Chapter 203: Chapter 207: A Kind Father and a Filial Son
The battle began.
The fight commenced with the Sea Mist’s first round of cannon fire. Thunderous booms reverberated across the entire sea area as cannonballs whistled through the sky and plunged into the ocean at the end of their parabolic paths, stirring up towering columns of water and small chaotic surges.
The first round entirely missed, as did the second, until finally, during the third round, the barrage from Sea Mist barely grazed the side of Homeloss.
Towering Spectral Flames blazed between every seam and mast of Homeloss. Duncan clutched the ship’s wheel, steering the massive Ghost Ship like a moving mountain range of fire across the sea. The majestic bow broke through the waves ahead, stirring up a series of white foam and ripples on either side of Homeloss. In the corner of his eye, Duncan caught a swift shadow diving toward the stern deck.
It was a cannonball from Sea Mist—after several misses, the iron battleship seemed to finally have adjusted its aim. A cannonball hurtled unerringly toward the rear of Homeloss; this time, there was no avoiding it.
Sudden evasive maneuvers by spinning the steering wheel wouldn’t happen in reality. Homeloss, massive in structure, still had to obey the most basic laws of physics when traversing the real world… probably.
The ship was about to be hit.
But in the next moment, Duncan suddenly felt his vision sharpen immensely. He could track the complete trajectory of the slightly tilted descending cannonball, see the distorted heat waves around it, feel the airflow pushed by the shockwave, observe the glowing red projectile, and the blurred dents on the body of the shell—he watched that blazing iron, and the iron responded to his call.
Just as it was about to strike Homeloss, the surface of the cannonball from Sea Mist suddenly burst into eerie flames—almost as if it had been instantly infected and assimilated by the Spiritual Fire surrounding Homeloss. It quietly transformed into a green meteor, gently falling in a slow, bizarre arc into the fiery sea rising above Homeloss.
The cannonball, burning with eerie green flames, landed on the deck of Homeloss with a thud, causing what seemed like a tremble throughout the entire ship—but no additional damage followed.
“A neat catch!” bellowed a voice that sounded like it was from a goat-headed creature, suddenly resonating in Duncan’s mind, snapping him back to reality, “Captain, how did you manage that?!”
“… It was instinctive; I didn’t think much about it,” Duncan replied casually, then almost immediately, more whistling sounds crossed the sky, attacking relentlessly.
His nerves instantly tensed, and while slightly adjusting the course of the massive ship Homeloss, he tracked those falling shadows from the sky. In the next second, one green “meteor” after another weirdly emerged above the burning body of Homeloss.
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But Duncan’s ability to catch was not unlimited. As the distance between Homeloss and Sea Mist decreased, the latter’s cannon fire became more precise and fiercer. Its many secondary and close-defense guns finally came within effective range. When a barrage of shells fell from the sky, some finally evaded Duncan’s sight and struck the body of Homeloss.
Amid the continuous explosions, Duncan saw a section of the hull near him suddenly get struck by something. A shadow pierced through the wooden planks, causing severe tearing damage before plunging into the sea. The struck hull exploded into countless fragmented pieces—
Those torn, broken structures scattered, soaring upward and then abruptly stopping, hovering in the air, synchronized in posture with Homeloss.
This was an utterly bizarre sight; it was as if those shattered structural pieces of the ship in the real dimension were still unified with Homeloss in some higher dimension—they appeared visually fragmented, yet the pieces were still tightly connected!
This instantly reminded Duncan of the ship’s hull, thinking of the shattered yet still functional walls that navigated and soaked in the Subspace.
The next second, he watched as those fragments from the hull began to slowly fall and return, swiftly reconstructing as if time had reversed.
Duncan finally looked away from the hull.
This was the first time he witnessed Homeloss taking damage and also the first time he saw the ship repair itself—this ship could heal itself so rapidly! And that “healing,” it seemed to simply revert the ship’s condition to before it was damaged?
He finally understood why a modern, fully armed iron battleship like Sea Mist couldn’t defeat a century-old Ghost Ship.
Subspace had completely transformed Homeloss, placing the entire ship within a bizarre spatial-temporal structure—it simply couldn’t be defeated by ordinary firepower in the real dimension!
The voice of the goat-headed creature rang in his mind again, dripping with pride: “Captain, Homeloss is the best ship in the world, isn’t it?”
“… To be fair, indeed it is.”
“What are your plans next?”
Duncan slightly lifted his head, peering at Sea Mist, which was now approaching closer, “… March on and discipline the child along the way. Idle time is idle time, right?”
