NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter-185 Sun’s Malice
The consequences of the fruit changed the world and altered the fates. Some survived their deaths after repeating the hour, while some missed the luck of the first time and died on the redo, and the warning in Ewan’s journal now paled in comparison.
The sun’s impish malice flipped everyone’s life upside down. The weakest rung of the Starons, the Kyrons, suffered the most, but it… he even gave the Ashevas a headache for most of their days.
The sun messed around and Airadia raged, and as a result, the hub shut down for an indefinite period. The loss of business it caused was only secondary. Ewan lost contact with Nana most of all, barely leaving a message before the connection cut, and his heart was in his mouth every second of the day.
The Stormfalcon swayed with the waves, the wind hissed along, and the seagulls cried and fluttered around, lost and disoriented. Ewan closed his ‘adventures’ log’ diary with a sigh, not a new word written in it, and looked up at the starry but moonless sky from the top deck. The time on the clock called for the peak of the afternoon right now, yet the sun refused to rise. From a few hours a day and lengthy nights to nightless days, he messed about with the orbits and the planetary rhythms.
Nevertheless, the nights were still better. When the sun refused to go down, the rate of random spontaneous combustion soared among the weak Kyrons—the reports of such incidents had already flooded the hub market before it closed.
“Boss, he woke up,” Kidd said, coming up to the top deck.
“Did he say anything?” Ewan asked and led him down the stairs and towards the tail of the middle floor. The hung lanterns clattered on the walls and lit the corridor in patches, the shadows fluttering against the flickering fire. The primitive tool contrasted the advanced Warship and the sophisticated metallurgy, but the flatlined Rigen level forced their hands—even the core system shut down, let alone the peripheral lights. Without the energy, the Stormfalcon only amounted to a lifeless junk.
“No, he’s just staring at the ceiling,” Kidd said. “He’s not responding at all.”
“Where’s Stefan?”
“He’s cleaning and fixing the bottom floor now,” Kidd said.
“Is the middle floor done?” Ewan asked.
“Yeah, he finished it this morning…uh night…a few hours ago.”
“Tell him to take a rest, he’ll break his back like this,” Ewan said and entered the medical bay.
The monitoring systems were down, the shattered supply cabinets ran empty, even the medical tools had rusted and rotted into dust; the infirmary ward was at best a hall with a few intact but groaning beds at this point. Stefan hadn’t cleaned the living quarters when they found him though, so this was the only option.
“How are you feeling?” Ewan asked, taking a seat beside the bed.
A few breaths went by in silence, but the man only stared at the ceiling.
“Can you not speak, or do you not want to speak? I gave you my precious potion, so you should be all healed. Do you remember me, Lance?” he asked again, yet received nothing in return. “Have you lost all sense of gratitude? We saved you, but we won't indulge your depression. If you don’t speak in the next second, I’ll throw you overboard. You can try your chances out in the ocean.”
“It won't make any difference, sir, I don’t want to live anyway…,” Lance said in a hoarse voice. “You wasted your potion on me, sir.”
“It’s not up to you,” Ewan said. “Do you remember what happened?”
“Lightning fell from the sky, and I lost everything,” he said. “They abandoned us, sir.”
“The Ensils? Yeah, I can imagine why. So, the Governor lived…,” Ewan said under his breath. “We found you drifting on a piece of wood. You were lucky the sun didn’t come out; else we would find your ashes.”
“Am I lucky…” Lance murmured.
“Enough with your self-pity. I saved you, so you owe me your life,” Ewan said. “I need help with something, do it for me and you’re free to do whatever you want. Kill yourself, jump off into the ocean, find your own way, up to you.”
Lance nodded. “My life is yours anyway, sir, I won't resist.”
“It’s not a bad deal for you either. Didn’t the Ensils stop you from becoming a Severynth? You can get another chance now,” he said. “You can't become a Severynth without opening your soul space, but since your soul was strong enough to awaken, you can opt for a counterpart. I have an inheritance with me that I want you to accept.”
“Yes, sir,” Lance said.
“Boss, are you giving it away?” Kidd asked. “It was our loot…”
“Stefan failed anyway, and neither of us can use it. I don’t want to leave it on our ship, it’s an unknown element,” Ewan said. The seed of thought Perceval left on the Warship was a matter of concern for him, a foreign element that he couldn’t control. He could crush it, but the recoil might make the Stormfalcon suffer. Thus, it was better to just fulfill the wish and wash his hands of it. It was nothing but a plea to continue the Radons’ legacy anyway, the path of the ‘Reaper’. It had a high demand for physical abilities, so Stefan fell short of triggering a response—Lance stood a better chance.
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