With the night fallen over the World Seas, inside one of the cabins, Julian lay down on his bed while listening to the music.
On his feet, Kiernan was moving across the cabin while doing some strange footwork. He was also holding a book in his hand.
It was a book about necessary skills needed to survive in the World Seas. He had a page open about Sea Steps. It had all instructions to learn it.
'While in sea, you must know how the sea acts…' Kiernan frowned. 'As a newbie in the sea, it might take me longer to learn.'
He thought that Sea Steps was quite an interesting technique. Thus, he was now learning it, and he planned to even improve it.
'I know that one guy used Sea Steps in the nationals tournament; thus, using it is possible on the land. While it isn't as effective as on sea, it can still be quite a powerful technique.
'I wonder if I can improve it and make my own version of Sea Steps. I haven't created any new Iron Style techniques in some time.
'My last one was Hyperion's Smash, which I created before my death. I want to create more techniques that I can use right now since it will be years before I can fully unleash the true power of my Iron Style.
'I need to still condition my body to become as strong as steel, and I'll need to increase my martial arts rank to have physical strength to withstand the burden.'
"How long are you going to keep going?" Julian asked and removed his headset. "You've been trying to learn it for three hours already."
"If you bothered to teach me, I would learn it much faster!" Kiernan said with a twitching eyebrow.
"I told you—if you taught me a few Iron Style skills, I would teach you Sea Steps!"
"Nah, this is my style, sorry." Kiernan said and stopped moving. "It's not a fair exchange since I can learn Sea Steps by myself."
Julian shrugged his shoulders and continued to listen to some music on his music player.
He didn't know where his phone was anymore as the pirates took it, but he happened to find this music player on the cabin's wardrobe. It seemed to have belonged to one of the pirates.
This music player was quite old, but it still worked perfectly fine.
Since he took this music player as his own, it was his only personal belonging. Otherwise, he had nothing left except the money on Kiernan's "spatial ring."
Kiernan sipped on some water and sat down on his bed.
"By the way!" Julian pulled down his headset and looked at him. "Can we change places? I don't want to scrub these floors anymore. I want to cook!"
"Do you know how to cook?" Kiernan asked. "The chef will be pissed if you make a single mistake."
"Eh…" Julian clicked his tongue and sat up. "Shit. I am seventeen years old; why should I know how to cook? How do you know? You seemed to know what the hell you were doing."
"I cooked with my father," Kiernan said.
It wasn't the whole truth.
While he'd been making some food with his father, his experience actually came from living alone for over sixty years.
Whether it was cooking in the wilderness or in a kitchen, he was actually pretty decent at it.
"I guess you can stay as a cook assistant then, sigh…" Julian scratched the back of his head. "I don't want to be yelled at."
"Do you have any idea where we are heading?" Kiernan asked while browsing through the book. "Have you heard anything while cleaning floors?"
"Nah, no idea," Julian said. "I heard something from these pirates, though. They've apparently visited the wall of mist that is the final frontier before reaching the Dead World!"
"The wall of mist?" Kiernan frowned. "I think I've read about it. It is home for all sorts of monsters, right?"
"Yeah, apparently they saw some enormous tentacle shoot out from the water. They barely saw it, moving inside the mist."
"Do you think we're going there now?" Kiernan asked with a frown. "Is Ambrose planning to go to the Dead World?"
"Nah, no way." Julian said. "From the way they spoke about that place, they're terrified. Also, if we're approaching Dead World, we would've been attacked by sea monsters already!"
"I guess you're right," Kiernan said. "I wonder if they'll go to Nightingale one day. It would be pretty lucky on my part."
"Right, you came here to go to Nightingale." Julian said after remembering it. "To visit your mother, right?"
"Mmh…" Kiernan nodded.
While that was originally his plan, it was pretty much an excuse to go have some adventure and to reach Martial Champion after being stuck in the bottleneck for so long.
'Right, Martial Champion…'
He could feel that his martial soul had almost fully peeled off. There was only a small push left before he could take that final step.
It was annoying because it felt like the martial soul was making fun of him, tempting him with greater strength.
'If the fight with Galahad had lasted longer, I could've made that final push.'
Without any alert, the alarm started blaring loudly across the ship. It wasn't coming from anyone's phone but from the speaker system.
"Ahoy, everyone, wake up!" Ambrose's voice echoed throughout the ship. "We've got company—navy battleship heading straight for us!"
"We can't even have a proper sleep here!" Julian stood up and put his coat on quickly.
"Wait!" Kiernan took a pair of caps from under his bed and gave one to Julian. "Hide your face."
"Ah…" Julian put the cap on and smiled. "Quick thinking. Since it is navy, if we're seen among Silver Hunt pirates, we might be getting bounties!"
Kiernan nodded, and with cap hiding his features, he opened the door and saw pirates running down the narrow hallways, clumsily putting on their trousers and jackets.
They followed after others and soon arrived at the deck. In the distance, they saw the navy battleship heading in their way.
The navy battleship was at least three times as big as the Silver Hunt pirate ship.