…
“Captain! That ship is charging over at increased speed!” Aiden’s voice arose in the bridge, tinged with a slight nervousness, “Something is off… Our attacks are even less effective than that hurried skirmish half a century ago, more than half of our cannonballs just mysteriously disappeared into the fire sea of Homeloss!”
“I see it,” Teryian stood upright on the bridge, his gaze fixed on the Ghost Ship that was accelerating and already beginning to slightly adjust its course. His hands unconsciously tightened around the railing in front of him, his expression as dark as an impending storm, “Half a century has passed, ‘he’ has become stronger than last time…”
“Should we still fight?” asked the first mate loudly, “Looking at it now, it might not be so easy to drive that ship back into Subspace like last time! And I think your father must be very angry… That ship’s speed is simply freakishly fast TMD!”
Tyrion merely scowled, and after several seconds of silence, he said in a deep voice, “…continue to engage.”
As he uttered these words, his gaze remained fixed on the burning large sailing warship, focused on the rear deck of that ship.
He knew that was where the Homeloss’s helm was located, and in those distant, yellowed memories, his father always stood there.
Was he still there now? Was he watching the Sea Mist?
Great plumes of smoke rose from the sea, followed by the faint rumbling that reached his ears.
“Homeloss is firing!”
A sailor cried out in alarm.
Tyrion still stood steadily on the captain’s chair, like an iceberg standing in the Chill Sea, but he soon furrowed his brows.
The Homeloss hadn’t fully adjusted to a suitable angle before firing; instead, it had entered the path of the Sea Mist at a slightly tilted arc and fired while on the move.
This meant that only about one-quarter of the side cannons could be brought to bear.
Was it just symbolically retaliating? Did it not intend to battle the Sea Mist to the death?
That was not his father’s style, nor did it align with the experience from their encounter half a century ago—during that battle half a century ago, the Homeloss had fought the Sea Mist to the bitter end, until both ships were severely damaged before ceasing the fight.
The outcome of that battle pushed the Homeloss’s repair capabilities to their limit, forcing it to temporarily retreat into the Subspace, while the Sea Mist almost sank and took three full years to re-emerge on the Endless Sea.
But the current situation did not allow Tyrion to continue pondering.
The Homeloss’s retaliation came—compared to the Sea Mist’s initial and secondary rounds all missing, each shot fired by the Ghost Ship upon entering effective range was terrifyingly accurate.
Dozens of blazing green fireballs streaked across the sky from above the sea, crashing onto the steel warship like meteors, causing thunderous roars as the Spiritual Fire boiled.
Streaks of radiance floated around the Sea Mist, sacred relics and the shipborne chapel activate automatically to counteract the spread of the flames’ corruption, but the steel warship’s hull was still instantly riddled with terrifying voids—the burning iron shells seemed like fireballs falling into snow, everything they touched, whether wood or steel, was melted, devoured, and erased in the blink of an eye.
Even the strongest armor became meaningless—the Homeloss’s attack did not rely on kinetic energy or explosions to take effect, but rather on a higher-dimensional absorption and Transition, with the Sea Mist being erased under the falling shells like a pencil drawing under an eraser, half of its main cannons scraped away in the first round, and several holes capable of sinking a normal ship appearing on its hull after the second round.
The Sea Mist’s attack was forced to cease, even its power rapidly diminishing almost immediately.
Tyrion’s eyes widened.
Something was wrong… This was completely different from last time!
He did not recognize this ship; this was not the Homeloss he remembered!
And amidst this shock, he noticed that the Homeloss had suddenly stopped its bombardment.
The Ghost Ship unfurled all its sails, enveloping the entire sea area in massive waves, its speed suddenly soaring to the extreme as it charged directly towards the Sea Mist.
“…hard to port! Dodge! Dodge!”
First Officer Aiden suddenly roared, and the helmsman had already begun desperately turning the wheel, trying to steer the warship below them away from the impending collision—yet all efforts failed.
“The helm’s failed!” the helmsman cried out in terror, “It’s turning on its own! We’re heading straight into it!”
Just as the helmsman had said, the Sea Mist was actively meeting the Ghost Ship.
Tyrion had already noticed this anomaly; he heard the machinery below hissing unnaturally, heard all the windows around clicking, saw the remaining turrets on the deck lower their barrels one by one, and within the large voids punched out by the Homeloss, green flames were rising higher with each wave.
This was a nightmare unheard of in that fierce battle half a century ago—
The Sea Mist recognized its own flagship.