“Hey, what do you think about today’s weather?"
As I asked this question to the captain of this merchant ship while looking at the clear sky overhead. He made an amiable expression and said with a smile—
“Weather looks to be great for now, and there's also a downstream wind blowing from the north so it’s going to be a nice voyage today.”
“I see…… What do you think are the chances of the weather turning bad in the afternoon and becoming a storm?”
The captain's face turned bitter at my question.
“Weather on the sea is as fickle as a feather in the wind so the chances of it deteriorating into a storm can’t be ruled out. At times like that, we fold the sail and wait for the storm to pass by staying still.”
“Thank you for your explanation.”
I expressed my thanks and returned to Teto’s side.
“Majou-sama, what have you decided on?”
“It’s not about how we just have to do what we can within our capabilities.”
We weren’t the gods who could handle the weather with a flip of our hands. Besides, I didn’t know if it would even be a good choice to forcefully make the storm vanish either as it might show up in some other place instead for all we know.
Since things were problematic either way, we could only do our best to endure the storm and pray for it to pass quickly.
“Besides, gods aren’t omnipotent either.”
Even gods couldn’t directly interfere with the weather according to what I was able to make out from Luriel's story in her oracle.
What I understood was that they watched over the world through the mana that reside in objects or through the attributes they governed, and then controlled the weather or passed divine punishment through a little miracle.
The greatest known miracle of the five goddesses is the great barrier they had erected to prevent the flow of mana from being sucked away into the «Empty Wilderness», but even that is an exception among exceptions.
Any natural phenomenon aside from that should be them pulling it through the laws of physics rather than their mana or divinity.
“But, this has just deepened my interest in this world more and more now that I know a part of how it works.”
“*Pout* Don’t just talk to yourself, Majou-sama!”
Teto, dissatisfied that I stopped talking to her and was off in my own world, poked my cheek.
After that, both Teto and I put ourselves on alert to not miss any sign of the storm as we stared at the azure sky as if wanting to pierce through it. Dark clouds began to show themselves gradually as the time reached the afternoon. They thickened, took an even deeper shade of gray, and began to cover the sky with their color.
“—A storm is coming! Lower the sails now!”
“We can’t even enter any harbor given the scale of it! Get yourselves ready everyone, we’re going to brave it here in the sea!”
The undulation of the waves surged and pushed against the boat as strong winds blew down from the sky accompanied by the heavy rain pouring down diagonally.
“The storm is even fiercer than I expected.”
“Are you alright, Majou-sama?”
Teto supported me on the swaying deck of the ship when I stumbled on my footing as I held onto the Hisui in one hand and pinned down my triangular witch hat to keep it from being blown away into the storm on the other.
“Thank you, Teto! Anyway, we have to first protect the ship from the rage of the storm and rain! — «Avoidance»!”
I made a globe-shaped barrier covering the whole ship.
“This is……”
“It’s a spell that protects from arrow rain! This should be able to abate the effects of the storm!”
Magic spells like normal barriers that possessed the characteristic of being able to interfere with the material world wouldn’t be able to offset the momentum of the waves with how chaotic the sea was and it would just cause the ship to be overturned.
That’s why I opted for the arrow-proof «Avoidance» barrier to veer away from the wind and rain. This reduced the load on already struggling sailors and we somehow managed to make a firm footing on the ship.
“Alright, now we just have to be careful of the swaying of the boat and we’re all set! Set the boat to be vertically aligned with the waves!”
The captain raised his voice. The privately hired adventurers were also on the deck with their weapons out as the sailors operated the ships.
“It seems like monsters took advantage of the storm to slip in! Protect the ladies who put the windbreaker!”
Although the arrow-proof barrier could defend the boat from the rage of the wind and rain, it couldn’t ward off things that held a certain amount of mass.
Fish monsters slipped under the waves amidst the storm, came out of the sea, and leaped onto the deck one after another. I reckoned that the monsters' intention should be to feed on the sailors by either biting them or making them fall into the sea with ramming attacks.
And given how chaotic the sea was currently, it wouldn't be good if any of them fell into the water.
The adventurer party continued to swing their weapon at the waves of monsters, kicked them back to sea using the momentum of the swaying ship after defeating them, and then moved on to the next target.
“Ah, what a waste of monsters! Teto is also off to defeat them!”
“Be careful to not fall into the sea, Teto!”
