The first pirate attack had only been the beginning.

Over the next two week of travel, they were attacked by two more pirate fleets, but both were even weaker than the first one. Each fleet only had three ships, with Third Circle warriors acting as their commanding officers.

Those battles were dealt with so easily that the crew aboard Peter’s ship handled everything themselves. The Royal Katrina didn’t even need to fire a single cannon shot or cast any major spells.

By the end of it all, they had gained eleven extra ships.

Managing that many vessels was difficult since they didn’t have enough sailors to properly crew all of them, but they still had enough manpower to operate at least four more ships alongside their own.

And now that they had already entered the waters of the Mariossa Kingdom, there was little danger of pirates attacking anymore.

From here, it was only around ten more hours before they reached their destination.

So now the six fully crewed ships were towing the captured vessels behind them, with the Royal Katrina, being the most powerful among them, pulling two by itself.

Because of that, Cassian ended up spending his final night at sea aboard one of the damaged ships being towed while Wanni and the others worked on repairing it.

The whole repair process had been pretty eye-opening for him.

They weren’t just patching holes normally. Using magic, they could regrow entire wooden planks directly from the ship itself, and they could even create nails and other materials seemingly out of nowhere.

Wanni explained that it was called alchemy magic.

Basically, they guided mana into the wood and reshaped or expanded it according to their needs.

It was still a slow process, so it couldn’t really be used during combat, but it was fast enough to repair things when proper materials weren’t available—like in their current situation.

Now that the work was finished, they were finally free to relax for a while.

So they ended up spending the evening inside the captain’s quarters of one of the captured pirate ships—mainly the very first ship they had taken, since its captain’s room had been stocked with surprisingly high-quality alcohol.

Theon took a sip of the dark red wine in his cup before looking genuinely surprised.

"This is actually good..." he said.

Everyone else who tasted the drinks looked similarly shocked.

Wanni spoke next while sipping from a lighter-colored wine. "This one’s amazing too... honestly, even better than what mother usually drinks."

"You must be pretty rich if your mother drinks wine this fine..." Kirja remarked.

Wanni simply nodded. She wasn’t really trying to hide that she came from a noble family anymore. It would’ve been too difficult anyway, since details like that could slip out naturally in conversation—just like now—and trying to recover from those mistakes later would only make things more suspicious.

Theon took another sip before shaking his head slightly.

"Pirates having this kind of taste feels strange..."

"Yeah," his sister agreed while looking at her glass. "I expected some cheap strong rum that burns your throat, not refined wine..."

"It’s not that strange. Once people get rich, whether they’re criminals or not, they suddenly discover ’culture,’" Lumine said before finishing an entire glass ahead of everyone else.

With slightly red cheeks and a wide smile, she immediately poured herself another one.

Cassian and the others looked at her in surprise.

"Are you planning to blacking out tonight?" Cassian asked, sounding amused.

"Why aren’t you all drinking like this? We’re finally leaving this fish-smelling hell of a place," she said with a big smile.

"Can’t really argue with that..." Althea admitted, with the other women quickly agreeing as well.

"It honestly wasn’t that bad," Theon argued.

Cassian nodded along with him. "Seriously, I don’t think I even sweated once with how cold it’s been getting out here."

"Well then, drink more and keep your body warm," Lumine said as she poured more wine into his half-empty glass.

As the night went on, they drank, shared stories, laughed, and took plenty of humorous shots at each other.

By the time it got really late, almost everyone else had become heavily drunk.

Cassian, however, was still the least affected.

Thanks to his healing ability, his body simply refused to let him get too drunk. His domain treated excessive alcohol like poison, automatically neutralizing it once his body considered it dangerous.

The only other person who could still talk without slurring too badly was Kirja, though judging by her wide smile and constant chuckling at Wanni’s rant, she wasn’t exactly sober either.

Wanni had been passionately complaining about how she and the other mages had ended up cleaning the captured pirate ships.

Apparently, while some pirates—like the captain of this ship—liked to keep things neat, they were a rare exception. Most of the other ships had living conditions that could only be compared to toilets... just without the actual piles of shit and piss.

At least, Cassian hoped that was the only difference.

As for the rest of the group, they had long since reached the point where they could barely do more than listen and occasionally throw in some slurred comment of their own.

Eventually, even that stopped.

Cassian finally snatched a bottle away from Lumine after catching her trying to force more wine into Wanni’s mouth while the poor girl was practically asleep already.

"Givveee it baaack..." Lumine complained loudly, her words melting together as she angrily reached for the bottle again.

Instead, she completely lost her balance halfway and stumbled right into Cassian’s arms.

"Shhhhhh... she wan’ more drinksss..." she whispered dramatically while trying to point at Wanni and somehow pointing at the ceiling instead.

"I think she’s had enough already," Cassian said with a chuckle.

Right on cue, a loud snore escaped from Wanni, who had somehow fallen asleep while still sitting upright.

"N-nooo..." Althea suddenly joined in, equally drunk, hugging Wanni from the side protectively. "Don’t steal herrr wine... tha’s rude..."

Theon buried his face in his hand. "You’re drunk too..."

"I’m nooot..." Althea protested immediately before nearly tipping over sideways. "The flooor just moved..."

"We’re on a ship," Cassian pointed out.

"Exaccctly..." she said proudly, as if she had just made a genius argument.

Meanwhile, Lumine was still weakly trying to reach for the bottle from Cassian’s arms.

"Y-you’re a tyrannt..." she accused him with narrowed eyes. "Wine thief..."

Cassian chuckled before turning toward Kirja, who seemed to be enjoying the whole drunken disaster far too much.

"Mind helping me carry these idiots back to their rooms?" he asked.