Elemental Cats

Taienra continued condensing her mana with the help of the trees on her back. Eventually, her liquid, sloshing mana calmed down and slowly solidified, becoming a block of malleable mana inside her mana pool, similar to soft clay.

However, she still couldn't calm down. Not all of her mana had transformed, and she could still condense her mana and expand her mana pool. With the help of the trees, Taienra wouldn't have any trouble pushing herself and her mana pool to the limit.

Taienra was so caught up in her breakthrough that she didn't notice the arrival of a rapidly approaching ship.

The ship was sleek and clearly designed for speed, no matter the cost. It didn't even have a sail to act as a passive mana absorption device. It instead relied solely on mana crystals and enchantments to fly through the Void.

Taienra might not have noticed the blaze-red ship's approach, but Toz and the others certainly did due to the streams of concentrated fire from the thrusters lit up the air behind it, and they moved to intercept it before it could get too close.

Toz even decided to stop it where it was by conveying a message using mana to reach the ship across the Void.

"We'll take your approach as an act of hostility and attack if you get even a horse-length closer."

Toz wasn't sure if the message had arrived or not. It wouldn't be weird if the ship had shields to block foreign sources of mana from entering or coming in contact with the ship. But it didn't matter. When the ship didn't slow down, even after passing the designated distance, Toz launched a fireball straight at it.

The ship tried to avoid it by veering to the side, but since both the ship and the fireball were traveling so fast, Toz's attack hit the ship's barrier.

The fireball was just a quickly conjured spell meant to scare the ship's pilot rather than actually destroy the boat, so Toz didn't pour a lot of mana into it. But the barrier still took some damage, and the ship shook.

The thrusters didn't calm down or stop spouting flames, but the ship stopped in its path before quickly trying to turn around and escape. However, before it could get anywhere, Toz and Asilean thickened the space around it so it could hardly move, much less flee.

After locking the ship in place, Toz flashed over to the small torpedo-like vessel.

Toz felt how filled to the brim with enchantments and mana crystals the vessel was as soon as he stepped foot on the ship's body. In order to neutralize and turn off the boat, Toz sent a stream of void mana into it.

The enchantments fizzled before blacking out and inactivating.

When most of the enchantments stopped working, a section of the otherwise smooth top slid open and revealed a red-haired young man lying down.

The young man's eyes flicked up and met Toz's scrutinizing gaze.

Panic filled the young man as he tried to shrink down deeper into the cockpit, frantically pressing one of the controls at his side.

"P-please don't kill me."

The young man stuttered out a plea for his life, barely holding back tears.

"Don't worry."

Toz smiled widely, revealing his shiny, and glisteningly sharp teeth, before bending down and hoisting the young man up with a single hand.

The others had brought their ship over, and after grabbing the young pilot, Toz jumped over to the ship so everyone could partake in the interrogation, and he wouldn't have to repeat anything.

Toz put the fear-stricken pilot in a chair of metal and restrained his legs and arms.

The chair was hastily made and probably wouldn't have bound a proper enemy for long. But the red-haired man was only at the fourth level and so panicked he could hardly see. He didn't have the strength to break through Nil's chair, and even if he had the strength, he wasn't in a state to use it properly, so Toz and the others didn't have to worry.

Though, even if he could break free from the chair, he obviously wasn't strong enough to fight and escape from Toz, the cats, and Hayar.

Toz and the others didn't want to wait until their captive calmed down, so they held his crying and shaking head still and scared him into submission. However, their intimidation tactics were a little too good, thanks to Lucy's participation, so their captive passed out due to fear.

Since he didn't pass out due to an injury or take any actual damage, there wasn't anything Stitches could do. They could only try to wake him up by slapping his cheeks a little or wait until he woke up naturally.

Slapping his cheeks didn't work, and they were worried doing anything else might be too excessive and would actually injure the poor guy. But they didn't have to wait for the red-haired captive to wake up.

Dristel coughed a little to clear his throat since he hadn't talked for quite a while. Both he and his brother were too tired to speak. And after catching up with each other spent most of their captivity together in silence.

Dristel's coughing caught the attention of the others, and he didn't have to waste any time to try and make them listen to him.

"That's a scouting vessel from the Firebelt Kingdom. Probably sent to investigate the path to Pirate Haven in advance for whatever the Alliance of Kingdoms had planned. Since it doesn't take much skill and is relatively safe, the pilots are usually complete newbies."

Toz and the others looked at Dristel with some surprise.

"What? I was an admiral, you know. I recognize most types of ships and vessels."

"That's not it. Why are you willingly helping us?"

"Oh. Can we get a couple of pillows or something? I haven't had this bad of a stiff neck since that time someone dared me to fight while walking on my hands."

Dristel nodded to his brother as he requested for some kind of way to relieve the pain of having to sleep without being able to rest their heads against anything.

"Sure."

Toz easily agreed to Dristel's request. They were hostages and powerful ones at that, but they didn't have to suffer more than necessary now that their business was settled and Dristel had helped them figure out the identity of the vessel. And it would be easier to hand them over to the Starsling Kingdom in exchange for a ransom if they were cooperative.

After giving Dristel and Stris some water, Toz asked him another question.

"What do you think the different kingdoms are planning to do? What's their goal in sending a scouting vessel when they already know where Pirate Haven is?"

Dristel didn't seem very surprised at Toz's question, but he thought a little before answering. Toz didn't rush him since he didn't have a pressing need to know. They were still waiting for Taienra to finish her breakthrough and for the red-haired youngster to wake up, after all.

Eventually, Dristel opened his mouth and began explaining what he thought about the situation.