Chapter 458 The Storm Descends

To the eye, the gloomy leaden gray spreading across the distant skyline didn't seem to move very fast, and it was still incredibly far away.

Often, a long time would pass after lightning flashed deep within the clouds before the booming thunder finally rolled in.

But that didn't mean the Blade of Vengeance Ship could rest easy.

Because anyone with even a little sailing experience knew exactly what it meant to clearly track the spread of leaden clouds with the naked eye across the open sea, given the sheer distance between the storm and their wooden ship.

It was like the airplanes soaring across the sky in Xia Nan's previous life. Looking up, they seemed no larger than a fingernail and appeared to move even slower than a nearby bird. In reality, they were metal behemoths carrying hundreds of passengers, tearing through the clouds at an absurd speed of hundreds of kilometers per hour.

The distant storm looked just as sluggish—a mere smudge of gray-black on the horizon. But its actual speed of expansion was already far beyond anything the Blade of Vengeance Ship could outrun, no matter what methods they used.

How much time did they have to prepare?

Five minutes? Ten minutes?

No one had the time to answer that kind of question right now.

Because the moment they realized the storm was approaching, the entire crew of the Blade of Vengeance Ship was mobilized—including the Class Holders who formed the core of the team.

Bang—a flurry of rapid footsteps blended into a single continuous rumble, and the cabin door was violently shoved open from the inside!

Long, curly red hair swayed like flames over her shoulders, and a slender cigarette she had just lit still dangled from her lips.

Specks of ash fell. Lorraine had charged out of the captain's quarters the moment she heard the storm warning. Moving at the absurd speed granted by her Class Grade physique, she reached the deck so fast that a few wisps of dissipating white smoke still swirled around her.

"Lower the sails, clear the deck, and seal the cabin doors!"

Her authority and presence as the captain were put on full display.

The deck had been slightly chaotic from the looming storm, but the moment Lorraine appeared, order was instantly restored.

They clearly had contingency plans for this, and it wasn't their first time dealing with such an emergency. There was no need for detailed commands; with just two sharp orders from the highly aggressive female captain, the crew sprang into intense preparation.

Once she took control of the deck, Lorraine charged straight for the helm of the Blade of Vengeance Ship.

As the captain, she would personally take the wheel to manage the ship's balance against the incoming storm.

Adjusting the ship's posture in the storm was the absolute prerequisite for survival.

They had to keep the ship at a slight angle to the waves, allowing the bow to slice through the wall of water like a scimitar.

If they exposed their broadside to the oncoming swells, a single crashing wave could capsize the Blade of Vengeance Ship.

In a fierce storm, a capsized ship was a near-certain death sentence for the ordinary crew. Even Class Holders might not survive if their luck was poor.

Adventurers might normally rely on their martial power to throw their weight around in towns, treating ordinary civilians as stepping stones to show off their strength and status, riding roughshod over them without restraint.

But against a terrifying natural disaster of this magnitude, unless they possessed a specific countermeasure or their strength had broken through a certain threshold...

...Adventurers were no different from the ordinary crew.

Both were equally powerless to resist.

Without any safety gear, the brave sailors skillfully scaled the masts and tied up the main sails, leaving only a necessary sliver of canvas to maneuver the ship using the wind.

When the storm hit, its terrifying winds could blow a man straight off the deck. If the sails were left unfurled, the sheer force would easily snap the masts in half and throw off the ship's balance, helping the crashing waves capsize the vessel.

They had only managed to avoid that fate because they spotted the storm early enough to prepare.

In extreme situations where it was too late to stow the sails, it was common for sailors out on the sea to chop the ropes and drop the canvas entirely, or even chop down their own masts.

The half-sorted clutter on the deck was rapidly cleared away. Wooden barrels, ropes, cleaning tools... anything they could gather in time was hurried into the cabins and secured tightly with hemp ropes. Anything too heavy or difficult to move was immediately tossed overboard without a second thought.

The cabin doors were boarded up and sealed with tarps. This ensured that the incoming waves and torrential rain wouldn't be blown inside, protecting their supplies and survival goods while minimizing the risk of sinking.

