Chapter 208

Being on the sea meant constantly feeling the waves. Even in my cabin on the ship, lying lazily on my bed and dozing off, that didn’t change. The sound of waves lapping against the hull of the ship, and the hull creaking in turn, were all different from what you would hear on shore. That was about as natural a phenomenon as you could get, but it also served as a way for me to communicate with the water spirits in the sea. You could think of it as the voice of the ocean.

Without warning, the waves rocking our ship changed. The difference was sharp enough that I noticed it immediately, even while half asleep. The waves had become strong but small, excited but careful not to damage the ship. It was like a child pulling at your sleeve, eager to show you something new they discovered.

I slowly opened my eyes, then got to looking for what the spirits were excited about. The spirits living in the ocean were refined and composed, sometimes even wrathful. They rarely showed excitement like this. When I asked what was happening, they simply told me to hurry and come see. I couldn’t help but smile at their childlike behavior.

At the spirits’ urging, I hurried out of my room and onto the deck, looking around at the water surrounding us...to see it was full of flowers. That wasn’t a metaphor; there was literally a blanket of pure white flowers covering the water around us.

At sea, the most prevalent colors were the blue of the water, the black of night, and the white of clouds. But now, the ocean itself was white. The bizarre sight caused something indescribable to well up within me. I felt overwhelmingly moved, enough to blow away any unease or suspicion I might have felt.

However, it seemed I was the only one who was having a positive experience, as the rest of the crew was running around the ship, pale with fear. The sails were full, and the ship gained speed as if to leave this sea of flowers behind as quickly as possible.

“What’s wrong?” I asked Suin, who looked as pale as the rest of the crew but at least wasn’t running around in a panic. Of course, as the captain, his hands were still full with giving orders, but it didn’t seem like there was anyone else I could ask.

“Ah, you’re up, Acer. As you can see...well, I guess if you’re not a sailor, you wouldn’t know what this means. These flowers, we call them Sea Snow flowers based on the color, are a kind of plant that grow far to the south, and only show up in the spring tide.”

I tried to imagine what that meant...but I still couldn’t figure out what exactly we were dealing with. It almost made me laugh. It was a great feeling to experience something so clearly showing me I had much more to learn about this world. There might have been whole forests under the sea, and another kind of Spiritual Tree I had never heard of before. Even the thought of that was starting to get me excited.

“Sometimes the flowers break off of the main plant and float this far north. But damn, I’ve never heard of them appearing in numbers like this before.”

It seemed that Suin considered these Sea Snow flowers to be a sign of bad luck. But why would that be? From what I could tell, the flowers weren’t dangerous in any way. They had a faintly sweet smell about them, mixed in with the usual sea air, but they certainly weren’t poisonous. As a high elf, even if it was my first time seeing them, there was no way I could mistake whether a plant was toxic or not.

But thinking over Suin’s words, I realized something. He had said that, as seasoned a sailor as he was, he had never seen the flowers in such numbers, but maybe I knew why. Was it possible there were so many flowers specifically because I was here? Maybe the water spirits were in such a fervor because they wanted to show me this sight. In that case, despite growing so far away, the water spirits must have been responsible for gathering them all here.

“The flowers themselves aren’t dangerous, but there’s a kind of monster that quite likes them. A huge one, the kind that doesn’t normally leave its own hunting grounds. They’ll go anywhere to eat these, though.”

As Suin spoke, the spirits warned me of something massive cutting straight through the water toward us. The spirits must have known the connection between the monster and the flowers...but there was no sign of any shame in them.

Well, I supposed that wasn’t a surprise. Even a monster large enough to threaten a massive ship like this was tiny in the eyes of the spirits. They must have assumed that I, as a being similar to the spirits themselves, would view it as insignificant as well. But my being and power were on a totally different level from the spirits, of course. Something that big could still be a huge problem for me, especially considering the threat it posed to the boat I was sailing in. But asking the spirits to understand such things was bordering on absurd.

“I’m going to buy us some time. Once we’re clear of the flowers, could you slow down the ship for me? I should be able to catch up.”

After saying that, I kicked off the side of the ship and jumped down to the water below. Though I guess with the flowers all around us, I landed on a carpet of flowers rather than the surface of the water. In any case, the water spirits were there to help me stand.

Normally, I would want to leave handling things at sea to Suin and his crew, but there was no way I could avoid getting involved in this, especially since the whole event had been caused because I was on board. It would be a challenge to catch up to the ship if it continued going at full speed, but I trusted Suin. He would wait for me once they made it out of the flowers. And I was sure he had just as much trust in me.

Once I was up close to them, I understood how the sweet fragrance of the flowers drew in the sea monster. Even I found the aroma pleasant.

The monster raised its head above the surface, revealing its form as an enormous, incredibly long snake. I guess “sea serpent” would be the right name for something like this.

I faced the approaching monster and drew my sword. I had no intention of killing it. It was only here to eat the flowers, and even if I were interested in hunting it, there was no way I could harvest its remains for meat or other materials here on the open ocean.