[Current Balance: 11,889,053,129 R]
---
The information from the drunken sailors was a starting point, but it was also a needle in an oceanic haystack.
A "deserted atoll in the middle of nowhere" was uselessly vague. The Pacific Ocean was a vast, unforgiving emptiness, dotted with thousands of unnamed, uncharted islands. Flying aimlessly in search of one specific rock was inefficient, even for him.
Alaric needed more. He needed a map, a chart, or at least a story from someone who knew the secret currents and hidden corners of these waters.
He spent the next morning walking through the Parian, the bustling Chinese quarter of Manila. Lanterns still hung from the eaves of the tightly packed wooden buildings, and the air was thick with the smell of exotic spices, medicinal herbs, and roasting meats. This was the city's true hub of information, a place where secrets were traded as readily as silk and porcelain.
He found what he was looking for in a small, dimly lit tea house, a place known more for the clandestine meetings in its back rooms than for the quality of its tea. In his disguise as a mestizo trader, he sat and observed, his Mind's Eye passively scanning the patrons. He felt the nervous energy of smugglers, the cautious greed of merchants, the weary patience of sailors waiting for a new ship.
After an hour, he identified his target: an old, reclusive map-maker known only as "El Viejo," a man rumored to possess charts of routes no sane captain would ever sail.
Alaric approached the old man's table, placing a heavy pouch of silver Reales on the worn wood with a soft thud.
[Money Withdrawal: - 1,000 R]
[Current Balance: 11,889,052,129 R]
El Viejo, who had been hunched over a cup, looked up, his rheumy eyes widening at the sight of the coin.
"I am looking for information," Alaric said quietly in Spanish, his voice low and direct. "About a strange voyage. A ship carrying Chinese silk, diverted from its course to Acapulco some months ago. It sailed to a deserted island, for a woman."
The old map-maker stared at the pouch, then up at Alaric, his expression shifting from surprise to shrewd calculation. He motioned for Alaric to sit.
"Many ships sail these waters, amigo," El Viejo rasped, his voice like dry leaves. "Such stories are common."
"This woman," Alaric continued, ignoring the old man's feigned disinterest, "paid the captain with a single, unique pearl."
At the mention of the pearl, a flicker of genuine recognition sparked in El Viejo's eyes. He sighed, a long, weary sound, and slowly pushed the pouch of coins closer to himself.
"Ah," he said softly. "The Ghost Pearl."
He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "I know the story. Not the captain's name, not the ship. But I know of the pearl. It is a legend among the most desperate sailors. A type of black pearl found only in one place on this earth: a cursed archipelago far to the east, a place the old maps call the 'Serpent's Teeth'."
El Viejo shook his head. "No captain goes there willingly. The waters are a maze of razor-sharp coral reefs, the storms are sudden and violent, and the currents can tear a ship apart. It is said the place is haunted, protected by ancient spirits."
"Then why would anyone go?" Alaric asked, his focus sharpening.
"For the pearls," the old man confirmed. "Or because they were paid an immense sum, or perhaps... persuaded by a woman with eyes that could charm the devil himself." He gave Alaric a knowing look.
"I do not have a full chart of the Serpent's Teeth," El Viejo admitted, "No one does. It is suicide to map it properly. But..." He reached into a worn leather satchel, retrieving a rolled-up piece of old, yellowed parchment. He spread it carefully on the table.
It was a fragment of a nautical chart, showing a section of the Pacific. In the center was a cluster of small, unnamed islands surrounded by hand-drawn warnings of treacherous reefs and unpredictable currents.
"This," the old man tapped a specific island on the chart, "is where the stories say the pearls are found. It is the only place. If your ghost woman needed to be dropped off at a deserted atoll, and she paid with one of those pearls, then this is where the ship went."
Alaric studied the chart, memorizing the coordinates, the shape of the islands, the warnings. This was it. The next piece of the puzzle.
"Thank you," Alaric said, standing up. "You've been most helpful."
