Chapter 616: Redbeard
"We finally made it out..." Only after arriving here did Leon truly breathe a sigh of relief. Over the past month and a half, their journey had been anything but easy—the number of encounters with frost giants and frost beasts alone had exceeded thirty-seven waves.
Just think about it—what does that even mean...
That means they've fought at least thirty-seven battles, with the total number of magical beasts encountered numbering in the thousands. At first, things were manageable, but the deeper they ventured, the stronger the beasts became, and exhaustion set in. By the last day, even Leon had to retreat into the natural demi-plane repeatedly to restore his mana.
Thankfully, they've finally made it out...
"Wait..." Just then, Cyrus Watson, who was leading the group, suddenly stopped in his tracks. The face of this eighth-level Title Archmage showed a flash of shock.
"Hm?" Leon was startled for a moment, then his expression changed abruptly. In that instant, he clearly sensed a surge of intense magical energy spreading through the air. Before he could use his mana array to analyze the fluctuation, the wave of magic had already transformed into a booming roar...
At first, it sounded distant...
But in just a split second, the sound was right at their ears...
"Rumble..."
"Rumble..."
Thunderous booms echoed, as if tens of thousands of mammoth beasts were stampeding, as if endless thunder beasts were rampaging across the world...
"Holy crap!" Leon blurted out.
Then, a massive crack appeared beneath their feet, like a scar splitting the icy wasteland in two...
"Ascend, ascend, quick, ascend!" Leon shouted without thinking, casting Levitation on himself. As he floated upward, he glanced down...
Sure enough...
The icy wasteland beneath his feet was suddenly torn apart, shards of ice flying everywhere, blinding everyone's vision. The rumbling roars were endless, mixed with sharp cracking sounds—the sound of ice shattering...
Deep within the crack, surging waves boiled and roared. No one had expected that beneath the icy world, there was a boundless ocean...
The seawater was boiling, monstrous waves rising and crashing, rumbling and surging...
Finally...
A colossal shape slowly rose from the depths of the ocean...
It was a massive gray ship!
The ship was so enormous—its hull stretched ten thousand meters across the sea, even larger than a mountain serpent. The entire vessel radiated a sense of desolation and decay, as if it had slept in the ocean depths for tens of thousands of years. The hanging sails bore terrifying, grinning skulls—the mark of pirates. Leon glanced over and saw not a single figure aboard, making the silence and eeriness all the more unsettling.
"Ghost ship..."
Almost as Leon screamed, a terrifying power suddenly erupted, blanketing thousands of meters around. Suspended in midair, Leon instantly felt a force surge up from below. Before he could even process what was happening, his entire body plummeted from the sky with a whoosh...
"Damn it..." Leon's heart jolted. He tried to cast Levitation again to steady himself, but suddenly realized it was useless...
Yes, Levitation was useless!
As that terrifying force enveloped him, Leon's Levitation spell seemed to lose all effect in an instant. No matter how he chanted, he couldn't slow his descent, not even a little...
What the hell is going on?
The wind howled past his ears, his fall accelerating. For a moment, Leon felt like he was about to die—frantically, he cast Feather Fall in hopes of slowing down, and summoned a dozen water elementals below, praying they could cushion his landing, even just a little...
Then...
With a dull thud...
Since becoming a mage, Leon had never suffered such a miserable fall. Feather Fall was useless—he crashed onto the ghost ship's deck without slowing down at all...
The rotten deck couldn't withstand such abuse. With a loud crack, Leon smashed a huge hole through it, then crashed through several more decks with a series of splintering thuds. He had no idea how many layers he broke through...
"Good thing I'm smart..." Leon finally came to his senses after who knows how long.
Feeling the wet sensation left by the shattered water elementals, Leon couldn't help but feel grateful. Thank goodness he hadn't pinned all his hopes on Feather Fall—otherwise, falling from a thousand meters up without the water elementals to cushion him, he'd have ended up as meat paste...
