Shouts filled the air of the bay as my call was repeated up and down the line of the flotilla.

  “MAN THE BALLISTA! LOAD GRAPPELS!”

  I cracked my neck back and forth as I saw the ballista teams of the Astray pick up the enormous barbed naval grappels I’d purchased for exactly this purpose. Each one was over five feet in length, with four large, curved barbs emerging from the head. Knotted tightly through a forged loop at the butt of them were long lengths of rope, wrapped tightly around a spool attached to a crank.

  With the resources available to the expedition, I’d made sure that each and every ship within it had these available for our use. These were not standard issue, even in the paradigm of modern day Veredenese naval combat.

  Oh, the way High Lord Wersk’s eyes had gleamed when I explained the idea to him. With all the combined crafting industry of Blutstein at our fingertips, it had been child’s play to outfit all five vessels had them at hand.

  The Venier ships sure as Hell didn’t have these. They probably had hand-thrown grappling hooks, but that wouldn’t help them.

  And they knew it. They may not know exactly what we were preparing, but they sure knew we were up to something. I had to fend off two more volleys from the Dwarven bowmen as our ballista teams prepared the grappel bolts.

  But that was all they managed to get off before the time came.

  “CAPTAIN!” I heard the Polaris officer I’d put in charge of the ballista teams scream over the sudden noise. Flicking my eyes their direction, I saw him pointing towards the oversized siege crossbows at the bow of the Astray. “THEY’RE READY!”

  I nodded at him and turned to face the Lancia del Mare across the gap. Somehow, I thought I was able to catch the gaze of Captain Bronzle, frantically directing his men as they prepared to face us. His eyes narrowed at me, while I…

  Just smirked at him.

  You are not prepared. I promise you that.

  I slashed my right arm down at him, in a mirror of the move he had done just minutes ago. “LOOSE!”

  My ballista Captain didn’t waste a moment. “LOOSE THE GRAPPELS!” He bellowed, much louder than I was.

  With a deep, humming twang, two enormous hooked ballista bolts flew from the siege weapons, crossing the bay in an instant. Even with the iron armored plates upon the Dwarven galleys, the steel bolts still punched straight through the hull of our target. The startled and confused screams of the Venier marines as the grappels punctured deep into the Lancia del Mare reached me even from here. Their confusion turned to dreaded realization as the ballista teams began straining against the massive cranks attached to the ballista, and the grappels…

  Snapped into place, embedding their hooks deep into their ship.

  “HEAVE!” My ballista Captain screamed over the hoots and hollers of the Astray’s crew, at our successful hooking. “HEAVE, DAMN YOU!”

  With muffled shouts, the two Strength aspected Classers assigned to each crank began to push and pull with all of their might…

  And the Astray began to move, slowly drawing closer to the Lancia del Mare every second. You see, with all of their extra weight, the armored galleys of the Venier were much heavier than any ship in the expedition flotilla. Not even the massive bulk of the White Gull was greater than the iron laden ships at least in matters of weight. Weight differential meant that instead of bringing them to us, the Astray was being moved closer to the Dwarven formation through nothing more than the power of a crank operated by strong Classers.

  What was the saying? ‘Give me a strong enough lever, and I’ll move the world?’

  Well, in this case, we were moving ships.

  All up and down the line of the flotilla this entire process was repeated, and similar grappels crossed the distance to either slam into other ships or into the Lancia del Mare. Nearly as one, all five vessels slowly began to cross the distance across the bay, driven by nothing more than pure Human might.

  I could see the rank and file of the Dwarves almost start to panic, as they realized just how outnumbered they were now that battle was inevitable. I think they weren’t actually intending to engage with us in the first place. They’d just been looking for a pretence to flee and inform the rest of their fleet about us, once we demonstrated malfeasance. After all, there were maybe…six hundred Venier marines, across all three ships? That was a maybe, too.

  That was less than half the total number of soldiers we had across the expedition flotilla.

  Still, their officers were made of sterner stuff, and they quickly shouted a spine back into their underlings. Battle lines formed across the decks of the ship closing the increasingly shorter distance between us. Soon, I was able to see the whites of their eyes, and when I did…

  I drew my own weapons. In a close-range fight like this, I think I’d go with Terractus and something new. Something I’d been dying to use in an actual fight for half a year now.

  The still-as-yet-unnamed directed energy weapon I’d picked up from the Netherim bunker underneath Mt. Gorenzan.

  In other words…my laser pistol.

  With sword in my right hand, and gun in my left, I raised my blade into the air, mimicking what I saw many of my other soldiers were doing.

  And roared.

  It was…entirely unintentional that I forgot to unbind the voice amplification Spell I’d been using to speak with Captain Bronzle. But the battle scream I loosed did its job just fine.

