The Mediterranean breeze carried the scent of salt and fish through Alexandria's bustling port.
Taimur stood on the docks, watching fishermen mend their nets and merchants haggle over crates of dried dates, spices, and linen. The sea glittered under the afternoon sun, vast and waiting—a frontier long ignored. Egypt had always been a land power, content to let others rule the waves. That ended today.
He closed his eyes and reached into the System.
[Mall Interface: Open]
The virtual shelves unfurled endlessly before him. His gaze locked onto a massive tome bound in what looked like black whale leather, its spine etched with golden Arabic calligraphy that shimmered and shifted like waves.
[Kitab al-Bahr al-Zakhir – The Book of the Glorious Sea – 5,000 Merit Points]
A king's ransom in points. But power was born from knowledge—and he would not be poor.
He purchased it.
[–5,000 Merit Points]
[Total MP: 13,800 / 100,000]
The air crackled as the tome materialized before him, slamming onto the table with a weight that made the planks groan. Its cover bore intricate designs of warships and sea monsters locked in eternal battle.
The Sultan's Study
The room was quiet, save for the scratch of Salahuddin's pen and the distant call of the muezzin. He signed another decree, his brow furrowed in thought, when the doors groaned open.
Taimur entered, arms straining under the weight of the massive tome. The book hit the table with a thunderous boom, scattering scrolls and making the inkwell tremble.
Salahuddin looked from the mysterious volume to Taimur's face.
"By Allah," he said dryly. "Do you often drop thunderbolts on my desk disguised as books?"
Taimur's fingers traced the golden script embossed on the cover:
كِتَاب البَحْرِ الزَّاخِر
(The Book of the Glorious Sea)
"This one," he said, "was worth the wait."
With a dramatic sweep, he opened the tome.
The pages shimmered briefly as schematics of warships unfurled—sleek dromons with reinforced rams, towering forecastles bristling with weaponry. Salahuddin's breath caught at the illustration of a ship-mounted fire lance, spewing Greek fire in a blazing arc.
"This…" Salahuddin reached out, then hesitated. "Is this Byzantine? Some stolen codex?"
"Better," Taimur said. He turned to a page showing a repeating crossbow fixed to a ship's rail. "This is what happens when Chinese ingenuity, Persian engineering, and Roman ruthlessness converge." He tapped a diagram of a reinforced hull. "These ships will outsail anything the Franks have. And the weapons?" He flipped to a page depicting enemy fleets engulfed in flame. "They'll make the Mediterranean ours."
The Sultan stood abruptly, his chair scraping against stone. He paced to the window overlooking the distant harbor, where fishing boats bobbed like toys.
"Do you understand what you're asking? The resources? The gold?"
Taimur didn't blink. "I'm asking for the means to strangle the Crusaders without ever setting foot in Palestine. Cut their supply lines. Burn their fleets. Let them starve behind their walls while we grow rich on trade."
A dangerous light entered Salahuddin's eyes. He gripped Taimur's shoulder.
"The Venetians rule the waves. The Byzantines guard their fire like treasure. And you propose to surpass them both?"
"Not propose." Taimur met his gaze without flinching. "Promise."
Silence fell, thick as the weight between empires. Then Salahuddin's grip tightened.
"What do you need?"
"Ten thousand men. Fishermen, pirates—anyone who's ever wrestled a sail in a storm. Timber from Lebanon. Smiths from Damascus." Taimur's voice dropped low. "And your word that when the time comes, you'll let me loose their leash."
Salahuddin's laugh was sharp as a drawn blade.
"You ask for my word?" He strode back to the table, slamming his palm down on the page where Greek fire bloomed. He pulled the seal ring from his finger and pressed it into Taimur's palm.
"Take whatever you need. Take everything you need." His voice burned with conviction.
"Make them fear our sails on the horizon."
Outside, the call to prayer faded. Somewhere in the harbor, a gull screamed.
The deal was struck.
The sea would never be the same.
Blood on the Oars
The morning sun burned the mist off Alexandria's harbor as ten thousand men gathered on the docks—fishermen with salt-bleached hands, Nubian river traders whose arms bore hippo scars, and hard-eyed pirates who once preyed on these very waters. All stood tense under the gaze of Taimur's lieutenants.
A hush fell as Taimur climbed onto a stack of cedar beams meant for the keel of the first warship. In his hands, the Kitab al-Bahr al-Zakhir lay open, its pages glowing faintly in the dawn light.
"You!" He pointed at a grizzled fisherman from the Nile Delta. "How many times have Venetian galleys stolen your catch at spearpoint?"
The man spat. "Sixteen seasons, Effendi."
Taimur's finger swept across the crowd.
"And you Nile rats—how often do Crusader ships demand tolls just to sail your own waters?"
A roar of anger answered him.
He slammed the book shut with a thunderclap that echoed over the waves.
"No more. Today, you stop being prey."
The first day broke men.
Two hundred sweeps dipped into the harbor's still waters as recruits strained at oars longer than anything their fishing boats had known. The manual's rowing drills demanded perfection—three strokes to accelerate, two to pivot, a synchronized backstroke to halt.
"Again!" barked the drillmaster, a renegade Byzantine galley slave with a back full of lash marks. When the tenth attempt failed, he seized an oar and cracked it across a Nubian's shoulders.
"You row as individuals, you die as individuals!" he roared. "Out there, the sea eats the weak. Synchronize, or sink!"
