A few days later, a traveler wearing a tattered cape and clothing entered Gold Port. His walk was alert but marred by tiredness as he stumbled his way through. His hood was up, shadowing his eyes, but a small frown of concentration was etched on his face.
As he entered town, giving a nod to the guards posted outside, he approached the well, where a young human woman was drawing water. Being the only source of non-salty water, it was pretty important.
"W-water..." he mumbled. The woman turned around, startled, and gasped at the state of the traveler. He looked burnt and dehydrated.
"R-right away, sir!" Working quickly, she offered him her bucket, of which he drank greedily like his life depended on it- which it very well might have. After he'd gulped down a fair amount, however, he turned the bucket around and dunked the rest on himself, completely soaking his clothes and drawing another gasp from the woman.
"Ahhhh..." the traveler moaned in contentment, life returning to him and his previously parched voice returning to normal. "Thank you. Here, I'll fill it again."
"Ah... sure..." the woman mumbled, looking for a bit around herself. "Uh, hunt any monsters lately? Is that why you're so... dried up?"
He paused for a moment before snorting and resuming the action of drawing water from the well. "Well, you could say that I was hunting down a monster in the Gold Volcano, yes. She won't be bothering anyone anymore." He smirked.
"Gold Volcano? That's incredible! Only dragons and fire elemental monsters live there!" The woman gushed. The traveler, previously smirking, winced for a moment, before nodding.
"Yeah... the past month has been hell for me to be honest. Could you direct me to where the wharfmaster is?." And then, a bit lower under his breath so the woman didn't hear him, he began muttering. "Nothing I said was a lie…"
"Oh! The wharfmaster is at the docks, would be a fair amount behind the old church- you can't really miss it as long as you keep going, with the sea there and all! Thank you for hunting down the monster, Hero!"
The man smirked at her, even sopping wet as he turned around.
"No need to thank me, it was nothing." And with that, he ducked into an alleyway and out of view, headed for his destination.
"I can't believe you." A voice suddenly sounded in his head, as a small, fiery figure appeared from thin air in his mind's eye, shaking her head. "Why would you just lie for some fame?"
"Well, I hunted you down- just not in the sense of killing you, you won't be bothering anyone anymore because you were not inclined to, and I did nothing about you, so it truly was nothing. You can't blame me for inconsequential things like double entendres and context..."
Salamander just huffed. "Just dry yourself up already, I'm getting chilly and I'm not even physically with you. And what's with your cheek today?"
"...I don't know. I guess I'm just in a good mood since I'm not gonna die of heat stroke anymore. Was a real scare not to find any water. Plus, I got to give the slip to the Sages." He proudly fished the Hero's Proof out of his pocket, his body briefly set ablaze for but a moment, causing the steam to evaporate.
"These things happen, especially in the vicinity of my mountain- water sources are pretty rare. And remind me again why you needed that useless trinket in the first place?"
"Well, given that the Pope-" he paused, shaking his head. "The King of San Ilia has decided to live on the other side of a mountain range from the people that are supposed to say whether someone is a 'True Hero', communications between him and them can't be very fast at all. So by stealing this- don't give me that look, they had like twenty of those- I get to go back to the King and say that I got it from them and neither will be the wiser."
"And all of this, because...?"
"The King has a pretty nifty sword infused with holy magic, from what I gathered." Salamander stared at him with a gobsmacked expression for a second. "Hey! We've gone over this- I'm not into killing monsters, but I want an effective deterrent."
Salamander shook her head. "I just can't believe that the one I contracted with is a human so... brazen. Besides, the sword I forged for you should be plenty fine for your purposes."
Noah shrugged. "It never hurts to have a spare. Besides, I never claimed to be a hero. I just want to not have to fear for my life anymore. I want to be free. And... I'd like to go home too, eventually."
"Home?" Salamander asked, but Noah shook his head.
"Maybe another time. Anyways, none of those things are going to happen if I'm dead, or forced into slavery, or worse..." his previously lighter tone turned grim at that. "So I have to be strong enough for that to happen."
"Noah..." Salamander trailed off. She wanted to tell him many things- that he'd been unlucky, that not many humans who don't explicitly look for a fight with monsters find themselves in that kind of situation, and that strength guided by fear would only turn to hate. But she could bring herself to say none of those things. Instead, eventually what she said surprised even her. "I'll be with you."
"...thank you, Salamander." He breathed in deeply, the mess of roads that was Gold Port eventually opening up into the actual wharf portion, with the ships and sailors. "Right, Port Natalia is next."
"Wouldn't it be better to go on land?" Salamander asked, shivering a little. Already she was missing the comfy, lava-filled space of her mountain. Still, she didn't dare dispel her presence from Noah's mind, if only because she didn't want him doing something suicidally stupid.
