Klein took a deep breath. The moment his mana surged, his voice was carried out by the spell. He wasn't shouting—it was channeled directly into everyone's ears, at a volume that was neither too loud nor too soft, just enough to cut through the roar of the wind and waves.
“Everyone, I am about to cast a spell to relocate all of us, along with this ship, to a safe place.”
The sailors on deck froze. Some looked up, some let go of the ropes in their hands, and others opened their mouths but found no words.
Klein’s voice continued: “There may be some discomfort during the process—specifically, your five senses will be briefly disoriented. It won't cause any harm, but the experience will be unpleasant.”
He paused for a moment and added, “I apologize in advance.”
No one objected.
In truth, no one was in a position to object—the thing in the west that was devouring the sky explained everything. Staying here meant death; taking a gamble with this young mage at least offered a chance at survival. The first mate was the first to nod, tossing his mop onto the deck. “Mr. Klein, please proceed.”
The rest of the sailors followed suit, voicing their agreement.
Klein didn't waste any more words. He knelt on one knee, pressing his right palm flat against the deck. Mana poured from his palm into the hull, spreading along the keel of The Voyager toward both ends.
The spell expanded rapidly. A faint film of light rose over the surface of the ship. Its color wasn't the usual blue or white, but a transparent texture with a slight refraction, as if the air itself had been crumpled.
The light film rose from the deck, passing over the railings, the masts, and every person standing on the ship.
When Diancie felt that layer pass through her, goosebumps broke out across her skin. It didn't hurt or itch, but there was an indescribable sense of wrongness—as if a layer of something had appeared between her and the deck beneath her feet, something so thin it barely existed, yet it definitely severed her connection to this sea.
Aphros stood at the cabin door. No one knew when she had come out; she was barefoot, holding onto the doorframe. The transparent film was reflected in her gray-green vertical slit pupils. Instead of constricting, her pupils dilated slightly—she was looking at something she recognized.
Ophelia had already put on her boots and stood three paces behind Klein. Her sword was sheathed, but her right hand remained on the hilt. She was counting the seconds.
One minute.
Two minutes.
Lohr's brow furrowed deeper and deeper.
He couldn't say what was wrong. When the light film of the spell enveloped him, his battle qi instinctively surged to the surface of his skin—not because he had actively channeled it, but as a stress response from his body.
He remembered this feeling.
The last time he had reacted this way was when Klein was dealing with those monsters on the sea. The moment the gravitational field expanded, even from dozens of meters away, Lohr’s battle qi would push outward uncontrollably. It was a warning from deep within his instincts—the thing before him was a power on an entirely different level of existence.
The feeling this spell gave him now was exactly the same.
“Is it really going to be alright...” Lohr's lips moved, his voice whittled away by the wind until only he could hear it.
His hand did not loosen its grip on his blade. He wasn't guarding against Klein—he had no such intention, nor the right. His body simply wouldn't obey.
Diancie stood beside him and caught the half-sentence. She glanced at Lohr but said nothing, though her hands were also trembling. She wasn't afraid of Klein’s magic; she was afraid of the thing still approaching from the west.
Sweat slid down Klein’s temple.
The computational load for the spell nodes had already exceeded his usual limits. Every living thing covered by the light film—from the first mate to the apprentice sailor in the corner clutching a mast—was an independent set of variables.
Not a single variable could be calculated incorrectly.
If he got even one wrong, that person would never come back.
This time was indeed different from before. With the slightest mistake, everyone affected by the magic would die.
They would be killed by Klein's own hand.
He hadn't explained the underlying logic of this spell to anyone.
The spatial magic Klein was using now was not, in fact, spatial magic.
What he was doing was converting everyone and all matter affected by the magic into “information.”
Pure information, stripped of its physical substrate.
And the transmission of information was completely unrestricted. It was not limited by distance, not limited by obstacles, and not limited by the thing pressing in from the west.
This created the illusion of crossing through space.
To put it bluntly—
Klein was killing everyone here. He was dismantling living flesh and blood into strings of data, compressing beating hearts, flowing blood, and every firing neuron in the brain into information streams. Then, he would send this information to another set of coordinates and reassemble everything exactly as it was.
Resurrection.
From the perspective of the result, it was no different from spatial relocation.
From the perspective of the process—
He was a murderer.
Klein’s jaw was clamped tight. Sweat slid from his sideburns to his chin and dripped onto the deck, only to be scattered by the wind.
The spell progressed. The light film contracted from the outside in, “reading” everything it covered layer by layer.
The first mate’s body began to turn transparent. Starting from his toes, it was as if he were being erased inch by inch. He looked down at his vanishing legs with a complex expression—but he didn't shout, nor did he move.
The other sailors followed, becoming transparent. Some closed their eyes, while others traced a gesture of prayer over their chests.
Diancie stood by the cabin door, watching her fingertips become translucent. Her lips were pressed into a thin line, and she made no sound. Lohr stood beside her, his hand still on his blade, but that hand was already half-transparent—his battle qi struggled on the edge of dissipation before finally being swallowed by the information stream.
Aphros was the quietest of all. She stood there, her gray-green vertical slit pupils watching her body turn to nothingness bit by bit, her expression devoid of fear.
Thirty breaths.
The deck was empty.
The people were gone, and the ship was vanishing as well. The masts dissolved from the top down; the canvas, ropes, and planks turned into transparent motes of light that rose and were swept away by the information stream. The keel was the last part to disappear—the backbone that ran through the entire ship held on until the final moment before shattering into a cloud of light beneath Klein's feet.
The magic was a success.
The people and the ship had vanished together.
Klein was kneeling on—nothing. Below him was the sea. He hovered half a meter above the crests of the waves, supported by a thin repulsion field, his knee still in the position of pressing against the deck, but the deck was no longer there.
The sea wind rushed in, making him shiver from the cold.
He looked up.
Ophelia was standing three paces to his right.
She was also hovering—not by Klein’s spell, but by her own battle qi as she stepped upon the water. A golden light flowed slightly at the bottom of her boots, each step pressing a shallow depression into the sea's surface.
She had not disappeared.
Klein had expected this result long ago. When the spell expanded and the light film swept over Ophelia’s body, the feedback data had made his head ring—the information volume was too immense. The battle qi within her, the deep-sea residues in her contaminated left hand, and her own physical body that far exceeded the limits of a normal person... all these things combined to create a total volume of information that exceeded the limit of what Klein could convert in a single pass.
The consequence of a forced conversion would be only one thing: data loss.
Any lost parts would become blanks upon reconstruction.
He could not gamble Ophelia's life on that.
So she remained.
With him.
Ophelia looked down at him, her golden pupils shining clearly in the darkness. The wind had scattered her freshly tied hair again, golden strands flying wildly about her face.
She didn't ask why she hadn't been teleported away.
She only said one thing:
“What now?”
To the west, that murky green canopy had already consumed half the night sky. The low-frequency hum grew heavier, pressing down on their heads until even breathing became a chore.
Only the two of them were left on the sea.
Klein pushed himself up from his knee, wiped the sweat from his face, and grinned.
“Naturally... we run for it.”
Rate on N.U.
