Chapter 35 - Demonstration
Brohm looked down at me, offering a warm, casual smile. "Good morning, Kyro."
"O-oh... G-good morning, Captain Brohm," I stammered, my voice squeaking.
Before my internal panic could spiral any further, Lyra walked back over. She was effortlessly balancing two steaming wooden cups of breakfast fish soup in her hands while using her legs to roll a large wooden barrel toward us, light-footedly kicking it from left to right.
"Morning, Captain," Lyra said cheerfully.
She handed me one of the soup bowls. I took it with trembling hands, grateful for the physical distraction, while Lyra skillfully tilted the barrel onto its flat side to create a makeshift table. I carefully set my bowl down on the wood as Lyra dragged another crate over to sit down next to me.
Brohm looked down at my sister. "How was your sleep?"
"It was fine," Lyra lied smoothly, taking a quick sip of her soup before pointing a spoon toward the back of the ship. "Say, have you seen Grandpa? I haven't seen him yet this morning."
"Well," Brohm chuckled, gesturing behind her with a casual flick of her thumb, "he's acting as the captain for a little while."
Lyra peeked her head sideways, and I turned my gaze to the left. Sure enough, high up on the quarterdeck stood Grann. He was gripping the massive wooden steering wheel, his weathered face set in a stern, commanding expression as he stared out over the vast ocean.
"Huh. Strangely, it kinda fits him," I muttered, watching the old man look surprisingly badass against the morning sky.
"Hah! He really does, doesn't he?" Brohm laughed.
She gently stepped back, and I felt the comforting, pillow-like pressure leave the top of my head. My brain, fully suffering from the ridiculous impulses of a physical child combined with the deeply starved soul of a forty-seven-year-old virgin, felt a sudden, hilarious wave of disappointment.
Brohm pulled up a third crate and sat right down between us. She left her oversized brown coat draped over my shoulders, which I snuggled into gratefully. I focused entirely on my fish soup, closing my eyes and desperately trying to shove my deep urges into a dark corner of my mind.
"Kyro," Brohm started, her voice dropping into a tone of genuine curiosity. "I didn't know you were a mage. The first Mandate to ever wield magic, it seems."
My eyes snapped open, and my gaze involuntarily landed right on her jiggly chest. I choked on a sip of soup, coughing violently to clear my throat.
"U-uh," I gulped, wiping my mouth with the sleeve of her coat. "Y-yeah! I am a mage!"
Brohm clearly noticed where my eyes had drifted. A slow, highly mischievous smirk spread across her beautiful face, and she leaned in close, bringing those massive assets of hers right into my field of vision.
"You can touch me if you want," she purred, her voice dripping with playful temptation.
My mind completely spiraled. My cheeks burned so hot I was certain steam was about to start escaping my ears.
Don't do it, Paul! the logical adult voice in my head screamed. She is a demon! The moment you touch her with even a shred of sexual intent, she will literally siphon the lifespan right out of your soul! It is a trap!
But my physical, stupid seven-year-old hand had already formed a mind of its own. As if pulled by an invisible magnetic force, my right hand unconsciously started drifting toward her chest.
CLACK!
"Ow!" I yelped, pulling my hand back.
Lyra had brought her metal spoon down in a lightning-fast strike, snapping it right across my knuckles. She glared fiercely at Brohm, crossing her arms over her chest. "Hey! Stop doing that to him!"
Brohm threw her head back, letting out a booming, theatrical laugh. "HAHAHA! It's always fun to mess with boys. They make great meals." She paused, turning her eyes back to me with a wicked wink. "Literally."
I swallowed hard, clutching my smarting knuckles. "W-what do you actually want...?" I asked, taking a defensive, protective sip of my soup.
"Heh," she smiled, her amusement softening into something a bit more genuine. "I guess I just wanted to confirm it for myself. That's all. Grann has been bragging about you non-stop, you know?"
I blinked, raising a skeptical eyebrow. "R-really? Grandpa was bragging about me?"