  My soldiers copied me, raising their blades into the sky and screaming in anticipation of the fight to come. The other ships in the flotilla, not wanting to be left out of some good old-fashioned, pre-battle intimidation, copied us. Even I had to admit the sound of fifteen hundred hardened Classers and soldiers screaming into the open air was an intimidating sound.

  Someone unexpected decided to join in, then.

  Fade.

  The Spirit wolf threw back his head and howled, louder than I’d ever heard from him before at any point in the past. Strangely enough, a second howl joined his only moments later.

  Bleddyn had abruptly burst through the doors leading to the lower decks, standing tall, bare chested, and crackling with bright yellow lightning all across his limbs. He barely looked human, and I think the only reason he hadn’t transformed was because it might spook the troops. Still, his entrance both rallied them and caused a gasp and moan of recognition from the enemy. I think they might just recognise him.

  The combined sound of both the howls and our screaming carried easily over the water, and for a moment…

  For a moment I hoped that our show of strength, combined with our obviously superior numbers, would be enough to intimidate the Venier into surrendering. There didn’t need to be a massacre today. Not if they submitted to us and made certain promises.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  We couldn’t allow word of our presence to become known to the coalition that the Savoy, Venier, and Luminari had formed. If they chose to let this come to open battle, and didn’t surrender in the next few moments…

  I was going to slaughter them all.

  Sadly, my quiet hope wasn’t realised. Captain Bronzle and his officers managed to bolster the spirits of their men, and the combined forces of the Venier patrol vessels began to show back at us, banging their maces against their shields as they did.

  I sighed in the midst of the cacophony.

  What a waste.

  And then I hardened my heard, and raised my voice as the gap between our two ships closed. It easily carried over the pre-battle howling and screaming.

  “NO QUARTER! NO QUARTER!”

  As the closet ship to the Venier, the Astray crashed into the Lancia del Mare with a crunch of wood, and the battle…

  Began.

  Together with dozens of other Classers and soldiers from the Order of the Polaris Reach and beyond, I leapt across the small gap between the two vessels. As I did, I sighted the nearest Venier marine closest to me, and lined up the iron sight of the pistol with his steel helmet.

  And pulled the trigger for the very first time.

  I thought I knew what to expect. After all, I’d seen this thing fire once by accident, back in the Netherim bunker. The beam it had loosed at that time had been thin, but strong enough to score the strange steel that those ancient people used in construction. But what I hadn’t considered was that the last shot it’d had before losing power had been weakened.

  Now, what leapt from the barrel of the energy weapon wasn’t a thin beam. It was a thick bolt of fiery hot crimson death that screamed through the air as it approached the concealed head of my target. The bolt was so fast that I think the only reason I was able to track it at all was because of my heightened Perception.

  Because the marine sure wasn’t able to react in time.

  The bolt of burning light punched straight through both the helmet and the head of the Dwarven soldier, killing him in an instant. In the split second before he slumped to his knees in death, I could see straight through his skull, the edges of his steel helmet glowing bright orange from the heat of the blast.

  Ah.

  That was…a bit overkill, I believe. Best to save those shots for when I really needed them.

  And though a few of the other marines before reacted in shocked horror at just how easily I had slain one of their comrades, they didn’t get the chance to gawk for much longer.

  The forces of the expedition crashed into them, and the world devolved into sheer chaos upon the deck of the Lancia del Mare. As I touched down upon it, my Core Lattice idly noted that the Steel Resolve had joined us upon this ship, while the White Gull had chosen to deal with the leftmost Dwarven vessel. In contrast, my Middle Lattice informed me that the right most one was being engaged by the Ashen Bride and the Thorny Reef.

  But in the meanwhile, I, as the Outer Lattice, was shearing the arm off of a screaming Venier marine with Terractus, the black and gold short sword sheathed in the near chainsaw-like effect of Grinding Crimson Sunder. I barely blinked at the blood that splattered over my white cloak from the move, and merely ended the dying Dwarf with a swipe through his steel gorget protected throat.

  The whirling crimson thorns of my secondary weapon enhancement Skill worked well dealing with armor.

  As I worked my way through the ranks of the Dwarven marines as methodically as I could, I caught rare glimpses of the individual fights going on around me. Mostly, I relied on the superior observation skills over my Core and Middle Lattices as they kept track of everyone through my blood sense.

  In one flash, I saw Maria, loosing arrows from a very familiar short bow quicker than I’d ever seen before. She was so efficient at it that nobody was ever able to take more than a single step towards her before falling over dead, an arrow suddenly jutting from a single thin eyehole in their helmet. She was the only person I’d ever seen capable of wielding a bow in melee range, and it was gratifying to see her skill hadn’t diminished since her time in the Nocturne Division.

