Thaddues had always assumed danger would feel obvious when it finally arrived—loud, theatrical, something a sane man could point at and say there, that is the moment everything changes.
But the sea did not work that way.
Even after mastering three branches of magic, even after refining his instincts to the point where most spells felt like extensions of thought rather than effort, he had learned one simple truth: the ocean did not announce its intent. It only became it.
And today, it had become something wrong.
He stood at the prow earlier, hands tucked behind his back, robes tightened against the salt wind. The horizon had looked normal at first glance—endless water, pale sky, the slow drift of clouds. But something in it refused to settle. The air felt… misaligned. Like a spell cast imperfectly, its structure nearly correct but subtly unstable.
Thaddues didn't ignore that feeling.
He never ignored that feeling.
Even with his capacity for magic—vast enough that lesser wizards might have mistaken him for a walking leyline—perhasp because he had watch many fantasy series in his past life he had learned enough to know that power did not make one immune to stupidity. Overconfidence killed more mages than curses ever did.
So before the ship crossed into the stormfront, he began to weave.
Not casually. Not minimally.
Layer upon layer of protection spread across the vessel like overlapping glass plates, reinforcing what was already in place. The ship had long been under standard protective charms, but Thaddeus pushed them further—upgrading each existing layer instead of replacing them.
Shielding enchantments thickened the already reinforced wooden hull, stacking additional resilience over the original wards. Structural bindings tightened around the ancient timbers, compressing them into a more unified and resistant frame. Wind-dispersion matrices layered over earlier stabilization spells, refining control over the sails. At the deepest level, an anchoring enchantment was extended through the entire structure, with Thaddeus himself acting as the fixed point that stabilized the ship against external force and distortion.
The result was not a new ship, but an upgraded one—its original protections still intact, now reinforced and elevated into something far more durable, as if every safeguard had been pushed one layer higher in refinement, all centered around his presence as the anchor holding it steady.
He didn't care how much magic it cost.
He cared that his wealth—everything he had accumulated since arriving in this era—was inside it. More importantly, he cared that he was currently trapped in the middle of the ocean with no possibility of escape if nature decided to stop pretending it was benign.
When the ship finally entered the fog, it felt less like sailing into weather and more like crossing a boundary.
The world changed instantly.
Sound distorted first.
The thunder did not roll—it echoed, as if the sky itself had been hollowed out and struck like a drum. Each reverberation came delayed, layered, wrong in its timing. Then came the rain, heavy and relentless, but not falling so much as collapsing from above. The sea turned black beneath it, swallowing light until even dawn seemed hesitant to exist.
Within minutes, the horizon vanished.
It was as if someone had drawn a curtain across reality.
Thaddues remained on deck long enough to confirm what he already suspected: visibility was gone, navigation unreliable, and the storm was not natural in any conventional sense. The wind patterns alone did not make sense—they shifted direction in sharp, angular bursts, like something massive was moving through them and displacing the air.
He did not stay to observe further.
He returned below deck to the galley, where lantern light flickered against polished wood and damp metal fixtures. The ship creaked softly under pressure, but inside the enchantments held steady. The illusion of safety remained intact, even as the world outside roared like a living thing.
He prepared his dinner in the kitchen, and once it was ready, he carried it to the long table and ate in silence.
Food was routine. Routine kept the mind steady. And a steady mind made magic easier to control.
Still, the unease followed him in.
Thaddeus exhaled through his nose and reached into his pocket, pulling out a vial of Calming Draught. He uncorked it and drank it in one motion.
The potion was lightly sweet, with a soft herbal warmth underneath—something like honey mixed with faint floral notes that settled gently on the tongue. It was not overpowering, but it carried a quiet soothing quality that made the body ease before the mind fully understood why.
Within moments, the tension in his chest loosened. His breathing slowed, his thoughts steadied—but the unease did not disappear completely. It was only held down, kept under control, not erased.
That bothered him more than the feeling itself.
