Kael didn't chant. He didn't pull out a grimoire. He simply raised his right hand and snapped his fingers.
The ocean directly behind the massive hull of the Abyss Serpent froze instantly. The water didn't just turn to ice; it violently erupted. A massive, towering ring of jagged, pitch-black ice spikes tore out of the churning sea, hovering in the air like a halo of death behind the warship.
Then—without a sound—they launched.
Dozens of massive, heavy, spear-like projectiles screamed across the narrowing gap of the sea, aiming directly toward the fragile wooden hull and deck of Garrick's ship.
"MOVE!" Garrick roared, his voice tearing his bruised throat.
His crew didn't need to be told twice. They scattered instantly, diving behind crates, throwing themselves down the stairs leading below deck, desperately scrambling for any semblance of cover.
The first black ice spike smashed violently into the center of the main deck.
BOOM!
The thick oak wood exploded outward in a shower of lethal, jagged splinters. A gaping, freezing hole was instantly torn through the planks.
Another spike tore effortlessly through the heavy canvas of the main sail, shredding the thick fabric to ribbons and snapping the mast's rigging lines. A third spike slammed into the bow, completely shattering the front railing and sending chunks of wood flying into the sea.
Absolute chaos and screaming erupted across the ship as the bombardment hit.
Garrick didn't run for cover. He couldn't. If those spikes hit the hull below the waterline, they were all dead anyway. He leapt forward, throwing his hands out, his grimoire glowing with a desperate, toxic light.
"Cursed Water Magic: Sea Serpent's Fang!"
A massive, incredibly thick whip composed entirely of highly pressurized, boiling black water exploded from his outstretched hand. It cracked through the freezing air like a cannon shot, leaving a trail of foul-smelling steam in its wake.
The heavy, toxic whip slammed violently into two incoming ice spikes right before they reached the mast. The highly corrosive nature of the water ate through the demonic ice on contact, shattering them into harmless, melting fragments.
But more kept coming. The barrage was relentless.
It was simply too many.
Standing on the bow of his pristine warship, Kael rested his chin lazily on his palm, watching the desperate struggle with casual, detached amusement.
"Dance, little smuggler. Dance for me," Kael whispered, a dark thrill in his eyes.
With a subtle twitch of his finger, another, even larger barrage formed above the freezing sea.
This time, the spikes weren't just spears. They were larger. They were jagged, covered in wicked, secondary barbs, and they were far more densely packed together. They blotted out the remaining light of the setting sun.
Looking up at the descending cloud of death, Garrick's heart sank like a stone in his chest. His arms were shaking from mana depletion.
"…You've got to be kidding me," he breathed, his voice barely a whisper.
The second barrage launched. The sky above the Gilded Eel literally became a howling storm of black ice.
Garrick screamed, pushing his exhausted, bruised body and his rapidly depleting mana core to their absolute, physical limits.
Cursed, boiling black water surged wildly around him in desperate, uncoordinated arcs. He whipped his arms back and forth, shattering several incoming spikes into dark snow. He threw himself to the deck, desperately dodging others that embedded themselves deeply into the wood where he had just been standing.
But he wasn't fast enough. He wasn't some monster or genius. He was just a man, an ordinary man.
One of the massive, barbed spikes managed to slip past his flailing water whip. It struck him dead-on in his left shoulder.
CRACK!
The sickening sound of his own collarbone and shoulder blade violently snapping echoed in his own ears, louder than the storm.
"AAAGH!"
The sheer kinetic force of the heavy ice projectile lifted him completely off his feet. He was thrown violently backward across the ruined deck, his body skipping across the splintered wood like a skipped stone.
Before he even stopped rolling, another, smaller spike grazed the outside of his right leg, tearing through his heavy coat and slicing deeply into his calf muscle.
Hot, bright red blood sprayed across the freezing, frost-covered planks.
The Gilded Eel was rapidly falling apart beneath him. The hull was groaning, taking on water from several near-misses that had ruptured the sides. His surviving crew members were desperately, frantically trying to cast weak repair spells on the sails and steer the dying ship away from the warship.
But it was entirely futile. The Abyss Serpent was gaining, its massive metal hull cutting through the water effortlessly.
Kael let out a long, theatrical yawn, covering his mouth with a gloved hand.
"Well, this is getting rather predictable," Kael said, his voice tinged with genuine disappointment. "I suppose that's the limit of a insect's struggle."
He raised one hand high into the air once again.
This time, the mana surge was violent, oppressive, and utterly overwhelming. It felt like the gravity in the area had suddenly doubled. A massive, intricate, glowing black magic circle, easily fifty meters wide, formed in the sky directly above him.
The dark, churning ocean immediately beneath Garrick's dying ship began to freeze solid. The water turned to thick, black ice, trapping the Gilded Eel completely in place. The ship groaned in protest as the ice crushed its wooden sides.
