Fishermen usually always kept some spare rope in their homes, but not necessarily canvas. After all, in this day and age, most vessels were powered by motors and engines, and actual sailboats were only used for fun.
Hans had no canvas to spare, but he helped Zheng Yang get enough from someone he knew. Of course, it went without saying that Zheng Yang owed him more money after this.
The next morning, Zheng Yang went to collect over 20 kilograms of natural gum from the mountains. It was noon by the time he got home. After eating lunch, he took all the necessary materials with him and headed for the back of the island with his boat. Coincidentally, along the way, he ran into Feller and the others, who were all towing their logs back to the fishing village.
The wood they'd cut down was of such low density that it could float on water. As such, it was rather easy to tow the logs when they were all tied together. But then again, this kind of wood was only suitable for making small boats; making larger boats and even ships out of it was out of the question.
Zheng Yang had a lot of time to kill before it was time to get to work, so he lit up a fire and summoned the tiny bug, ordering it to kill the mosquitoes flying around. The bug did well enough that he no longer had to consider buying repellents.
The winds were rather chilly by around 10 pm; and somehow, it was growing increasingly colder.
He knew the winds well enough to know that the current temperature shouldn't have gotten that cold to begin with, considering it was autumn. And it was the kind of cold that seeped right into his bones.
Suddenly, he felt his instincts kick into high alert, as if he'd received a danger warning from either the spirit vessel or the vessel's magic formation. It was almost a gut feeling. He realized right away that something was off, and he reached for the machete at his side and peered at his surroundings, a serious look on his face.
He couldn't detect anything unusual on the beach, so he quickly turned around, spotting a white wisp of something on the mountain path heading his way.
The mountain path led to the fishing village, and it was the one that Feller and the others had taken back to the village the day before. However, he wasn't about to believe that the wispy figure was one of the villagers. That chilly, eerie feeling was enough to tell him what it was.
An eldritch entity had finally found its way to him.
Getting through the past two days without incident had made him think that there were no such things on the island to begin with.
He quickly pissed on his machete to "energize" the weapon somewhat (a Chinese method used for dealing with situations like this).
As someone who had died once, he had a devil-may-care attitude and was able to keep calm during such panic-inducing situations. He simply reacted by pissing on the blade, unfazed.
The washed-out, wispy figure floated closer to him. With the help of the moonlight, he was able to tell that the figure was a middle-aged man dressed in fisherman's attire, and this man actually looked rather familiar to him.
Zheng Yang immediately rummaged through the memories of Little Zheng Yang—his parallel world counterpart—and realized that the man was a villager who'd died of a severe illness two years ago. It was said that the man had contracted some deadly infectious disease after he was bitten by a dog in the English Harbor. Somehow, that dead man had come back as a ghost.
The travelogue had mentioned ghosts, which were classified as very low-level undead. They were so weak that they were practically harmless, and common folks were unable to see them. Zheng Yang attributed his ability to see the man to either of two things—the fact that he had come here from a parallel dimension, or the workings of his spirit vessel. He personally believed that it was the latter.
The ghost, which was now just several feet away from him, looked rather dazed at the moment, yet it also wore a fearful, greedy look as well. It seemed like it was either hesitating about whether it should do something to Zheng Yang, or simply feeling flustered because it was unable to do anything.
Swoop.
Zheng Yang was in no mood to communicate with the ghost. He raised the machete in his right hand high and brought it down hard on the ghost. The blade smoothly swooped down without resistance, as if it were slicing through nothing but air. However, the ghost before him shrieked in pain, and it had a large gash, which then fizzled with smoke. Soon after, the whole ghost disintegrated into a whiff of eerily cold air.
After he finished cutting down the ghost, Zheng Yang remained unmoving, still reeling from the experience.
"Wait, that's it? Nothing else? Shouldn't I be like doing a lengthy battle with that thing?"
He recalled that gut feeling he'd had earlier and realized all of a sudden that it was a warning that eldritch entities were approaching. He was cursed because of the spirit vessel, yet he was also able to see eldritch entities thanks to the vessel and received warnings from it too.
This ability gave him time to react when he was about to face off against such entities, preventing him from being caught by surprise.
…
At around 11 pm, he finally managed to get his logs to float on the sea, but he found that his boat was unable to tow them. Worse still, the logs were headed for shore due to the tide.
He had no choice but to transfer some spirit power to himself, convert it into physical strength, and drag the logs to his side through sheer brute force, with the boat following behind.
This finally allowed him to drag the logs to the side of the shipwreck.
He placed the logs beside the tip of the wreckage sticking out of the water, and then put his boat on the logs themselves. All the required materials were now in place.
Begin modification.
After giving the order for the boat to modify itself, the boat's magic formation was activated, and silver light started to spread outwards, enveloping the spirit vessel, the logs, and the tip of the sunken ship.
The steel tip of the ship melted into liquid, which was then absorbed into the spirit vessel with the help of the magic formation. Under the workings of the magic formation, the spirit vessel took in the natural gum, ropes, canvas, and logs beneath it. The materials were then dismantled and reassembled into their respective designated parts, and the boat gradually transformed into the vessel he had in mind.
