socalfunplaces Chapter 124 Shipwreck, Special Characteristics, and a Young Girl?
Chapter 124 Shipwreck, Special Characteristics, and a Young Girl?
"Snap... hiss..."
The entire passenger ship emitted a tooth-grinding groan, and the deck twisted into a horrible arc beneath Lorne's feet.
The porthole at the end of the corridor shattered with a "crack," and a gust of wind whipped salty seawater into the cabin.
"Meow!" Rachel's fur stood on end, and her amber pupils suddenly contracted.
As a cat, it has an ingrained fear of water, even though it is an "assassin".
"Rachi, calm down."
"It's alright..." Lorne reassured him.
Even so, Lorne felt powerless in the face of the crisis. This was his first time encountering a shipwreck.
Damn it... I'm not a "sailor".
At this scale, if someone were pulled into the vortex, even an extraordinary being would have virtually no chance of survival.
"Lifeboat..." Lorne suddenly thought of something.
"The lifeboat is on the aft deck..."
They had to get out before the ship sank, or they'd be swept away by the whirlpool. Lorne hugged the orange cat tightly and quickened his pace towards the aft deck.
He hadn't taken two steps when he sensed something was wrong.
"Oh no, this ship is going to sink."
Violent tremors echoed all around. Suddenly, the entire ship emitted a tearing, deafening roar.
The floor beneath their feet suddenly collapsed, and in the instant of the fall, Lorne flung the orange cat toward the relatively intact left corridor.
"Meow—!"
With a deafening cracking sound, the passenger ship broke in two.
Lorne managed to steady himself by grabbing onto a dangling cable amidst the flying wood chips.
……
"Ah...where am I...?"
"My head hurts so much."
The violent shaking woke up a certain unfortunate "disaster priest".
Looking at his soaked body, he was somewhat bewildered.
"Wait, my potion seems to have been completely digested..."
"Clang!"
Before he could even feel relieved, a broken section of the mast struck him hard on the head before his spiritual intuition could warn him, slamming him directly into the churning sea.
……
"Captain! The mainmast is broken!"
Chaos reigned on Tracy's pirate ship as well. She gripped the helm tightly, her knuckles turning white.
"Damn it, how could this suddenly happen..."
Tracy had been a pirate for many years and had seen all sorts of situations. She could tell at a glance that the unusual natural weather was caused by some extraordinary factor.
Could it be the Church of Storms? Impossible… She looked at the passenger ship not far away. If it were simply a matter of dealing with pirates, there was no need to drag innocent passenger ships into it.
"Turn the rudder quickly!"
"Throw everything away and break out at all costs!"
"quick!"
She roared at her subordinates, but her voice was drowned out by the thunder. A bolt of lightning struck the sea less than ten meters away, the blinding blue light illuminating her pale face.
Before she could give any further instructions...
"Boom!"
Another bolt of lightning struck the pirate ship precisely in the middle. Tracy was thrown into the air by the blast wave and plunged straight into the icy sea.
……
"Damn it, something's got me all over me."
The seawater had already reached Lorne's chest, and he clung desperately to the rope, trying to climb up. But something grabbed his leg.
"Humans? No, that's not right, humans don't have that much strength."
While it's true that people can unleash unimaginable power when faced with dire circumstances, Lorne is still a Sequence 7 Extraordinary, and no ordinary person, no matter how strong, could possibly hold him back.
"Could it be a fish-man?" Lorne suddenly remembered Edwina's description of the most common monster on the sea.
"I'm going to be dragged down!"
"Damn it, let go!" Lorne shook his legs hard, trying to shake off the "fishman".
The "Catastrophe Priest" clung tightly to the leg of the man in front of him. He had been awakened by the seawater, and when he regained consciousness, he was covered in wounds and on the verge of drowning.
This leg was his last hope for survival, and he refused to let go no matter what.
"If only I hadn't betrayed the School of Life..." he lamented inwardly.
"hateful!"
"I'll kick you to death, I'll kick you to death!"
After kicking him several times without being able to get rid of him, Lorne became furious.
"Ah." He struggled to free one hand and pulled "Phantom" from his pocket.
"Bang bang bang!"
After three gunshots, the pulling sensation in my leg finally disappeared.
"Finally, I'm rid of him..." Lorne put away his pistol and breathed a sigh of relief.
However, before he could even feel relieved, an even bigger wave crashed over him.
……
"Brando, where are you?" Anderson lost his previous composure and called out Lorne's alias with slight anxiety.
This sudden shipwreck disrupted all his plans.
"Damn it, we've lost him." Feeling the bumpy ride beneath his feet, Anderson felt a rare sense of powerlessness.
Losing track of a target is a disgrace for a "hunter," but the current situation is clearly illogical.
He looked up at the storm that was gradually gathering on the sea.
"This must be related to the Church of Storms..."
"I wonder if the old man at the church will listen to my explanation."
……
Lorne floated on the relatively calm sea, looking around blankly.
He appeared to have been blown directly out of the eye of the storm by the gale, and therefore was not affected by the vortex.
Debris, debris—everywhere you looked was debris from ships; the sea was a scene of utter devastation.
Just then, something in the distance caught Lorne's attention.
Life rafts!
Without hesitation, Lorne immediately swam towards it.
"Was it thrown out by the wind and waves?" Lorne examined the small boat in front of him. Although it was covered with holes of all sizes, the main structure was still intact and there was no leak.
"Finally, I got lucky this time..."
After climbing up, Lorne was panting heavily; he had been in the sea for several hours.
"Bang!" Before he could catch his breath, the small boat was hit by something.
"A corpse?" Lorne looked down and saw a corpse with a resentful expression and a face full of wounds.
"Wait, this person looks familiar?" Lorne felt like he had seen this face somewhere before, but the scars made it difficult to identify.
"The burn marks...that's strange."
"This is... an extraordinary characteristic!" To Lorne's surprise, not long after, a transparent substance began to precipitate from the corpse.
"They've only been drowned for a short time, otherwise their properties wouldn't have been released so soon..." Looking at the scene before him, Lorne began to analyze the current situation.
"Poor guy, he almost got saved..."
Adhering to the principle of "if you don't take it, you might as well take it," Lorne accepted the characteristics from the corpse and placed them in Cube 3's personal space, intending to study them slowly after returning to the mainland.
He then offered a prayer over the corpse.
"May the steam protect me, and may I have better luck in my next life..."
……
"Laki!" After being temporarily out of danger, Lorne suddenly remembered his orange cat.
"Where are you!"
"Oh no, even cats are afraid of water." Looking at the vast ocean, Lorne felt a sense of despair.
In a shipwreck like this, even a human can't escape, let alone a cat.
"Meow!"
"Rachi! I'm here!" Hearing this meow, Lorne's hope was rekindled.
He saw his cat lying on a floating object, bobbing up and down with the waves.
Lorne immediately used his hands as oars and rowed vigorously toward the cat.
"Meow!" Rachel exclaimed excitedly upon seeing her owner.
"Racky, thank goodness you're alright."
"Wait? What's that?"
As Lorne approached, he noticed something was off about the thing under Rachel's feet.
"This is... a woman?"
It was a huge crystal that resembled both ice and crystal, inside which was a beautiful, black-haired girl with a graceful figure.