Steel, Explosives, and Spellcasters

As soon as the person outside the cabin opened the door, the steel spike left Winters's hand.

No one expected someone to open the door at that moment, Winters and Bard shouted out at the same time.

If the person outside had waited to hear their warning before dodging, it would certainly have been too late. The person acted just before they yelled out, leaning to the side to avoid the flying implement, averting the danger.

This sharp little thing flew out the door and embedded itself in the wooden partition opposite the cabin door. The person outside reached out and pulled it down, holding it as he walked into the cabin, smiling, "Well, you land ducks are trying to go up against us sailors in a fight?"

Winters jumped down from the bed, stepped over to the other man, and steadied his shoulder, saying with relief, "Lucky you reacted quickly, Cage, very lucky. I'm so glad you're not hurt, I won't play like this in the cabin ever again."

Cage, the cadet officer of The Glorious, handed the steel spike back to Winters and said with a smile, "If you're trying to hurt a naval officer, a little toy like this won't do the job."

"Okay, whatever you say it is, it is," Winters also said, smiling as he lay back down on the bed.

After Bard exchanged greetings with Cage, he asked, "Aren't you on duty?"

"We switched shifts after anchoring. It's my turn to rest now." Cage yawned tiredly and lay back down in the bunk below Bard's.

There were four bunks in the room, three of which were occupied by the army warrant officers Winters, Bard, and Andre, and one by a naval cadet officer.

However, a naval cadet officer like Cage was a very different matter from an army cadet officer like Winters. Cage had much more seniority than his three roommates.

Winters, Bard, and Andre were fresh out of military school, while Cage had been a cadet officer on The Glorious since he was twelve and had already spent eight years on board. An army officer with the same experience would have been promoted to lieutenant long ago, yet Cage was still just one of the eleven cadet officers on the ship.

The reason was that the naval and army officer systems were two entirely separate entities, not corresponding to each other at all.

Compared with the strict hierarchical structure of the Alliance army's rank system, the navy's rank system was very flat. There were only three officer ranks on a ship: Captain, Lieutenant, and Midshipman.

Among them, only the Captain and the Lieutenant were formal officers, with Midshipmen, like Winters and the army warrant officers, ranking above sailors and soldiers but below formal officers.

In the army, both Captain and Lieutenant are junior officers, with the former being the third level and the latter the second level. Officers of these two ranks usually command a company of eighty men at most.

But in the navy, the Captain commands the ship, holding supreme authority. The Lieutenant acts as the Captain's second-in-command, subordinate only to one and above all others.

The power a Captain can wield depends on the ship. The Glorious, with its thirty cannons and crew of over five hundred, would equate its Captain to at least a colonel in the army.

The rotund Captain of the Bandit Gull is also a Captain, yet with a meager crew of about twenty sailors, he wouldn't even qualify as a warrant officer in the army.

Yet in the navy's view, the Captains of The Glorious and the Bandit Gull are theoretically of the same rank, neither having to salute the other first.

Because of this substantial disparity, the land and naval forces of Vineta simply ignored each other's rank systems, each going their own way. An army warrant officer like Winters didn't have to salute even a naval general, and the same held true in reverse.

To become an officer in the Vineta navy, one firstly had to come from a good background and secondly needed a guarantor. With these two requirements met, one could board a ship as a cadet officer. After that, they would have to painstakingly build up seniority until the naval headquarters approved their promotion to warrant officer. As for when one could become a Captain? First, there had to be a ship without a Captain.

Although Cadet Officer Cage was much more seasoned than the three army warrant officers, he never put on airs as the senior, and his personality was very amicable. He imparted a great deal of knowledge about ship life to Winters and the others. Furthermore, with their ages being similar, they quickly got to know each other and got along very well.

"By the way, after we leave this anchorage, we should be docking at Lighthouse Port for a day," Cage said, covering his head with a pillow and speaking listlessly. "Then you guys can take a break as well."

"What?" Winters suddenly sat up. "Get off the ship?"

Life on board was like being in prison, with seasickness to boot. Yet when he heard about disembarking, Winters's tone showed no hint of joy.

"Yeah, disembark for a rest. We'll probably dock for a day or two."

"We've just set sail for two days and we're already docking for a rest?" Bard poked his head down from the top bunk, puzzled, "Aren't we supposed to be heading non-stop for the Taniria Islands?"

Winters teased, "The bunch of us land ducks haven't even started to complain, so why are you sailors the first ones needing to dock for a rest?"

"How are you suffering in your officer's quarters?" Cage, unable to sleep, got up with a wry smile, "Besides, you still get to enjoy hot meals. How is that suffering?"

"We didn't get any rest for a day when we took the ship back from Guidao City to Vineta."

"What ship did you take?"

"Uh, I don't know what kind of ship it was," Winters admitted, then recalling the Bandit Gull, he said, "It was called the Bandit Gull, a smallish ship with three masts."

"I see, how many people were on the Bandit Gull?"

"About twenty crew members, plus us, making over fifty in total."

"If it were just The Glorious, she could make the voyage without docking once straight to the islands. A large sailing ship can do that, but a galley cannot." Cage lay back down wearily, "If you want to know why, when the other ships gather and I go to deliver the sea charts, I'll take you to have a look, and you'll understand."