Ruho stood up from the bath, water dripping from his still-wet body, the towel barely secured around his waist. A surge of adrenaline and false confidence flooded through him—he had powers now, actual powers, and pirates were just humans with swords, right? How hard could this be?
"You know what?" he said, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "I can do this. I can totally do this."
He started shadow boxing, throwing jabs at invisible opponents. His right hand shot out in a quick one-two combination, then a hook, then an uppercut. The towel slipped slightly and he had to pause to readjust it, but he kept going, moving around the bathroom like he was in a boxing ring.
"Take that, pirates!" He threw a cross that would've been impressive if he had any actual boxing training. "And that!" A hook that nearly made him lose his balance. "I've got Lu Bu! I've got Killing Intent! I've got—OOF!"
He slipped on the wet marble floor, his feet going out from under him, and barely caught himself on the edge of the bath before he went down hard.
"SIT. YOUR. ASS. DOWN." Azirel's voice was sharp and commanding. "Before you hurt yourself! You're going to break something and we're all out of healing potions!"
"I'm fine!" Ruho protested, but he was breathing hard from the brief exertion and his towel had nearly fallen off completely. "I'm just... warming up. Getting ready for combat."
"You're getting ready to give yourself a concussion on wet tile," Azirel shot back. "And you're not fighting anyone until you have actual clothes. Which brings me to your next task."
"What task?"
"Go get your bloody cargo pants from wherever you left them," Azirel instructed. "Bring them to the bath. You're going to scrub them clean because apparently Vexor didn't think to stock this castle with a wardrobe and you literally have nothing else to wear."
Ruho stared at him, or at where Azirel's presence felt strongest, since the god was invisible. "You want me to hand-wash my pants. In the bath. Like some kind of medieval peasant."
"You ARE in a medieval castle," Azirel pointed out. "And yes. Because your other option is running around in a towel, and I promise you that pirates will not take you seriously if you're fighting them in bath wear."
Ruho groaned but trudged out of the bathroom, his wet feet leaving prints on the stone floor. He found his cargo pants in the entrance hall where he'd discarded them before the bath—stiff with dried blood, torn at the knees, smelling faintly of death and crocodile. He grabbed them with two fingers, holding them away from his body, and carried them back to the bathroom.
The bath water was still warm and clean somehow, the magic apparently maintaining it. He dunked the pants in and started scrubbing, his hands working the fabric to loosen the dried blood.
"This is degrading," he muttered. "I died and went to the afterlife and now I'm doing laundry by hand."
"Welcome to medieval living," Azirel said. "No washing machines. No dryers. Just you, some water, and elbow grease."
Ruho scrubbed harder, watching the water turn pinkish-brown as the blood dissolved. "You said this planet is 1.8 times the size of the sun. What does that actually mean? Like, in real numbers?"
"Oh, you want the actual math?" Azirel sounded pleased, like he'd been waiting for this question. "Okay, so here's the thing. Most people think the sun ends at the photosphere—that's the visible surface you see. But technically, the sun extends way beyond that. There's the chromosphere, the corona, all these outer layers of the solar atmosphere."
"Okay..." Ruho kept scrubbing his pants.
"When I say this planet is 1.8 times the size of the sun, I mean all the way out to the outer corona," Azirel explained. "The full extent of the solar atmosphere. So if you calculate that in square kilometers, this planet's surface area is approximately 152 trillion square kilometers."
Ruho stopped scrubbing. "Trillion?"
"Trillion," Azirel confirmed. "152,000,000,000,000 square kilometers, to be exact. Give or take a few billion. That's why Duke Noverk's Agreement being 55.4 billion square miles is considered small. In the context of a planet this size, it's tiny. A drop in the bucket."
Ruho's brain tried to process that number and failed. "That's... I can't even comprehend that. That's bigger than—"
"It's bigger than anything you've ever experienced," Azirel said. "Earth's total surface area is about 510 million square kilometers. This planet is roughly 300,000 times larger. The oceans alone could swallow a thousand Earths. The continents make Antarctica look like a backyard patio."
"And I'm on the smallest island in the smallest inhabited archipelago," Ruho said slowly.
"Which is still 7.67 million square kilometers," Azirel reminded him. "Bigger than Australia. But yeah, in the grand scheme of this world, you're in the middle of nowhere."
Ruho went back to scrubbing his pants, the reality of the situation settling over him like a weight. "Doesn't matter," he said, trying to psych himself back up. "Pirates are still just pirates. Humans with swords. I've got powers now. I can take them."
"Ruho—"
"I've got two hundred mana points!" Ruho continued, his confidence rebuilding as he scrubbed. "I've got Killing Intent! I can sense when they're coming! And I've got the Patron skill—I can literally summon legendary warriors to fight for me! The pirates don't stand a chance!"
"You have two hundred mana points," Azirel said flatly. "Which puts you at high Kappa rank."
"See? High rank! I'm—"
"High Kappa is STILL the weakest rank," Azirel interrupted. "You're still bottom tier. You've just gone from being able to fight a ten-year-old... to being able to fight a thirteen-year-old. Congratulations. That's your power level. Teenage boy."