Depthless Hunger

Chapter 224: Charting a Course Between Continents

Constantly pouring qi into the ship was a decent sort of training, but after enough hours at the wheel, Kai eventually got bored. He wasn't going to break any major barriers with just endurance training, especially since Behemoth's Heart seemed to keep him from getting tired. If they wanted to face all the opponents coming for them, they needed far greater power.

Not that his other training was making great strides. Even after two weeks at sea, not to mention the battle over Yulthens, Kai had yet to gain a single Physique level. In fact, he'd never even seen someone get above rank D-0. Omilaena said the energy was just too weak here and that he should be able to make progress once they reached Rosemount, but he couldn't afford to sit around until then.

All the explosive growth in the human side of his soul, especially that D-rank boost, meant that his monstrous side was eager to grow. He estimated that his effective strength was less than double his human side, so less than 700 Power. But developing that meant finding monsters, which wasn't guaranteed.

"Why are we veering west?" Zae Zin Nim emerged from the cabin of the ship glowering, then glowered even more when the sun hit her face.

"Omilaena has a plan," Kai said with a shrug. "I was planning to ask you about it. Done cultivating?"

"I've hit my limits for now." She turned away from him to glower at Omilaena instead. "What on earth are we doing? I thought the plan was to circle east to Rosemount."

Omilaena sat in the middle of the deck behind them, doing some sort of experiment with one of her syringes. She and Zae Zin Nim had rehashed their exact plan multiple times, frequently revisiting the decision of whether it made more sense to move to Cloudspire instead of Rosemount. This time, however, it seemed like Omilaena was in a different sort of mood.

"That was before your father's minions started slowing down." Omilaena tapped her syringe against her lips thoughtfully. "They have a better ship and more qi, so we shouldn't be able to outpace them much. Unless they're giving up, which seems improbable, I suspect they're trying to contact someone else to intercept us."

"The Brightwind sect has many vassals, so I suppose they could contact someone on the central ocean." Zae Zin Nim tucked her hands into her sleeves and adopted a more thoughtful sort of scowl. "But northwest will just trap or strand us."

"We're going to take the Blood Current and swing east."

"Are you sure that's worth the risk?"

"I've done it before. Not in this direction, but we should be able to survive it. That will give us enough time to disappear into Rosemount and lose them for good."

Kai had been listening quietly, as he did most days, but now he kept just one hand on the wheel and turned back to talk to them. "I have to say, I don't think I really understand the geography here. I know, I know, people from Deadwaste don't understand anything. But if we're changing the plan, I feel like I need to have a better idea, in case something goes wrong."

"You're right." Omilaena stood up abruptly, which made her legs flash through the slit of her skirt. After so long on the same ship, Kai was used to it. "There's actually a map in the captain's cabin, so I can show you. Want to take over for a while, Zae Zin Nim?"

She immediately revealed another of her diverse collection of scowls. "Bring the map out here. I don't trust you to explain without supervision."

It was a little unclear what she meant by that, since it could be rivalry between Cloudspire and Rosemount or something more personal. Technically there could have been sexual tension on the ship, but everyone had been so focused on escaping their pursuers, it didn't come up. At least from his perspective... and Kai wasn't confident he knew enough about women to be sure.

In any case, it looked like Omilaena wasn't going to argue and left to get the map. Zae Zin Nim came and took the wheel from him to continue guiding the ship. He got one of the cooked fish for her, though it had gone cold since she spent so long cultivating. She took it with her free hand and frowned.

"Could you heat this? Use your breath."

"You sure?" Kai spat out the tiniest tongue of Baleful Breath he could manage and even that singed the fish a bit. Made it plenty hot, though. "Omilaena says it messes with the taste."

"I don't mind." Zae Zin Nim took a bite of the fish and actually took a break from scowling when she looked at him. "Thank you."

Having her behave like that was downright strange and Kai wasn't sure quite what to do. He'd become more experienced with relationships in Krysal, but Zae Zin Nim and Omilaena could still make him feel tongue-tied and awkward sometimes. Before he could figure out how to proceed, Omilaena emerged with a map on a large Krysali scroll.

"Take a look at this," she said as she unrolled it. "The world is effectively three large continents. We left Deadwaste going west, which would take us to Cloudspire. Then we headed northwest, as if we were planning to go north of the continent and then circle back."

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"But we're actually going the other way, to Rosemount." Kai saw that it was fully northeast of his home continent, quite a long ways away if he understood the distances. "What are these lines in the middle?"

"There's a triangle of trade between the three continents, though most of it is between Rosemount and Cloudspire."

"What about the big ominous sign in the south?"

"That's Lostwreck." Omilaena tapped the symbol and shook her head. "Nobody sails too close to the lost continent due to fear of the Whispering Death. Some traffic between the nations of Deadwaste might hug the southern coast, but otherwise no one has a reason to travel the other oceans."

"There are ice floes south of Lostwreck anyway," Zae Zin Nim put in. "The patriarch of a major sect once sent a delegation to find the south pole, hoping it had some sort of pure qi, but half of them died before they had to turn back."

"Does anybody try to circumnavigate?" Kai asked. "Looks like if you went west from Cloudspire, you could hit Rosemount from the east."

