In the next morning, all of the pirates are outside of the hold, the sea is calm and there are not a lot of waves, not at all, the sea is flat. By the way, during the night, the ship navigated a lot closer to the pirate city, yet they are still a bit far away from its main dock.

Symone and Vek are next to each other, admiring the sea and acting as if nothing happened between the two of them last night. At least they are not showing the other pirates that they got pretty close, keeping their kiss as a secret. By the way, the demon has now fully healed and rested from all the energy he used the day before, he healed pretty fast.

Amber approaches the two new pirates glancing at both of them before saying, joyfully :

-"So.. Symone ? How was your first adventure as a pirate ?"

The elf turns around, ending up in front of the smaller, blond haired and blue eyed pirate, the green one takes a short time of reflexion before answering with a huge and warm smile :

-"At first, it was scary. But it was fun to look for the treasure, I really enjoyed it."

-"Nice, I hope you and your friend will keep going on adventures with our crew !" Amber says, really happy that these two new guys have chosen this galleon, then the blond pirate looks at the demon and informs him, "The captain wants you to go and sell the treasures with me, since we did nothing to help finding it."

Vek nods their head positively, agreeing on what Amber just said without debating or anything like that. The demon feels like they have to do it because he didn't help the crew at all to find the treasures, even though he saved the entire ship and almost the entire crew from the megalodon the day before.

After a few more hours navigating they finally arrive back at the main dock of Golden Hook, a bunch of pirates get off the ship to attach the boat to the dock with some big and extremely solid ropes. While doing this outside of the ship, the ones who are still in the galleon are gathering some food leftovers and non-used things, not forgetting all of the treasures they gathered during their really short adventure.

To take all of this off the boat, a simple plank is placed going from the boat to the dock, it is not really secure but it is enough for the ones used to walk on a really thin and shaky path. Of course Symone and Vek aren't used to that, so the green one is a bit scared, it was shown before that he certainly might have a fear of height.

Before going to sell the treasures, Vek, who is now on the deck, watches all around him, looking at the sea for no particular reason. Then he suddenly sees a light blue shape in the water, the colour is slightly different from the sea. He frowns his eyebrows, trying to guess what this shape could be, then a small part of it goes out of the water, the creature underwater which is no other than the merman who saved him from sinking the day before. He lets out his head until his eyes are out of the water, to observe the demon.

It seems like the mercreature is doing that on purpose despite acknowledging that any other pirate seeing this creature would try to kill him. Vek finally recognises the merman Byoryth, from what Amber described to him.

The demon tries to approach the water closer, wondering why the one observing him got expelled from the crew, was he a bad person ? A bad pirate ? Or is it just because he looks like a merperson ? It can't be the only reason. But as soon as he gets closer, Amber yells Vek's name to tell him to go help him with the treasures.

Once all of the treasure they found is collected and now outside of the boat, Amber and Vek are now on their way to sell some of the trinkets which were with the big treasure. So they walk for a few minutes towards the downtown which is full of pirates, merchants and fisher people. This city was a fishing city before its inhabitants slowly decided to become pirates, not all of them of course.

The two young men end up in front of a shop. The walls and the windows of the shop are really damaged or just really dirty as well as the streets surrounding it. But as they walk inside, everything is weirdly cleaner and there's a lot of different trinkets, those are probably some uninteresting treasures sold by other pirates. They both head in front of the one buying and re-selling various products, the person say :

-"Welcome to my shop, what can I do for you ?"

-"We'd like to sell some treasures we found !" Amber says, happily and smiling.

Vek is staying behind Amber, holding all the treasures and trinkets in silence, he is just waiting until the owner of this shop orders the demon to put all the stuff on the counter, they do so. While the shop owner is calculating on how much money they'll buy all of it, Vek is looking around at the other trinkets in the shop and eventually will take a look at what's displayed outside, it is indeed a bit unsure to let things outside of the shop in a pirate city.

The demon steps out of the shop. The atmosphere is suddenly more lively and loud, indeed there's lot of people back in this street, which is one of the main streets of this pirate city. A moment later, after he took a look at some of the products exposed outside, he wants to go back to the calm place but at this exact moment a tall man comes to him and violently grabs one of his arms.

The demon takes a look at who this person can be, ready to fight even though he hates to. This tall man is in fact a royal guard, the demon's eyes get bigger as he sees the tall one in a golden armour, his head is hidden by a helmet and he has weapons attached to his belt. Vek is shocked and tries to flee but another guard comes from the crowd behind him and knocks him out but Vek yells right before passing out.

