The sound of the tall waves washing over the coast was strangely soothing – almost like the sea had forgotten the horrific massacre that had taken place in its depths just then. The sailors didn’t seem to care about the ocean’s cruel irony in the slightest, too busy whispering to one another while gawking at Micky’s host.

  “Marnok?! How in the reefs did ya pull that off?!” one of the survivors barked, holding out a hand to haul him up.

  Micky found it odd that he could register the sailors’ weird speech patterns, having never experienced anything of the sort in the past. His hosts all spoke languages entirely alien to him, which he could only understand thanks to their connection. Any weird quirks that they exhibited tended to get absorbed by the translation entirely, sounding like regular sentences in his mind.

  The fact that he could notice the discrepancy probably meant that Marnok had been exposed to the correct version of his language, yet both him and his crewmates clearly insisted on butchering it by clinging to their uncouth sailor-speak like a bunch of barbarians.

  ‘Oh well… I suppose I can forgive them for being a little difficult to understand, considering all the shit they’ve been through today.’

  Oblivious to his thoughts, Marnok groaned, clearly wishing that the others would let him rest on the soft sand a few seconds longer. He ultimately kept those thoughts to himself, however – and to the nosy foreigner sharing his body, of course – before grabbing his friend’s hand.

  The man helping him up released a burst of mana from his palm, sending it into Marnok’s body. Micky was a little surprised by the familiar rush of life mana, having not expected to meet someone with a rare affinity here. That said, the sailor’s generous attempt to heal his friend didn’t amount to much, the mana getting sucked into the seed in Marnok’s abdomen the very next instant – much like the potions from earlier.

  ‘I hope he didn’t realize what happened,’ Micky thought, though he mentally shook his head the very next second.

  It didn’t really matter, did it? This wasn’t a developed world, and the sailors were all at Yellow or Orange, stranded on an island with questionable odds of making it out alive. Besides, even if he told them everything about the Moirais’ Decree or his bloodline, there was a good chance that they wouldn’t believe him.

  That was why he didn’t bother coaching his host, letting him make up whatever excuse he wanted. Marnok opted to go for the good old strategy of playing dumb, pretending that he’d escaped from the aquatic horrors through sheer luck.

  Well… that wasn’t entirely false, though Micky’s host conveniently left out a few crucial details – such as the hundreds of powerful creatures that the parasitic ghost hiding in his body had slaughtered using his now-broken scythe, or the portal to a different world that said spectre had employed to rip a Green reptile apart.

  Tuning the pointless part of the conversation out, Micky focused on something more interesting. He scanned the sailors up and down, finally getting a chance to learn more about them, and this place.

  ‘They look surprisingly similar to humans,’ he noted.

  He might have even struggled to tell them apart, if not for the overly square jaws barely concealed beneath their bushy beards, or the way the top of their ears pointed outwards. Their bodies were admittedly a little too muscular to pass as humans, however, their skins sporting a deep bronze colour. Then again, those features could have just as well been caused by their rough lives sailing across the ocean.

  Their attire varied slightly from person to person, though it was generally centred around a certain theme. Most wore loose, cropped trousers that Micky guessed had been fashioned out of repurposed sailcloth. They were paired with V-collared or buttoned linen shirts, their sleeves rolled up to their elbows. Many had a thick sash tied around their waists – Marnok’s was red, though Micky saw some green, yellow, orange and blue ones.

  A few of the more uncommon features included piercings that a couple of sailors wore on one or both ears, and a crimson bandana that one of them had wrapped around his forehead. Marnok was in the minority that didn’t have boots on – only three out of fifteen had made it to shore barefoot like him. And only two had Orange cores, the rest being at Yellow.

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  ‘I suppose the survivors are heavily skewed toward the higher grades who had been awake when the ship crashed,’ he reasoned.

  One unlucky sailor had reached the island buck naked, making Micky thank his lucky stars that Marnok had slept with clothes on. Spending the whole trip in his host’s birthday suit would have been way too embarrassing.

  ‘Still better than getting killed within the first hour though,’ he reminded himself, thinking back to the unfortunate swimmers.

  Micky wasn’t sure how many had died in total – he’d personally witnessed close to a hundred getting eaten alive, though many more had likely drowned inside the sinking vessel before he’d even arrived here.

