After our mail delivery, we laid low for several days while we moved further north. While still in the Broken Isles, we were approaching the mainland isthmus of Elessar. It was on the western border of the elvish kingdom, where their grand forests turned into the mountainous steppes of Desolas. Along the isthmus were several elvish havens and shipyards, most of which were closed to non-elves even in peacetime. Those ports had become battlegrounds in the war, as the human confederation sought to establish early naval dominance.

They claimed they had done so, but the only news that had reached our ears could very well have been propaganda. Human pride always wanted to hear that they were superior. We were like the elves in that regard, but with less of the insight and realism that came with age and old culture.

What we did know was that the isthmus – and indeed, most of Desolas – was the location of older battles fought in wars of previous eras. The fortifications were plenty and strong. The confederacy was currently pursuing a strategy of containment, allowing the non-human alliance control over the land while they directed troops elsewhere.

They still had a large naval presence buffering the sea between the Broken Isles and the isthmus. Kinda belied the story that all the elvish ships had been burned, now didn’t it?

I expected that the Emerald would discover our northerly route before too long and would be suspicious that we might target the ships in the area, but we should get off at least one attack first. It was part of my private campaign to portray our hunters as incompetent and unable to handle us. If I thought they might allocate more resources to catching us I wouldn’t have needled them like that, but how many more high-levelled ships would they send with the Emerald already on us?

Our scouting first showed us a near-derelict vessel sitting anchored that identified as a “prison ship”. We considered sinking her but we really didn’t know what factions we’d be aggravating. Since the ship didn’t have a threat level, I didn’t feel any compunction from Jones’ about challenging myself. We left it alone.

After that, we saw a small cutter moving quickly – too quickly for us to catch. It was flying the flag of Drua. Later we saw a large warship at anchor flying the flag of Oorkom, showing there really was a coalition presence.

The warship was level 7 and named the Murdock. It became our target.

As we’d observed in previous battles, if our enemies didn’t have the means to counter us and we resigned ourselves to a battle of attrition, we could easily take on high-levelled threats from safety. Stay below the waves, blast holes in the hull, with enough time and munitions you win.

I’m sure that strategy terrified naval captains. Such people might keep an eye out for boats using geography to move in close, or fear ships that had a cloaking effect. What were they supposed to do, though, against an enemy that was invisible unless it surfaced, and which could continue attacking from concealment?

Nevertheless, continuing to do that reeked of stale tactics to me. I’d take an assured win, sure, but this was an opportunity to develop alternative fighting plans. Why not give captains even more things to worry about at night?

For the warship, we had two methods of attack. Our backup was the tried and true “shoot them while submerged”. My experiment was a rendition of the first trap I’d tried to pull in the Broken Isles.

Back then I’d lashed logs together like a caltrop and had them floated upwards to the ship overhead. In that case the logs had struck, then bounced to the side and continued surfacing alongside the ship, no more than a few points of durability taken from the hull.

This time we were designing the log traps to be more stable and have a single point aimed upwards to focus the blow. In addition to the natural buoyancy of the logs, I repeatedly spent my mana pool adding ice to the trap. Frozen saltwater really liked to float. When I was done, it looked less like a modified caltrop and more like a mini-iceberg.

All of that probably would have been useless if not for the design of the Murdock. As a ship from Oorkom, it had a much flatter bottom than other ships. The design had some perks, but today it meant the hull wouldn’t naturally deflect us.

The ship stayed conveniently anchored for us while we went through these hours of planning and preparation. It wouldn’t have been possible to plan a strike like this on a moving target.

Finally, we were ready and I cut the ropes holding our trap down. She rose immediately with a deceptive slowness as the large construction actually moved almost as fast as I could have moved swimming alongside it.

When she hit the warship, she briefly lifted some of its draft from the water. The point of my trap had smashed the hull open and broken the keel, though the ship remained spitted on it and likely wouldn’t begin sinking until the ice had melted a bit.

You have advanced to skill level 5 in Artillery. +5% accuracy, -5% reload time per level.

Well … I’d been thinking of it as a trap, but I suppose this was more accurate. Another level in artillery, wahoo! I’d advanced it twice already under Sadeo’s tutelage, combined with my earlier levels to bring my total where it was. The teams consistently training with Sadeo had long since surpassed me and his best pupil had reached level 12. There were advantages to being taught by a professional with a skill level of 37.

“Alright boys,” I said. “Time for you to head back to the ship.”

The handful of crew still with me nodded and swam off, trailing a few thick lines that were attached to the mini-iceberg above. Those would come into play later.

I swam for the anchor and followed its chain upwards. When I was almost to the surface I felt 7 – no, 8 people enter the water on the other side of the ship. Each of them was clear to me once they entered the water, thanks to my domain ability.

