Keep Sailing, Tai

The red haired teenager had long since given up on the hope of ever managing to understand the Time Storm compass.

Maybe Nikki would have been able to read the mysterious artifact, but she was still out cold due to energy exhaustion.

He sailed alone on the violent sky tides with deafening thunderclaps on his left hand and sharp streaks of lightening on his left.

Tai was bored as he had gotten used to the harrowing madness around him.

The noise did not even bother him at all anymore and the violent rocking of the ship sailing on the wild hurricanes felt like the mild rocking of a rocking chair.

It was crazy how much a human being could adapt.

How could he feel bored when he was in the centre of a deadly disturbance in time that transcended the boundary of reality itself?

Heck, he even felt sleepy.

Throwing a quick glance over to Nikolah and Claire resting peacefully in a corner despite the thousands of feet high rise and fall of the majestic ship, Tai scowled.

"Tch, why don't I get to rest.

I'm the one who had been plotting on killing the damned dragon for two entire years!"

But indeed, what he was doing could be considered resting in some perverse, twisted way.

He was on a flying ship that rocked and swayed, while he watched an amazing light show and enjoyed some strange psychological illusions.

That was relaxing.

But in reality, he was on a flying ship that violently shook, rolled, and was constantly being tossed around like a rag doll, while watching the skies ahead for streaks of lightening and sky tides. Not to mention the strange undoing of the laws guiding time, space, and reality itself.

It should have been absolutely terrifying for any sane person, but which sane person would want to sail in a tornado like hurricane where the winds of time blow raphazardly.

The terror of the time storm had long been eluded from the red haired teenager.

Sighing deeply, Tai crashed on the steering in boredom.

"Is this what being a Protector feels like? One second, you're battling some gargantuan beast, and in the next, you're dying of boredom."

Having nothing else to do, he decided to practice his runic sorcery. The sword wraith, Amirax, had not appeared since he had arrived on Black Nest island, so there wasn't any new part of runic sorcery he could learn. Thus, he chose to perfect the one he had managed to learn.

Letting go of the steering, and then quickly holding it back with one hand and fear on his face as the ship had immediately began to careen to the side, Tai used his free hand to circulate his energy.

After he had searched around the fairly large cabin for a minute or two searching for a suitable item to draw the summoning rune on, and not seeing any, he picked the closest object to his position, an exquisite chair.

Tai scowled as the ship rose very high into the sky and crashed down extremely low over and over again for a full minute.

"This is going to be hard."

He needed absolute concentration when drawing runes.

For the past two years, only the sound of Nikki's door opening had caused him to make an error. Here, there weren't any doors to distract him.

Instead, the entire world was distracting!

The ship rose and fell, the hurricanes howled violently, thunderclaps roared left and right, blinding flashes of lightning bolted here and there, the ship would get tossed around like a rag doll once in a while, and the eerie whispers and silhouettes were very unnerving.

But he had faced a dragon and survived, even if he had to die hundreds of times first, and here he was, braving a Time Storm despite being an Unlocked, someone who had just entered the Protectors Academy and was still on his very first expedition, and he was still alive.

Merely trying to draw a summoning rune despite the maddening state of the world would not be harder than killing a mythical level beast, could it?

He didn't know. He had never drawn a rune in this sort of situation before, after all.

Groaning, Tai gripped the exquisite chair to balance himself.

"Let's hope for the best, then."