean into his personal highway, reducing hull friction to zero, allowing the thousands-of-tons iron ship to glide like a sled on ice.
"Vargo the Butcher," Sable muttered, his voice hoarse and despairing. "Tier 5: Torrent. He can compress water molecules to be as hard as structural steel. He doesn't submit to the sea, Auditor... he rapes the laws of nature wherever he goes."
I lowered the binoculars, my blood running cold.
Tier 5. Catastrophe Level.
In Valdor Academy textbooks, Tier 5 is defined as a Singularity Point—the point where mana stops being ephemeral energy and begins to become permanent physical matter. They are no longer mages; they are walking reality factories.
"Let's just surrender," Sable said suddenly, his courage shattering into pieces before that force of nature. "We raise the white flag. We hand over the Core. Maybe... maybe he'll let us live as galley slaves. Better to be enslaved than shredded by a rain of needles."
Sable turned to his crew with wild eyes. "PREPARE THE WHITE FLAG! LOWER THE SAILS!"
"DON'T!" I barked, my voice cutting through the panic.
Sable grabbed the collar of my shirt, lifting my frail body until my feet dangled.
"Are you insane, Auditor?! That's a Torrent! He can turn that rain into thousands of iron needles and shred the flesh from our bones in seconds! Negotiation is the only rational path!"
"There is no negotiation," I said, staring straight into his camera eye without blinking, imposing an authority I didn't have. "You misread the variables, Captain. Your math is flawed."
"Let me go," I commanded calmly.
Sable released me roughly. I straightened my crumpled robe, my mind spinning rapidly, assembling a psychological profile of the enemy. I had no mana, but I had an understanding of ambition.
"Vargo isn't chasing us to trade, Sable," I explained, my voice coldly slicing through the panic on deck. "Think. A Tier 5 already has everything in these waters. Wealth, the largest fleet in the Southern Sector, dominion. But he's stuck."
I pointed at the figure of Vargo in the distance, growing larger.
"He's chasing that Dreadnought Core. For a Tier 5 stuck at the peak of his biological limit, that's not just a battery of energy. It's a catalyst for Evolution."
I looked sharply at Sable, making sure he understood the gravity of the situation.
"Tier 6 isn't a myth, but it's a very high wall. It's the divider between 'Local Catastrophe' and 'Continental Threat'. To cross that wall, you need pure energy that exceeds the capacity of a normal human body. Vargo wants that Core to break through his limit, to become something more than just a pirate."
"If you offer him the Core, you're not offering merchandise," I continued cruelly, puncturing his illusion of safety. "You're offering proof that you hold the key to his future. A person driven by the obsession of evolution won't leave witnesses. He'll take the Core, then use his Domain to erase this ship down to the last atom so no other rival knows he has it."
"Your proposal is suicide with extra steps. You're just making his job easier."
Sable fell silent, cold sweat pouring down his temples, wetting the metal on his face. The logic made sense to him. Vargo's greed was a non-negotiable variable. He wasn't a trader; he was an apex predator wanting to metamorphose.
"Then... we run? We can't run from a Weather Controller! Even the wind fears him!"
"We don't run," I said, looking at the yellowish cloud mass of the Sulfur Belt to the east. "We lure him to a place where the water turns against him. We take him to a battlefield where his magic becomes a boomerang."
I turned to the lower deck, shouting as loud as my weak lungs could.
"SOLSTICE! TO THE STERN! NOW!"
Solstice ran up, breathing heavily, his face smeared with oil and sweat. He looked astern and grinned nervously. "Tier 5? The sky back there looks bad, Ice Rock. That's not a normal storm."
"Less talk. We need a visual distraction. Do a Thermal Inversion behind the ship. Boil this sea."
"Got it."
Solstice jumped onto the stern railing. He hugged the flagpole with one hand, while his other hand aimed at the churning wake.
"BURN!"
VWOOOOM!
Blue fire shot from his body.
SSSSHHHHH!!!
The hissing sound was deafening, like thousands of venomous snakes. As the high-temperature fire hit the cold seawater, an instant physical reaction occurred. The ocean behind us exploded into an extremely thick wall of white steam. This instant hot mist wasn't a magical illusion; it was water particles expanding thousands of times, blocking visual sight and thermal sensors.
Vargo and his personal storm disappeared behind that hot white curtain.
We turned sharply into the Sulfur Belt.
The atmosphere changed instantly. The sky turned a sickly yellow. The stench of rotten eggs (sulfur) and sweet swamp gas (methane) stung our noses, making our eyes water. The sea here was calm but deadly, its surface bubbling with thousands of gas bubbles rising from volcanic fissures on the seafloor.
"Cut the engine!" I ordered.
The Gilded Wreck glided in silent running mode, propelled only by leftover momentum. The atmosphere became quiet, except for the blup-blup sound of gas bubbles popping on the surface.
In the distance, behind the mist, the sound of The Iron Maw's engines roared closer. Vargo was too overconfident. He was a Tier 5; he felt nothing could touch him at sea. That arrogance was a crack in his armor.
The black ship emerged from the mist, speeding directly over the methane gas field. The torrential rain Vargo carried began to extinguish the sulfur vapors in the air, clearing the way for him. But he was unaware of what was under his hull. Methane gas floating on the water's surface couldn't be extinguished by ordinary water; it was just waiting for a spark.