The scream gets Amber's attention, so he turns around, relaxed and impatient to receive the treasure's money in a big bag. As he sees Vek being caught by the guards, in front of everyone, his facial expression changes really quickly to panicked, the pirate screams :

-"VEK !"

Then he takes the bag of money before running away from the shop, hoping to get his new friend back. The shop owner is in disbelief, as they mutter some words :

-"What was that ?... Well now I have more useless stuff to sell to some curious tourists, good for me."

Outside, Amber is running through the crowd, trying to run after Vek while not trying to lose the money he just got. The pirate sometimes yells Vek's name to try to get his attention, not knowing he is knocked out and wanting to stop the guards.

After chasing them for solid minutes in the crowd, which is kind of tiring, the guards hop in a quite big carriage taking the demon with them. Of course, the carriage is pulled by a big white horse dressed with royal golden decorations, one more proof that the king loves to show his money.

Seeing the carriage quickly going away, Amber angrily mutters a long 'noooo' before walking back to the crew, still panicked because he kind of knows that Vek, a demon, will not be well treated by the king. He'll be killed for sure.

After walking for a few more minutes, Amber arrives at the dock, in front of the captain. He ignores Symone who is just next to them, the pirate whispers to the captain to stay discreet and to not panic Vek's friend :

-"Erm.. We have a problem with one of the new crew members."

Gwenchlan replies, out loud and wondering :

-"Ugh, you know that I don't like whisperings. Just tell me what happened to the new one."

-"He, um... got kind of kidnapped by the royal guards." Amber stops talking softly and simply uses his normal voice.

Amber does not dare to take a look at Symone's reaction and he is right, because the elf now has his eyes really wide open, he starts to panic as well. Just after hearing that Vek got arrested or kidnapped by some royal guards, Symone says, completely panicked and uncontrollably :

-"We have to take him back ! He's in danger !"

He is already ready to take back his friend from the guards. But the captain stands in front of him and tries to calm him down by putting her hands on his shoulders, as if she was trying to make him stay still :

-"We cannot go now, it is too dangerous for us and for your friend." She talks seriously.

Symone looks at her in the eyes, in a really sad and desperate way. He says, almost crying :

-"B-but.. we have to save him." The elf obviously doesn't want to lose someone he became close to.

-"Calm down. We have to make a plan before going. Alright ?"

Symone nods, then goes to sit on the dock, looking at the sea in a calm spot. The elf is now devastated, indeed he might have lost his only friend, for the moment he is just waiting for the captain to make a plan, as she said.

***

The captain gathered as many crew members as she could, without Symone, who wanted to stay alone for a moment. So everyone is sitting around a table inside an inn, thinking about how to save Vek.

One of them suggests simply going by the land but the captain refuses and says that the guards might keep an eye on the forests, in case someone would rescue their demon friend and it would take way too long since they don't have any horse. So they just stay here for more minutes, still thinking.

Gwenchlan knows exactly what they should do because she might have experienced something similar to this before but she says nothing about it. Suddenly Amber has an idea and suggests to the captain :

-"Maybe we should go by the sea, if we take this path we should be closer to the castle and to the prisons than coming from the land."

The captain takes some time before answering to this idea :

-"That's a good idea ! They weirdly barely keep an eye on the seas, so I think it's a safe way, safer than the land at least."

She already knows that the king and the royal guards almost NEVER care about the Golden Ocean, so she must be experienced in navigating around the castle. By the way it is named that way because in the legends it is said that everything was just an ocean made of liquid gold before it all became land.

After this 'meeting' ends, Amber decides to go check on Symone, to make sure he is alright. So the blond pirate walks outside of the inn and goes straight to the dock where he saw the green elf for the last time. Symone stayed there for the entire meeting, which was dozens of minutes long, he is still looking at the view as well, lost in his thoughts. So Amber sits right next to Symone and starts a conversation :

-"Hey, are you ok ?"

-"Erm... not really. I'm sad that he could die that early, we just started a new adventure."

-"By the way, we might have an idea on how to save your boyf-- your friend." Amber says, with a smile and hoping that the other didn't hear the mistake he almost made on the last word.

Symone turns his head to look at Amber in the eyes, a bit surprised about how fast they found a way to save the demon. He questions :

-"Really ?! How ? Can we go now ?"

The blond pirate explains that they have to go to Hooves Village first on the next day in order to take a new boat, so if they get caught by some guards, they won't be able to tell whose ship it is and they'll be safer that way.

Symone takes some time to think about it then immediately remembers that he met a faun named Ywain back in the beginning of his journey, maybe the merchant could help them, that's what the elf is thinking.