  Alas, there was nothing he could do about those poor souls, other than maybe praying that their final moments had been swift and not too painful. Turning his attention back to the sailors’ conversation, he perked up upon realizing that they’d already moved past the topic of Marnok’s unexpected survival and onto other, more important things.

  “What are we even goin’ to do now?” a man asked, his voice cracking with worry. “We ain’t got a scrap of food nor a drop of ale left!”

  “I’d be more worried about endin’ up as food ‘arselves,” another growled. “Edric, ya sure those things won’t chase us here?”

  “The ones in the ocean won’t,” a sailor – Edric presumably – said. “They’re smarter than ya give ‘em credit for. Wouldn’t risk fightin’ so many of us on land. Most can’t even survive outside the waves. But I won’t rule out some Green beast crawlin’ outta the jungle,” he added, gesturing toward the dense foliage some distance away from where the group was standing.

  “Great… so how are we supposed to survive?” the first man muttered again.

  “Edric’s got a water affinity. He can conjure drinks for us – ya don’t need ale to survive. I say ‘tis best we take a breather before doin’ anythin’ reckless,” the life affinity user said.

  On closer inspection, Micky realized that he knew the man’s name. His host had to be familiar with all of his crewmates – not just the healer – but Micky had known for a while that people his hosts interacted more often with tended to leave a deeper impression in their minds, allowing him to access some of that information himself. This was largely how he’d managed to get by during his brief stay in the Proudheart Academy on Felmara, and also how he could understand and speak his hosts’ languages while sharing their body.

  Either way, Flammy’s most distinguishing features were two golden teeth in the upper-right side of his mouth, along with a vertical scar over his left eye. The man had clearly used his life affinity to seal his wound a long time ago, though he didn’t seem skilled enough to get rid of the lingering traces that his injury had left behind.

  Oblivious to Micky’s thoughts, the other sailors nodded in agreement with the healer, many of them plopping down on the spot.

  “How the bloody depths did ol’ Harrosh even manage to sink the ship?!” the naked man asked, drawing everyone’s attention. “Cap’n was a stubborn bastard alright, but he sure knew ‘is stuff when it came to sailin’! Never seen ‘im screw everythin’ up this badly!”

  “The old sod downed a barrel o’ rum last night, that’s how!” one of the Orange-cores snarled, spitting on the sand. “Told ‘im it was a bad idea too, but he wouldn’t listen!”

  “Always knew the ol’ sack of bones would drink ‘imself to death on’ day!” another swore. “Never thought he’d nearly take the lot of us down with ‘im, though!”

  “Well, that’s just perfect, ain’t it?!” the sailor with the red bandana said. “This was supposed to be an easy voyage – four months ‘ere and back, safe as houses in the Commodore’s waters, not a soul from the Brumes-Indigo fleet to trouble us. Not to mention nearly two hundred men to storm this place… and now look at us! Can’t even protect ‘arselves! Are we still chasin’ that treasure?”

  Micky couldn’t help but raise one of his host’s eyebrows upon hearing the word “treasure”. Sure, he probably shouldn’t expect much from a barren world like this, but he still struggled to suppress his curiosity.

  “What choice do we ‘ave?” another sailor asked. “We ‘ave to trek into the jungle if we don’t want to starve, so might as well head for the tomb. If it’s truly where ‘ar intel says, we might find somethin’ buried with the ol’ Saint that can ‘elp us.”

  Soft murmurs rippled through the group, most of the men nodding in agreement. A few didn’t seem to like the idea much, but everyone understood that they couldn’t just stay on the beach waiting for their deaths.

  Meanwhile, Micky couldn’t help but shift his attention to his host. ‘Hey, who’s this “Saint” whose tomb you guys are after? Someone important, I take it?’

  Micky tried to temper his expectations, knowing that, at the end of the day, he’d only come here to have some fun. Obviously, he wouldn’t shy away from helping someone in need – which was why he’d done his best to save Marnok earlier – but he didn’t think that he’d be walking away with anything particularly valuable.

  At most, he was hoping to spend some time practicing a certain trick that he hadn’t had a chance to work on with his main body in the past few years – one that would factor heavily into his future plans. That said, his host’s next couple of sentences flipped those expectations on their head, making Micky realize that there might be more to this world than he’d initially thought.

  ‘Of course he’s someone important! Saint Ludwick was one of Robari’s last demigods!’

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