Tim gave a look of surprise and somewhat horror when he heard that Ning was looking to kill someone.
"You… you can't do that," the young man said. "You can't kill people. Do they allow these things in the Morgian empire?"
Ning looked at Tim. "Don't worry, I'm not killing people," he said. "The one I'm going to kill doesn't count as a human."
Tim gave a look of shock. "What… did he do?" he asked. "To be called not even a human."
"It's better if you don't know," Ning said. "Anyway, how long will it take us to get back?"
"Around 2 days if our luck is with us," Tim said. "5 if the wind is against us."
"Only 2 days?" Ning asked. "How long have you been on this voyage?" "Around a month now," Tim answered. "We've been roaming the southern Anaeric Ocean for the past month, trying to find any instance of a Zurin treasure."
"I see," Ning said. "No wonder. What's south of here? Do ships not come in this direction often?"
"Well, the south is just thousands of kilometers of ocean, with sparse islands in between. Most of the landmass there hasn't even been found yet, and if you go too far south, its just frozen land as far as you can tell. You must not know since you're from the northern hemisphere."
"Yeah, that is it," Ning said.
He spent his time with the young man, finding as much as he could about this world in as little time as possible. Once again, he had decided to make it a game for himself to hunt this Constellation Zurinus.
There were 3 things he knew for certain even before coming to this world. First, Zurinus was not as strong a Constellation as Indebiss. In fact, of the ones on his list, there were maybe 3 that were stronger than Indebiss, with the strongest one being Zaraxus, a Constellation that lived in the most fantastical world that Ning could think of.
Second, Zurinus had spent a long time cultivating this land to be completely under his control, and Ning could see how he had done that. Naming things that were not related to him as being related to him was a really sneaky way of getting people to forever remember you.
Third and final, Ning knew for certain that Zurinus was actively working in this world, even if he wasn't showing the world who he really was.
He was not hiding himself for generations, coming out only once in a while. No, he had been working normally, just not as a god. That was why Ning had decided to use this time to see if he could find Zurinus on his own without the system's help.
However, just to be safe, Ning had also given himself a year at max as a deadline. If he couldn't find Zurinus in the next year, he would rely on the System.
Captain Dorian came back a while later and started talking to Ning, trying to find out more about him and his treasures. It wasn't long before the man realized that he was going to get nothing relevant about Ning out of the conversation and simply decided to end it there.
The Captain gave up his own quarters to let Ning stay there, with him moving to his second-in-command's quarters, who moved to the one below him, and so on until some poor guy had to go sleep in the bed of a man that had died just today.
Ning went to his room to rest not long after, and Tim went back to his room as well.
Tim looked at the golden horn in his room with wide eyes as he still had yet to come to terms with the fact that he had in fact received a Zurin treasure.
He thought for a bit and blew on the horn as softly as he could. He didn't have to blow it loudly, and it still worked.
The Horn of Domination, as it had been named today, had a radius of 20 meters around which it could work, and it could only work on beings with minimum intelligence.
If tried on beings with higher intelligence, he would have to force himself to fight against the intelligence of that being to forcefully dominate it.
Tim felt the same feeling he had felt when he blew the horn the first time. The soft glow of lights seemed to float around him, some bright, some dull.
He could see small shapes of the light, each telling him what the beast he was looking at was.
"Weird," he spoke to himself. "There isn't that bright light from earlier."
The first time he had blown the horns, there had been a bright light that had nearly blinded him entirely. He wondered what that light was, and if it meant that he could dominate that thing too.
'No, I would probably lose my mind if I tried that,' Tim thought. He was most certainly sure that was what the strength of the light here meant.
He looked for a dull light, one in the shape of a mouse, and chose it. Suddenly, all light vanished and he was alone in his room again. Except, there was a sort of presence in his mind, waiting for him to give orders.
"Come here," Tim said and called for the mouse. Out from the ceiling of the room, hidden within the crevices of two wooden planks, a mouse showed its tiny head and then ran along the side wall before arriving on the floor, standing before his bed. The mouse looked at Tim with its large eyes, waiting for any orders that Tim had for it.
"Can you understand me?" Tim asked.
The mouse gave a slight nod. How it even knew to nod to show affirmation was beyond Tim's understanding. A mouse should not have known that at all.
"Turn around," Tim said.
The mouse turned, showing Tim its back.
"Turn again," Tim said.
The mouse turned back toward him.
"I can't believe it," Tim said softly. "I'm actually controlling a rodent's actions."
The mouse made a small sound as if he had confirmed his thoughts. "Let's try some more."
"Jump. Move in circles. Backflip. Run up the wall. Drag that over here."
Tim gave the mouse one task after another, seeing how far he could push the tiny thing with his commands. There was a limit to the amount of things he could have the beast do. It was limited by its physical capacity in the first place, so doing something like dragging something beyond its size was not something it could do in the first place.
It was incapable of doing backflips as it had never done that before, and extreme actions got it tired too, so Tim couldn't push it all the time.
As for things that required mental capacity, that seemed to be more so on the magical part, as it could do complex mathematical calculations with ease.
It was almost thought that the mouse was using Tim's intelligence to understand and perform the actions.
After a bit more testing, Tim realized that the rat was only capable of doing that when he knew what the rat was doing.
Even if Tim could do something, if he didn't know that the rat was doing it, the rat couldn't do it either.
'So I need to have vision over it for most of the time,' he thought.
He wanted to have the rat come to him, but thought better of it. Who knew what the rat had stepped on and what it could infect him with?
"Go back to what you were doing before. And if you can, don't let your other friends come in this room again," Tim said and went to sleep.
With the mouse gone, Tim finally went to sleep.
The next 3 days went by in a flash, with Tim having nothing to do throughout the entire day, so he talked to Ning the entire day.
Ning seemed somehow both very smart and very dumb at the same time. He appeared as though someone with a lot of knowledge. He was able to suggest to the Captain when the wind was going to blow in their direction and when in the opposite.
He could look at the sky and forecast the upcoming storm.
And yet he seemed to be lacking even the most basic knowledge as he had zero idea of any geopolitical situation of the world or even the most basic knowledge of what countries existed in the world.
In the end, Tim could only tell him what he wanted to learn.
There were more and more ships in the area, both large vessels for travel and fishing vessels. Birds were beginning to be seen in the area as well.
"Land in sight!" a man at the crows nest on top of the ship shouted and quickly came down to the deck.
Everyone looked in the distance and saw a small smudge of land.
"Tremala is here," Captain Dorian announced and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. They were finally back on land.
It still took them about 15 minutes to reach the docks where the ship was tied off. Ning and Tim left the ship and waited for the captain.
The Captain came out following them and shook Ning's hands.
"Once again, brother. Thank you for saving us. Without you, we would've died. If you need anything, need to go anywhere, give this old Dorian a shout and I will come even if I have to crawl to you."
"I will," Ning said. "Thank you for bringing us back."
"Of course, of course," the captain said and turned to Tim. "You are welcome as well, Lad. I will see you both again."