Above deck, the tense crew darted back and forth. Amid the chaotic footsteps and hurried shouts, the once-refreshing air seemed to turn stiflingly hot. This frantic atmosphere stood in stark contrast to the calm sea and warm sunlight around the ship—the final sliver of peace before the storm.

Lacking any experience with storms and having only recently joined the fleet without much time to adapt, he felt somewhat lost.

Right now, Xia Nan felt like an outsider, and no one came over to tell him what to do.

Of course, he couldn't just stand there and watch. Since he was now a member of this team, he wanted to do his part in the face of this impending crisis.

Lacking sailing experience and specialized training for handling storms, he worried that acting rashly would only get in the crew's way. So, he picked a necessary and virtually foolproof job: helping the sailors move and secure the supplies.

Thanks to his comprehensive Class Grade physique, he was far more efficient than the ordinary sailors. Even restricted by the cramped space of the cabins, he could do the work of five or six men alone, greatly alleviating the pressure on the entire crew.

"Thud!"

All by himself, he hauled a massive freshwater barrel—one that normally required two or three sailors working together—deep into the cabin and lashed it tightly in place.

Xia Nan let out a soft breath. Simple manual labor like this barely put a dent in his stamina.

He quickened his pace, turned around, and stepped out of the cabin.

An icy sea breeze—noticeably stronger and more damp than before—whipped past his cheeks. He instinctively turned to look off the ship's forward flank.

There, the leaden storm clouds that had just been a distant speck on the horizon had already devoured nearly half the sky.

A curtain of rain fell, and the gap between the flashes of lightning and the cracks of thunder shortened drastically.

The storm was closing in.

He had to admit, although the crew of the Blade of Vengeance Ship was acting with utmost professionalism—proving they had weathered many storms before—and he was doing everything in his power to help out...

...out of sheer caution and a desire to prepare for the worst, Xia Nan was already wondering what he would do if the ship actually capsized.

His current [Gravity Control] level wasn't high enough to allow him to fly or even glide for a short distance, and he certainly didn't have the ability to breathe underwater.

[Fang Hunt] was incredibly fast, but even if he used the deck as a runway to build momentum, his speed across the water would never outpace the expanding storm. It would catch him in no time. Besides, his personality would never allow him to abandon his teammates at such a critical juncture.

Taking everything into account, if the ship really capsized, it seemed he could only rely on his raw physical stats to tough it out in the water... The thought made his heart sink.

It wasn't that Xia Nan was being pessimistic.

After all, even the modern ships from his previous life—which were explicitly engineered for stability and resistance to wind and waves—weren't perfectly safe against overwhelmingly intense storms.

Let alone this medieval three-masted galleon he was standing on right now.

He was almost certain that somewhere on the Aifala Continent right now—perhaps even moored at a private dock in Barracuda Bay—there were high-end ships powered by magic.

Augmented by supernatural forces, their performance in a storm might not be any worse than the technological marvels of his past life.

But the Blade of Vengeance Ship clearly had nothing to do with arcane magic or mana drives. From what he could see, it was just a traditional sailing ship that had undergone professional modifications.

The timber might be stronger and more durable than ordinary wood, but compared to the steel vessels from his previous life—forged from high-strength alloys and specialized composites—it didn't even come close.

Power, propulsion efficiency, navigation, operational range, and even anti-sinking designs... needless to say, there was a generational gap of several centuries.

Having sailed on both types of vessels, any normal person would feel the massive disparity and inevitably compare the two.

And that wasn't all.

Unlike in his previous life, the threat Xia Nan was facing right now was far more than just a simple storm.

His pitch-black eyes narrowed, reflecting the blurry curtain of rain and leaden clouds as he stared intently at the ocean ahead.

Beneath the increasingly violent swells, ominous shadows were rapidly closing in on the Blade of Vengeance Ship alongside the storm.

Unless he was mistaken, that was a massive school of thousands of whorl-tooth sharks.

He recalled the crazed frenzy of the shark that the Druid Hein had crushed just recently as it gnawed at the ship's hull.

Like crops in the path of a locust swarm, or a bleeding prey falling into a river of piranhas, Xia Nan seriously doubted that these agitated whorl-tooth sharks would just ignore the Blade of Vengeance Ship.