  In another, I saw Fade, finally cutting loose as a combatant for the first time. The Spirit Wolf dashed around the battlefield that was the deck of the Lancia del Mare upon ghostly green, glowing paws. The sheer speed that he was doing so was greater than anything I’d seen from anyone short of Dexterity specialized Classers, or old monsters like Grey and Honoka. It was like he was nearly skipping through the air, gouging through armor and flesh like it was nothing more than tissue paper, red in tooth, claw, and antler. Actually…

  A better look revealed that he was pushing off of something. His paws pushed off of something I couldn’t quite see with his sheer speed, causing him to accelerate with every movement.

  My Core Lattice posited that he must be hardening the air somehow, and that…sounded possible, I suppose. A better explanation than anything else I had right now. But that wasn’t important. If I was curious, I’d just ask my Familiar later about it.

  Oh, and speaking of. Yes, yes, Fade. You can have a little bit of my Mana. My Middle Lattice handled the transfer across the Familiar bond as I focused on the battle. From what I could tell, it was going predictably well. I’m not sure if we’d suffered any casualties at all, and I believe I had Renauld to thank for that.

  The Gnollish Healer had greatly increased in both power and Skill, while I’d been mouldering away on medical rest. All of the Healing he’d done as part of the Polaris Reach hadn’t been for naught, as he took the reigns of an entire division of his own. His range, too. Anyone who took serious injuries on our side swiftly found them closed, to the dismay of the Venier marines. Luckily, it didn’t appear as if they had a Healer of their own.

  And then it was my time to shine, once more. You see, I was interested in accomplishing something. I may have told my soldiers no quarter, but there was one prisoner I was interested in taking.

  Captain Giancarlo Bronzle. After all, I was mighty interested in finding out just what was currently happening in the Principality, and as the ranking officer, he was likely to have the most intelligence on the situation.

  The Captain was up near the wheelhouse, from what I could see, and directing the battle as best he could surrounded by a guard of five marines. For a moment, I considered conscripting a nearby squad of Polaris Classers to distract them while I dealt with the Captain.

  And then Bleddyn almost literally burst through a nearby marine in a shower of blood and cut off scream. The barely concealed werewolf landed in a crouch in front of me, and I decided to take the gift horse as it was.

  “Bleddyn!” I said loud enough to be heard over the din of battle. His head snapped in my direction, and I met his suddenly lupine eyes with a smile and a nod up towards Bronzle and his escort. “Deal with the guards while I take the Captain, would you?”

  Bleddyn blinked at me for a moment and then chuckled lowly. “Just like old times, eh?”

  I smirked back at him in remembrance. “Just like old times.”

  My old friend nodded at me and then burst into a run. Like a beast, he scrabbled up the wall towards the wheelhouse and leapt over the railing with a howl. As I followed after him, taking the stares like the human I totally was, I was able to watch as Bleddyn easily drew all five of the guards away from the shouting Captain, dispatching more than one as he did so.

  Now was my chance.

  While the Captain was distracted, I burst into a run towards him, activating Might of the Wyrdwood at thirty percent as I did so. As the familiar ghost red thorns began to crawl along my body, I did several things at once. First, holstered the laser pistol and instead drew one of my daggers, holding it in my left hand. After all, I didn’t want to kill him immediately.

  Second…

  I let something deliberately fall out of my cloak, instantly lost in the din of battle.

  Somehow, someway, Bronzle must have detected my rapid approach. He oriented on me immediately and was able to interpose his halberd before him to block both Terractus and my dagger from eviscerating him. Even though his face was covered in an all-encompassing helmet, I was still able to tell just what he felt about me, as he gritted out a few short words in the space between us.

  “You…YOU…” Bronzle seethed, straining against the force of my blades.

  I just smiled at him, while someone else answered from behind his back.

  With my own voice.

  “Me,” Bait said with a victorious sneer across our features, suddenly appearing behind the Dwarven Captain.

  And then he shoved a spear through Bronzle’s stomach, showering me with even more gore.

  You see, I had realised an interesting fact some time ago. When I used Umbra Gemina Exactoris, the halving of my level only occurred in the instant that the Sprite generated from the Skill transformed into a clone of me. If either my Core or my Middle Lattice chose to jump into the Sprite without triggering the transformation, and just piloted it around until the right moment came…

  Well, that was within the boundaries of the Skill.

  Which was why I had taken to keeping a blank Sprite in one of my cloak pockets for just such an occasion. And if I just so happened to drop that Sprite before engaging an enemy…

  It could be quite effective, as this had just proven.

  Bronzle immediately weakened from his mortal injury, dropping his halberd and vomiting more blood all over me as Bait ripped our spear right out of him. He slumped to his knees, moments from death…

  And then I healed him.

  Just enough so he wouldn’t die. I had questions to ask him, after all.

  With their commander beaten, the battle on the Lancia del Mare didn’t last much longer. And judging by the cheers that erupted from the other Dwarven patrol vessels…

  Things had gone well over there, as well.

  In one fell swoop…

  We won.

  Quite easily, in fact.

  Heh.

  Not bad for someone who hadn’t fought in half a year.