"Two reasons people don't try anymore." Omilaena tapped the eastern edge of the map. "There's nothing special or dangerous east of Deadwaste, just some random islands, but the ocean is huge. There are large areas where the water doesn't have any energy and ships get becalmed. Everybody who tried to find an eastern passage either gave up when supplies ran low or disappeared."

"What about the second reason?"

"That's the Blood Current." Next Omilaena traced a fingernail over a red line around the northwest of the map. "The ocean currents become dangerously fast and there are more powerful monsters. Most likely, the cultivators chasing us will assume we'll have to turn around and they'll cut us off. But instead we'll ride the current..."

"Straight east." Kai nodded as his eyes followed the red lines east toward Rosemount. "So I assume the current is fast enough that we'll leave our pursuers behind?"

"That's the plan. This way we reach Rosemount early, we don't spend too much time in the most occupied ocean, and we put some distance between us."

"Assuming we don't get eaten." Zae Zin Nim had finished her fish and was back to scowling, this time at Omilaena. "You're sure you know the currents? Strong cultivators have been swept out and mobbed by monsters."

"Admittedly, I haven't done it in this direction." Omilaena raised her hands defensively, as if to ward off Zae Zin Nim's glower. "But when I was younger I tried to go out and train in the Blood Current, so I have some experience. I was weaker then, and there are three of us. We can take a path that even all those Earth Soul cultivators won't dare follow, then once we get to Rosemount, we can slip them. That's what you ultimately want, right?"

It seemed as though Zae Zin Nim was slightly appeased by this answer, so Kai wasn't going to argue. Still, as he looked over the map of the world, it seemed a more ominous place than he'd known. Deadwaste wasn't small by any means, but it felt relatively safe except for the incursions. Around it he saw ice floes, lethal currents filled with monsters, and an entire dead continent.

"Is the Blood Current really that dangerous?" he asked.

"It is." Zae Zin Nim turned away, focusing on the ocean ahead as she answered. "Have I told you about the Heaven's Path Scale?"

"Uh, a long time ago, I think. You haven't really mentioned it in ages."

"That's because almost all of Deadwaste is on the second step in the scale. A few dead zones might be on the first step, and maybe your most intense regions edge into the third step."

"Let me guess, everywhere on your continents are at least the third step?"

"All the places people want to live, at least. Regions that would be unimaginably wealthy on Deadwaste are normal there. The only places strong enough to fight over are on the fourth or fifth step of the Heaven's Path Scale." Zae Zin Nim didn't look arrogant, though, she looked unsettled. Her gaze seemed to be locked beyond the horizon.

"Just how many steps does this scale have?"

"Seven. Cultivators argue about whether or not anywhere on Rosemount has enough energy to be rated as the sixth step. Originally I'd have said no, but I may have underestimated the uses of chakra."

"How magnanimous!" Omilaena swept in, trying to wrap an arm around Zae Zin Nim's shoulders and being evaded by an acrobatic spin. "There are the same debates on Rosemount, of course. We may not use the same scale, but everyone agrees the most powerful areas are few and far between."

"So what about the seventh step?" Kai asked.

"Technically it's an ideal, a heaven of qi we can only aspire to create." Zae Zin Nim's lips flattened and her gaze grew harder. "But the Blood Current... it might be more dangerous than even the most threatening places on Cloudspire. Cultivators who go there die, and if the qi was more accessible there, a lot more would probably try."

And they were headed right into it. Of course, based on the path Omilaena had traced, they were just going to hit a fast-paced eastward current that should sweep them to Rosemount, and they could always retreat back south if it got too dangerous. But there was no question they were taking a risky path.

Things wouldn't get any easier once they reached Rosemount, though. The idea of an entire continent where every location had richer power than southern Goralia was astonishing to him and he wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't seen power from other continents himself. So taking the difficult path and training as much as they could was still the best option.

As he stared down at the map, Kai found his thoughts wandering further afield, though. "It seems like our world contains a lot of ocean," he said, "and it isn't fully explored. Are we sure there's nothing else out there?"

Zae Zin Nim and Omilaena glanced at one another, for once without any antagonism. Eventually the latter woman answered quietly. "There are always legends and rumors of a fifth continent. Maybe on the other side of the Blood Current, either blocked off by the monsters there or just so powerful they don't bother visiting the rest of us. Once, I would have dismissed these as nonsense, but..."

"Except for what we saw during the incursion." Kai swallowed as he thought back to the god-like warriors he'd seen there, still insanely far above him.

"Right. People that strong have to come from somewhere."

"If they came from the fifth continent," Zae Zin Nim said grimly, "then they're strong enough to handle anything in the Blood Current. If."

She left unsaid the potential implication: either there was a fifth continent insanely far beyond the peaks of Cloudspire and Rosemount, or their world was a wilder and stranger place than they knew. Technically that should have been an ominous thought, especially if these powers were related to the Frontier and the monster incursions that threatened to wipe his home continent off the map.

Yet as they sped across the oceans, Kai found himself smiling eagerly. He needed to return to protect his home one day, but for now, he was glad to finally travel the world.