And given their massive numbers, coupled with their terrifying ability to bite a clean hole through solid wood with every snap of their jaws... could a wooden vessel like the Blade of Vengeance Ship really survive this? Xia Nan was highly skeptical.

Rumble—

The lingering echoes of thunder rolled across the sky.

At some point, the warm sunlight had completely vanished, replaced by oppressive, gray-black storm clouds.

The sea winds grew increasingly violent, howling as they swept overhead.

A drop of moisture suddenly struck the tip of his nose.

A raindrop.

The storm swept in with unimaginable speed.

It had seemed so distant just moments ago, but once the leaden clouds swallowed the wooden ship, it took only a few breaths for the scattered raindrops to turn into a torrential downpour.

The normally sparkling, gentle seawater had morphed into towering, pitch-black mountains that roared across the horizon. Despite their best efforts to angle the ship, it was hoisted to the crest of a massive wave before violently plunging down the other side, the sheer drop inducing a sickening sense of weightlessness.

Driven by the gale, the raindrops felt like seawater-soaked ice needles piercing every inch of exposed skin. The deck pitched wildly beneath their feet, making the entire ship feel as though it were suspended in midair by an invisible rope, violently thrashing among the waves.

Leaden clouds, howling gales, monstrous waves, and torrential rain... it was a scene straight out of the apocalypse.

It was hard to believe that this very same sea had been so gentle and warm just moments ago.

In that moment, a rather disrespectful and bizarre thought popped into Xia Nan's head.

No wonder Umberlee, the Goddess of the Ocean, was known as the "Bitch Queen."

A name might be deceiving, but a nickname rarely missed the mark.

Of course, he only dared to mutter that in his heart. Out here in reality, even the most foolish layman completely ignorant of the sea would never dare to insult the great, beautiful, sublime, and revered Goddess of the Ocean at a time like this.

When the storm truly hit, the deck became everyone's main battlefield.

Right now, there were far more crew members on the deck of the Blade of Vengeance Ship than there had been when the skies were clear.

Counterintuitive as it seemed, staying on deck during a storm was actually the safer option.

However, that safety came with conditions.

Hiding in the cabins only required dodging falling debris as the ship rocked and making sure you didn't lose your footing. At a glance, it seemed far safer than the deck, where a rogue wave could sweep you into the ocean at any second.

But if the ship failed to withstand the battering waves and capsized, the cabins—which had been intentionally sealed up to prevent flooding, leaving only a few exits—would instantly fill with seawater.

The lower decks would instantly transform into a massive, inverted death trap.

Turned upside down, anyone seeking air would have to float up to the cabin's floorboards as the water rapidly rose. To escape, they would have to hold their breath and dive through narrow corridors choked with cargo and tools to find an exit. It was no different from being locked in a sinking coffin.

Even if you relied on astonishing willpower and miraculous luck to navigate the flooded corridors and escape the cabin, the sinking ship would have likely dragged you into the abyssal depths by then. You would only be able to stare up at the distant surface as you drowned in despair.

Because of that, even though the deck seemed far more perilous, most of the crew chose to brave the storm above, doing whatever they could to keep the ship balanced and prevent a catastrophic capsize.

Rumble!

Lightning flashed, closely followed by a deafening crash of thunder.

Another massive wave slammed into the hull, tilting the deck at a terrifying angle. Under such an impact, even the most seasoned sailors struggled to keep their footing. Though they clung tightly to the masts, they were tossed around violently by the turbulence, relying entirely on their desperate grip to keep from being thrown overboard.

Yet standing in stark contrast to the flailing crew was Xia Nan. His feet seemed deeply rooted to the deck, and he stood perfectly steady without needing to grab onto anything for support.

Anchored by his Agility—a stat sitting at a high 11 points that governed reaction speed, balance, and reflexes—coupled with the balance bonuses his [Tidal Stabilization] feat granted on unstable surfaces, and the sheer physical weight quietly added by his silent [Gravity Control], Xia Nan could treat this chaotic terrain as if he were walking on flat ground.

The ordinary crew had finished their preparations. Now that the storm had truly descended, it was time for the adventurers to step up and prove their worth as the core of the team.