Chapter 143

Chapter 143

Mana frowned hard and stomped her foot on the deck. "Yeah, this isn't some little car — this is a cruise ship!"

Without a trained crew, what was the difference between sailing it and walking straight to their deaths?

Victor shook his head helplessly, stepped forward, and pulled the keys right out of Kaname's hand, giving him a pat on the shoulder in the same motion.

"Relax. I'll drive."

"You?" The two of them said it at the same time, both turning to stare at Victor like he'd just said something completely insane.

Victor bounced the keys in his hand, his voice flat. "Back on Emerald Island, I had time to kill. Picked up sailing and flying along the way."

Kaname opened his mouth, then swallowed whatever he was about to say.

He knew exactly what kind of place Emerald Island was. If you wanted to survive there, every extra skill was another shot at staying alive.

"What are you standing around for? Go grab some food and water." Victor's voice snapped Kaname out of his thoughts.

"We're looking at a few days out there. Move it."

The two of them shook themselves awake and hurried off the ship to stock up.

Half an hour later, the cruise ship let out a low, heavy horn blast and slowly pulled away from the dock, heading out into the open sea.

The days at sea were surprisingly peaceful.

Mana leaned against the railing, letting the salty wind toss her hair around. "Looks like we got lucky. Smooth sailing the whole way."

Kaname handed her a bottle of water and nodded. "Yeah. Let's hope it stays that way."

The words had barely left his mouth when the sky had other ideas.

Fat raindrops came hammering down, smacking Mana and Kaname square in the face.

"Didn't the forecast say clear skies?" Mana wiped the rain off her face, voice full of irritation.

Kaname wiped his face too and let out a sigh. "The weather turned fast."

Inside the bridge, Victor stared at the control panel, his expression darkening in an instant.

Every needle on the dashboard was spinning wildly. Red warning lights flashed without stopping. Alarms blared one after another.

The ship had completely lost control.

His eyes went cold. He already had a read on the situation — they'd drifted into the chaotic waters surrounding Black Sun Island.

All those rumors about magnetic anomalies out here weren't just talk after all.

Dozens of massive waterspouts shot up from the surface without warning. The wind picked up walls of seawater and twisted them into towering columns, bearing down on the ship with terrifying force.

Victor shoved the bridge door open and charged out onto the deck, shouting at the top of his lungs. "Abandon ship! Jump! Now!"

The moment they heard that, both of them knew something had gone seriously wrong.

By the time the waterspouts closed in, the suction hit like a wall. They both tried to channel their Qi to push back against it — and got nothing. The magnetic field in this stretch of water was wrong in a way they couldn't explain. Their Qi felt like it had been frozen solid, completely out of reach.

With no time to think, all three of them threw themselves into the churning water.

They'd barely swum any distance when the cruise ship was ripped into the air like a toy. It spun wildly in the storm, then the hull cracked apart like a set of blocks being torn to pieces, the wreckage getting sucked toward the center in a violent rush.

Kaname fought to stay above the surging waves, wiped the seawater from his face, and shouted, "Mr. Ashford — couldn't you have avoided that?"

Victor coughed up a mouthful of bitter saltwater, his voice half-swallowed by the wind and waves. "Control systems were completely dead. That thing was already a chunk of scrap metal!"

He raised one hand and pointed toward a dark shape in the distance, off to the left.

"That's Black Sun Island. We swim hard and we swim fast. If we don't make it to shore before we're out of steam, we're just feeding the sharks."

No Qi to draw on. Nothing to do but burn every last bit of strength and keep moving forward.

Early on, the suction from the waterspouts held them back and drained them faster. It took a brutal fight just to finally break free of the pull.

After so long in the freezing water with no Qi to shield them, the cold had started working its way into their bodies, bit by bit.

By the time Mana broke clear of the waterspout, she was running on empty. She swallowed several mouthfuls of water and started sinking, her body no longer responding to her.

Victor glanced back, saw it immediately, reached over, and grabbed her by the collar, hauling her upward. "Don't you close your eyes. Look at the island. Keep looking."

How many times they brushed up against death that day, none of them could say. But eventually, all three of them dragged themselves to the edge of the island, completely spent.

They crawled up onto the sand and collapsed face-up, gasping hard, barely a drop of strength left between them.

Victor lay on his back staring at the sky, which was already clearing up fast. He let out a cold laugh. "The guy who sold us the boat wasn't lying. This place is something else."

Kaname spread out flat like a starfish, chest heaving. "Who goes out to sea and runs into a dozen waterspouts in one go?"

Mana managed a weak laugh. "If we weren't as strong as we are, we'd all be dead right now."

The part that really made their skin crawl — the moment they stepped onto the sand, the sea behind them went completely still. Like the whole storm had never happened. Like it was all just some kind of illusion.

Victor pressed his hands to his knees and slowly got to his feet, eyes fixed on the center of the island.

There, built into the hillside, stood a massive structure — something like a beast crouched in the mountains, giving off a faint sense of dread.

"Five Star Palace. Hard to miss."

He brushed the sand off himself. No wonder April had spotted it on the satellite map without any trouble.

"Do we move in now?" Kaname struggled to his feet and asked.

Victor waved him off, scanning the jungle around them. "Not yet. We find supplies first. Get our strength back."

Abandoning ship the way they had, they'd left with almost nothing. All they had on them were the short blades they always carried.

The sea wind blew through their soaked clothes and pulled away what little warmth their bodies still had, leaving them shivering.

Walking into an enemy stronghold dressed in wet clothes with nothing in their stomachs would just be asking to die.

And that wasn't even the worst of it. The island's magnetic field was still active, and it was putting serious pressure on their Spiritual Energy. They couldn't even use Qi to dry themselves off.

Victor had barely finished talking before the three of them split up to look around. It didn't take long to gather a pile of dry branches.

Kaname pulled out his lighter and had a fire going in no time.

"Kaname — you carry a lighter around with you?" Victor asked, genuinely curious.

"Just in case. I keep a few things on me that the Knights Bureau definitely doesn't authorize." Kaname smiled. "A long time ago, that habit saved my life. Never saw a reason to stop."

Mana raised an eyebrow at him. "I think I know what you're talking about. The museum heist, ten years ago?"

Victor's face lit up. "You say that and it comes right back to me. I saw that on the news."

Ten years ago, Victor had caught the story on TV by chance.

A group of trainee knights had helped the police and a full knights unit crack a major museum heist. The case had been a huge deal at the time.

The whole thing was a clever setup. The criminal crew had used a bank robbery as bait, pulling almost every available officer in the area to lock down the bank.

While that was happening, another team hit the museum, which was left wide open.

If Kaname hadn't pushed back against everyone else and insisted the trainee knights hold their position at the museum, the outcome would have been a disaster.

That incident was part of what had pushed Victor to enlist when the time came.

"That habit of yours really came through today." Victor watched the flames flicker, something almost like feeling in his voice.

Without that lighter, they'd have been rubbing sticks together. That would have been a whole other problem.

Once their clothes were fully dry, they picked some wild fruit from the trees nearby, got a little fuel back in them, and set out toward Five Star Palace.

But the moment they stepped into the open square in front of the building, all three of them stopped cold.

Bodies were scattered everywhere across the ground — countless of them, all dressed in long black robes, exactly like the ones Victor had seen on Easton and the others before.

There was no question. This was the standard uniform of the Black Sun Cult.