"Mhm," she nodded, her eyes twinkling with a sudden, playful spark. "Well, how about you try and show me a demonstration? C'mon, now, don't be shy."
"Uh... yeah, sure, no problem," I muttered, trying to sound a lot more confident than I actually felt. I looked around the makeshift table barrel and spotted an empty clay mug sitting nearby. "Pass me that mug. I'll fill it with water."
She nodded, walking over to grab the mug before placing it right in front of me. I held my small palm over the rim, taking a slow, steady breath as I began to channel my mana.
It really was a pain that water wasn't my natural affinity. In this life, my strong suits were strictly Geo, Fire, and Wind. Water felt clumsy to mold, like trying to sculpt dry sand with my bare fingers.
Plop.
A perfectly formed sphere of cool water manifested right beneath my palm, hovering for a split second before dropping into the mug, filling it to the very brim.
"Oh!" Brohm's eyes widened in genuine surprise. "So you really are a mage!"
She picked up the mug, swirled the liquid around, and took a deep, testing gulp. "It tastes completely fresh, too. No sea salt at all."
"Well, yeah," I sighed, rubbing the back of my neck. I really didn't like using water magic. Because it wasn't an element I had a natural affinity for, it drained my mana reserves nearly twice as fast as any of my other spells. The only reason why I demonstrated it is because it is something you can consume, and I'd prefer to not waste anymore--
She smacked her lips, placing the empty mug back down, and turned her gaze back to me. "Honestly, though... I expected a little more from what Grann was hyping up," she shrugged, a tiny, teasing smirk playing on her lips. "Well, I suppose you are still just a little kid, so I can't really blame you for keeping it simple."
..mana.
My pride, stubbornly clinging to the remnants of my adult ego, took immediate offense. "You expected more? What do you mean by that?"
"Well," she smiled, leaning down so her face was level with mine, "how about trying to shoot a massive fireball? Can you actually do something like that?"
"Yeah!" Lyra interjected, her eyes suddenly sparkling with excitement as she nearly choked on her soup. "Make it explode, too! A really big, loud one!"
"I... uh... I have tried making a fireball before," I stammered, suddenly feeling put on the spot. "But making it massive? That is an intermediate-level spell. When I conjure it, it usually has a fixed, standard size that matches my current limits."
I looked up, only to catch the slight, disappointed droop in Brohm's expression. The sheer disappointment on her face was almost painful to look at.
I sighed, defeated. "But... I guess it wouldn't hurt to try."
Brohm's entire face lit up instantly. "That's more like it!" She stood up, walking to the edge of the ship and pointing out toward the empty, blue horizon. "Try shooting it over there, away from the sails."
I nodded, pushing the warm coat off my shoulders and walking over to the wooden railing. I took a deep, steadying breath, trying to clear my mind.
Truth be told, ever since we set sail for the Demon Continent, I hadn't practiced my magic at all. My mind had been completely occupied by other things: trying to adjust to my surroundings, daydreaming about an advanced alchemy book I was dying to read, and, most terrifyingly, the knowledge that a gargantuan sea monster was lurking in these very waters. The memory of that massive, half-eaten megalodon carcass, which was practically the size of our entire ship, still made my stomach turn.
But I pushed those paralyzing fears deep down into the recesses of my mind, focusing entirely on the warmth of my mana pool.
Fireball.
Usually, the standard fireball spell naturally manifested behind the caster's body or above, for unknown reason. But I didn't want to accidentally set the wooden deck or my sister on fire, so I consciously altered the structure of the spell. I injected a specific, guiding intent into my mana, forcing the heat to manifest directly in front of my outstretched palm, just like the time back at the Bandit Incident.
Make it bigger...
I wondered if simply dumping more fuel into the spell would work, similar to how I used Gale when I first beat Lyra. Gale is an intermediate spell, similar to Fireball, so I guess the feeling wasn't as unfamiliar as I thought. I began to pour small, controlled increments of mana into the forming spark, gradually ramping up the output.