By dusk, the harbor stank of vomit, sweat, and blood from blistered palms. Men collapsed on the docks, eyes hollow and limbs trembling.
But when the war drums sounded the next dawn, every man returned—hands raw, spirits burning.
The Dance of Death
On the archery platforms, former pirates gaped at the Zhuge crossbows—devilish contraptions with rotating magazines that fired ten bolts before a Frankish archer could nock one.
"Aim for the waterline!" Taimur shouted, as the first volley shrieked across the bay. The bolts punched through floating barrels with sickening crunches. A one-eyed Cretan laughed madly as his entire magazine found its mark. "Like gutting sheep!"
Nearby, ballista crews manned massive torsion engines. A flaming projectile arced over the waves and exploded against a derelict Fatimid barge in a bloom of fire. The Greek fire master—a wrinkled Coptic alchemist—cackled as he adjusted the mixture. "Not even rainwater will quench this!"
Captain Yusuf, who had fished Alexandria's waters for forty years, stood trembling on the deck of the first training galley. In his gnarled hands rested the fire lance's trigger.
"Remember," whispered the Byzantine drillmaster, "short bursts. The sea hates fire as much as men do."
Yusuf exhaled and pulled.
The world erupted in a roaring jet of green-tinged flame, turning the harbor's surface to steam. When the inferno ceased, his face was streaked with soot and tears.
His crew stared in horror. Yusuf licked his cracked lips and grinned. "Now they'll know how squid feel in a boiling pot."
By the sixth week, chaos had hardened into lethal precision.
Oars moved like a single organism. Crossbow volleys fell like metallic rain. Fire teams could drench a target in burning pitch between heartbeats. And each night, the Kitab al-Bahr al-Zakhir glowed brighter in Taimur's tent, its pages now filled with notes in a dozen dialects—the distilled wisdom of ten thousand sea wolves learning to bite.
On the eve of ship construction, Taimur walked the docks. The men didn't salute. They bared their teeth and growled like the pack they had become.
Out in the dark Mediterranean, unseen by all, a Venetian scout galley slipped away northward, its oars muffled in terror.
The storm was coming.
The Alexandria Shipyards
The shipyards roared like a living beast, the air thick with cedar resin and hot iron. Fifty skeletal hulls rose along the docks, each a promise of vengeance against the Crusader fleets that had haunted Egypt for decades.
Taimur stood atop a scaffold overlooking the chaos, the Kitab al-Bahr al-Zakhir clutched tightly in hand. Below him, shipwrights from Damascus, sailors from Crete, and blacksmiths from Baghdad worked in orchestrated frenzy.
"Ten degrees sharper on the ram angle!" he shouted over the din. "The Shu'la al-Bahr must cut water like a dagger!"
A Greek shipmaster wiped sweat from his brow. "No galley has ever borne this shape!"
Taimur's knuckles whitened on the book's spine. "Then let Egypt be first."
The Sea Flames
Twenty sleek predators took shape—the Shu'la al-Bahr (Sea Flames). Each measured 150 feet from the snarling lion-headed ram to the triple-masted stern. Their black hulls drank sunlight like voids.
At dawn, the first completed Shu'la slid into the harbor. Veteran sailors gasped as it glided through the waves without the sluggish wallow of a traditional galley.
"The weight distribution…" murmured a Byzantine naval engineer who had defected after seeing the blueprints. "It's like Allah Himself balanced the hull."
Along the gunwales, bronze nozzles lurked behind armored shutters. The Greek fire master ran a trembling hand across one. "We'll burn their sails before they see our banners."
The Night Arrows
Fifteen floating fortresses followed—the Sahm al-Layl (Night Arrows). Their towering forecastles housed twin ballistae capable of launching six-foot steel bolts over three hundred paces.
During weapons testing, a single shot from the lead ship's Qaws al-Jahim (Hellbow) punched through a replica Crusader hull, the dummy mast behind it, and the harbor chain beyond.
The bolt sank after half a mile.
Red Yusuf, the pirate-turned-captain, grinned at his ashen-faced crew. "Pray we never aim at you."
The Water Lions
The final fifteen were nightmares carved in wood—the Asad al-Ma' (Water Lions). Their decks stretched unnaturally wide, allowing two hundred marines to swarm enemy ships.
Armorers outfitted boarding parties with:
Khanjar al-Bahr – curved naval axes designed to hook rigging and sever limbs.
Qaws al-Takrir – rapid-fire crossbows that loosed five bolts in seconds.
During drills, a marine named Khalid demonstrated the technique—his axe shearing through a hemp dummy's neck while his off-hand crossbow drove two bolts into its "shield."
"Close enough to smell their fear," he panted to approving nods.
Salahuddin arrived at sunset.
He walked the length of the Shu'la al-Bahr's deck in silence, his boots echoing on wood that still wept fresh resin. At the prow, he tested the ram's edge with his thumb. At the stern, he studied the fire projector's loading mechanism.
When he finally spoke, his voice carried across the silent docks.
"Twenty flame dancers. Fifteen arrow storms. Fifteen boarding beasts." His gaze found Taimur's. "You've built a fist to strangle the Mediterranean."
Taimur bowed his head. "A fist needs an arm to swing it."
Beyond the breakwater, the sea shimmered under the last bloody light of day.
Somewhere across those waves, the Crusader fleets sailed on in blissful ignorance.
Their time was ending.
Egypt's time had come.