Thaddues had always assumed danger would feel obvious when it finally arrived—loud, theatrical, something a sane man could point at and say there, that is the moment everything changes.
But the sea did not work that way.
Even after mastering three branches of magic, even after refining his instincts to the point where most spells felt like extensions of thought rather than effort, he had learned one simple truth: the ocean did not announce its intent. It only became it.
And today, it had become something wrong.
The air felt… wrong.
Thaddues didn't ignore that feeling.
Even with his capacity for magic—vast enough that lesser wizards might have mistaken him for a walking leyline—perhaps because he had watch many fantasy series in his past life he had learned enough to know that power did not make one immune to stupidity. Overconfidence killed more mages than curses ever did.
So before the ship crossed into the stormfront, he began to weave.
Layer upon layer of protection spread across the vessel like overlapping glass plates, reinforcing what was already in place. The ship had long been under standard protective charms, but Thaddues pushed them further—upgrading each existing layer instead of replacing them.
Protective enchantments settled over the ship's existing wards, reinforcing the wooden hull without replacing what was already there. Binding enchantments tightened through the ancient timbers until the vessel felt less like assembled planks and more like a single, unyielding structure. Wind charms refined the sails, while a deeper anchoring enchantment quietly linked every layer of magic to one fixed point.
Thaddeus himself.
The ship had not become something entirely new. It remained the same merchant vessel, only strengthened at every level. Its original enchantments still formed the foundation, each one reinforced and refined until the vessel could withstand far more than it ever had before—all anchored by the wizard who sustained it.
He didn't care how much magic it cost.
He cared that his wealth—everything he had accumulated since arriving in this era—was inside it. More importantly, he was stranded in the middle of the ocean, with nowhere to run if the sea chose to show its true nature.
When the ship finally entered the fog, it felt less like sailing into weather and more like crossing a boundary.
The world changed instantly.
Sound distorted first.
The thunder did not roll—it echoed, as if the sky itself had been hollowed out and struck like a drum. Each reverberation came delayed, layered, wrong in its timing. Then came the rain, heavy and relentless, but not falling so much as collapsing from above. The sea turned black beneath it, swallowing light until even dawn seemed hesitant to exist.
Within minutes, the horizon vanished as if someone had drawn a curtain across reality.
Thaddues remained on deck long enough to confirm what he already suspected: visibility was gone, navigation unreliable, and the storm was not natural in any conventional sense. The wind patterns alone did not make sense—they shifted direction in sharp, angular bursts, like something massive was moving through them and displacing the air.
He did not stay to observe further.
He returned below deck to the galley, where lantern light flickered against polished wood and damp metal fixtures. The ship creaked softly under pressure, but inside the enchantments held steady. The illusion of safety remained intact, even as the world outside roared like a living thing.
He prepared his dinner in the kitchen, and once it was ready, he carried it to the long table and ate in silence.
Food was routine. Routine kept the mind steady. And a steady mind made magic easier to control.
Still, the unease followed him in.
Thaddues exhaled through his nose and reached into his pocket, pulling out a vial of Calming Draught. He uncorked it and drank it in one motion.
The potion was lightly sweet, with a soft herbal warmth underneath—something like honey mixed with faint floral notes that settled gently on the tongue. It was not overpowering, but it carried a quiet soothing quality that made the body ease before the mind fully understood why.
Within moments, the tension in his chest loosened. His breathing slowed, his thoughts steadied—but the unease did not disappear completely. It was only held down, kept under control.
That bothered him more than the feeling itself.
Through the small galley window, only fragments of the sea were visible. Towering waves rose and crashed in restless succession, yet the ship barely shuddered. The enchantments woven into its hull carried it steadily through the raging water.
He leaned back slightly, letting his thoughts drift where they shouldn't.
That was when he remember he has a sign in available today.
——
[Sign in today? ]*1 avail
[Y/N]
——
Thaddues glanced at the additional information beside it—another system update he had discovered a few weeks earlier. From it, he had learned that he could stack his daily sign-in rewards instead of claiming them immediately.
He had even tested it, experimenting to see if longer stacking would improve the rewards—whether, for example, holding three days' worth would result in something stronger.
But after trying it four times, the outcome remained the same. The rewards did not improve in quality. At most, stacking only increased the quantity when claimed, which was expected and natural.
So he stopped expecting anything significant from the sign-in system. As long as it gave him something useful—a spell book, galleons, or any form of magical artifact—he considered it acceptable.
The system had been inconsistent since the day he awakened it. Sometimes it granted him life changing rewards like master cards, sometimes nothing useful at all. There was no clear structure to its behavior—only an unpredictable flow of rewards that all, however, still belonged within the world he now lived in: spellbooks, galleons, magical artifacts, and other known forms of wizarding knowledge and resources.
It felt less like a structured arcane interface and more like a capricious archive of forgotten knowledge—one that drew from the existing magical world without pattern or logic, offering rewards without clear reason or consistency.
But today…
A new sign in reward appeared before sight.
A book.
The system displayed it as a mental image, sharp and unmistakable, as if it truly existed and had been placed within reach.
——
[SIGN IN SUCCESSFUL!
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE HOST FOR OBTAING A BOOK OF SPELL!
Magick Moste Evile.]
——
——
[Claim the reward? ]
[Y/N]
——
He sat still. For a brief moment, even the roar of the storm beyond the hull seemed distant.
