Panicked, I raced through the jungle and dove into the river, only to find the Moontear was truly gone.
I remained stunned in the water for far too long. My lungs began to burn and my eyes began to bulge, forcing me to race into the reeds to pluck one in my mouth and have the ambient mana take hold of it, transforming the water that flowed through it into breathable air.
With several deep breaths taken, my nerves were thoroughly calmed, allowing my thoughts to return to those memories and visions while my senses latched on to that familiar something. In doing so, I felt the eldritch mana within me gather around my hands and feet in ways that propelled me downriver.
After a few hours and more encounters with dangerous beasts, I found her. However, the Moontear was… different. Alive.
She still had the shape that made her namesake. She was still like a teardrop laid on its side. Only, she no longer sat on the water. She stood above the land, supported on four wide flippers of metal. A hard shell covered her back, yet she was… amorphous. Misty. Thus I could see the flybridge and decks I was familiar with hiding beyond the veil.
Moreover, the tapered bow was the same, yet was now extended, with a bulbous pod at the front that looked at me with two circular windows before a seamless maw lowered, revealing stairs and a hefty metal door.
As I stepped inside, lights began to pop up all across my vision. Not from Mani, however. From the Industry tab in NoxNet.
{Vessels Connected: 1/2: Beta-Class Uma, Model: Misty Shell Sky Turtle: Moontear Mk III. 2/2: Alpha-Class Uma, Model: Sky Dolphin: Moonsliver Mk II.}
I could not believe my eyes. Everything about the ship was the same, yet different. It was still 41 meters long with a beam of 14, but only when the head was extended. It still had my cabin, an officer's rec room, and the bridge on the flybridge. But everything was protected beneath a shell of mist.
The main deck still boasted the galley, mess hall, saloon, and quartermaster's suite. However, they had all been connected into a streamlined chain that began at the 'mouth' from which I entered; and so too were those connected to the lower and sub-deck.
Even the crew cabins in the lower deck were the same, yet much more elegant in their design, boasting organic-looking furniture that ranged from bone-like shelves to silver mushrooms that conjured silver screens.
The tender garage and engineering bay in the sub-deck, on the other hand, had been filled with an array of enchantments of Ed's design. In the former, forcefields kept the skiffs, grav-bikes, and sky skiffs suspended in their places while cranes of the same nature facilitated their ingress and egress. Many of them were powered by the force mana as well, if not by torch.
Torch enchantments virtually filled the engineering bay, powering everything from the forges and heaters to the ovens and 'thrusters.' As did Amun's divine mana funnel, store, and sort the resources on top of automating virtually every process in the ship.
To that end, I no longer needed the undying shadows he imposed on me and thus they were gone. Including Neil. But of course, there were others to take their place. Thus I was not alone when I emerged from the mouth of the Szoramelsa River to witness something grand.
Ships.
7 ships that dwarfed mine in terms of scale and power.
Being underwater, the first ship I saw was the closest submersible and was among the smaller ships. At 792 meters, however, it was hardly small. Moreover, it appeared like an emperor penguin in the same way mine appeared like a turtle. Albeit a penguin with a short mast protruding from its dorsal side.
Appearance aside, Baigowlah was partially surfaced next to a much larger ship. and I didn't need to surface to see whose it was. Not when I could look across the Net and see a veritable army of orcs gathered around the shores overlooking the exotic ship anchored next to Commander Lu Lu Stubs' submarine.
Naturally, she had an equally large if not larger army of goblinoids pledging their loyalty to her. But they and their ship seemed much less foreboding than that of Commandeer Sinoshk. The reason being, that she was a mind-breaking 1.4 kilometers-long crocodile.
Karanja was a saltwater crocodile of a battleship with four massive claw-like paddles at the base of a towering hull lined with 10 decks of windows. The scutes lining each side of the back and tail contained long-range spell cannons larger than those found on the Moonsliver, growing larger and longer as they reached the massive 'railgun' at the tail; making a total of 87 such guns.
