As the chest opened, Cassian looked disappointed at first. There were only three rings inside.

"Please be spatial storages..." he muttered hopefully.

The moment he picked them up and felt the mana inside, his smile immediately returned.

Seeing that expression, Peter smirked. "Get a mage to unlock the protection spells on them."

Cassian nodded. He already knew how those worked—his own storage ring had a protection spell too, one that only allowed him to take things out of it.

"Now that we’re done here, let’s check the lower decks. I’m not sure we’ll find anything valuable, but who knows with these lowlifes?" Peter said. Usually, anything precious on a pirate ship stayed in the captain’s room, but there was always a chance.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t.

Both of them came back upstairs wearing disgusted expressions.

"What the fuck were they keeping down there for it to smell like an entire city took a shit inside?" Cassian asked, looking genuinely horrified.

"I don’t know," Peter said, looking just as disgusted. "But I take back everything I said earlier. You can have the ship, the treasure, the dead bodies—hell, you can marry the damn thing if you want. I’m never stepping into that cursed lower deck again."

"I’d rather burn the whole ship than clean whatever in god’s name was growing down there..." Cassian said, shuddering just from remembering the lower deck.

Soon, both ships moved close together again. Peter headed back to the main vessel, the Royal Katrina, to inform everyone about what had happened and warn them that more pirate ships might already be heading toward them now that their position and route had been exposed.

"So what happens now?" Theon asked after Cassian explained the situation to them.

Kirja was there too, listening quietly—but unlike the others, she looked more excited than worried at the thought of another fight ahead.

"We fight, I guess. Wasn’t that the whole reason we got hired?" Cassian asked, sounding amused by the question.

Theon looked completely unamused. "I know that... genius."

Cassian grinned. "Then why ask? I thought you suddenly wanted career advice."

Ignoring him, Wanni looked at the rings Cassian had handed over. "Do you know how many more ships there are?"

Cassian shook his head.

"Hopefully not many," she muttered before lifting one of the storage rings closer for inspection. "As for these, I can probably open them in about a week. The protection spell is basic—it’s just a really tedious process to break it without damaging the spatial space inside..."

"It’s fine..." Cassian said before looking around at them. "Now, does anyone here actually have a plan for getting onto enemy ships without jumping a hundred meters across the sea like a lunatic?"

"You didn’t even have a plan and still jumped!" Lumine snapped angrily. "Do you actually want to die that badly?"

Her reaction surprised Kirja, and when Lumine noticed everyone staring at her in silence, she quickly realized she wasn’t supposed to sound that close to Cassian when, officially, they had only recently met.

She coughed awkwardly before adding, "I-I’m saying that because my big sister is like that too and worries us a lot... so I figured your family probably feels the same way..."

Cassian immediately pointed at her. "See? Even strangers are emotionally attached to me. That’s how lovable I am."

"Fuck off..." Lumine cursed at him, looking disgusted by his grin.

Kirja ended up chuckling a little. Honestly, she probably would’ve reacted the exact same way if Cassian had said something like that to her.

Cassian, meanwhile, didn’t seem bothered by Lumine’s attitude at all.

"Well, my family does care..." he said with a smile, clearly amused by her worrying about him.

Lumine blushed faintly when she realized he was talking about her.

"But the captain offered me a ship in exchange for helping him," Cassian continued. "So I just jumped without thinking." Then he added with a disappointed look, "Didn’t even get the ship in the end. Though the captain promised me a lot of money instead, so I’ll split it between us when the journey’s over... so everything worked out."

"Only if you’re still alive by then," Wanni muttered.

Then she reached into her storage ring and pulled out a parchment.

"This is a speed-boosting spell," she explained. "A pretty extreme one, honestly. I only made it in case we ever needed to escape. But you could probably use it to jump really far."

Cassian’s eyes immediately lit up.

Wanni narrowed hers. "Don’t get excited yet. After it wears off, your legs will basically turn into jelly."

She paused before adding,

"Though... since you can heal, it probably won’t affect you that badly."

"That’s good then..." Cassian said as he grabbed the parchment with the magic circle drawn onto it. "I just have to let my domain touch it, right?"

"Yeah. Since you can’t control mana directly, your domain will work instead since it’s a mix of mana and your will," Wanni explained.

Kirja, who had been mostly silent until now, suddenly looked a little jealous. "I would’ve asked for one too, but I don’t have his ridiculous healing ability..."

"You really don’t need to jump onto enemy ships to fight them," Lumine said angrily. "They’ll jump onto our ship eventually. He’s just stupid enough to go over there himself."

Then she turned toward Cassian with an annoyed look.

"And have none of you ever read a book about marine warfare? People swing across on ropes when ships get close, not leap a hundred meters like suicidal idiots."

"She’s right," one of the sailors agreed.

Cassian and the others recognized him as part of the ship’s actual crew rather than one of the hired mercenaries.

"But getting onto their ship first is still important," the sailor continued. "The chaos it creates can stop their mages from focusing on attacking our ship with the cannons while we keep firing at them."

"Wouldn’t that make it even more dangerous for the people on the enemy ship?" Wanni asked. "They’d have to worry about getting caught in the cannon fire too..."

The sailor nodded. "Yeah, it does. But honestly, you can still end up caught in the crossfire even staying on this ship." He shrugged. "At that point, it’s just a matter of choosing where you want to take your chances."