One massive glacier broke completely through the defense, smashing into the starboard side of the ship and obliterating it.
Then another crushed the mainmast, sending the heavy wood crashing down onto the deck.
And another.
The attacks rained down upon the Gilded Eel like the literal end of the world.
Garrick moved. Or, at least, he tried to.
His body screamed in absolute agony. His mana core was completely, utterly empty, scraping the bottom of the barrel. He barely managed to throw himself to the side to dodge the first catastrophic impact.
The second glacier clipped his side, shattering three of his ribs and sending him spinning across the frozen, splintered planks.
The third—
Hit him directly.
CRASH!
He was instantly buried under tons of demonic ice and shattered, pulverized deck wood.
The Gilded Eel groaned a terrible, dying sound. Half of the ship was already completely destroyed, crushed down to the waterline. What remained of his crew scattered desperately like frightened rats, screaming in terror, some of them slipping and falling into the freezing, merciless sea of black ice.
Kael hovered in the air, watching the destruction quietly.
Then, he slowly floated downward, his black boots stepping lightly onto the ruined, frozen deck of the smuggler's ship. Each step he took froze the air itself, leaving a trail of white frost in his wake.
"You did well, for a peasant," Kael's voice was calm again, echoing over the groaning wreckage. "But that's quite enough."
With a wave of his hand, the heavy chunks of ice burying Garrick shifted and rolled away. The heavy wooden debris lifted slightly, exposing the crushed smuggler beneath.
Garrick coughed violently, a wet, sickening sound. He forced his battered, broken body to push up onto his one good arm. Blood poured freely from his mouth, his nose, and a massive gash on his forehead, staining the white frost beneath him a bright, shocking crimson.
"…Still… not dead… you Spade… bastard…" Garrick choked out, a defiant, bloody grin twisting his lips.
Kael's pale eyes narrowed slightly, staring down at the broken man.
"…Persistent. How annoying."
Garrick gritted his teeth and genuinely tried to stand up. He wanted to look the monster in the eye when the final blow came.
But his legs completely failed him. The muscles were severed; the bones were fractured. He collapsed heavily back onto the frozen deck, his face splashing into a puddle of his own blood.
"…Yeah…" Garrick panted, his vision rapidly darkening at the edges. "…That's kind of… my thing…"
Kael sighed softly, raising his right hand one final time.
A single, highly condensed spear of demonic ice formed just inches from his palm. It wasn't building-sized like the others. It was small. Incredibly dense. Pitch-black. And absolutely, undeniably deadly. It was a sniper's bullet forged of absolute zero.
"This will end it. Goodbye, smuggler."
Garrick didn't move. He couldn't move. His body had completely reached its absolute biological limit.
His vision blurred, turning the towering Spade mage into a fuzzy, dark silhouette. The sounds of his screaming crew, the groaning wood, and the howling wind became muffled and distant, as if he were already sinking deep underwater. The world dimmed.
So this was it.
For real this time.
He let out a weak, bubbling laugh that sounded more like a death rattle.
"…Boss…" Garrick whispered, his mind drifting back to the terrifying masked phantom who had forced him into this mess. "…Guess I'm not delivering those old books after all… sorry about your… down payment…"
Far away—
Miles and miles across the continent, within the pristine, shadowless white sanctuary of a completely different dimension—
Through the incredibly faint, invisible magical tether connecting two grimoires—
Something stirred.
The microscopic, conceptual mark burned deep inside Garrick's exhausted soul pulsed suddenly.
Once.
Twice.
Then—
It answered.
On the ruined deck of the Gilded Eel, Kael flicked his wrist forward with absolute, lethal precision.
The condensed black spear launched. It crossed the short distance between the Spade mage and the fallen smuggler instantly, aimed perfectly at the center of Garrick's forehead.
Garrick didn't even blink. He physically couldn't.
The spear reached him—
And suddenly, impossibly, stopped.
Kael's pale eyes widened in shock.
"…What?"
The very fabric of space directly in front of Garrick's bleeding face violently distorted.
Then—
It split wide open.
A thin, jagged, vertical crack of darkness appeared in the air between the spear and the smuggler.
It was perfectly silent.
The dense spear of demonic ice froze in mid-air, its tip hovering mere millimeters from the spatial tear.
Then—
It shattered.
It didn't explode with a kinetic impact. It didn't meet any magical resistance. It was simply caught in the localized gravitational crush of the spatial distortion and was instantly, utterly erased from existence. Just—gone. Reduced to atoms.
Kael's arrogant expression changed completely, shifting from shock to a deep, wary alarm.
"…Who—"
The jagged crack in reality widened, tearing open like a wound in the sky.
From deep within the swirling, pitch-black abyss of the portal—
A presence emerged.
It wasn't a physical body stepping through. It wasn't fully entering the physical realm of the ocean. But the sheer, overwhelming, suffocating density of the Stage 3 Peak mana leaking through the crack was enough.
It was more than enough to make the entire, massive frozen domain of Glacial Dominion actively tremble and vibrate under the pressure.
