"Who is that?"
"Is that Aquarius? I am just seeing him. Wow, he looks menacing!"
"He defeated a Condemned Sagittarius."
"He also survived the legendary Tide of Seas."
Of course, all of this was Leo's imagination. No one paid attention to him. That was expected since they had just suffered a great loss. A few thousand citizens for a city was a small number, and losing half of them was going to take a huge toll on the survivors mentally.
All they sought now was hope: to be able to break from the curse and escape the Spirit of Madness, which Leo had been thinking could not be done with just a ship.
"Aquarius must have thought of something else."
Still, a few gazes landed on him. That was more than enough even though they offered no comments. It was understandable since he had only met a few people along the way while trying to navigate the stone building he was in. Seeing no traces of Lyra, the King, or anyone familiar, he asked for directions from a young woman and reached the exit.
When he stepped out, a sense of déjà vu hit him.
The dry land was an endless expanse of white sand. Rolling, colorless mounds rose and fell in the distance. There was no sun, only a sky that looked like a trapped ocean. The stone building he had just exited was an enormous dome, and there were countless others like it around.
It was a desert. The only difference between this desert and the one where he had been a snake was the color of the sand. That one had been obsidian, but this one was white. Still, he had a strong feeling it was the same desert. The trapped, ocean-like sky and the rising and falling mounds and dunes were just too similar to be ignored.
Not to mention, when he had fallen into the vortex that day, the system had sent a message stating that he had moved from the present consciousness of Aquarius to his past consciousness.
"How has the sand turned black? Does that mean Aquarius never moved the ship away from here? That he never even got on the ship?"
Strangely, cold shivers ran down his spine at those questions.
Lost in his thoughts, it was too late to notice a shadow above him. Raising his head at the last minute, he saw a hot, raged blade preparing to split him in two, and the owner of the sword was Lyra.
"Eh?"
Thankfully, he was able to sidestep the attack. As Lyra landed to attempt another strike, he yelled, "It's me, Leo!"
Unfortunately, his voice sounded insidious and grated.
"A talking sea monster named Leo, huh?"
"Oh... curses."
Lyra only knew him as Aquarius.
"No, no… I meant…"
But it was too late. The pommel of her sword hit him like a wave of heat, sending him rolling across the dunes much farther than normal. Leo rolled on the hot sand and stood up clumsily.
Lyra was already heading toward him.
"It is me, Aquarius! Gods!"
Just as she was about to finish him off with a deadly kick, she froze for a moment before retreating and staring at Leo with a deadpan expression.
"Aquarius? You? What did you turn into?"
Leo shook his head and his voice grated. "No, it is an armor I got for killing the monster."
Lyra shook her head in disbelief. "You receive boons for killing monsters? Wow! I really need to become a Pisces as well."
"They don't receive boons?"
Hiding his shock, he dismissed the armor for a few seconds, feeling the excruciating pain rush back to his spine and his missing arm. Then, he summoned it back.
Lyra watched in awe as the armor took only five seconds to appear on his body, though the process looked intricate.
Ignoring the stunned Lyra, he looked around. It seemed like the domes were clustered together, but not a single soul had passed by except for Lyra. Glancing back at her, he opened his mouth to say something but was left in awe as his eyes scanned Lyra's body from head to toe.
Lyra stood before him encased in a suit of heavy, silver-steel plate that glowed with a cold, metallic luster under the indigo sky. Unlike Leo's organic, bone-like scales, her armor was a masterpiece of rigid military engineering, featuring flared pauldrons and a breastplate polished to a mirror finish. At the center of her chest sat a massive, raw emerald bolted into a circular housing, pulsing with a great force that Leo could feel vibrating through the soles of his boots.
The suit was reinforced at the joints with articulated silver scales, and her gauntlets were heavy, the knuckles topped with jagged emerald studs designed for crushing impact. A tattered, sea-green cloak hung from her shoulders, weighted at the hem with lead to keep it from fluttering in the stagnant, heavy air of the desert.
She adjusted the heavy, sharkskin-wrapped hilt of the broadsword on her back and gestured toward the distant horizon where the silhouette of a massive hull broke the line of the white dunes.
"If you are done ogling, can we go to the ship? I was actually coming to get you."
He jolted back to reality and nodded. As they walked, his eyes kept drifting toward her armor.
"Curses! I really have become a pervert."
He forced himself to concentrate and looked at the domes. Some were bigger than others, and they weren't exactly clustered. The way they walked proved that Leo still didn't understand how the domes were arranged.
"Uh, Lyra? Where is everyone?"
Without turning back, she answered, "In the domes. Why?"
"Nothing. Everywhere just feels silent."
Lyra sighed. "Yes, it was meant to be that way. We just lost our city, and there is sure to be a famine in the coming weeks. Our only hope is to complete the ship and hopefully finally be safe."
Leo did not answer immediately. He had also faced hunger here before, in the future. The only difference was that he had become hopeless immediately. But it looked like these people were trying to control their own fate and were placing it on his shoulders.
"What a hassle."
Soon, they reached the hull. It was just as Leo had left it before the battle with the shark. The remaining materials were placed on the finished decks. There were countless soldiers dressed in armor working and preparing. It was good to finally see them walk on dry land so he could call them humans. Not really, though, since humans would not last long underwater, but these people could survive both on dry land and below the surface.
As they walked, the sound of the desert changed. The dead silence of the dunes was replaced by the heavy sound of mallets on wood and the sharp tang of cold-forging. Groups of men, their skin slick with a mix of salt-sweat and grey silt, moved in coordinated teams. They were laborers, their backs corded with muscle, hauling thick hemp ropes over their shoulders. They dragged massive, squared-off timber beams across the white sand.
"Looks like they are already working on it. Nice. Why didn't they think of this before? And woah... they have gotten this far."
A few people threw strange glances at him while others courtly bowed. Leo smiled.
He and Lyra reached the top of the ship via a ladder resting against the hull. Different people were using their abilities to nail the wood just as he and Lyra had done. He looked around with a hopeful expression until his eyes finally landed on two metallic gloves resting at the side of the deck.
With a happy smile, he ran and picked them up. "Thank goodness."
He was oblivious to the much stranger gazes that fell on him. Lyra, meanwhile, shook her head and walked toward a giant man dressed in blue armor who was currently supervising the work.
Leo immediately caught up to her. He stared at the King as they got closer.
The King was still the same way he had seen him on the first day: armor covering him from his neck to his feet, long brown hair, a large build, and white orbs that reminded him of Mirage. This was the second time he was seeing the King. He had guessed the royal man barely came out of the castle, but now that it was destroyed and the citizens were looking to him for a brilliant idea, he had decided to show up and supervise personally.
As soon as the King's gaze landed on Leo and Lyra, a strange expression appeared on his face. Once Leo raised his hand to show he wasn't a monster, a bright smile appeared on the ruler's face.
"Ah, if it isn't the man who survived the Tide of Seas. Come here, my good man, Aquarius."