The Forsaken Land of the Gods, Afternoon Town.
To explore the place, the Silver City team had split up and scattered across the town. After surviving a series of dangers and mutations, and cutting down a number of monsters along the way, one temporary group of five reached the center of the town.
There stood a church, more than half of it collapsed.
The church was tall and imposing, its thick stone columns holding up brick and stone arches. Its front gate was magnificent, so wide that even a giant would have found it more than roomy enough to pass through.
"Stay alert."
Colin, First Councilor of Silver City, said in a low voice, leading the squad across the threshold.
"Yes!"
Derrick answered along with Heim and Joshua.
He glanced instinctively at Elder Lovia beside him, and gripped the "Hurricane Axe" in his hand a little tighter.
She, calm and composed, seemed not to notice the glance directed her way, and simply strode forward into the sanctuary.
Passing through the largely collapsed forecourt, the group arrived at the hall of prayer.
There they found the statue of the deity destroyed, yet the candles on the altar had somehow been lit by someone. A figure in a plain white robe knelt before the altar, making prayer gesture after prayer gesture, tears streaming down his face as he spoke.
As the group cautiously drew closer, they finally made out his words.
He said: "Almighty Lord, I confess my sin. I... tempted Sasrir, and the kings met often and in secret within the palace that belonged to the Dusk..."
"The people of this town changed, too, at some point without anyone noticing. They set up secret altars, held strange rites, and did all manner of things You forbid."
"And so darkness rose, and so flame burned, and so corruption, blood, decay, slaughter, filth, and shadow poured forth and drowned this land."
"They betrayed the Lord... they betrayed the Lord!"
Though his voice was not loud, it struck like thunder in the heart of every Silver City explorer present.
After seeing Roy King off, the fleet entered a period of rest and reorganization.
Beyond the safe shipping lanes of the Sonia Sea, there was no shortage of hidden harbors that catered specifically to pirates or to ships operating in gray areas.
Walter, once known as the "Sea Serpent" for his days as a pirate captain, naturally knew such places well, and guided the fleet to a remote cluster of islands.
The ships needed repairs, and the crew were eager for some enjoyment. Silas simply gave everyone leave, while he himself stayed aboard, turning his mind to what he ought to do next.
After some thought, he settled on three things that needed doing in the near term:
Continue tracking down the "Vice Admiral Ailment";
Continue digesting the potion;
Find the Black King.
(/n: correct is Black King for the ship)
First, according to what Qonas had told him, the Demoness Sect was the very first link in the chain of human trafficking at sea. He needed to start with Trissy, and clear out these filthy, damnable witches, settling old scores together with new;
Second, corrupting people could indeed help digest the potion, and even setting aside the matter of finding a suitable target, he still needed to keep sailing and picking out the fallen. Witches, corrupted in body and soul alike, were excellent material;
Last, there was still the matter of the Black King...
Thinking of this, Silas lowered his head.
At that moment he was seated at his desk, palm turned upward and resting on a sheet of white paper. In the open palm, a black key floated without a sound.
The key to the Black King!
An item crafted by Roselle, forcibly bound to his body!
He noticed that the tip of the black key, like a compass needle, pointed steadily toward one fixed direction. That should be the direction in which the Black King lay.
"Tock."
Silas glanced at his pocket watch, then picked up his pen and marked a black dot at the position the key was pointing to. There were already many black dots on the white paper. He kept marking dots this way at fixed intervals, until the dots grew dense enough to reveal a pattern.
While sailing at sea, since the ship itself was in motion, the key's direction couldn't be used as a reliable reference. Now that he was back on land, he could finally observe the key's behavior in a stable setting. And that was when he discovered that the key was, in fact, turning very slightly all the time.
"Scritch, scritch."
Silas connected all the black dots with his pen, and a neat curved line quickly appeared on the white paper.
"It's starting to loop back around."
He murmured to himself.
In simple terms, he had discovered that the Black King was moving in a cyclical pattern, following a set rhythm!
Silas quickly spread out a map of the world on his desk, picked the sheet of white paper back up, took out a sextant, and made a series of measurements out toward the sea.
Drawing on the seafaring knowledge he'd picked up over this period, together with his extraordinary abilities as a "Seafarer," he finally managed to draw two lines at an angle to each other on the chart, then shaded in the fan-shaped area between them.
That fan-shaped area crossed the Rorsted Archipelago, crossed the Raging Sea, and finally fell across the Misty Sea.
The Black King's route lay somewhere within that shaded, fan-shaped region.
"The range is too big. It won't be easy to find."
Silas muttered to himself, shaking his head.
"Meow."
In the corner, Luna, who had been curled up on top of a crate, sat up and let out a cry, as if annoyed that Silas was being too noisy and disturbing her rest.
"What are you meowing about? If your divination had actually worked, would I need to go through all this trouble?"
Silas said to the black cat.
The Black King had, of course, been warded with the ability to resist divination and prophecy. Before this, Silas had once had Luna try to divine its location, only to have the cat sniff the key and come away looking utterly baffled.
Still, there was a way around it.
Silas marked another point on the map, cast out another fan-shaped area from it, overlapping the previous one, producing a region where the two intersected.
As long as he kept sailing, kept changing his collection points, and kept charting the routes, the overlapping section of the fans would grow smaller and smaller, and the area he needed to search would shrink along with it.
By the time he'd finished clearing out the Demoness Sect from the Sonia Sea, he'd probably have narrowed it down to a region worth exploring...
Silas was still turning this over in his mind when, suddenly, he noticed something flying in through the window.
The moment he first noticed it, the thing had still been quite far from the captain's quarters, but in the next instant it had crossed that whole distance, drifted in through the window, and landed on the desk in front of him.
It was a black invitation card.
"Esteemed Blood Reverend."
The invitation landed on the desk, bowed as if in greeting, and spoke in a human voice, "I represent Earl Whitemaple, King of the Five Seas, Nast Solomon, in extending an invitation to you. The pirate conference will be held in the near future, and you are most cordially welcomed to attend."
Having finished speaking, the invitation went still, lying flat and stiff upon the desk.
"Meow?"
Luna leapt up onto the desk, sniffing curiously at the invitation, and tried prodding it with a paw. Silas pushed her aside and picked the invitation up in the same motion.
On this card of pure black paper there was only a single Intis-style noble crest, with no specific time or place given.
Ah, right, there had been this matter too...
Silas gradually began to recall.