Two black crows circled overhead.
Below them, the wreckage of destroyed airships lay tangled together on a "small island" made entirely of densely packed Pariston corpses. Near the edge of one twisted hull, a gray rock sparrow perched on Liam's shoulder, chirping indignantly and pecking at his ear. Hungry. Always hungry.
Liam held out a hand. Shizuku passed him some food, and the bird immediately switched targets, stabbing at the offering with its beak.
The crows wheeled through the air, then dove toward the blood-red shoreline of "Pariston Island."
Shark fins cut through the crimson water. As the first crow descended, the surface exploded. A massive shark head erupted from below, jaws gaping, teeth like knives. It lunged for the crow with the confidence of a predator that had never missed.
The crow stopped mid-air. Wings flared. Momentum killed instantly.
Something small and round dropped from its talons into the shark's open mouth.
The crow banked hard and shot back into the sky.
The shark swallowed the "Flying Star Bubble" without realizing what it had just eaten and sank back beneath the waves.
Twenty meters away, the second crow performed the same maneuver. Dive. Shark attack. Emergency stop. Drop payload. Escape.
Two fewer fins on the surface.
Underwater, the blood-red sea erupted with movement. Dozens of sharks thrashed and collided, crisscrossing paths in violent confusion. The water churned. Bubbles rose. Then, after a long moment, everything went still.
Silence.
Then, one by one, shark fins emerged from the bloody water and swam toward the shore of "Pariston Island" in a neat, orderly formation.
On the shore, Liam was still feeding Jaku the sparrow. He addressed the surviving passengers without looking at them. "So here's the situation. The Phantom Troupe caused a small accident. The airship exploded. We got lucky and didn't die. You've made contact with land-based rescue teams. Help's probably on the way. Just sit tight and wait."
One of the braver survivors spoke up. "Aren't you waiting for rescue with us?"
Liam shook his head. "Nope. I'm taking one of the three life rafts. We'll need some food and water. One meal's worth. That's it."
Everyone stared at him.
Liam turned to Kortopi. "Hey. Copy the life raft."
Kortopi's body moved before his brain caught up. He walked to one of the inflated rafts, pressed his left hand against it, and extended his right hand toward the open space beside them.
Aura poured out. "Divine's Left Hand and the Demonic's Right Hand."
Identical inflatable life rafts materialized across the "Pariston Island" clearing. One after another. Dozens of them.
The survivors' stunned expressions hadn't even finished forming before the scene changed completely. Life rafts everywhere. More than they could possibly need.
Given that they were literally standing on an island made of corpses, the sight of multiplying life rafts barely registered as weird.
We don't even need to wait for rescue, someone realized. We can row to land ourselves! One raft per person!
Excitement rippled through the crowd.
Then Liam spoke again. "Friendly reminder. These copies only last twenty-four hours max." He checked his phone. Signal was garbage, but the time still worked. "It's almost seven a.m. Which means this 'Pariston Island' under your feet starts disappearing after six a.m. tomorrow. By seven a.m. tomorrow, the copied life rafts vanish too."
Kortopi, who'd just finished the copying, thought: This kid knows way too much about my ability.
Pariston, watching from the sidelines as always, thought: He knows the Phantom Troupe's abilities in detail. Interesting.
Liam was doing math in his head. The airship was supposed to land around eight a.m. It exploded around six. Two-hour flight time difference. Can't be that far from land.
He had zero interest in dealing with official rescue operations. Who knew what kind of authority figures would show up? His identity was either completely off-the-grid like Meteor City, or he was technically a six-month-old infant registered as dead with possible ties to Kakin royalty.
Neither option was great for casual conversation with coast guard personnel.
Why is air travel so goddamn complicated? Liam thought bitterly. Never flying again. Walking from now on. Boats if I have to.
"So," Liam continued, "if anyone wants to leave on these copied rafts, be aware of the time limit." He glanced at Kortopi. "Copy the food too. As much as you can."
Kortopi obeyed.
Food appeared in massive piles. Mountains of it. More than the survivors could eat in a week.
Food gets digested within a few hours of eating, Liam reasoned. So even if it's a copy, it should work fine as long as you eat it before the twenty-four hours are up, right?
He'd done his part. Helped where he could. Warned them about the risks. Anything beyond that was their problem.
Time to leave.
"Shizuku." Liam waved a hand. The three birds took off into the sky. He hooked his foot under one of the large inflatable life rafts, dragged it across the "Pariston ground" toward the edge, and kicked it into the bloody water. Then he grabbed Kortopi by the collar and tossed him onto the raft like a sack of potatoes.
Liam jumped after him. The raft bounced under his weight.
Beneath the water's surface, sharks circled the raft, ready to act as living propellers.
Shizuku picked up a few bags of food for appearances and followed Liam onto the raft.
