yemalu

I looked at the loot that we managed to get from the pirates.

There were sacks of Creas of different sizes and value, chestfuls of jewellery, and piles of precious metals.

"Umm… So how are we going to deal with this?" I asked.

Emilia slurped up the drool that had leaked out from the side of her mouth, "Sluuurp~ Ehehe~ We can split this three ways?"

Naturally, since the Sirens helped us crew the ship during the pirate raid, they were entitled to a split of the loot as well. Meanwhile, Odeta and I were treated as one group ourselves.

Cherith raised a hand, "If it\'s alright… could we have the… Umm... Creas instead of those other things? That\'s what we are missing right now."

Emilia looked at the three sackfuls of Creas that we had originally divided to be of the same value.

"Hmmm… I\'m happy to give up my share of Creas if I get your share of the jewels and metals."

I wanted to point out that the combined value of the metals and jewellery would be worth more than the Creas already but Cherith agreed before I could.

"That\'s fine. We would rather have that since it\'s something that we can use right away without needing to trade for it."

Unn… I suppose that would be a prime consideration for them since they aren\'t actually that destitute with all the precious stones they had collected.

Needless to say, Emilia was more than happy to trade them for it and our share of the loot was decided.

I wasn\'t sure what I was going to do with the jewellery and metals I got from this, especially when some of the metals were even supposedly mithril bars, but I just stored them in my Pack of Folding anyway.

As for the Creas, I got fifty two Creas from that. It might not seem a lot but this was quite a large sum for such a pirate group like this to possess. They could even be considered quite well off, in fact.

Emilia had even cut off the pirate captain\'s hand to bring along with her just so that she could take it to a branch of The Guild to check if he had a bounty.

Odeta was, as usual, not interested in any of the loot we found and was quite upset when she found the pirates did not have any flowers amongst their loot.

Diona raised an eyebrow at her, "Why would these pirates even have flowers? And what do you need them for?"

The Amrap huffed, "To give them to Sister Aster of course! Sister Aster looks more beautiful with flowers, don\'t you think?"

Odeta… Stahp…

I coughed, "A… Anyway… Umm… What should we do about the pirate ship there?"

Emilia waved her hand, "We already took their supplies and everything of note so just burn it."

If you say so.

Since I was in front of everyone right now, I raised my hand to face my palm towards the sky and began to chant.

"I command the flame to form under my direction. [Ember]"

I felt the familiar thrum of magic in the air before a small ball of fire appeared in the middle of my palm, hovering just an inch above it.

The Sirens immediately reacted to the sight with loud gasps.

"What is that, Aster?" Ephyra asked.

I looked at her, "Err… This? This is fire?"

"I know that… But how did you make it appear in your hand like that?"

"... Magic?"

"Magic is real?! I thought those were just stories!"

Seeing the surprised look reflected on all the other Sirens\' faces, that was enough to tell me that the same thought was reflected in their minds.

Hold up… You\'ve seen monsters, you\'ve seen me sprout wings from my back, you\'ve seen other fantastical races and you\'re even one yourself… Yet you all think magic is just a fairytale?

Oh wait, precisely because they are a part of this that they don\'t even realise that any of that is even something special.

What they constitute as \'normal\' is different from what others see as \'normal\' after all.

Although there was one thing I had to point out…

"Girls… Did you forget that your singing is also magic?"

"Ah… That\'s right, we forgot," Delmare giggled sheepishly.

Cherith shifted her gaze from the fireball floating above my hand to me, "So Aster is a magician?"

"Unn… I suppose you could say it like that? In fact, Odeta and Emilia are capable of using magic too."

I don\'t really know what the terms are in this World after all.

The Sirens then made more \'ooh\'-ing sounds while I concentrated on shooting the fireball in my hand.

Normally, this spell could only be used to start a fire or burn something that was within arms reach, which unfortunately was beyond the ability of myself when the pirate ship was so far away from us.

But I thought of an idea and figured this would be the perfect place to test it.

"I command the air to form under my direction. [Breeze]."

A small gust of wind blew itself towards my ball of fire, shooting it out of my hand to fly towards the pirate ship and exploding on the ship\'s sail.

The cloth slowly caught fire and I repeated this combination a few more times just to be sure that the ship would burn. Good to know that I could combine magic like that, maybe I could even learn some special combination magic or something?

Once a sizable fire had started on the ship, we lowered the sails and continued on our way, sailing past the ship that slowly burned itself away.

I\'d like to say I felt some kind of emotion watching the burning wreck of a ship as it sank into the dark depths of the sea… But I\'d be lying.

It wasn\'t my first time taking a life and it most certainly wouldn\'t be my last.

*

Another day had passed and Ephyra\'s clothes were ready so we had a little fashion show for it.

The first up was Emilia and she came on the deck wearing what I could really say was the stereotypical pirate outfit.

She had a tricorn hat nestled on her head that had holes cut out to allow her ears to peek out while a long, black coat with white accents that matched her cat ears was wrapped around her shoulders.

Underneath said coat was a rather fashionable set of tunic and trousers that were of a dark shade of blue with white accents. A scarf was also wrapped around her neck which she could pull up to hide her face if needed.

On her feet were a pair of relatively ornate boots that had gold buckles and straps, a stark contrast to the sandals she normally wore.

Odeta\'s clothes consisted of a fairly simple tunic that showed off her abs which I completely approve of and a simple pair of pants with a red band tied around her waist. A bandana was also tied around her head to bunch up her long, amethyst purple hair.

To hide her features, she was given a leather mask that she could tie around the bottom half of her face.

Apparently she had insisted on keeping things simple so that she could move around and fight easily without the clothes hindering her.

The Siren girls pretty much wore the same clothes, which I meant were bikini and pareos except they were more colourful than before. Ephyra did make face scarves to hide their faces at least and I have to admit they do look good in those new clothes.

As for myself…

I told them it was fine to be a bit more stylish with mine and Ephyra seemed to have taken my words as a challenge.

Not only was I given a coat similar in design as Emilia\'s, it was also longer and it reached all the way to my ankles as compared to Emilia\'s where it only reached to her knees.

The colour of the coat was also a much more vibrant shade of red with white accents, similar to my enchanted dress that I would usually wear.

Under the coat, I was basically wearing a bikini similar in design to the Siren girls as well, only that I had an additional corset wrapped around my waist that really accentuated my figure and pushed up my bust. That left my collarbones and the bottom part of my navel exposed.

Instead of trousers, they opted to give me a skirt that only reached the upper part of my thigh, leaving a large gap to show off my stocking clad thighs before being covered by my knee length boots.

I was similarly given a face scarf to hide my face while a bandana wrapped around my forehead to give my hair a different style from my usual look.

Allure even went ahead and said I look especially sexy now and the other Sirens agreed, especially Delmare.

All of us were also armed with a cutlass and dagger tied to our waist that they managed to find in the ship\'s armoury to complete the look, which Emilia promised to teach the Sirens in using so that they could at least defend themselves in a fight.

Of course, she did demand payment from them and a single ruby was enough to convince her.

All in all… I think we\'re really looking the part for being pirates.

…

Wait, why am I even happy about looking like a pirate?