Even though the spirit vessel was undergoing modifications at the moment, there was still something solid beneath his feet, preventing him from dropping into the water.
As it glittered with silvery light like the moon, the tip of the sunken ship gradually sunk beneath the water. It was fortunate that there was no one around; otherwise, who could tell what kind of commotion such a phenomenon would have caused.
The modification process went on for about half an hour before the silvery light finally dissipated, signaling that the job was finished.
The sailboat he found himself in was a new boat that was five meters long and two meters wide at his widest point. It still maintained that typical tapered down shape, and the corners of both the bow and stern were encased in thick steel brackets, which had claws that dug deep into the wood underneath.
The boat's hull consisted of logs tightly packed together, with no gaps in between, making the entire vessel look like a natural whole. The shipboard was very sturdy, and the center of the bottom of the boat was tapered along the sides, with the deepest part measuring 1.5 meters, and consisted of logs and steel.
The entire vessel, from the keel to the surface of the hull, including all the corners and joints, were all sturdily fixed in place with steel and natural gum. There was a deck above the keel, and a good number of storage compartments for storing cargo, freshwater, and fish were separated along the keel. The freshwater storage tank could hold a cubic meter of freshwater.
Zheng Yang felt that if he were to just add a cabin, which could shield him from the elements, he would actually be able to travel the world on that boat.
The modified mast was six meters tall and consisted of a single log standing upright. The triangular sail was expanded to the corresponding size with a capstan and pulleys befitting said size, enabling him to have a far easier time raising the sail. There was plenty of steel on the boat, including a capstan and an anchor. The sculling oar had been replaced with a rudder driven by a wheel, making the boat easier to steer.
"Now this is a single-mast sailboat that can truly go out to sea."
The vessel spirit's perception range had been extended to a five-meter radius, and this was due to the workings of the spirit vessel itself after all. With the size of the vessel increased, it was only natural that the perception range was enhanced as well. But, a five-meter radius was still far from enough, though.
Zheng Yang brought up his boat's information page and read it.
Basic Information:
Vessel: Level One Spirit Vessel
Status: Complete
Sealed Spirit: Scaly Demon Bug (larva)
Spirit Power Core: Moonlight Shell
Spirit Power Reserve: 8/100
Base Speed: 10 knots
Attack Boost: 5%
Defense Boost: 5%
Power Boost: 5%
…
Equipment Data:
Main Drive: Ball Sail, Single Mast, Triangular Sail
Auxiliary Drive: Manual Oars
Figurehead: Scaly Demon Bug
Figurehead Skill: None
Remark: … (Zheng Yang pretended that this part didn't exist)
A ball sail had been installed and was tucked away beneath the deck at the bow. He could easily raise the ball sail with the set of corresponding pulleys when the boat was sailing with the wind.
A base speed of 10 knots meant that his boat was about as fast as Hans' fishing boat. The boat was also significantly safer than it was before—so much so that it could have easily shattered the former one.
However, he was still puzzled as to how to go about evolving his boat, given that it was still a level one vessel despite all the extensive modifications.
With the sails fully lowered, he then set sail under the moonlight and headed back to the village.
A big chunk of the tip of the wreckage was gone by the time he left.
He deliberately took his time returning to the fishing village. The boat's Spirit Power Reserve was recharged to 65 percent by the time he reached home. It was already past three am, and he would surely run into some fishermen heading out to sea early if he were to drag the journey out any further. So, he took his boat to shore somewhere and willed it back into the pocket space before going home to sleep.
Like a monster, a shadow crept out of nowhere and engulfed his place.
"Here we go again."
Zheng Yang was puzzled for a brief moment before realizing what was going on.
The all-too-familiar mist and the swaying deck beneath his feet gave it away. He immediately looked at his hands and found that he was actually carrying a machete this time.
Falling to sleep with the machete in hand had indeed been the right thing to do. He'd actually brought the blade with him into his dream.
However, he still didn't understand why he'd entered the same dream again, or what his spirit vessel had to do with it.
Realizing that there was no point in mulling this over, he started to move around, slowly exploring the place. After taking over a dozen steps, he was actually able to make it out of the mist, and he could see his surroundings more clearly as a result.
He realized that he was indeed on a vessel—an extremely humongous vessel that was floating in the middle of nowhere in the ocean.
The barren mast stuck into the clouds, looking like a cross used for crucifying people. Strips of canvas were all that was left of the decayed sails that hung from the masts, and they flailed about in the wind like they were calling out to the dead. The yards on the masts were still intact, and far away, with bloody-red lamps between them, there were doors to some of the holds.
This world was seemingly bereft of any color other than the bloody light from the lamps. It was black and white, with multiple shades of grey in between.
Zheng Yang gulped at the sight.
"There's no doubt about it. This is some humongous ghost ship."
Ghostship… spirit vessel… the connection between the two made his skin creep.
At the moment, he was standing at the edge of the deck at the bow. The deck before him was so spacious that it could hold a football field. He turned around to find that the mist was nowhere to be seen. Instead, off to his side, there was a gunwale over a dozen meters away, as well as the sea beneath, which looked like an abyss.
He tightened his grip on the machete in his hand, his devil-may-care attitude giving way to a twinge of tension.