She and Liam exchanged a look. Blinky was already stocked with plenty of food and water. Asking the survivors for a meal was just politeness. Keeping up appearances.
THUMP. The raft shook.
Someone else had jumped aboard.
Liam's expression went flat. "I swear to god, you walking personality disorder, what do you think you're doing? We're not friends."
Pariston settled himself against the edge of the raft, smiling that infuriating smile. "Don't mind me. I just feel like we're destined to travel together. Besides, if I insist on taking your boat, are you really going to throw me overboard?" He tilted his head. "You don't have the strength for that. Do you?"
Several survivors on the shore who'd been considering asking Liam and Shizuku for a ride immediately reconsidered.
Pariston Hill has a reputation. A bad one.
Stuck on a life raft in the middle of the ocean with a lawyer famous for having zero moral boundaries? What if they couldn't find land for days? What if supplies ran low? Who knew what kind of Lord of the Flies situation Pariston would instigate when things got desperate?
The hundred-or-so survivors of "Pariston Island" split into two groups.
More than half chose to stay on the island and wait for rescue, betting that help would arrive before the island disappeared at six a.m. tomorrow. They kept one of the real life rafts just in case.
The other half chose to leave immediately. They loaded up the copied life rafts with copied food, took the second real life raft, and scavenged every useful item from the wrecked airship: planks, floating debris, life jackets, anything that could serve as emergency backup. With dozens of copied rafts available, they could afford to pack redundancies.
"Your terrible personality actually saved me a lot of hassle," Liam muttered, glaring at Pariston as their raft picked up speed across the water, dragging a white wake behind it like a speedboat.
The sharks were pushing hard. The raft was practically flying.
Liam crossed his arms. "But you're still shameless as hell."
Pariston leaned back comfortably, looking like he was on vacation. "There's plenty of space. Besides, I can be useful. Navigation, for instance? I'm guessing neither of you attended much formal schooling, so you probably don't know how to..."
He glanced up and stopped mid-sentence.
Three birds flew high overhead, scattered in different directions across the sky.
Pariston laughed. "Right. Almost forgot. You can control animals. Like the sharks pushing us right now."
Don't take the bait. He's trying to piss you off. That's literally his fetish.
Liam took a deep breath, smiled, and gave Pariston the middle finger. Then he turned away.
Kortopi sat in silence, staring at nothing. Defeated. Done caring.
Shizuku had pulled out a book. An old one she'd read dozens of times and forgotten just as many. She noticed Liam watching her and looked up, confused.
"Lap," he said. "I need a pillow."
"Oh." Shizuku adjusted her arms, lifting the book higher, and Liam lay down across the raft with his head on her thighs.
She glanced down. Liam's eyes were already closed.
Shizuku understood. He was focusing entirely on the three scout birds in the sky, using their high-altitude vision to locate the nearest land or island. Simultaneously, he was controlling the sharks underwater, directing them to push the raft at maximum speed toward whatever destination the birds found first.
Whether it was Liam's terrible sense of direction or just spectacularly bad luck, they drifted for most of the day without finding anything.
The ocean changed moods like a toddler. Calm one moment. Violent the next. Waves rose out of nowhere, slamming the raft hard enough to throw everyone around. The sharks beneath them had to rotate out several times, exhausted from constant propulsion.
The sun crawled across the sky, then started its descent. Dusk approached.
Finally, through Jaku's eyes, Liam spotted a black silhouette on the horizon.
An island.
Thank god. I'm going numb. Finally.
Liam dropped the metaphorical stone he'd been carrying in his chest and pushed the shark formation to maximum speed. The raft shot forward like a missile.
"Running to a mountain's death" was the saying. On the ocean, it was the same principle. When Jaku first spotted the island, the sky was still bright. By the time the raft actually reached it, night had fallen completely. Stars reflected on the water's surface like scattered diamonds.
The speeding raft split the galaxy of reflections and closed in on the island ahead. In the darkness, the island's outline looked like a sleeping beast. Mountain ridges rose against the night sky, black and imposing.
Liam's mood sank. This island looks empty. No towns. No lights. Nothing.
Pariston stood up at some point and walked over to stand beside Liam. He stared at the approaching island, expression thoughtful. "You know, I've heard rumors. Greed Island. The game created by Nen users. It's not just a game. It's a real island."
Liam's eyes went dead. He looked at Pariston. Then at the dark island ahead. "What are you saying?"
Pariston smiled and said nothing.
Greed Island. Entrance to the game's starting village.
Yida, dressed in her artificial NPC outfit, sat at a keyboard inside the game's control center. Her fingers flew across the keys, monitoring systems, tracking player movements.
Her hands stopped suddenly.
"Intruder detected."
She'd noticed something anomalous. Offshore. Something that shouldn't be there.
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