Through his fading, blurring consciousness, Garrick caught a fleeting, hallucinatory glimpse of it through the dark rift.
A tall silhouette. Wearing a dark, billowing cloak. Standing perfectly calm. Perfectly still. Watching the scene with the terrifying, detached calculation of a god.
And a cracked, splintered wooden mask.
A voice, slightly distorted by the spatial folding, echoed softly from the abyss, bypassing Kael completely and resonating directly in Garrick's mind.
"…You've done enough, Garrick. I'll take it from here."
Garrick's bloodshot eyes widened slightly, a weak, disbelieving breath escaping his lips.
"…Boss…?"
Standing on the frozen deck, Kael Vortigen took a slow, highly cautious step back.
For the very first time since he had set sail from the Spade Kingdom—
There was genuine, calculating caution in his crystalline eyes. The mana leaking from that rift was monstrous. It felt ancient, heavy, and completely devoid of standard elemental alignment.
"…Interesting," Kael murmured, his hands glowing with fresh, freezing mana.
The air twisted violently around him, the temperature dropping even further as he prepared his most devastating spells.
"Whoever you are, hiding in the shadows…" Kael threatened, his voice dropping into a lethal register. "…don't interfere in Spade Kingdom business."
The dark presence lingering within the spatial rift did not respond to the threat. It didn't banter. It didn't boast.
Instead—
The magical mark burned deep inside Garrick's soul suddenly, violently ignited like a flare.
A massive, overwhelming surge of foreign, highly refined mana flooded aggressively into the smuggler's broken body. It wasn't meant to empower him to fight. It wasn't a healing spell meant to knit his bones back together.
It was an anchor. It was meant to pull him.
Kael's highly trained eyes sharpened as he recognized the complex geometric structure forming within the dark rift.
"…Mass Teleportation?" Kael hissed.
He moved instantly. Demonic ice exploded violently beneath his heavy boots as he shot forward with blinding speed, reaching out to grab the dying smuggler before the spell could complete.
"Don't think I'll let you steal my prey—"
But he was too slow. The phantom was already ten steps ahead.
The jagged crack in space rapidly, violently expanded, stretching wide like the jaws of a leviathan.
It swallowed Garrick first, the smuggler's bleeding body instantly vanishing into the swirling darkness.
Then—the rift expanded further, wrapping around the screaming, terrified remnants of the surviving crew.
And finally, with a massive, groaning roar of spatial displacement, the rift expanded to encompass the entire, massive, half-destroyed hull of the Gilded Eel.
One by one—in the blink of an eye—
They all vanished.
Like they had never even existed on the ocean in the first place.
Kael's outstretched, ice-covered hand reached the exact spot where Garrick had been lying, just as the very last, lingering trace of the spatial distortion cleanly faded away into nothingness.
His hand passed harmlessly through empty, freezing air.
Absolute, deafening silence fell over the ocean.
The massive, miles-wide frozen domain of the Glacial Dominion stretched endlessly around him in every direction, completely empty save for his own warship.
The chaotic battlefield—gone.
His desperate, bleeding prey—gone.
Kael stood there for a long moment, his hand still suspended in the air. Slowly, he lowered his arm, letting the demonic ice melt from his fingertips.
Then—
He smiled.
It wasn't the arrogant, bored smirk from before. It was a slow, incredibly dangerous, deeply thrilled smile of a predator who had just discovered that the woods held much larger game than rabbits.
"…So, there's someone else out there," Kael whispered to the empty, frozen sea.
His pale eyes glinted with a dark, psychotic interest. He didn't know who the masked phantom was, or what kind of monster possessed spatial magic capable of casually teleporting an entire ship across the continent.
"Good."
He turned sharply on his heel, his heavy fur cloak swirling around him, and began walking calmly back toward the Abyss Serpent.
"This world just got incredibly interesting."
Far, far away—
In a completely different location, entirely divorced from the freezing terror of the ocean—
Garrick's broken, bleeding body crashed heavily onto solid, perfectly smooth white marble ground.
He gasped violently, his eyes shooting open as warm, incredibly thick, perfectly clean air filled his failing lungs. The stinging, bitter smell of the sea salt and the metallic tang of blood was completely gone.
It was replaced by something else. A scent like crushed mint, old parchment, and pure, vibrating life energy.
The environment was completely still. Utterly silent. And impossibly, miraculously safe.
For now.
Garrick lay on his back, his vision swimming and blurring wildly as he tried desperately to focus on his surroundings. He was in a massive, brightly lit, shadowless white room.
A tall figure stood nearby, looming over him.
Watching.
Calm.
Unmoving, with a cracked wooden mask staring down at him, holding a thick, black grimoire in one hand.
Garrick stared up at the monster who had just ripped him from the jaws of death, and let out a weak, bloody, coughing laugh.
"…Took you… long enough… Boss…"
The darkness finally rose up to take him, pulling his exhausted mind under the rushing black waves of unconsciousness.
And the very last thing Garrick heard, before the world completely faded away—
Was a quiet, surprisingly calm voice echoing in the white room.
"…You did well, Garrick. Now rest."