"Let's finish this little game," Kael declared coldly.
Garrick forced his battered, broken body onto his hands and knees.
His breathing was incredibly ragged, coming in short, bloody wheezes. His entire body trembled violently from a mixture of shock, adrenaline, and severe blood loss. His left arm hung completely useless, numb and shattered at his side.
"…Damn monster…" Garrick spat, blood dripping from his chin onto the frozen deck.
He watched helplessly as the freezing, demonic ice crawled slowly up the sides of his hull like a creeping disease. And high above, in the center of the massive magic circle, another colossal ice spear began forming.
It was larger than the first one. Much, much larger. It was a localized extinction event. When that spear fell, it wouldn't just sink the ship; it would completely obliterate the vessel, the cargo, and every living soul on board into microscopic dust.
Garrick let out a low, wet, incredibly weak laugh.
"...Of course," he wheezed. "Of course it ends like this."
He gritted his teeth, placing his good right hand on the deck, and tried desperately to stand. He wanted to die on his feet.
But his muscles refused to obey. His legs failed him completely, numb from the cold and the blood loss. He collapsed back onto his knees. Hot, fresh blood dripped steadily from the multiple, jagged wounds across his body, pooling warmly on the freezing wood.
The cursed, pitch-black water that usually swirled around him so effortlessly now sputtered weakly at his fingertips, fizzling out like a dying candle. His mana core was completely, utterly empty. He had nothing left to give.
So this was really how it ended.
Not in some grand, high-stakes heist in the capital. Not in a glorious, daring escape from the Magic Knights with a hold full of gold. Just crushed like an annoying bug by some bored, sociopathic noble from the Spade Kingdom.
"…What a stupid, pathetic way to die," Garrick whispered, closing his eyes, waiting for the shadow of the spear to fall over him.
But then—
Something strange happened.
At his hip, strapped securely to his belt, his heavily modified, tethered grimoire began to aggressively vibrate. It began to glow.
Garrick frowned, his eyes snapping open.
"…What?"
The pages of the book began to flip violently, entirely on their own, illuminated by a sickly, pulsing, incredibly intense purple light.
And then, Garrick felt it.
It wasn't external mana. It was something stirring incredibly deep within the absolute, foundational core of his own soul. It was a sensation he had never felt before in his entire life as a mage. It was something entirely unfamiliar. Something completely, profoundly new.
It was a conceptual shift.
The remaining, sputtering droplets of cursed water surrounding him began reacting strangely to the shift in his soul.
Instead of flowing like normal liquid, or spraying like a geyser—
The water fundamentally changed. It thickened. It darkened from a translucent black to an absolute, light-consuming void. It became incredibly, unnaturally heavy. It didn't look like water anymore. It looked like thick, bubbling, boiling tar.
Garrick's exhausted, bloodshot eyes widened as a sudden, profound realization slammed into his brain.
"…Wait."
Understanding, sharp and incredibly clear, flashed through his mind like a bolt of lightning.
He had always treated his magic like water. He had used it to whip, to slash, to wash away. He had treated the 'curse' aspect as a secondary effect, a mere poison added to the liquid.
But that was fundamentally wrong.
Water was the essence of life. It flowed. It nourished.
But cursed water… Cursed water was the absolute antithesis of life. It was the physical manifestation of decay. It was rot. It was absolute, unstoppable contamination.
And rot didn't flow like a river.
Rot spreads. It consumes. It infects.
The incredibly heavy, black, tar-like liquid around his boots suddenly began expanding outward. It didn't splash; it seeped. It crawled rapidly across the splintered, frozen deck. It seeped deeply into the cracks of the wood, instantly rotting the oak to mush. It seeped over the side of the hull, dripping down into the demonic ice that trapped them.
And the moment the heavy black sludge touched the frozen sea—the ocean itself began turning black. The demonic ice hissed, melting and rotting away as the corruption spread like a highly aggressive plague.
Standing on his warship, Kael's perfectly groomed eyebrows rose slightly in genuine surprise.
"Oh?" Kael murmured.
The creeping, freezing Spade ice had suddenly, abruptly stopped advancing on the smuggler's ship. In fact, it was retreating, being actively devoured. The incredibly dense, cursed liquid was actively resisting and eating the his magic.
On the deck of the dying Gilded Eel, Garrick slowly, shakily pushed himself to his feet. He didn't feel the pain of his shattered shoulder anymore. He didn't feel the cold. He only felt the overwhelming, intoxicating rush of the new concept burning in his soul.
A brand new spell, complex and entirely unearned through practice, formed perfectly inside his mind, downloaded directly from the epiphany.
The words left his bloody mouth instinctively, carrying a heavy, echoing resonance.
"Cursed Water Magic…"