I continued to hold the wand up and deploy the windbreaker.
I also fired some wind blades at the leaping monsters and sent them back to the sea before they could get on the deck while maintaining the arrow-proof barrier spell which was stronger than ever now due to the magic amplification of the floating stone.
Teto, too, swung her black magic sword left and right, stored the bodies of the defeated monsters in the magic bag fastened to her waist and continued to collect ingredients.
Just as the battle had been going on for around two hours, a conspicuous black shadow could be seen hovering above the sky.
“What is that black thing……”
A black silhouette was floating amidst the dense, black clouds. One could see a glimpse of a green light from the thick clouds on that huge black shadow’s lower body. Then it began to rain rocks all of a sudden, perhaps blown away by the wind from that thing.
“Why in the world are rocks suddenly falling!”
“Shit! Oh, the great marine goddess Luriel-sama! Please protect us!”
The members of the adventurer party cursed while the sailors prayed to the goddess as they operated the ship.
“Let’s see, I've already amplified the wind magic, now the dark-gravity magic… That should do it. —«Collapse Bullet»!”
Around 20 fist-sized black spheres formed at the tip of my wand. I took notice of the ship’s mast to not accidentally hit it and fired those bullets into the sky.
They were the black spheres of destruction that I came up with by changing the direction of the gravitational magic «Gravity» from downward to inwardly and their powers were amplified by the floating stone.
Each bullet consumed 10,000 units of mana — much more than even the «Thunderbolt» I had used to defeat the sea serpent. Like a balloon, the compressed black spheres swelled up into 5-meter spheres as soon as they came in contact with the falling rocks and swallowed them inside. The swallowed rocks were reduced to atoms literally by the immense pressure packed inside the spheres.
“Holy crap……”
The sailors exclaimed in amazement at the sight of the black spheres appearing in the sky one after another and then let out sighs of relief seeing all the falling rocks being reduced to nothingness.
“*Sigh* This has sorted out the immediate danger for now. But how come rocks are falling into this part of the sea?”
While there was the black shadow in the sky, there was no tall mountain as far as eyes could see in this broad ocean from where the rocks could even fall from.
It was the leader of the adventurer party that cleared my doubt when I muttered it out.
“Rocks must have fallen from the floating island.”
“What do you mean by floating isla—... wait, don’t tell that was……”
I recalled the huge black shadow as well as the green light shining on the lower part of its body and looked at the wand in my hand. After comparing them I was sure it was the same kind of light as the «Floating Stone».
“Floating islands can be seen around the vicinity of the Lovile Kingdom. We may have gotten close to one of them inadvertently in the storm. We usually take care to not pass through the same place where the floating islands are but we probably didn’t realize this in the storm."
It seemed like the dark clouds hovering in the sky hid the floating island as it was no longer visible when I looked up again while listening to the explanation. The desire to someday see a floating island in clear weather swirled inside me.
It was then that I noticed something falling from the floating island again.
“This time it's a mana item or something? It looks small……”
The tiny existence, whose mana was far denser than trash like rocks, was dancing in the sky as if being toyed with by the storm’s wind.
I straddle my magic wand as curiosity got the better of me seeing that tiny thing struggling in the stormy sky where strong winds were blowing.
“I have spotted something intriguing so I’m going to go and take a look! —«Fly»!”
“Come back soon, Majou-sama!”
“Wait miss, there’s still a storm blowing outside the windbreaker!... Eh, it seems like she also made another windbreaker to cover herself with.”
I immediately leaped into the sky while riding my magic wand.
The repulsive force of the floating stone sped up my flight speed and I shot through the air like an arrow. At the same time, the falling speed of the tiny being that fell from the sky increased.
It seemed like the monsters had also noticed the dense mana packed in that being as they waited in the sea for it to drop, some had even begun leaping out of the water in an attempt to swallow it.
“Phew, I barely made it.”
I increased my speed and gently caught the black being in my arms just before it was about to become a monster's lunch.
The tiny being turned its body around to look at me while I hugged it in my arms.
«Meow~»
“......A kitten fell from the floating island, eh?”
The kitten that had beautiful black fur shivered due to being wet from the rain. I guess it may have fallen from the floating island in the same way as the rocks before did.
It would be difficult to chase after the floating island now and protecting the ship was currently the first priority.
“Let’s return to the boat for now.”
I flew back to the ship while hugging the kitten inside of my robe.
