Any further agreement or disagreements Aethe might have expressed were drowned out in a sudden chain-reaction explosion of smoke and fire that swept the entire upper deck of the enemy ship. It was a huge craft, truly, and wouldn't have been something they could have normally boarded from the top. One power made all the difference here.

It didn't have a name, but the ability they had received from the fishmen put a little bit of extra oomph in any attempt they made to board another ship. Now, amplified by a ship that made any power like that stronger, they had more than enough height on the leap to make it to the enemy deck. Marco saw his friends rise to ridiculous heights with him, then heard rather than saw as they hit the deck amidst the smoke, fire, and general madness.

He heard the others clomp off towards the underdecks and wished them well. Between the three of them, they were fairly strong these days, especially in restrained spaces where Elisa could set up targets for Riv to take down without too much trouble. At the least they weren't in any more danger than he was, alone on the enemy deck, a captain wandering around somewhere looking for him.

He had to even the odds of the battle before he was found. He wandered the deck like an avenging angel, finding enemy troops in the fog and taking them down with zero-distance gunfire or sword strikes.

Were crewman always this weak? Marco tried to think back to when boarding enemy ships had been more typical for them. Back then, he had usually been in charge of fighting the captains, who tended to be as strong or stronger than he was. Maybe I'm just that strong now.

In all honesty, there weren't that many ways for him to gauge how strong he was in real terms anymore. He had so much going on with his equipment and ship at any given time that his stat screen was just one of many ways to judge his progress, none of which gave the full picture by themselves and none of which compared well with each other.

What he did know was that he had put down ten men by the time the captain found him, none of whom gave him very much trouble. The captain seemed determined to change that. He was a small, quick-looking man, someone who stood in stark contrast to the bigger, tougher-looking men Marco normally fought. This was a smaller, olive-skinned man in an outfit much like his own. He was compact. He looked fast.

Marco decided not to give him too much time to come to terms with what he himself was. Lowering his gun, he fired round after round at the man as he zigged and zagged, dodging most of them. His gun's general build these days was one that rewarded speed and annoyance, so he danced back himself, giving the firearm all the time he could buy it to annoy the man and to build up damage. It wasn't much, but as the man finally closed ranks with Marco, the gun's accuracy started to approach decent, and he had more than a second or so to work on him.

After that, things got much, much harder.

The man had a one-handed fencing sword he could move like lightning, stabbing, ducking, cutting, and generally moving faster than Marco had ever seen another human move close up. Marco relied on every bit of the length of his sword just to keep the man at bay, but was completely incapable of counterattacking in the least.

"Didn't expect this when you got up here, did ya? I'm not one of his little thugs. He doesn't own me. He hires me."

"Is the pay good?" Marco huffed. "I don't know that we've done so well."

"Good enough. I'll get three skill gems for taking you down. Never had a real attack skill, you know. Looking forward to getting one."

Marco knew the feeling. He had a red and yellow crystal in his pocket, even then. He put off using them, hoping that he could somehow convince Aethe that an attack skill and some kind of random, didn't-quite-fit-in-most-categories skill would suit her better than him, especially considering he was a lot less likely to get anything out of them.

"Four of you to kill, right? I'm guessing you are the toughest," the captain asked. The man effortlessly parried two of Marco's attacks, then launched a series of stabs that left Marco bleeding from one of his arms and both legs. "There's not much to you, though, so there shouldn't be much to them. I figured you and Quill are both those growth classes. I never saw the point in all that, honestly. Eventually, he'll get stronger than me. I'll go somewhere else and hide out for a year or so. When I come back, he'll have moved on and I'll be the biggest fish in this pond again. Safe. Lucrative."

Marco took a cut along his ribs and a jab into his forehead that he felt nick bone. The man was more aggressive now, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

"How long can you hold out?" the man asked. "I'm interested to see."

It was a valid question. If he couldn't stay in fighting shape until his friends got back, there was no chance. They had an entire boat full of people to defeat. It wouldn't be a short process, and he was getting worn down fast. Something had to change. Holstering his gun, Marco shoved his hand in his pocket as fast as he could, leaping back to make room as he felt the tiny gems warm up and then go poof in his pockets.

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Pulling his gun again, he tried for a zero-distance shot, something that had no chance of doing anything at all but that the other captain hadn't seen yet. He had to respect what looked like it might be a trick, which bought Marco just enough time to glance at his notifications before he was back on him.

Marco didn't smile. He didn't show joy. He only had time to read one of the notifications enough to get an impression of what the skill crystals did, and spent only the barest glance on the other. It didn't look like a failure, but he couldn't be sure.

He focused on the first. He gave up on anything but random hits from his handgun, going on full defense to keep himself as intact as possible for as long as possible.

"Won't help, you know." The other captain maneuvered like a snake, faking one way and then moving the other to score a deep gash on Marco's forearm. "Won't even buy that much time."

The next ten or so attacks forced Marco almost to the larger ship's rail, above where his ship had been but far enough down the length of the battleship that any fall would be straight down into the unforgiving ocean.

Now would be a good time, he thought. Any time now.

It took three stabs for it to finally happen. As he deflected the third, he felt his sword grow light in his hand as the time around him slowed to a crawl.

His sword moved forward like it had its own will, which for all he knew it might. It would hit. He could see that much. But a single hit would not be enough. He needed more. Roaring, he activated Captain's Cry and felt the power of his ship wash over him, the barest widening of his opponent's slowed eyes telling him he had noticed the change too. He leveled his gun, putting it to the level of the other captain's head and hoping he'd have the opportunity for one of his overpowered point-blank shots before this was all over.

Last but not least, he asked the system for a favor. Not literally, of course, but in the sense that he had a skill he had no idea how to use in his arsenal now that he wanted very much to add to the stack he was building. He didn't even know its name, but he begged with every fraction of a second he had left for it to work.

At the last second, it did. His fast thinking stopped working for a second as the world blurred around him. He felt his sword hit something hard, and he was so without bearings he let his gun fire as soon as it happened, hoping he had made it.

When the blur stopped, he realized what had stopped his sword. It was the other man's spine.

Two times his speed, as already improved by Counterattack, with four times his power from Desperate Thrust, plus whatever Captain's Cry had done turned out to be kind of a lot. The captain looked at Marco with just a hint of shock before dying standing up, propped up by Marco's sword, his own heart, and his shattered backbone.

Marco’s blade wrenched free, the body of the hired captain collapsing in a heap. He staggered backward, sweat and blood soaking his shirt. The fight hadn't been long, but it had taken everything he had to complete it and left every nerve in his body screaming with exhaustion.

The next notification hit him like a hammer.

Marco laughed. He couldn't help it. Somehow, he had cleared the deck before the fight, and now found himself with a breath of time in which he wasn't in danger. He was covered in blood, of course, and maybe just a bit past how tired and stressed he could be while maintaining sanity, but he was fine. He laughed on, ragged and borderline mad in the way only a man who had survived by sheer luck could be.