The moment I opened my eyes, my breath caught in my throat.
The fireball had grown into a roaring, crackling sphere of orange-red flame that was easily large enough to swallow my entire body. The ambient heat was immense, and I could actively feel the skin on my fingertips beginning to blister and sting.
Crap! This is way too big!
Behind me, the entire deck had gone completely quiet. Brohm, Lyra, and the rest of the crewmates were staring in absolute awe at the miniature sun hovering at the edge of the ship.
With a desperate grunt, I thrust my hand forward, releasing the spell before it could singe my eyebrows off.
PHEW~~!
The massive sphere of fire shot through the air, cutting a scorching path across the sky.
BOOM!
A thunderous explosion detonated in the far distance, sending a violent shockwave rippling across the surface of the water and kicking up a spray of mist.
Brohm watched the dissipating smoke, her expression completely transformed into one of genuine, deep respect. "Impressive. Very impressive."
Behind her, the rough sailors broke out into loud, rowdy cheers, clapping each other on the back.
"YEAH!" Lyra grinned, jumping up and down on her crate. "There's the explosion! That was awesome!"
I tried to offer a smug, victorious smile, but the moment the adrenaline faded, my vision suddenly went completely blurry. My knees began to shake like jelly. Every single drop of my mana had been violently vacuumed out of my body to fuel that single stunt.
The world tilted sideways.
Thud.
My head hit the hard wooden floorboards of the deck, and my consciousness began to rapidly slip away.
"Kyro?!" Lyra's voice was suddenly frantic.
Through my half-lidded eyes, I saw her scramble off her crate, kneeling down right next to my head. Brohm was right behind her, her bare feet stepping on the wood as she hurried over.
"Hey, you good?" Lyra asked, her brow furrowing with genuine worry.
"Uh... huh...?" I mumbled, my tongue feeling like lead. That single spell had left my internal reservoir dry.
Brohm let out a rich, booming laugh, though her eyes were soft. "That was better than I expected! Now," she said, leaning down and easily lifting my limp, tiny body off the deck. She draped me over her shoulder like a sack of grain. "Let me do the honors of taking you back to your room. That stunt clearly drained every bit of juice you had."
"Right... thanks..." I muttered, my head resting against her shoulder. The comforting scent of her skin and sea salt washed over me again. "You smell really good..." I whispered, completely filtering out the fact that I was talking to a terrifying demon captain before my mind finally went pitch black.
Lyra stood on the deck, watching Brohm carry her unconscious little brother down the hatch.
Seeing the sheer, raw power I had just displayed didn't make her feel insecure. Instead, it lit a raging, competitive fire deep within her chest. If her tiny, quiet little brother could summon a miniature sun, she wasn't about to let herself be left behind in the dust.
She whipped her head around, her sharp yellow eyes locking onto a massive figure sitting nearby.
"Uncle Scrotus!" she called out, marching over to his table. "Do you know how to sword fight?"
Scrotus, a rugged, heavily scarred barbarian crewmate, paused mid-bite. He set his wooden bowl of fish soup and rice down on the table, swallowing his food with a heavy gulp. He looked down at the fiery blue-haired girl, a slow grin spreading across his weathered face.
"Of course I do, little lady," he rumbled, his voice like grinding stones. "A barbarian must know how to wield a sword if they want to survive even a single day on the Demon Continent."
Lyra crossed her arms defiantly, tilting her chin up. "Then I want to spar with you."
Scrotus blinked, clearly amused.
"You saw what my little brother can do," Lyra declared, her voice firm and filled with absolute determination. "And I am absolutely not about to be left behind by a nitwit!"
Scrotus let out a hearty, low chuckle, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Oh? Is that so? Alright, kid. Once I finish up my morning chores, I'll gladly humor you."
***
Two hours slipped by, and the heavy darkness finally let go of my mind.