Still, even with all that, Leon's fall was anything but gentle...
Every bone in his body felt shattered—the pain was everywhere, making Leon feel like he'd just been trampled by a mammoth beast...
"Archmage Leon, Archmage Leon..." Xuban's voice echoed from afar. Having bathed in the blood of ancient gods and demons, the Dragonblood Orc's body was far tougher than Leon's. Dropping from a thousand meters up, he hadn't even scratched himself. Now he was bellowing at the top of his lungs.
"Alright, shut up, I'm not dead yet..." Leon grumbled, struggling to get up, rubbing his bruises. He took a moment to ask Xuban, "Where are the others?"
"No idea..." Xuban shook his head without hesitation. "Aside from that dragoness, I haven't seen anyone else..."
"Alright..." Leon glanced around, confirming that only Reina was present.
As a dragon, falling from a thousand meters was child's play—her clothes weren't even wrinkled. Seeing Leon get up, Reina's tense expression relaxed a little. She nodded at him from afar. "Didn't see anyone else."
This is troublesome... If Reina says she didn't see anyone, then no one was there. Leon frowned. This ship was just too strange—the way it appeared was bizarre enough, and now this sinister force was suppressing all flight magic. Without a doubt, it was the legendary anti-flight domain.
Any alchemical array that uses the term 'domain' is no joke. A domain means changing the rules, even creating new ones—something only a Saint Alchemist could attempt...
"Archmage Leon, where... where are we?" Xuban's voice trembled with fear.
"How should I know..." Leon snapped, annoyed. The cabin was dimly lit and silent, a chilling and sinister atmosphere seeping in from all directions...
Leon frowned and began chanting long incantations. One after another, Wizard's Eyes appeared, summoned by his spells—within moments, dozens of them filled the cabin.
After linking them with mana, Leon glanced at the Wizard's Eyes and sent them flying out the cabin exit. Just three seconds later, feedback came back—Leon couldn't help but feel a surge of joy as he led Xuban toward another cabin.
Soon, Leon found the alchemical golem...
But the Watson family members were truly nowhere to be seen...
"Archmage Leon, can we leave now? This place is really creepy..." The sinister atmosphere had already scared Xuban out of his wits—his voice now carried a hint of tears.
"Creepy or not, there's nothing we can do." Leon knew all too well how strange this place was, but there was no way out—now that they were here, no matter how sinister it got, there was no leaving in a hurry.
"Archmage Leon..."
As Xuban's tearful voice echoed, Leon led Reina and the alchemical golem out of the cabin toward the next one. Xuban glanced around in terror, and when a cold wind blew out of nowhere, he jumped as if he'd seen a ghost, rushing to catch up with Leon and the others.
The ship was enormous—endless corridors, identical furnishings, no warmth, no sound, just boundless loneliness weighing on everyone's mood.
Hour after hour passed as they trudged onward, with no end in sight. Just as Leon's frown deepened, a giant oil painting finally appeared on the cabin wall ahead.
The figure in the painting was a man in his forties, wearing a black captain's hat with lifelike skulls carved into it. His right eye was covered by black leather, leaving only his healthy left eye exposed. Just meeting his gaze made Leon feel like he was being stared down by a venomous snake.
Most importantly, the man had a red beard...
Wait... a red beard?
Suddenly, Leon remembered—there was such a figure in Northend's history...
"Damn, it's Redbeard..." After staring for a while, Leon suddenly remembered the legendary Redbeard and was completely stunned.
Legend says that in the age of ancient gods and demons, Redbeard was one of humanity's strongest. Later, he caught Constantine's eye and was made admiral. Toward the end of that era, as gods and demons fell, Redbeard supposedly ventured into the Endless Sea of the Far North, gathered a horde of pirates, and founded the Redbeard Pirate Crew—becoming one of history's most famous pirates.
It's said he once raided the outer reaches of the Endless Sea and captured a pureblood elven princess...