Salt and Blood [A Pirate LitRPG]

Sometimes, trying to figure out how something was made is more difficult than creating it yourself from scratch

-Quoted from Elmer Saff, of Saff & Company

Rose stood beside Daniel, staring at the complex workings of the tidestone engine. To her surprise, the ship they had stolen had an entirely unique design.

She had figured out how the flagship's engine worked, but it took a little bit of extra effort to figure this one out. Even knowing how the arcane energy flowed through the systems didn't help her much when it came to truly understanding the machinery.

That was where Daniel came in. The boy was a budding shipwright and she hoped that with his added expertise they could reverse engineer it and perhaps improve the ship.

It was theirs now, after all, so if they could make it even stronger and faster than the ones Minenblum had, it would give them an edge in the coming battles. Unfortunately, Daniel lacked her talent in arcane energy manipulation.

He didn't even have a core.

"I don't understand it," he said, scratching his head. "I get the gist, from your explanation. I somewhat understand how the physical machinery slots together. However, without being able to see the energy flows myself I'll never be able to take it apart and rebuild it."

"Well then, it seems we have a lot of practice to do," Rose said, turning to him with a devilish smirk. "What do you say? Ready to awaken your arcane core?"

He turned to her with eyebrows raised and wide eyes. "What? That's impossible, we're still teenagers," he exclaimed.

Rose frowned and looked back at him as if he were an idiot. He wasn't an idiot—just ignorant and uneducated. "Oh dear, Daniel. Looks like we'll have to start at the very beginning," she said with a devious smirk.

***

Rose sat on the sandy beach, listening to the gentle lulling sounds of the wind and the waves. Daniel sat cross-legged opposite her with his eyes closed and slightly strained in focus.

A seagull squawked, breaking his concentration. His eyes snapped open and he groaned while slapping the sand. "This is stupid," he complained, throwing Rose a fierce glare.

"What is? Your unwillingness to properly focus or your complete lack of talent?" she quipped, cocking her head to one side.

"You-" he cursed, grabbing a handful of sand and chucking it at her head.

She dodged, avoiding most of it, but a few grains still got in her mouth. Rose pounced on the boy, spitting out sand while slapping at him as he did his best to evade.

His best was far from good enough and he ended up with a red and swollen face from all her strikes. Despite that, both of them had ended up laughing until their sides hurt and were currently clutching at them as they recovered.

"Look, I know it isn't easy, but if you want to save the Emerlan Isle then we have to be better than anyone from home ever has been," Rose said, fixing him with a serious stare. "I get that I'm not… normal, but I know you can do anything I've done with enough effort. Just, try to focus okay."

Daniel sighed and took up the meditative position once more. Once he was comfortable, he placed his palms on his knees and closed his eyes, waiting for Rose to begin her explanation once more. "I'm ready."

"So, first you have to try and clear your mind of all distracting thoughts," she said, repeating what Trent and Nasar had taught her when she was awakening her own core. "That part was really hard for me, but what helped was practicing just reducing the number of things I was thinking about until I could eventually think about nothing at all!" she helpfully added with a wide grin.

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"Right, easy!" Daniel said exasperatedly.

"Focus, idiot," she scolded him, giving him a light cuff on the temple.

He grunted and returned to his practice. Once she saw that he was settled and doing his best to concentrate, Rose continued her explanation.

"Then, you need to kind of throw your mind into the centre of your body and feel for the empty void. It should be around your stomach, but Trent told me that for some people it can be closer to their heart or even neck."

"Who's Trent?" Daniel asked, opening one eye and staring at her strangely.

She slapped him and he coughed, but returned to concentrating after muttering some foul curses that Rose chose to ignore. She thought teaching him would be easy, but she found that repeating the things she'd learned from the two men gave her a heavy feeling in her stomach.

It hadn't been that long ago that they had sailed across the seas together. Their loss hit her hard and she wasn't sure she'd properly moved on. She'd barely had a chance to reconcile the loss before she was thrown into the chaos of the invasion.

Coming home was supposed to give her some freedom to recover and mourn, but that hadn't happened at all. She sighed. When this war was over, perhaps she would visit the site of the battle.

"It's impossible to focus with you moping over there," Daniel suddenly said. "Your sadness is almost visible."

"Shut up and focus, idiot," Rose retorted, but winced internally. "I'm going to go and help the others with their training, but keep at it until you find your core. If you manage to find it before I come back, then to begin awakening it you simply need to connect it with your mind. Easy stuff," she added, standing up and turning away from the boy.

She barely made it ten paces away when she felt a sudden fluctuation in the ambient arcane energy. Spinning back to face, Daniel, her face twisted in confusion.

He was still sitting there with a constipated look on his face. There were no shifts in the energy around him, but she could definitely feel the pull in the air.

Following the direction of the energy flows, Rose turned until she was facing the torrential vortex in the air. It reminded her of when she had awakened her own core.

At the moment one formed the mind-core connection, it would suck in the surrounding arcane energy to fill itself. That was one of the most pivotal moments of the awakening process, as the more energy you could initially stuff into your core and the more you condensed it, the higher quality your core would be and the further you could progress.

That was how Nasar had explained it anyway—Rose still didn't quite understand it herself, but she did feel that she'd made great strides in her own advancement. The experience of divine energy flowing into her core and through her body had likely tempered her even further, but she wasn't sure if that also extended to arcane energy too. Only time would tell.

Back to the matter at hand, when she lowered her gaze from the swirling torrents of arcane energy, she got the shock of her life. Sitting there, serenely meditating and absorbing the energy as if he were drinking from a water fountain, was Jason.

Was he listening to my lessons without me noticing? she wondered. However, she quickly raced over to his side and crouched beside him.

There would be time to ask questions after his awakening was finished. While it was ongoing, she would have to do her best to assist him and ensure nothing went wrong. Trent had done the same for her when she awakened her core and she was glad she was here to do it for her friends.

Jason was absorbing energy even faster than she had done during her awakening. The streams were thicker too, like torrential rivers. Clearly he had a natural talent for manipulating arcane energy.

However, that was working against him. There was simply too much of it trying to enter his body and flood his core. It was damaging him.

A trickle of blood flowed from his nose and towards his lips and he groaned. Observing his internal condition, Rose noticed that some of his thinner circuits were bursting as the energy flooded into him.

She wasn't sure exactly how to best help him, but she was decent at manipulating energy. Constricting the flow might result in a slightly worse core, but if she didn't restrict it then Jason might just end up crippled instead.

Placing a hand on his back, she focused on the streams of energy and began to redirect it. Rather than grabbing the entire streams, she gently peeled off thin strands before they could enter Jason's body and absorbed them into her own core.

Actually, it was decent practice for Rose. She wasn't used to such fine control of arcane energy—most of her own applications were rather explosive or lethally sharp.

However, her efforts slowly paid off. Jason's face seemed less pained and his circuits were no longer bursting and swelling to the breaking point.

He was still absorbing energy like a parched man in a desert would drink water, his core rapidly filling up to the maximum. A few seconds later, it was completely stuffed with arcane energy and Rose exhaled, preparing to stop focusing as he was almost done.

Yet, even when his core was filled, Jason showed no signs of slowing down. Her eyes widened in panic as she had no clue what to do, while his core began to swell to dangerous levels.

"Jason! You need to stop!" she cried, trying to get his attention, but he didn't seem to notice she was there.

Rose would have to figure out a solution and fast, or his core would explode and he would be a cripple for life—or worse, dead.