They were no doubt highly competent individuals sent to source the damage and attack any enemies they found. If they tried taking on the Death’s Consort … well, good luck to them. Sadeo would be having his teams target them even now. For once, the underwater strike team wasn’t my concern. My crew could handle them. My concern was with the warship.

Lawless Jack had once challenged me, asking if I had what it took to infiltrate an enemy ship and trap it so thoroughly as to win the battle without a direct engagement. I was going to stretch my traps skill and find out.

Climbing up the chain was a simple trick, easily performed by anyone with the requisite skills in climbing or enough attribute points in agility or strength. As someone with all three, I was up the chain and wriggling into the ship with hardly a ripple left behind me.

The capstan for the anchor on this ship was in a tight room below the forecastle. I always frowned on such designs because it meant the capstan wasn’t available for other jobs, and since it was harder to fit people into the small room you had to have people with the brawn and strength stats to do the job.

Since this ship was an enemy and their design offered me a position to sneak aboard and hide, I forgave them for their foolishness. Mostly. I was a seaman before a rogue, after all.

There was shouting going on, as there was whenever a crew discovered the danger of either a mishap or attack. I didn’t hear anyone giving a rallying cry of ‘raise the anchor!’ yet but it would be foolish to think I was safe here. I needed somewhere else to hide …

No. This was an enemy warship set to become a hive of activity. If there were any good hiding spots on it, I didn’t know them. That wasn’t why I was here anyway. I was here to make traps out of everything that I could.

This was training. It was time to practice.

What better place to start than here? I knew exactly how the crew was going to file into this room, how they would set the bars in the capstan, how they’d attach the chain to the messenger to raise the anchor …

When I’d first found the adventurer bag, it had a number of miscellaneous items in it. Potions were the most immediately relevant items, but it also had a journal, some money, and trap making supplies. While it was the way of the world that time slipped from you and you couldn’t always practice what you had skills for, I really was surprised that I hadn’t employed these supplies sooner.

Between what the bag had held for so long, and what I’d scrounged up looting our last several ships, I had the means to be creative.

The capstan had a simple ratcheting system so the seamen could release pressure without undoing all their work. A quick examination showed me where the ratchets were, and how many teeth they’d move in a rotation. I stuck four small vials three teeth in, so that they’d get the capstan turning and the ratchet system would smash all 4 vials simultaneously. They might notice the sound, but I expected that they wouldn’t stop their momentum to investigate.

The vials held a poison used by some melee fighters. If you got it on your skin, it would cause severe rash and irritation. That was merely a side effect. The danger of the poison was when inhaled, it burned the lungs and caused the throat to swell. A splash of the poison on the eyes could cause blindness, but just the vapors could temporarily incapacitate. I’d found these doses in the belongings of an alchemist shortly before our mail drop at Skillaboth. I’d found a lot of other curiosities too, that were now also in my bag.

This trap at the capstan wouldn’t be lethal, but the vials would fill the compartment and incapacitate anyone inside. It would buy time if the Murdock’s Captain decided to weigh anchor and limp to shore.

I slipped out and into the galley. I had been briefly seen, but not recognized as an intruder. The artillery crews were manning their stations to rebuff an attack, and the deck was a hive of activity. The galley seemed like such a promising place for causing damage, because it was where every seaman on fire watch expected trouble. However, I didn’t expect anyone to waltz in here to prep a meal, triggering whatever clever trap I laid.

Not that I couldn’t find a use for the oil and grease stored here …

I had made it across the first artillery deck and down to the 3rd deck before I was recognized. The seaman who realized I wasn’t part of the crew realized too late that meant I was an enemy. I considered trapping his body like I’d trapped the body of the pirate on the Wind Runner, but decided I’d be better served placing hazards along the aisles. I was being creative, I could discover later what worked and what didn’t. My bag had a few preset devices that shot a needle – which could be poisoned – when a tripwire triggered them. I tried to use those sparingly and instead depended on the environment to provide triggers, hazards, or both.

A whoosh and shout from above heralded the loss of ‘control’ in ‘controlled chaos’ aboard the Murdock. I quickly moved forward. It hadn’t been easy to rig the grease and matches to the bolt storage by the ballistae, but between clothes to blend in and stealth to hide from notice, I’d pulled it off. Honestly, I’d expected one of my other traps to be triggered first, but that was a great one to get things started.

There were explosive bolts in those chests that had just been set alight.

Enchanted munitions weren’t reliably enacted when they weren’t fired from their machine – hence why I wasn’t using the Death’s Consort’s supply of poison bolts to fumigate this ship. But while they weren’t reliably enacted, that wasn’t to say they weren’t volatile.

I’d gotten two chests within the area of the grease fire trap I’d set. It seemed that the artillery crew had successfully smothered one before the bolts could blow. The other one detonated, causing a report that echoed throughout the ship. I got several kill notifications.

