A muffled thunderclap in Wildspace would not draw much attention. The space jellyfish, glimmering centipedes, and other bottom-tier creatures hiding inside the spelljamming ship all fled, slipping into space and leaving without a care.
The warlock drifted into the wreckage. The stern cabin had been turned into a blossoming flower by the explosion. The scorpion-tailed boar-crocodile had been shaken half to death by the shockwave. Its tough hide looked like roasted pork skin, covered in scorch marks, its bones shattered everywhere, exposing writhing organs.
The monster mother was protecting several eggs beneath her belly. When Skyl approached, it opened its cold green eyes and stared at the warlock.
Otherworldly Knowledge: You recall a mother who also had green eyes.
The so-called value of life was a trick cooked up by civilized people. Skyl had learned to adapt to his surroundings. He only wanted to eat the monster before him and its children, without wasting a single scrap.
The warlock hooked his fingers and chanted an incantation. A colorless ray of force shot out, slipped through the seams of the skull, and shattered the brain.
"Roar."
One prey animal fell. One hunter ate his fill. That had been the law of life since ancient times.
Skyl did not hurry to process the corpse. Instead, he thoroughly searched the wreckage of the spelljamming ship.
The core component of a spelljamming ship was called a spelljamming helm, a device that could convert magical energy into propulsion. The helm of this ship had already been removed and taken away. If he had a spelljamming helm, a traveler could roam through Wildspace and completely escape this predicament.
The items in the stern cabin had mostly been destroyed in the explosion. Skyl searched carefully and discovered a torn star chart, though the contents on it were now difficult to make out.
He went down to the lower deck. In the hammock area where the sailors had lived, he found some personal belongings that had not been taken away in time, including two diaries.
Skyl greedily flipped through the diaries, but the language barrier was now a problem he urgently needed to solve. The two diaries were written in two different languages, and both used scripts he could not understand.
He took two dirty hammocks stained with lizard scales, wrapped up his kill, and returned to his temporary shelter.
Wooden fragments from the spelljamming ship were used to build a fire and roast meat. The scorpion-tailed boar-crocodile's meat was very tough. It had to be beaten into minced meat with Eldritch Blast before it was easy to eat.
No matter what, Skyl still ate his fill. Watching the crackling firewood, he felt relaxed for the first time since he had begun wandering Wildspace.
Inside The Guide, he found the languages used in the sailors' diaries. One was a special script called Lizardfolk, and the other was Gnomish. Buying dictionaries cost very little, so Skyl immediately purchased them, then spent a great deal of time deciphering the contents of the diaries.
The two diaries had been written by sailors of two different races. The lizardfolk's writing looked like random scratches carved out by claws, making it extremely difficult to identify. Gnomish, meanwhile, was packed together so densely that it hurt his eyes to read.
Skyl could only translate as much as possible.
The lizardfolk sailor's diary was full of trivial details.
"Dear diary, it has been twelve days since I boarded the ship. Tomorrow we will reach Realmspace. Everything around me stinks, and the fresh air in the air bladders is about to run out. Scarface says we will soon reach the Sea of Winds in Realmspace, and then we can change out the stale air for fresh air… A month has passed. The fleet has been chasing a space whale for three days. It is not fully grown yet. A lone space whale is good cargo. No one remembers that we are only a merchant ship… Dear diary, I miss Kazalu a little. She, feminine pronoun, could make tasteless one-eye smell delicious, and she could even turn krajing into a good dish. She died too early… all neogi deserve to die."
The gnome sailor's records were somewhat unhinged. That was just how this race was.
"First day of travel. The planetary hourglass is perfectly accurate. I am a genius! Timed it again, precise! With a good timekeeping tool, you can save yourself a lot of trouble during travel. For example, you can calculate exactly when the big lizards go to the bathroom. If I see a lump of lizard poop in the chamber pot, I will sew my nostrils shut with a needle… One-eyes eat shit! And they suck away precious air! Once discovered, they must be eliminated… Fourteen days. We are finally close to the Sea of Winds. Wonderful, we need fresh air so badly! Traveling with these stinking fellows has polluted even the air bladders. Today, I smelled lizard shit in the one-eye soup! The food on this ship is awful!"
