Chapter 10: Of Course!

“The entire ship should be safe.

Cang Xu coughed as he leaned against a wall.

He was still in poor health.

Going into battle like this would only cause trouble for the others.

Thus, he wasn’t in a hurry to leave the room.

A moment later, he began to inspect his body.

His body had been transformed by necromancy, and once laid between life and death. But now, the balance had been broken and his body was on the edge of crumbling altogether.

Death was ascendant while life was firmly suppressed.

Due to that fact, Cang Xu’s body smelled more like a corpse.

Of course, Cang Xu was not about to sit and allow this to continue, thus he immediately started to deal with it.

The edge of life and death transformation was something he slowly created with his limited necromancy inheritance. Since it was his own personal achievement, he was very familiar with it and had a deep understanding of the process.

In only a short period of time, Cang Xu completely recuperated and once again established an equilibrium between life and death.

His body’s deathly foul odor quickly diminished.

After stabilizing his situation, Cang Xu examined his magic power reservoir.

All magicians had their own magic power reservoir.

In the prior battle, Cang Xu had emptied his magic power reservoir, yet now he had restored most of it.

“The magic power recovery drug I used was of inferior quality, at most it only restored 30% of my magic power.”

“The room’s alchemy formation should have been the thing to regenerate it to this degree.”

He then inspected his human skin storage bag.

The storage bag looked like skin sewed to his chest, both hiding it and making spells convenient to cast.

In the storage bag, there were 3 blue inferior magic power restoration potions left.

Ever since he had been a fugitive on the run, Cang Xu had only ever had these bottles.

Apart from those, there was also some food, water, clothes, and other miscellaneous items.

Cang Xu’s most important items were spell materials.

Dead Sea shell fragments, grimacing lonely wood, ghost spire legs…

The first two were the main materials used to cast Wave of Death, while the last one was the main catalyst to cast the Junior Soul Summoning Spell.

Originally, there weren’t many of them, but after the battle, they were in seriously short supply.

Cang Xu’s brows wrinkled.

These spell materials were rarely replenished.

“Regardless of whether it is Wave of Death or the Soul Summoning Spell, I only have enough materials to cast one of each.”

Spells needed sorcery materials.

Of course, they weren’t completely necessary.

The principle of magic was very simple, it needed a spell model plus magic power.

If both requirements were met, then one didn’t need magic materials to successfully cast spells.

But during actual combat, almost all magicians used magic materials to cast spells.

Spell materials were very practical.

On the one hand, they could help a magician construct a magic model, on the other hand, it could also help one supplement much of their magic power.

Wave of Death was such a spell.

The main components were the Dead Sea shell fragments and the grimacing lonely wood.

In the Dead Sea, every once in a while, naturally occurring waves of death left vestiges on the shellfish living there.

Grimacing lonely wood is a type of magic plant, in times of peril, the human face on the surface of its crest will screech, creating a spell-like Wave of Death.

Without these two materials, Cang Xu would have needed ten times the magic power and eight times the time to create the model to cast the spell.

If Cang Xu had the above spell efficiency, he couldn’t have aided Deep Sea Monster Fish in time when they were besieged by the school of fish.

By the time he was only half way done, the Deep Sea Monster Fish would have been skewered and schools of fish would have flooded in.

“I must replenish my materials as soon as possible.”

Cang Xu sighed to himself, and felt awkward.

Necromancy had both its advantages and disadvantages as the newest school of magic.

The greatest advantage was the other schools of magic were ill suited to and hadn’t yet developed ways to counteract necromancy.  For example, take the previous battle. Cang Xu was an iron level magician, yet he could easily penetrate the hull of a gold level enchanted ship. If it were fire or lightning magic, the spells would be intercepted by the hull.

But likewise, there were many problems too.

One of them was spell materials.

More developed schools of magic could easily replenish their casting materials. The world markets for them were immense.

But spell materials for necromancy were difficult to find.

Necromancers often needed to gather them themselves.

Besides spell materials, there was also magical equipment.

Necromancy magician staves, gowns, and more usually needed to be self-made, and were extremely difficult to purchase in the marketplace.

Cang Xu was like this, he had neither staff nor gown.

He didn’t know how to make them, nor did he have the alchemy attainment to design one.

“If I had a staff or a grimoire, I wouldn’t have over casted and fallen unconscious.” Cang Xu sighed, he had always longed for such magical equipment.

After replenishing his magic power and making sure his body was normal, Cang Xu opened the cabin door and left the sailor room.

As soon as he looked out of his room, he saw that two alchemy puppets had been standing by the door for quite a while.

These two alchemy puppets were humanoid shaped, they wore a shield and a sword at the waist, and the armor they wore was stylized with clouds of eastern design. After sensing the quiet movement behind them, the two puppets turned around as one and looked at Cang Xu, saying at the same time, “Lord Cang Xu, I am Sword Guard 5(6). The captain left a message for you. After you have awakened, he asks that you proceed towards the dining hall, he is holding a victory feast there.”

“It seems Zi Di had a bountiful harvest, these two puppets must be from the Deep Sea Monster Fish, she must’ve enabled them.” 

Cang Xu understood everything clearly.