Maybe the Captain would have thought the fire was due to an accident or negligence, but when the explosion happened people began rushing towards it … many right through my traps. Some of those traps were triggered and missed their target. Others inflicted mild or moderate damage that impacted the crew capabilities but didn’t net me any XP. And then there were the traps that were just a rough way to go. Behind me a crewman rushing into the third deck triggered a weight that had pulled a tripwire tight around his neck like a garrote. I hadn’t thought that trap would be effective, as someone of a different height wouldn’t be caught or would simply have the wire around their shoulders, but … yeah, a rough way to go.

I had the illusion that I could continue to slip through the ship laying traps after the alarm was raised, but I’d need to develop more roguish skills to manage that. Once on alert people were constantly trying to penetrate my stealth, and my seaman’s disguise wasn’t good enough on a ship where everybody was recognizable.

“There!” Someone shouted. They were wise enough to immediately disappear back up their hatch, spreading the word rather than taking me on directly.

Okay, things were getting hot. Practice was over.

I was surprised when the purple barrier formed on the deck above me; there was no flooding here yet. There were also still crewmen on these lower decks. If the Captain was hoping to use the flood barrier as a shield to trap me, he’d forgotten that while the magic excelled at blocking water, it was so specialized that nearly anyone banging on it could deliberately break it quickly.

But … if I started breaking it, the Captain could send fighters to wherever I was doing so. He’d trapped his own men below with me, but saved those on the upper decks. He’d also saved the artillery decks, which was what he was probably focused on keeping to stay a threat as long as he could.

Touché, Captain. You take the upper half of the ship, I’ll take the lower.

I didn’t bother putting many more traps out, just ones that had solid chances of success. I made my way down below, getting a surreal sense of déjà vu. Caught in the lower holds of a ship, a hole in the keel, traps …

I wondered what Redmund would think of me now.

I brutally pushed the thought away.

The damage my ‘artillery shot’ had caused was crippling, but it was only as a large portion of the ice on it had melted that seawater had begun to flood into these decks. I found two people inspecting the damage – one of which looked like the ships’ carpenter. He had a strength of 31, so I dipped a blade in a paralytic poison I had. A cut to each arm, and I moved onto the second man before the cries of surprise even began.

The second man was a low level but professional sailor. He knew his stuff if being down here with the carpenter was any indication, but it didn’t expand his HP pool. He went down quickly.

The carpenter lunged for me, his arms still working if not fully functional. I dodged and remained just out of reach, running around the hold until the paralytic fully took effect of his arms. It wasn’t a dignified way of fighting, but I also wanted to test the stuff. It took several seconds for the paralytic to take local effect, rendering the man’s arms useless. He cursed me while I waited to see how long it took to completely immobilize him. He answer was, it didn’t. I hadn’t introduced enough into his body to do that – or his constitution was fighting it before it could do so.

I left his body behind and sloshed through the rising water to where my once ice-crusted log had lodged. More water was coming in, but there wasn’t enough space for me to wiggle out yet. I pulled an axe from my bag and set to it.

If I was trying to make a hole in an unmarked section of the hole, it would have taken me forever. The ships’ durability would fight against me, making each landed blow less effective. The wound in the belly of the ship, however, meant that I could exploit the weakness here. It took several minutes of chopping – chopping that would have been much less effective if the water resisted me like it would a normal person – but I expanded the hole to something I could wriggle through by the time the water was to my chest.

I poked my head out, saw that there was nobody around, and slipped off the ship. Behind me the Murdock slowly sank, taking on water into several decks since the Captain thought he could keep me locked away. I enjoyed the thought of making a fool out of him. Was this bloodthirst?

I was just doing what had to be done, and being as hard as I needed to be.

Back aboard the ship, I gave the order to use the lines trailing back to our iceberg. We used the power of the ship to pull the iceberg, wrenching it inside the ship like twisting a knife. We pulled the Murdock along like we were towing them before the projectile splintered free. Where the hole in the ship had been a nearly-plugged hole, now there was a gaping wound.

The ship would flood to the third deck, then hold there while the flood barrier magic kept it at bay. When the mages who could power the spell ran out of mana, then the ship would sink. The process could last from hours to a full day.

Not wanting to sit around and tempt fate, I gave Sadeo the order to start firing on their artillery deck – the level above the flood barrier. Our ballista bolts soared towards the surface, jumping from the sea and impacting the side of the ship like flying fanged fish.

Scarcely an hour later my artillery teams were picking off survivors swimming away for target practice. We looted the sunken ship – after I’d gone inside to make sure none of my traps were still active. I actually managed to recover some.

You have advanced to skill level 11 in Traps. +3% to successfully set traps, +3% chance to successfully disarm traps, and +2% chance to spot hidden traps per level.

In addition to the personal XP I’d gotten for combat and the victory XP for taking on a level 7 warship, I’d say it was a successful experiment.