"A word of advice, amigo," El Viejo called after him as Alaric turned to leave. "Whatever you seek in the Serpent's Teeth... be wary. Some places are best left undisturbed."
Alaric simply nodded, then walked out of the tea house, melting back into the crowded streets of the Parian.
He spent the rest of the day gathering basic supplies, discreetly withdrawing what he needed from the System. As he moved through the city, he felt it… a subtle shift in the atmosphere. The casual glances from Spanish soldiers seemed to linger a little longer now. He sensed eyes watching him from shadowed alleyways.
The local Templar network, or perhaps the Governor's own agents, had likely taken notice of the wealthy stranger asking dangerous questions. The ghost hunt was attracting ghosts of its own.
That evening, under the cover of a moonless sky, Alaric made his way back to the secluded beach where he had first arrived. He took one last look back at the flickering lights of Manila.
He had what he needed.
With a final thought, he activated the flight seals on his arms. He rose silently into the night sky, a dark, unseen shape against the stars, and turned east, towards the treacherous, distant waters of the Serpent's Teeth.
The chase was on again.
---
The flight east from Manila was a long, lonely affair.
For what felt like days, the world below was an endless, uniform sheet of deep Pacific blue. Alaric flew high and fast, a solitary figure gliding through the upper atmosphere where the air was thin and cold.
The Fuinjutsu seals on his arms made the journey a quiet, effortless exercise in patience, a stark contrast to the slow, creaking voyages of the sea below.
He didn't need to sleep, but sometimes he would pause, hovering motionless in the vast emptiness between the sun and the sea, watching the clouds form and dissipate beneath him. In these moments, the sheer scale of the world, and his own isolation within it, felt immense.
He was a ghost moving through a history that was not his own, chasing another ghost who was lost to a power she couldn't possibly understand.
He thought of Caroline. The cheerful, somewhat naive girl from Bristol, so full of life and simple dreams, now a pawn in a game thousands of years old. The Apple wasn't just influencing her; it was consuming her, using her ambition and her pain as fuel.
He felt a pang of guilt. Had he paid more attention to her back in Pennsylvania, been a better cousin, would she have been so vulnerable to the artifact's whispers?
He pushed the thought aside. Regret was a useless weight. All that mattered now was the chase.
After what his internal clock estimated to be nearly four days of steady flight, he saw it.
At first, it was just a dark smudge on the horizon. But as he drew closer, the archipelago took shape, and he understood why the sailors called it the Serpent's Teeth. It wasn't a gentle, sandy chain of islands. It was a jagged, violent scar on the ocean's surface.
Dozens of black, volcanic islands clawed their way out of the churning water, their peaks sharp and menacing, like the fangs of some colossal sea beast.
The waves crashed against the razor-sharp shores with a fury he hadn't seen in the calmer waters near the Philippines. And hanging directly over the central cluster of islands was a single, perpetually dark storm cloud. It roiled and churned with an unnatural energy, lightning flickering within its depths even though the surrounding sky was perfectly clear.
This was the place.
Alaric adjusted his course, heading for the specific island El Viejo had pointed out on the fragmented chart.
As he descended, moving from the clear sky into the oppressive gloom beneath the storm cloud, the atmosphere changed instantly.
The wind picked up, howling around him with a sudden, targeted violence. Rain began to lash down, not in a steady drizzle, but in thick, heavy sheets that blurred his vision.
He shielded his eyes, his crimson coat whipping around him. This wasn't a natural storm. It felt… directed.
A bolt of lightning, thicker and brighter than any he had ever seen, tore through the dark clouds. It didn't strike the water; it shot directly at him.
Alaric reacted instantly, twisting in mid-air, the bolt of energy searing the space where he had been a fraction of a second before. The air crackled with ozone.
'So, the old man wasn't just spinning yarns,' he thought, his expression turning serious. 'This place really is protected.'
Another bolt followed, then another, each one tracking his movements with terrifying accuracy. Flying was no longer an option; it made him too obvious a target for this strange, localized tempest. He angled his descent sharply, diving towards the largest of the central islands.