"Wait..." I whispered, calculating the distance and gas spread. "Let him enter the red zone."
The black ship was now right in the middle of the bubbling field.
"Now!" I shouted.
I fired a flare pistol into the air. Solstice, with the last of his strength, sent a concentrated fireball chasing after the flare.
KA-BOOM!
The sea exploded.
Not a gunpowder explosion, but a Fuel-Air Explosion—a thermobaric chain reaction.
The methane gas on the water's surface ignited simultaneously, creating a shockwave of fire that enveloped The Iron Maw.
We saw the giant steel ship lift slightly out of the water from the sheer air pressure.
This was physics against magic. The fire sucked out the oxygen within the blast radius. Without oxygen, the enemy ship's internal combustion engine stalled instantly. Without oxygen, the human crew on the open deck fell unconscious or suffocated immediately.
The hunter ship stopped moving, helplessly adrift in the middle of a sea of fire. Their sails were burnt to cinders. Their steel hull blackened, the protective paint melting like wax.
"WE DID IT!" Grimm yelled, jumping with joy. "LOOK AT THAT! THEY'RE BURNING! THOSE DOGS ARE ROASTING!"
The entire crew of The Gilded Wreck cheered. Sable laughed hysterically, slapping my back until I nearly stumbled.
"You mad genius, Auditor! You defeated a Tier 5! You beat Vargo with sea farts!"
I let out a sigh of relief, holding onto the ship's railing to keep from falling. My legs were weak. The plan was physically perfect. No magic could create oxygen from nothing in seconds.
Our ship began to pull away, leaving the burning wreckage of The Iron Maw behind.
We were safe. We had won. Logic had defeated brute force.
Or so I thought.
Suddenly, my ears rang with a high-pitched tone.
The air pressure changed drastically. Not because of the thermobaric blast. But because the Mana Density was skyrocketing insanely, pressing on my chest like a heavy rock. The oxygen around us felt heavy, damp, and suffocating.
"Wait..." I whispered, my eyes squinting at the strange swirling flames behind us.
From the heart of that fiery hell, something shot out.
Not a cannonball. Not a shell.
But a human figure.
Vargo.
He hadn't stayed on his crippled ship. He had jumped.
And he wasn't burning.
Around his body, a layer of water was swirling. It wasn't liquid. That layer had a metallic sheen, reflecting the orange firelight with a cold silver gleam.
That was the signature technique of a Tier 5: Iron Skin. He compressed the water molecules around him until they reached a hydraulic density equivalent to diamond steel, creating a transparent, high-pressure armor impervious to both fire and explosion. He walked through the thermobaric blast as if he were walking through a morning drizzle.
He launched himself through the explosion, using platforms of solidified air under his feet, arcing through the air for 200 meters like a human missile.
"FALL BACK!" I screamed, my voice breaking. "EVERYONE FALL BACK!"
BOOOOOM!
Vargo landed on the main deck of The Gilded Wreck.
Not a human landing. It was a meteor impact.
The impact shattered the ten-inch thick wooden deck planks, creating a small crater. Its kinetic shockwave threw Sable, Grimm, and half the crew against cabin walls and the mast.
Dust, wood splinters, and seawater flew in all directions.
From within the dust, Vargo the Butcher rose slowly to his feet.
Rain began to fall on our ship's deck—localized, cold, piercing rain—as if he had brought a piece of his sky with him. His Domain had shifted. We were now inside his realm of control.
His black armor was intact. No burns. No scratches. The Iron Skin layer melted away slowly, turning back into water that swirled around him like hissing, living snakes, waiting for the command to attack.
He was alone. Without crew. Without ship.
But the dark blue aura radiating from him made the entire ship feel tilted. His mana density was so thick it made the wood under his feet crack with a terrible crack... crack... sound.
Vargo turned his head. His black eyes—as dark as the deepest ocean trench—swept over the terrified crew, then stopped right on my face.
He smiled. The smile of a predator finding an interesting prey, not an angry one.
"Physics," his voice was heavy, echoing as if he spoke from underwater, penetrating my ribcage. "An adorable child's play trick."
He took a step forward. The rainwater around him stopped falling, froze in mid-air, then floated upwards, solidifying into hundreds of crystalline needles aimed at all our necks.
"You destroyed my toy," he said casually, pointing his thumb at the burning The Iron Maw in the distance. "So now... I'll take your ship. And its contents."
I took a step back, my legs trembling uncontrollably. I looked around frantically for Solstice.
Solstice was kneeling near the stairs, vomiting bile from severe Mana Exhaustion after the big blast. He was empty. I was empty.
And before us stood the Natural Disaster who had just walked through an explosion without a scratch.
My calculations were right about his greed.
But my calculations were wrong on one fatal variable:
I forgot that for a monster of Tier 5, a ship is just a shoe. If his shoe breaks, he'll walk barefoot—and his footsteps will crush our spines to dust.
"Now," Vargo raised one finger, and the solidified water needles hissed, vibrating ready to shoot through our hearts. "Which little genius blew up the gas? Step forward, or I'll turn this ship into an underwater coffin in one second."