As he spoke, Flynn raised the hand holding the sword behind his back and flashed a three. Escoffier saw it clearly.
This time, the captain had no intention of indulging him in another guessing game. He immediately barked for his men to rush in and seize Flynn, then sneered as he followed up:
"Rather than guessing, I'd rather wait until you're pinned down and begging to tell me yourself..."
Before he could finish, the three Flynn had signaled behind his back had already become one. Then the last finger folded in as well.
"It's here."
Flynn smiled mysteriously.
The words had barely fallen when the first two men reached him. But in that very instant, a violent tremor shook the floor beneath them and the space around them, abruptly breaking the movements of everyone caught unprepared.
Boom! Crash!
A thunderous roar followed.
"What happened?!"
The captain panicked a little.
Having spent years at sea, he recognized it instantly. Something had gone wrong with the ship.
But what had gone wrong?
How serious was it? Where had it come from?
That, he could not tell.
More importantly, he could not be sure whether this was Flynn's backup plan.
"You did this?!"
Distracted for a split second, he came back to himself just as he was about to order his men to check the situation. Then he saw that the two subordinates who had rushed in first were already sprawled at Flynn's feet. The sword he had just sheathed was bared once more, and several drops of blood slid down the blade.
The situation was obvious.
That sudden upheaval had not shaken Flynn in the slightest, but the captain and his men had all been caught off guard. With the deck bucking beneath them, they had lost their footing, and the two closest had been cut down by a single draw of the sword.
The moment the accusation left his mouth, the captain felt the first faint stirrings of regret.
Provoking Flynn might have been a mistake.
"Who knows? At this point, all I can tell you is that from beginning to end, I haven't said a single false word."
A smile returned to Flynn's face, and he spoke with layered meaning. Then, as if the subject had changed entirely, he glanced at the weapon in his hand.
"The Flute of Ezpitzal, a gift from a friend of the Masters of the Night-Wind. I won't brag too much, but it's certainly sharp enough. It also carries secret incantations that hasten the draining of vitality. Don't worry, your two men died cleanly. I guarantee they didn't suffer."
Those words, together with what he had just done, were like a harmless beast suddenly baring its fangs.
The smugglers who had been charging in had already paused because of the accident. Now they instinctively backed away another step, and did so with surprising uniformity.
The captain had no mind to rebuke them, nor any interest in answering Flynn. Right now, the only thing that mattered was the ship beneath his feet.
If the ship was in trouble, what use was handling everything else perfectly?
Swim back to shore?
Fortunately, he was no novice. He had not forgotten to leave men stationed at the ship's key positions, so it did not take long for a report to reach him.
"Captain! It's a sea monster! A giant sea monster!"
"What?!"
The captain shot Flynn a vicious glare, then turned and left without the slightest hesitation.
"Listen carefully. If you don't want all of us ending up as food for that thing, then do not interfere."
"Leave five men behind. Keep your eyes on them. Everyone else, with me. To your stations. Ready the ballistae!"
After throwing down those orders, the captain sprinted off with the rest of his men.
Flynn watched the doorway, where only a few lackeys remained on guard. Whatever contempt or mockery had lingered in his eyes faded away, all of it dissolving into a soft click of the tongue.
"Everything I said was true, and still you wouldn't believe it... well, it doesn't matter. Even if you had, you were never getting out alive."
He glanced at Escoffier.
"I'll leave these few to you. I need a little time. Keep watch for me. Thanks."
With that, he sat down right where he was, closed his eyes, and stilled both breath and mind.
Escoffier asked nothing. She simply nodded, summoned a spear, and raised a plume of icy mist before the stunned eyes of the men left behind.
A hidden card?!
You've got a Vision and you didn't say a word?!
If you'd shown it earlier, the captain might never even have targeted you. But you hid it the whole time, were you baiting him?!
That was the last thought to flash through the minds of those five lackeys.
And after that?
A surge of bitter frost slowed their reactions and stiffened their movements, the haze of ice masking the gleam of the spear. In a single instant, all five fell.
Escoffier drew the spear back with satisfaction and calmed the unrest of Cryo within her.
If she had only been fumbling forward on her own, then right now she probably would have just dumped all that gathered Cryo power out in one burst. That had been her backup plan against being swarmed, a full field-clearing attack.
Using it here would have been like using a cannon to swat flies.
But over this stretch of time, Flynn had introduced her to quite a few friends from Natlan, and she had learned more than a few tricks from them. So now, there was a certain effortless ease to the way she handled it. She only drew on a small portion of her elemental power, leaving her later Elemental Burst untouched while still giving those enemies more than enough of a surprise.
Assuming they ever had the chance to come back.
...
On the other side, Flynn turned his focus inward.
"At last... almost enough."
From a perspective no ordinary person could perceive, wisps of blue-violet mist were drifting out from the surrounding crates and flowing into his body.
Their destination was what he was now observing within himself.
A seed.
It lay within his sea of consciousness, in the deepest part of his soul, yet at the same time it seemed to exist at an immeasurable height beyond all things, visible and perceptible to him alone.
As a transmigrator, this was Flynn's cheat.
A World Seed.
Once it sprouted, it would give birth to a complete world, and that world would be equivalent to Flynn's incarnation.
What was a complete world?
It meant not a planetary world like Teyvat, but something on a higher level altogether, a world whose standing matched the universe that contained Teyvat itself.
Naturally, it would need time to grow. At the very beginning, its scale might not even compare to one of Teyvat's smaller hidden realms. But its rank would be absolutely genuine, and growing it would not be difficult.
After all, an ordinary world possessed only a broad, impersonal will. A world that served as Flynn's incarnation, however, was effectively one with a clear consciousness. It could actively guide and plan its own growth.
More interesting still, because Flynn was a transmigrator, his world would also inherit corresponding traits. Once it passed through its infant stage, it would be able to consume its origin power, trace the path of his transmigration, seek out others like him, and open Gates of Transmigration...
The cheat could hardly be called anything but monstrous.
But until the seed sprouted and the world was born, none of it meant anything at all.