He landed with a soft thud on a patch of wet, black sand, the unnatural storm raging above him. The island was a desolate place, covered in sharp volcanic rock and tough, windswept vegetation that clung desperately to life. The air was thick with the smell of sulfur and rain.
He needed to find Caroline's trail. He started moving inland, his boots sinking slightly into the soft, dark earth. His Mind's Eye was active, passively scanning his immediate surroundings. He felt the life on the island… small lizards, sea birds nesting in the cliffs, and something else... something larger, moving through the dense, twisted jungle ahead.
He pushed his way through the thick foliage, the rain plastering his hair to his forehead. The jungle was eerily quiet beneath the roar of the storm. He came to a clearing and paused.
The source of the life signatures he'd felt was there. Strange creatures, like oversized, reptilian boars, were rooting through the undergrowth. Their hides were thick and leathery, and sharp tusks protruded from their jaws. They looked at him, their small, intelligent eyes glowing with a faint, unnatural light.
They were not normal animals.
One of them let out a low growl and charged.
Alaric sighed. He didn't even draw a weapon. As the creature closed in, he sidestepped its clumsy attack and delivered a single, precise chop to the back of its thick neck. The creature dropped without a sound, its legs twitching once before going still. The others watched, then, with a collective snort of what seemed to be defiance, they all charged at once.
The fight was over in seconds. Alaric moved through them with bored efficiency, a whirlwind of kicks and punches that sent the strange beasts flying. He left them unconscious, not dead. They were just animals, after all, however strange.
He continued his exploration, finding no signs of a camp, no remnants of Caroline's visit. The island seemed untouched, primeval, except for the creatures. It was clear the main island wasn't where she had made her stop. He needed to get to the smaller atoll El Viejo had marked.
He made his way back to the shoreline, finding a spot where a cluster of smaller, rocky islets formed a treacherous path towards his target island. The water between them was a churning mess of currents and jagged, half-submerged rocks. Flying was still too risky with the lightning, and swimming looked deeply unpleasant.
With a shrug, Alaric simply started walking.
His chakra-coated boots held firm on the water's surface as he began to run, leaping from the crest of one violent wave to the next, dodging the sharp teeth of coral that jutted from the sea.
He reached the target atoll in minutes, a small, rocky place with a single, sheltered cove. And there, near the back of the cove, almost hidden by overgrown vines, he saw it. The faint, tell-tale signs of an old campfire.
He walked over, crouching down. He found the charred remains of wood, a discarded piece of rope of European make, and, half-buried in the sand, a single, ornate button from a woman's traveling cloak.
She had been here.
Satisfied, he stood up, brushing the sand from his hands. Now he just needed to figure out where she went next. The answer, he suspected, lay back on the main island. The source of the Ghost Pearls.
Suddenly, a faint thwip sound cut through the air.
Alaric didn't even turn. He simply tilted his head slightly to the side. A small, thin dart, no bigger than a needle, whistled past his ear and embedded itself in a tree behind him. He looked at it. The tip was coated in a dark, glistening substance.
He slowly turned his head. Emerging silently from the jungle behind him were figures. At least a dozen of them. They were tall and lean, their skin tanned dark by the sun. They wore simple loincloths and were adorned with tattoos of swirling, intricate patterns. Each of them held a long blowgun, and their dark eyes were fixed on him with a wary, but not necessarily hostile, intensity.
One of them, clearly the leader, stepped forward. He was older than the others, his face a mask of stern lines, a necklace of polished black pearls hanging around his neck. He spoke, his voice was a low, guttural sound, the language utterly alien to Alaric.
But Alaric understood every word.
"You are not the Ghost Woman," the chieftain said, his gaze sharp and piercing. "But you carry the same scent of the outside world. Why have you come to the Serpent's Teeth?"
Alaric just smiled.
.
Consider buying me a coffee!
patreon.com/kulark
I'm uploading dozens of chapters ahead there!