To top it off, 56 vertical arcane missile launchers were contained in the two rows of smaller scutes running down the middle of the back; all while leaving enough space for a massive deck and twin bridges around the 'head.'
The next ship I saw was further in the bay, at around my depth. Peng, Commander Riptide's eel. Through my ship's eyes, I could see the ship's massive head chowing down on sunken ships while, through the Net, I could see materials and people passing down a long conduit to maintain or operate the 7 circular modules of the truss-like design. Some were scanning, others were scavenging or refining, mining, or drilling for oils. Each of them was 120 meters, making for a total length of 1.2 kilometers.
Above Peng was something a little more tame. A 1.12 kilometers-long submersible corvette that boasted many docking bays on her spotted hull. Being made from a leopard seal and affectionately named 'Labrador,' it was the perfect vessel for Commander Seadog's fast attack fleet, as that was essentially all it held.
The same couldn't be said for the many-armed behemoth floating next to it. It was a full kilometer in length but varied in width due to the many orientations the giant sea otter of a ship could position its arms. If that wasn't enough, the otter's 'stomach' was paved over with strips and fields of stone for the amphibious planes of Commander Rickety Woodgrain.
Quite fittingly, the most visually appealing ship belonged to Commander Vexx. At a meter under a kilometer, Tanstaafl wasn't the fastest on or under the water, but the swan-turned-destroyer could take to the skies quickly and fly far to deploy her marines anywhere. The biggest ship of all, however, belonged to Commander Ragnuron Stronghull.
A Stronghull he did indeed have, as his ship- his Alpha-Class Uma was made from a Stone Alligator Snapping Turtle. Now, she was both a dreadnought and a veritable dwarven mountain fortress set to drift in the sea until perpetuity; as the sole spire that protruded the waters was a whopping 1.74 kilometers in diameter, its main body was far too big to dock at any port.
Not that she needed to. With thirteen mountainous spires bordered by deep dales spread across the shell and a volcanic heart, the Sea Mountain, Oeklinge, would power through the seas for eons- or rather, under them.
Of course, I wasn't left out either. I returned to the Moonsliver to see it had not only become a Sky Dolphin but that it had grown to a length of 1.3 kilometers and surfaced itself on the choppy waters, where it was surrounded by a vast flotilla of ships that ranged from fishing boats and merchant ships to naval flagships.
It seemed Amun altered my advertisement a little. Or at the very least, made sure the appropriate people saw it and were guided to me or the other commanders.
As things went, we spent two weeks in the Great Bay of Ligin, with the advertisement being in effect the entire time. We departed with our new crew and citizens on the 22nd of Trescia and weighed anchor far off the coast near the border of Chaulort and Rhar naught 3 days later.
Hidden beneath a misty shroud, the citizens got settled and the sailors got up to speed while the Commanders came to terms with the many toys Ed installed in our ships. Meanwhile, the Doppelgangers of Riptide and Lu Lu Stubs went forward to scout the area ahead while I backtracked to find the last monolith spotted by Mani's eye.
While it was posted on the edge of the cliff I climbed, set beyond a sacred elven forest, the monolith was the last thing I saw when I ascended. First, I saw the worlds woven by us, cascading the energy of a dozen divine worlds down the line until the lands they overlooked came into view, wherein it poured.
It poured, waking the very spirit of the lands themselves while I did as before and rubbed parchment to charcoal to copy the eclectic script.
It flooded, uplifting the spirits of sentient and beast alike while I did as before and sketched the background, foreground, skies, ground, and every minute detail of what I saw.
It swept through me and the ocean alike, influencing every aspect of our being while I did as before, and fell to the maddening whispers, visions, memories, and thoughts. Then, it faded. Yet something remained.
It remained as the mist in my mind faded to reveal the approaching sea.
It remained. Both in the seas and in me.
——
[Blessing Received: Imperial Lunarian Crown.]
[The touch of divinity that has been seeded in you has set you on the path to becoming the Emperor of the World Seas, in turn making you a sorcerer of the Silverstream that merges the fluids within and above the World Seas. So too are you capable of communing with its creatures, no matter how deep and dangerous they may be.]