Through the small galley window, the ocean outside was barely visible. What he could swere waves—towering, unstable things rising and collapsing in irregular rhythm. Yet the ship remained steady, held in place by the layered enchantments he had cast earlier. It cut through the chaos like a needle through cloth.
For now, at least, it held.
He leaned back slightly, letting his thoughts drift where they shouldn't.
That was when he remember he has a sign in available today.
---
[Sign in today? ]*1 avail
[Y/N]
---
Thaddeus glanced at the additional information beside it—another system update he had discovered a few weeks earlier. From it, he had learned that he could stack his daily sign-in rewards instead of claiming them immediately.
He had even tested it, experimenting to see if longer stacking would improve the rewards—whether, for example, holding three days' worth would result in something stronger.
But after trying it four times, the outcome remained the same. The rewards did not improve in quality. At most, stacking only increased the quantity when claimed, which was expected and natural.
So he stopped expecting anything significant from the sign-in system. As long as it gave him something useful—a spell book, galleons, or any form of magical artifact—he considered it acceptable.
The system had been inconsistent since the day he awakened it. Sometimes it granted him life changing rewards like master cards, sometimes nothing useful at all. There was no clear structure to its behavior—only an unpredictable flow of rewards that all, however, still belonged within the world he now lived in: spellbooks, galleons, magical artifacts, and other known forms of wizarding knowledge and resources.
It felt less like a structured arcane interface and more like a capricious archive of forgotten knowledge—one that drew from the existing magical world without pattern or logic, offering rewards without clear reason or consistency.
But today…
A new sign in reward appeared before sight.
A book.
The system displayed it as a mental image, sharp and unmistakable, as if it truly existed and had been placed within reach.
---
[SIGN IN SUCCESSFUL!
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE HOST FOR OBTAING A BOOK OF SPELL!
Magick Moste Evile.]
---
--
[Claim the reward? ]
[Y/N]
--
He sat still. For a brief moment, even the roar of the storm beyond the hull seemed distant, as if the world itself had drawn back and left him in a pocket of quiet.
Magick Moste Evile. He knew that name.
The memory came unbidden—Marco's cluttered display back in their college boarding house, where oddities and joke props gathered dust on narrow shelves. That book had been among them: worn, theatrical, ridiculous. Marco had clutched it like a prize while cosplaying a dark lord, loudly claiming he'd forged a Horcrux… using a pair of his own rancid socks.
Back then, it had been nothing more than a joke. A prop. A fake.
Now, this was no replica. This was the real thing—ancient, dangerous, true.
A slow grin tugged at his lips, edged with disbelief and anticipation.
"Hell, yes."
Since the day he had awakened the system, it had never once offered him anything categorized like this. Not once. Everything it granted leaned toward neutral theory—elemental manipulation, structural magic, benign utility. Safe paths. Predictable growth. He had even begun to suspect, absurd as it sounded, that the system itself was bound by some kind of moral framework—a curated ceiling, a "safe" wizarding structure meant to keep him contained.
Charms. Transfiguration. Ancient runes.
Disciplines of control, creation, and refinement. Power, yes—but disciplined, shaped, restrained.
Never this.
But this.... shattered it.
The spellbook materialized in front of his table, almost knocking over the bowl he had used for eating.
His fingers twitched slightly against the wood. His eyes stayed locked on it.
Once he touched it—once he learned its first spell—another branch of magic would unlock within the system.
A slow, restrained satisfaction crept into his expression before he could suppress it. Not joy—something quieter, more precise. Recognition. The acknowledgment of value in the dark arts, in magic that did not pretend to be safe.
Even as he looked at it, he could feel it already, like a sealed door beginning to crack open in a pressure-tight room. Something old stirring on the other side, waiting for permission to breathe.
He reached out to open the book. However, before his fingers could make contact, the ship shuddered.
Not from wind. Not from waves.
A sound tore through the air outside—sharp, violent, like reality itself being ripped under unbearable pressure.
Then came the screams.
Human screams.