Magick Moste Evile.
The memory came unbidden—Marco's cluttered display back in their college boarding house, where oddities and joke props gathered dust on narrow shelves. That book had been among them: worn, theatrical, ridiculous. Marco had clutched it like a prize while cosplaying a dark lord, loudly claiming he'd forged a Horcrux… using a pair of his own rancid socks.
Back then, it had been nothing more than a joke. A prop. A fake.
Now, this was no replica. This was the real thing—ancient, dangerous, true.
A slow grin tugged at his lips, edged with disbelief and anticipation.
"Hell, yes."
Since awakening the system, he had never received anything like this.
Every reward had centered on knowledge and control—elemental manipulation, structural magic, practical utility. They expanded his capabilities, but always within clear boundaries.
Charms.
Transfiguration.
Ancient Runes.
Each demanded precision rather than destruction.
He had even begun to suspect the system was governed by its own rules, quietly steering him away from certain kinds of magic.
This reward proved otherwise.
The spellbook materialized in front of his table, almost knocking over the bowl he had used for eating.
His fingers twitched slightly against the wood. His eyes stayed locked on it.
Once he touched it—once he learned its first spell—another branch of magic would unlock within the system.
A trace of satisfaction surfaced before he mastered it.
Not joy.
Recognition.
The acknowledgment of value in the dark arts, in magic that did not pretend to be safe.
Even as he looked at it, he could feel it already, like a sealed door beginning to crack open in a pressure-tight room. Something old stirring on the other side, waiting for permission to breathe.
He reached out to open the book. However, before his fingers could make contact, the ship shuddered.
A sound tore through the air outside—sharp, violent, like reality itself being ripped under unbearable pressure.
Then came the screams.
Human screams.
Thaddues froze.
His body reacted before his mind fully caught up, instincts tightening like drawn wire. He had been alone—truly alone—for so long since his transmigration that the sound of human voices, especially in panic, struck him like a physical blow.
He stood so quickly his chair scraped harshly against the floor.
For a moment, he just listened.
Screams.
Not one voice. Multiple.
Close enough to be real. Close enough to be here.
That alone made no sense.
He moved fast.
He stepped out of the galley and onto the deck. Rain lashed across the ship, but it held firm beneath its layered enchantments. The storm had worsened. The horizon had vanished behind sheets of rain and mist, while towering waves rose around the vessel like dark cliffs.
And then he saw it. At first, it was only a silhouette in the fog.
A ship.
Massive.
A warship of unfamiliar design, built for command of the open sea rather than elegance. Its broad hull was reinforced with dark timber and iron strakes that ran along its sides like old scars, made to withstand impact instead of avoiding it.
Twin rows of oars rose and fell beneath the waves, their rhythm barely visible through the mist. Above, towering masts pierced the storm-dark sky, carrying torn sails heavy with rain and salt. A faded emblem still clung to the weathered canvas—an elongated sea creature coiled in motion. Time had nearly erased it, but its outline remained.
The vessel was easily twice the size of his own.
Yet its size was the least remarkable thing about it.
Something was wrapped around the hull.
At first, it seemed part of the ship itself, another shadow swallowed by the storm.
Then it moved.
A colossal body coiled around the warship like a living fortress, dwarfing the vessel it embraced.
There was no mistaking it now.
A kraken.
Its immense tentacles surged from beneath the waves, each thicker than the ship's masts and lined with rows of powerful suckers that clung to wood and iron alike. Dark, slick skin—almost black beneath the stormlight—glistened with seawater, as though the ocean itself had taken living form. It drew the warship into its coils with slow, crushing strength. There was nothing frantic or animalistic in its movements. Every motion was measured, deliberate.
Timbers splintered.
Decks buckled.
The warship was no longer sailing.
It was being torn apart.
Wood cracked under the relentless pressure while iron strakes groaned and twisted around the hull. The kraken wasn't trying to sink the vessel.
It was dismantling it.
Behind the monster, figures moved.
Small at this distance, little more than shifting silhouettes against the rain and fog.
Men.
Soldiers.
Even amid the chaos, their discipline remained. They struggled to hold formation across the shattered decks, flashes of steel appearing whenever lightning split the sky. Cloaks snapped violently in the wind, their insignias lost to distance and rain. Only their coordinated movements revealed they belonged to something greater than a frightened mob.
Some still fought to save the ship.
Others were already being consumed by the chaos.
Thaddues felt his breath catch.
This wasn't a storm.
It was a hunt.
The kraken tightened its coils once more.
A deafening crack rolled across the sea as the warship split down the middle. Even through the storm, he heard timber splintering and iron screaming under impossible strain.
One mast snapped and disappeared beneath the waves.
A second followed moments later.
The screams grew louder.
Thaddues stood frozen at the edge of his deck as rain swept harmlessly over the ship's enchantments. His mind struggled to accept what he was seeing.
Then, as if sensing his gaze, it stopped.
Only for a heartbeat.
Its massive body shifted within the fog.
That single movement chilled him more than the destruction itself.
It meant the creature was aware.
Thaddues took a slow step back.
The sea was no longer just water.
And whatever lurked within it...
Had noticed him.
"What the fuck," he whispered, his voice nearly swallowed by the storm.
TBC
What Thaddues had seen.... for reference. Click here.[*]
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