Skyl looked at the words and unconsciously smiled.
He could feel that these two diaries had been written by two living souls. He hoped they were both still alive.
He put the diaries away and unfolded the damaged star chart. The explosion in the stern cabin had destroyed part of it, and the chart in Skyl's hands was covered in burned-through holes. He saw that the chart depicted a star system. Of the eight planets, only one, Toril, remained completely intact, as if fate had subtly preserved this coordinate to guide him forward.
Skyl stared at the planet Toril. It was blue, beautiful, third from the sun, and it had one moon.
Otherworldly Knowledge: Does that remind you of anything?
He remembered nothing, but he felt that this planet seemed incredibly familiar.
The markings on the star chart showed that the fleet's destination was Toril. Skyl was deeply regretful. If he had done everything he could to call for help back then, he would already be on the route to Toril by now.
At present, he could roughly confirm his own position on the chart, the Farstar Belt. This place bordered the Sea of Winds at the edge of the crystal sphere. It was a vast gaseous nebula, the largest ocean of gas in Realmspace. If all of Realmspace were a basketball, then the Sea of Winds would be a quail egg floating inside it.
Fortunately, the Sea of Winds was a route many inter-sphere ships had to pass through. Judging from the contents of the diaries, the air bladders of spelljamming ships needed to be refreshed regularly. Otherwise, the crew would suffocate. Most regions of space were clearly vacuum.
Skyl had originally thought this universe was full of air everywhere. It turned out he had simply happened to fall into an ocean of gas.
With the hope of rescue in his heart, he still lived his life step by step.
Every day, he studied, practiced, obtained potions, ate crocodile meat and eggs, broke down the spelljamming shipwreck, and used the materials to improve his shelter.
Skyl soon saved enough candleflames to buy first-level spells and began stepping into truly profound and dangerous spell knowledge.
During this period, he did not encounter any dangerous creatures, though the ruins of the spelljamming ship occasionally attracted some space monsters that lingered nearby. Skyl set up ambushes like a trapper. If he ran into something he could beat, he fought it. If it looked too troublesome, he ran. Because of this, his food reserves remained reasonably acceptable, and he finally escaped the embarrassing situation of starving more often than not.
Ever since arriving in the Farstar Belt, the wandering warlock's living conditions had improved greatly.
He even began using wooden planks and magical energy to cultivate ship grubs, creating a space farm.
The first-level spell [Unseen Servant] created a force servant for him. It could help him with odd jobs, and the work of expanding his shelter also proceeded smoothly.
Everything was getting better. One month later, Skyl had mastered five first-level spells and twelve cantrips.
[First Lesson, Complete]: Please learn two cantrips and two first-level spells.
The reward was an Undetectable Extension pocket with one hundred cubic meters of storage space inside. On the first day Skyl received the pocket, he decided to make his home in it.
It could store air and had directional gravity. It was equivalent to a fifty-square-meter apartment with a two-meter ceiling. After some modification, he could create a comfortable home inside and carry it with him wherever he went. It could not have been more convenient.
He also obtained the blueprint for a tiny miniature spelljamming ship, priced at one hundred candleflames. The main portion of the blueprint explained how to build a spell-drive helm. Skyl discovered that if he wanted to save himself by relying on a spelljamming ship, he still lacked a great deal of accumulated knowledge.
He needed to master engineering and alchemy, understand how to make magic items, learn how to navigate by the stars, and distinguish different space environments. For any one person, truly mastering all of this would be enough to do spectacularly well in the multiverse.
Skyl had nothing else to do, so he truly began learning how to build a spelljamming ship from scratch.
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