Thaddeus froze.
His body reacted before his mind fully caught up, instincts tightening like drawn wire. He had been alone—truly alone—for so long since his transmigration that the sound of human voices, especially in panic, struck him like a physical blow.
He stood so quickly his chair scraped harshly against the floor.
For a moment, he just listened.
Screams.
Not one voice. Multiple.
Close enough to be real. Close enough to be here.
That alone made no sense.
He moved fast.
He pushed out of the galley and onto the deck again, rain instantly striking his enchantment field like scattered sparks. The storm was worse now—visibility nearly nonexistent, wind screaming in unnatural bursts, waves rising like vertical walls of liquid darkness.
And then he saw it. At first, it was only a silhouette in the fog.
A ship. Massive. A warship of unfamiliar yet refined construction—built for dominion over open seas rather than elegance alone. Its hull was broad and heavily reinforced, dark timber bound with iron strakes that ran along its sides like hardened scars, made to endure impact rather than avoid it.
Twin rows of oars moved faintly beneath the waves, their rhythm barely visible through the mist. Above, towering masts rose into the storm-heavy sky, carrying torn sails soaked with rain and salt. On the fabric, a faded emblem still lingered—an elongated sea creature coiled in motion, its form stylized and fluid, like something born of deep waters rather than air. Time and weather had worn it down, but the suggestion of its shape remained unmistakable.
It was larger than his own vessel—twice the scale, maybe more. But that wasn't what held his attention.
What held his attention was what clung to it.
A creature.
No.
Not on it.
Wrapped around it.
Coiled like a living siege engine, its body vast enough to dwarf the entire structure. Its form resolved more clearly now—no longer something ambiguous between myth and nightmare, but unmistakably a kraken.
Massive, abyss-born, its immense tentacles surged from beneath the waves, each one thicker than the ship's masts, lined with rows of gripping suckers that clung to wood and steel alike. Dark, slick skin—almost ink-black in the stormlight—shimmered as it moved, as if the ocean itself had condensed into living flesh. It dragged itself and the wrecked vessel together in slow, crushing motions, not frantic or animalistic, but deliberate—like something ancient testing how easily the world broke under its grip.
Every movement shattered timber.
Every twist collapsed deck sections like paper.
The massive ship was not sailing.
It was being dismantled in real time.
Timbers cracked under unseen force, iron strakes groaning and bending as if the sea itself had turned hostile, intent on breaking it apart piece by piece rather than simply sinking it.
And behind it—figures.
Small at this distance, reduced to shifting silhouettes against the pale churn of fog and stormlight.
Men.
Soldiers—disciplined even in collapse, their formation barely holding as they moved across the ravaged decks. From afar, they were no more than dark shapes of armor and motion, catching brief flashes of steel whenever lightning tore through the clouds. Cloaks whipped violently in the wind, snapping like torn sails, their insignias lost in distance and mist—only the uniformity of their presence marking them as trained, as organized, as belonging to something greater than themselves.
Some still fought to maintain order on the broken vessel.
Some were already being swallowed by chaos too vast to resist.
Thaddeus felt his breath catch.
This wasn't a storm event.
This was a hunt.
The creature tightened its coil again, and the ship groaned in protest before splitting audibly down the center. The sound carried even through the rain—wood screaming, metal bending, reality protesting under sheer physical dominance.
One of the masts snapped completely and vanished into the sea.
Another followed seconds later.
The screams intensified.
Thaddues stood at the edge of his deck, rain pouring around his enchantments like a waterfall split in two. His mind tried to cope up what he was seeing—a kraken.
Then, as if sensing him—the Kraken stopped.
Just for a moment.
Its body shifted slightly in the fog.
And something about that felt worse than the destruction.
Because it meant awareness.
Thaddues took a slow step back.
The ocean had stopped being just water.
And whatever was out there—had just noticed him too.
"What the fuck," he whispered, barely audible beneath the storm.
TBC
What Thaddues had seen.... for reference. Click here.[*]
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