He was not surprised.

Magic ships usually had internal security to respond against enemy boarders.

These two sword guards were clearly of War Merchant’s design.

Cang Xu left for the dining hall.

As he gradually approached, he began to hear bouts of cheers and laughter.

His heart couldn’t help but feel pangs of nervousness.

As a living corpse, his mood never wavered from its impartial calm, any swings in mood from was a rare occurrence.

The spurt of nervousness caused Cang Xu to clutch his clothes.

His plain clothes consisted of scholarly garb and a pair of spectacles on his nose that had been repaired a while ago.

This was a small magician’s ploy.

His beard was snow-white, no longer grey and knotted as it was on Mystifying Monster Island.

He had a thin and tall stature, and his wrinkled face did not make him feel decrepit, but rather it seemed to contain his knowledge and wisdom.

His gaze was very tranquil, his appearance aloof, and his face expressionless.

The dining hall door suddenly opened, the laughter inside suddenly magnified as someone walked out with a very red face and a body that stank of wine.

He was about to urinate when he suddenly saw Cang Xu and immediately stared at the latter.

His smile rapidly dwindled, replaced by amazement, reverence, and suspicion.

But that lasted but a moment, and he quickly covered it up as he bowed to Cang Xu and frantically said, “My Lord, you’re awake? Everyone will be overjoyed to see you.”

Cang Xu nodded to him, but didn’t say anything.

The thread of nervousness was suddenly obliterated as Cang Xu walked past the person with a blank face, opened the cabin door, and strode inside.

The survivors shifted their eyes toward the opening door and when they saw Cang Xu, their laughter trailed off.

When Cang Xu looked at one of them, they would unconsciously avert their eyes.

The ghostly Zi Di smiled and nodded to him.

Zong Ge looked into the wine cup he was holding.

“Everyone, our hero has arrived.”  The young captain laughed loudly as he traversed the crowd.

He came to Cang Xu and excitedly clapped both hands on Cang Xu’s biceps. 

Then, standing side by side with Cang Xu, he faced everyone else.

With a powerful grip, he raised the necromancer’s frail hand up and loudly declared, “This is the star of our feast, tonight we shan’t be sleeping sober!”

Lan Zao was the first to respond. The sailor gave out a burp, revealing his brashness.  

Soon after, sounds of praise and laughter rose once again and filled the narrow dining hall.

A long forgotten sense of warmth and emotion as hot as the young captain’s hand on Cang Xu’s shoulder shot through Cang Xu’s heart.

But on the surface, he still remained calm.

Zi Di floated over to commend him, “Lord Cang Xu, thanks to you, we have a bountiful harvest.”

Zong Ge remained silent, but nodded to Cang Xu.

Although the half beastman was wary of the necromancer, he did not have a narrow heart and Cang Xu’s merits could not be denied. 

“I wouldn’t dare claim credit, everything happened because of the Lord Captain’s leadership.” Cang Xu showed the smile typical of a noble’s steward.

“Hehehe!” The young captain laughed loudly.

The feat had very fine food, this was because after the ghostly Zi Di took control of the Deep Sea Monster Fish, she noticed there were additional stores of food and wine onboard.

Typical provisions for War Merchant were extraordinary to normal folk.

Then, just as the young captain had said, tonight no one was sleeping sober.

But no matter how delicious the delicacies were, all of it was tasteless to Cang Xu. His calm attitude found it difficult to find purchase in the others nearby. As a scholar and a necromancer, Cang Xu began to retreat to a corner of the room.

He had performed a great deed in the battle, but he was not the leading figure of it.

That would be the young captain, he was the one socializing with the people, he was the one chatting with them, drinking with them, and singing shoulder to shoulder with them.

Cang Xu quietly watched with a calm heart and a gaze filled with admiration.

“He is an outstanding leader. Our greatest fortune!” Cang Xu stated to the floating Zi Di.

“Of course!” Zi Di agreed without the slightest hesitation.

Many people in the world would have found the following scene fictitious.

In the small dining hall, there were ten people. Among them were a half beastman and a goblin conversing as equals, and a necromancer and a ghost being treated as normal fellows. In a nearby door, there was a large man was curled up, a human and a giant hybrid. He was giggling, yet was not discriminated against.

This celebratory feast was not much different from the one on Mystifying Monster Island, but Cang Xu understood that the young captain had only achieved this through relentless work!

After leaving behind the unusual environment of Mystifying Monster Island, everyone had regained their battle qi, magic power, rank, and lineage. The things all races valued.

These differences were cracks that threatened to shatter this group apart.

But fortunately, these companions followed the same leader.

A transforming monstrous young knight.

He had strove to unite them all.

There was no doubt that it hadn’t been without its incomparably arduous challenges.

It had been far more difficult than what Cang Xu had faced when dealing with the sailfish school.

Because the problem was the vast chasms between the hearts of men.

Only an excellent leader with discernment, bravery, and resolve like the young knight could cross it.

“You know what? Compared to what he looks like now, I actually preferred it when he was donning the forms of beasts.” Zi Di exposed her inner desires to probe Cang Xu.

Cang Xu smiled, and without the slightest hesitation, echoed her words, “Of course!”