"I would, but Promestein dropped me off with no food except the stuff I ate, no water, and besides, I can't ride things, be they horses or camels."
"Or women." Noah groaned at her little quip. "Seriously though, what are you going to do then?"
"Check out the first ship headed for Natalia, become a stowaway, chuck gold at the captain if I'm caught so I'm not made to walk the plank. Pray it's not sunk." He paused. "I'm pretty sure Ilias won't hear me though, so I might not do that."
"You really are committed to acting like a scoundrel, aren't you?" Salamander shook her head, before smirking. "Fine by me. Don't come crying to me when you get caught and forced into working on the ship for the trip. Might get a bit of muscle on your bones."
"...right." he took a deep, shuddering breath. "Port Natalia, here we come."
"So this is what you were doing... I cannot say it's efficient, by any means, unless a lot of spells are already being thrown around but the fact that you can do this at all should be telling me something. For the life of me, however, I can't remember what it is."
"It must also be why you were able to ignite your spirit with no prior training, that day. You were able to attune to the fire mana I was exuding."
"Is that abnormal?" Noah asked, an eyebrow raised. After all, even if the spirit is way more knowledgeable about how things worked in this world, he hadn't come up with it on his own- it was described in Merlin's book. And if siphoning the life force of others when struck was something that anyone could and would do in a fight… though then again, Luka had to be taught how to do it.
The spirit hummed, the same way she did whenever Noah asked a difficult question that she'd need to think about. Noah wasn't sure what the big deal was. Fishing out his notebook, he twirled the pencil he had on him between his fingers.
Noah
HP - ?, Atk - D, Def - E, Agi - D-, - ?, - C?
Weap - Gold Sword
Armor - Brigandine
Accessory - Dragonskin Cloak
He still wasn't sure what to think of the last entry. Salamander had been surprisingly gung-ho about it, claiming that it was better that he have it than not- and it wasn't like he could sew the skin back on whatever unfortunate Dragon Girl it was taken from.
Still, without hard numbers, it was hard to really entertain himself with this.
"I wouldn't say the act itself is abnormal." Salamander eventually said as he began rubbing his arms for warmth. Admittedly, the hold of a ship where he had to stay crouched for stealth wasn't the most conducive environment for a magic lesson. "I've just attempted to do this with my main body and it works, but not to a degree where I'd go for it as opposed to gathering my energy from within."
"It's not that inefficient." Noah frowned. With a bit of concentration and a swirl of his hand, he was able to get his hand to start blowing electric sparks. It wasn't a lot, though admittedly way faster than when he was in San Ilia, but still.
"That's where your weirdness comes in." Salamander rebutted. "See, when you do it, it produces a clear, tangible effect within seconds. I, in an environment attuned to my own energy, somehow manage to gather less mana than you do in the same amount of time."
"...what?" Noah blinked, trying to come to terms with the idea. "How does that work?"
"My best guess is that being myself naturally saturated with mana- me especially, but just about any monster in the world really- makes it harder to attract the mana, whereas you, being void of natural magic, can attract it to yourself through a little concentration."
"I see..." he muttered to himself. "Well, I don't, but I know better than to question your knowledge of it. Still-" A particularly nasty wave hit the ship, and suddenly, he was across the floor skidding, slamming against the other sidewall.
"Woah, woah, woah, woah!" Another voice hollered, and suddenly the pain of slamming into the wall redoubled as something slammed into him. "Huh, weirdly soft landing…"
As he tried to gather his bearings, he felt a hand grope around and suddenly snatch his face. Looking through the fingers, he saw a small, but busty blonde girl wearing a pirate hat and a cloak, but nothing more than a thin strip of cloth across her chest to cover herself. Her eyes trailed down towards him.
"Oh! I guess that makes sense. Ah well, never look at a gift shark in the mouth. Itadakimasu~" she said, and set about removing Noah's pants.
Noah was frozen for a moment, but after that, he felt himself react on instinct. And that instinct had him kick the girl in the face. Repeatedly.
"Ow- ow- ow- ow- stop it!" The girl cried after a moment, and Noah took that moment to get himself back up, hand with a leather glove (he'd learned his lesson at the library) aflame. In the low light, he hadn't noticed, but the girl had a pink fishtail instead of the legs, and one of her eyes was covered in an eyepatch. "You bully!"
"You just tried to rape me," Noah growled.
"Nuh-uh!" The girl cried. "You literally fell for me! It was just a little friendly lovemaking!"
"You're the one that fell on me!" Noah shouted back. "And people typically ask before doing that!"