I slowly cracked my eyes open, instantly regretting the decision. My head felt infinitely worse than it had before I passed out. Waking up, eating a rushed breakfast, and immediately blowing your entire mana reserve on a flashy intermediate spell is apparently the magical equivalent of chugging cheap tequila on an empty stomach. It was like the mother of all hangovers combined with a severe case of oversleeping. My skull felt like it was trapped in a tightening vice.
"Ugh... this head is absolutely killing me," I groaned, pressing the heels of my palms into my temples and massaging them in a desperate bid for relief.
"ZZzzzzzzz."
I flinched at the sudden, rattling sound, cutting my eyes over to the opposite bunk. Grann was dead to the world, snoring loudly enough to shake the dust from the ceiling beams.
As my brain slowly booted back up, the memories of the early morning came rushing back in a horrifying wave. I had just conjured a fireball twice the size of my own body and chucked it out into the open ocean. And it had detonated with a massive, echoing boom.
A cold sweat suddenly broke out across my neck. Sound travels incredibly fast and far through water. What if that massive explosion had just acted like a giant dinner bell for the colossal sea monster lurking in these waters? What if it was swimming toward us right now?
Panic entirely overriding my headache, I scrambled out of the bunk, tore the cabin door wide open, and rushed up the stairs to the deck.
The bright morning sun hit my eyes, forcing me to squint. To my surprise, the crew looked entirely relaxed. Sailors were lounging against the railings, casually chatting, though their eyes still rhythmically scanned the surrounding waters. A few feet away, the rhythmic clack-clack-clack of wooden swords echoed through the air—Lyra and Scrotus were already hard at work sparring, wood meeting wood in a flurry of dust and sweat. She was too focused, she didn't even notice me.
Near the center of the deck, Captain Brohm was sitting on a crate, casually running a whetstone down the edge of her sword. Right beside her sat a shallow wooden bowl filled with a repulsive, thick green goop that smelled like rotting vegetation and copper.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and jogged straight toward her. "Captain Brohm!"
She looked up from her blade, her black eyes tracking my frantic approach. "Oh, you're finally awake. Good morning, sleepyhead." She went right back to drawing the stone across the steel.
"Brohm!" I stopped right in front of her, trying to catch my breath. "I—I'm sorry I passed out earlier, I completely overdid it. But what about the monster? The explosion from my fireball... what if it attracted whatever is out there?"
"Relax, Kyro. It's fine," Brohm said, her voice completely unbothered. "Grann told me that Krakens only hunt under the cover of night, or when a massive storm rolls in."
I quickly looked up at the sky. It was a perfectly clear, beautiful morning without a single dark cloud in sight. I let out a long, ragged sigh of relief, my shoulders sagging.
Then, my brain actually processed the word she had just used. My head whipped back toward her so fast I almost whiplashed myself. "Wait... a KRAKEN?!"
"Yep." She turned the sword over, inspecting the edge in the sunlight. "Grann said it was definitely a Kraken that hunted down that massive shark we passed."
I dragged a nearby empty crate over and collapsed onto it, my knees still feeling a bit weak from the lingering mana exhaustion. "How can he be so certain? It's not like any of us actually saw the damn thing."
"He could smell the oil from its skin on the water," she replied simply, never breaking her rhythm with the whetstone. "Out here on the open sea, Kyro, sometimes you just have to trust the instincts of the people around you."
I swallowed hard, staring down at my boots. As a former NEET shut-in, I had watched countless anime and survival movies. I knew exactly what a Kraken was capable of. My mind automatically filled with vivid, terrifying images of massive, prehistoric tentacles wrapping around the hull of a wooden ship, snapping the thick masts like toothpicks and dragging the entire crew down into the freezing, crushing depths of the abyss without a shred of effort.
"H-how do we even fight something like that?" I asked, my voice dropping to a tense whisper.
Brohm paused her sharpening, turning her gaze directly to me. "Simple. Fire magic stones."