"...can I-"
"No." he replied frostily.
"Please?"
"No."
"Pretty please?"
"Still no."
"I'm really hungry!"
"Don't care." He sighed, gritting his teeth. Salamander had disappeared, presumably to let him focus on one thing at a time. The girl seemed to think about things for a moment, before grinning.
"Hold on a second, that's right! I'm the great pirate captain Bonnie of the Fishy Pirates! Why should I ask nicely? I take what I want!" She gave him a lecherous smile, as Noah drew his sword, feeling the violent urges he'd felt in his fight with Salamander resurface. As though called by the strong emotions, the vision of Salamander reappeared to the side in his field of vision, looking things over.
"And I'm Noah Romero, and if you don't want to get gutted like the fish you partially look like, I'd suggest keeping your hands to yourself," he growled. She actually flinched at that, but then her face scrunched up in a frown of determination…
Just in time for another wave to hit the boat. Noah, his mind already on a trigger, stabbed his sword into the wooden flooring in order to not get knocked back off his feet, but the mermaid wasn't so lucky. The girl was once again dragged across the storage hold's floor and smacked into the wall, but Noah watched wide-eyed as one of the two cannons stored in there fell on top of her with a resounding crack of wood. Somehow, the noise she made reminded him of a dog toy.
She tried to push the cannon off of herself and seemed to actually have some success at it, so Noah readied himself again… only for the top of a trio of stacked crates to slam onto the cannon, making the metal part slam against her head.
"Ashel, I'm a mermaid, I don't need the swimming lessons… get that floatie away from me..." she muttered dazedly to herself and promptly fell unconscious. Noah felt like he had just watched a Looney Tunes skit happen in real life.
"Hm. It's nice to see a water-dweller get what they deserve, for once. Why were you about to get into a fight, though?" Salamander asked, prodding at Bonnie with her leg to no visible reaction. To be honest, Noah wasn't really sure if Salamander actually projected herself and remained visible only to him, or if she just existed in his mind and acted like a hallucination.
"Beats me." Noah glared at the knocked-out mermaid. "I think she was stowing away-"
"Terc! Go check out the third storage hold, I think I heard rats down there chewing through our provisions!" A voice shouted from outside. Eyes widening, Noah glanced at the mermaid for a moment, before smothering the flame in his palm and dashing over to a spot behind crates to hide as he heard footsteps approach.
Focusing on slowing down his own thundering heartbeat, Noah listened. Eventually, a door creaked open. "Always sendin' me to deal with the fuckin' rats… why couldn't we just get ourselves a cute, Nekomata girl who could sit in my lap and- hello there, gorgeous."The man's tone did a complete one-eighty. "Guys! Found me a mermaid stowing away on the ship!"
"No fucking way, you dick. You just want someone to come over and help you with the rats." Another voice called.
"Would I fuckin' lie about a mermaid?"
"Why in Ilias' sexy ass would a mermaid be in the waters this close to Hellgondo, you dumbass?!"
"Fuck if I know! Just come here, you idiots! She's stuck under the cargo!" Eventually, another man arrived and the initial one shouted. "Come on, help me move this thing. It's our lucky day, boys, she's knocked out. We can tie her up and have some fun later. It's not always that you find a mermaid nice and vulnerable like that."
Noah's blood ran cold.
"Dude, what the hell? You know that Ilias forbids laying with monsters!" Another one scolded. "You want her to sink the ship?"
"Nah, don't worry. I'm gonna just have my fun with her then we tie her to the mast to dry up as is proper." the first scoffed. "My good-for-nothing son ran off with a mermaid, sayin' that monster pussy was somethin' else. I wanna know what all that was about."
"Yeesh. Cap'n gonna kill you if she hears you."
"Well then this will be kept between me and you, aye? We can take turns."
Salamander was just staring at him with a curious, expectant look that he was trying his damndest to ignore.
They were going to rape and then kill the mermaid- the one who would have done the same to him not even two minutes ago. Maybe minus the killing part, but…
'Jesus Fucking Christ. Is this place only filled with barbarians?' Noah mentally cursed to himself, still staring at the two men struggling to move the cannon that trapped the mermaid.
What does he do? What could he do, actually? There was no system of laws in this place to prevent anything of what was going on. The current ruler, probably Tamamo, didn't give a shit to jail monsters who broke the rules, and it wasn't like on the high seas he could prosecute any of the fuckers on this ship.
'You're overcomplicating this.' Salamander spoke to him lowly. 'Right now, regardless of what happened before and what will happen later, there is a girl about to be killed, if you do nothing. If you don't want to do anything, stand by- if you don't want this to happen, act. Let go of justice and consequence; right now there is only what you want to do.'