She pointed her blade toward an open wooden crate nestled near the main mast. Inside, stacked neatly together, were a dozen heavy, fist-sized stones that looked like chunks of solid, glowing magma. Vibrant red veins pulsed slowly beneath their rocky surface, and a single, intricate rune was carved deeply into the center of each one.
"We load those bad boys into the cannons," Brohm explained, gesturing toward the iron barrels lining the sides of the ship, "and we light the fuse. The moment they hit the target, they trigger an explosion every bit as violent as that fireball you whipped up earlier. Grann says fire is its absolute greatest weakness. It hates the heat."
"Oh... okay. Cool. Cool, cool, cool," I muttered, exhaling a shaky breath. It wasn't a perfect guarantee, but knowing we had heavy artillery capable of blasting a sea monster to pieces made the tight knot in my chest loosen up a fraction. "How much longer until we actually reach the Demon Continent anyway?"
Brohm shifted her attention back to her blade, carefully dipping the edge into the foul-smelling green goop. "Based on the wind currents we've been catching since dawn, it should only take us about one more day to make landfall." She looked up, offering a reassuring smile. "We're incredibly close. Luckily for us, the Kingdom of Template is the absolute closest territory to the Demon Continent. If you were trying to make this trip from a place like Varellos, it would easily take you two full years of sailing just to see the shoreline of Zintar."
The sheer scale of this world still baffled me, but the sudden, pungent odor radiating from her sword quickly brought me back to reality. I pinched my nose shut with two fingers, grimacing. "Ugh, that awful smell.."
"It's just Schomper's Venom," she said lightly, completely unbothered by the stench. "We extracted it from a carnivorous plant native to the swamps back in the Kingdom of Querradia. It's incredibly potent stuff and incredible expensive. A single nick from a blade coated in this, once it gets inside the bloodstream, is enough to completely neutralize a full-grown dragon."
"Querradia?" I repeated, leaning forward slightly. "Isn't that place located inside the Demon Continent?"
Brohm let out a soft, amused chuckle. She stood up from her crate, carrying her freshly coated weapon past me over to a nearby drying stand. Other swords were already resting there, their dark steel catching the morning sun as the venom slowly baked and dried onto the metal.
She placed her hands on her hips, turning her head to look at me with a playful, teasing smirk. "You really do ask a whole lot of questions, don't you, kid? What is this, an interrogation? Am I being audited?"
"N-no..." I stammered, my cheeks growing slightly warm as I immediately shrank back into my defensive shell. I looked down at the wooden deck, suddenly worried I had crossed a line. "Never mind. I can stop asking if it's annoying. It's just... I guess it's a habit."
I turned my gaze out toward the endless, sparkling horizon, the sheer vastness of the ocean making me feel incredibly microscopic.
"Traveling to an entirely unknown location... it's already a massive step for me," I admitted softly, the heavy weight of my past life's anxieties leaking into my voice. "Honestly, this is the very first time I've ever been this far outside my village. There are just so many things I don't know about this world. And... I guess I'm just really worried about my future. About what's going to happen to me."
Brohm's teasing smirk completely melted away. She walked back over to me, her heavy boots quiet against the wood, and reached out to gently ruffle my messy blue hair. Then, she dropped down, squatting right to my eye level.
"Heh," she shrugged, her eyes filled with maternal warmth I hadn't expected from a hardened demon captain. "I know we've only known each other for a few days, Kyro, but I can already tell you're a remarkably curious kid. You think way too much."
I looked directly into her eyes, caught completely off guard by the lack of judgment in her voice.
She stood back up, her usual cheerful, high-energy demeanor returning in an instant as she stretched her arms toward the sky.
"Besides, there's absolutely no point in stressing about your future right now. You're only seven years old!" She walked over to the wooden railing of the ship, leaning her back against it and looking out over the water. "Leave the heavy worrying to the adults, kid. For now, just focus on the present. Enjoy the sunshine."
For a second, my mind rolled her words around. A small, involuntary smile tugged at my lips, but the warmth vanished the instant a sharp, uninvited memory of my past life flashed behind my eyes.