'I…' Noah closed his eyes for a moment. This was different than with the librarian, he supposed, if only because he was the one in control of the situation here.
It didn't need to mean forgiving the mermaid. Just that he would spare her a horrible death. If only because he could. "Torrent of white, bless me with your breath of strength," he murmured quietly to himself, drawing power from the injured mermaid. He gasped under his breath as his muscles clenched for a moment before he felt like he could move again.
And so, as they finally dragged out the mermaid from under the cannon, he moved. Just as one of them had picked Bonnie up while the other held the cannon, Noah put one hand on the tip and one hand on the crossguard, making sure not to cut himself, and rammed the handle into the head of the cannon guy.
He fell like a sack of potatoes.
"Wha- hey!" the other man shouted, just as Noah rose and rammed him to the wall, sword held against his throat. "Guh- MONSTER! MONSTER ON THE SHIP!" The sailor screamed. Noah backed off for a moment, only to grab the man's head and bash his skull against the wall, knocking him out as well.
"Shit," he muttered to himself, realizing that the man had shouted really loudly. "Monster?"
'You just picked up a man who's a head taller than you and with biceps the size of your neck and slammed him hard enough into a wall to knock him senseless.' Salamander informed. 'Enhanced by magic it may be, but it's a monstrous feat nonetheless for these people.'
"My hero…" the mermaid muttered dazedly from the floor, crawling to reach up and hug Noah's leg. "I'm gonna make you second mate- no, first mate of the Fishy Pirates…" She rubbed herself against Noah's leg.
'Hmm. She must've hit her head pretty hard- it's difficult to give a concussion to mermaids, their heads being full of water and all. Then again, this might be her natural state.' Salamander commented, snark returned now that Noah had saved Bonnie. Still, if the noise going on outside was any indication, the entire ship had just become alert to his presence.
"Let go." Noah shook his leg, with the mermaid eventually relenting.
"Alright… I'm gonna have me a quick nap, don't mind me…" the mermaid muttered, before passing out on one of the men.
"Well, well, well!" Suddenly, a female voice cut through the chatter. "We've got a monster stowaway in our midst, boys and girls! What do we say to the heroes and monsters alike who try to take on the mighty MS Gloria?!"
"NOT TODAY!" A chorus of voices replied.
"...right." Noah closed his eyes. "I've now got to take on the entirety of a pirate vessel because I couldn't keep my hands to myself." Slowly, he began retracing the steps of the two crewmates, eventually making his way up the ladder that led into the storage hold. How had a mermaid reached down here?
'It makes for some good practical training to put your spellwork to the test, doesn't it?' Salamander asked.
"You've yet to teach me shit." he deadpanned, and she shrugged.
'I don't actually have a measure of your current level, and I'm not exactly known for teaching magic- people look for me to train their swordsmanship, you know.' she snarked back. 'I guess right now is a good moment for both. I never want to see the atrocity you just performed ever again.'
"Mordhau is a perfectly viable technique."
'I don't know what that means, but what you're picturing in your mind is supposed to be both a last resort against armored opponents and performed with both hands.'
"Or when you don't want to kill your opponent." he rebutted, and Salamander scoffed.
"By the time I'm done with you, you'll learn sword control so fine you'll cut the wings off a dragonfly without killing it. None of that reverse grip pommel bash nonsense."
Replaced apparently by anime swordfighting nonsense. But Noah had no more time to contradict her, as he reached the door that led to the area immediately below the deck… and was met with about twenty angry pirates gathering various types of weaponry. Thankfully for him, in the darkness, he had yet to be spotted.
He gulped. "I'm gonna need you to juice me up here, Salamander," he murmured. A moment later, his whole body burst into flames. As he pondered what the fuck was going on, however, he felt the rush of mana fill him. "Torrent of white, bless me with your breath of strength, grant me the protection of your stalwart armor, fill me with the apex of skill, lighten me with your swift grace!" He quickly cast in sequence as men and women turned to the sudden light source, him accidentally slamming the door open with the additional strength and speed he just gained.
Moments later, it became a bloodbath.
A small time skip sees Noah make his way to Gold Port and try to stow away on a ship. Apparently, Lazarus isn't here for him to interact with... what a shame.
Bonnie's fine. A little concussion never killed anybody, much less a mermaid. The other guys... also probably fine. Will Noah ever succeed in finding someone who isn't a rapist in this world? That seems unlikely.
Also for clarity, because I think it might be necessary: when the fic refers to "a few days later", it's around ten days. When Noah refers to the past month, it's the entire period since he became the Dark Avenger of Ilias.
Still a very chuuni name.