The shame settled into my chest like lead, and my smile died. I lowered my head, staring blankly at the wooden crate.
Brohm seemed to notice the sudden, heavy shift in my posture. She let out a soft, silent shrug and casually strolled up behind me. I was so busy drowning in my own existential dread that I didn't even register her movement until a massive hand suddenly fisted into the back of my collar, yanking me clean off the crate like a stray kitten.
"W-what are you doing?!" I stuttered, my legs dangling uselessly in the air.
That's when I noticed a massive shadow blocking out the morning sun. Two powerful, leathery purple wings had unfurled from her back, stretching wide against the bright sky.
"I'm going to show you a closer view of the skies and the seas," she grinned, her scarred face twisting into a bright, utterly genuine expression. "Hopefully, that'll clear that overthinking out of that heavy head of yours."
"W-wait! Hold on—!"
Before I could even complete a sentence, her massive wings snapped downward with a violent, booming Fwoosh.
WHOOSH.
"WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
The wind violently slammed into my face, stealing the air right out of my lungs as we rocketed straight into the sky. Brohm laughed, pulling me tightly against her with one arm to keep me secure as the ship rapidly shrank into a tiny toy below us. Her orange bandana and long, reddish-brown hair whipped wildly in the gale.
We punched straight through a low-hanging cloud. For a few seconds, the world went completely white, and a biting chill washed over us. When we popped out the other side, my clothes were damp—a cold reminder from my old high school science classes that clouds were, in fact, just freezing water vapor.
Brohm caught a thermal and hovered in place, her wings beating slowly. I made the absolute mistake of looking down. The ocean was a vast, glittering blueprint, and our ship looked like a literal splinter on the water.
"We're so far up! Holy sh—"
Brohm didn't even let me finish my swear word. Her black eyes flashed with pure mischief, and she tilted her head back. "Hold on tight, kid!"
And then, she went into a dead vertical dive.
My stomach violently shoved itself into my throat. Terrified out of my god-given mind, my hands flew out and grabbed onto the first solid thing they could find—which happened to be a firm, desperate double-handful of her massive chest. But there was absolutely zero sexual intent in my soul right then; I was entirely, fundamentally occupied by the feeling of terror of plummeting to my death. Because my thoughts were 100% pure survival, her passive life-siphoning magic didn't even tickle my soul.
The wind roared in my ears, blurring my vision as the ocean rushed up to meet us at a terminal pace. Just when I thought we were going to splatter across the water, Brohm snapped her wings open, leveling us out a mere two feet above the surface.
SWOOSH!
We skimmed across the waves, kicking up a high, dramatic trail of sea spray behind us. Brohm giggled, a wild, free sound, and stretched her free hand downward, letting her fingers slice through the cool water.
I watched the spray fly off her fingertips, completely mesmerized. Slowly, the paralyzing terror faded, replaced by a strange, soaring rush of adrenaline. I cautiously loosened my death grip on her shirt and stretched my own small hand downward, mimicking her. The sea water stung my fingertips, but it felt incredibly alive.
I looked up at Brohm. The morning sun caught the sharp angles of her face, and she was smiling—not a teasing smirk or a scary demon grin, but a look of pure joy.
Strangely enough, the heavy knot of anxieties, past-life regrets, and future fears that usually choked my brain just... melted away like butter on a hot skillet. Her smile was completely infectious.
A laugh bubbled up in my chest, and I began to smile too. A real, genuine smile. Not the quiet, satisfied smirk I got whenever I stumbled upon a rare alchemy book in the study, but something entirely different. It didn't necessarily feel better, it just felt... brand new. Like I was actually occupying my own skin for the first time. And I liked it. I really, really liked it.
"YEAH!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, a massive grin breaking across my face.
Brohm let out another booming laugh, her purple wings flapping hard as she pulled us up into a steep climb, launching us into a series of wild, dizzying mid-air flips that left the ocean spinning beautifully beneath us.
[End]