The Pirate Emperor was indeed magnificent. Ye Chui calmly accepted the reverent gazes of the many pirates, stood proudly on the deck of the Ten-Thousand-League Ocean Conqueror, and said to Stari, “We can set off now. Weigh anchor.”
“This ship doesn’t have an anchor.” Stari scratched his hair in embarrassment. He knew that although Guni and Shaleme looked delicate, they were actually terrifying strongwomen, so he said to them, “You two stand on either side of the hull. When I give the signal, pull away the timbers propping the ship at the same time.” He walked to the rail and called down to the pirates below, “Everyone, lend a hand. Give us a push from the stern in a moment.”
The pirates all looked rather speechless. Was the Pirate Emperor’s style a bit too rustic? A great ship leaving port actually needed people to shove it…
Thanks to Ye Chui’s reputation, however, they still lined up as instructed and prepared to push. At Stari’s command, Guni and Shaleme simply yanked away the thick logs on both sides. With a thud, the hull rocked violently. The pirates threw their weight behind it and shoved the vessel into the water.
The ship really was ancient. It wobbled alarmingly, giving the impression an antique piece of furniture might fall apart at any second. Finally the hull settled into the sea with a great splash. Ye Chui, standing on deck, let out a quiet breath of relief, only to hear Stari beside him exhale heavily too and mutter, “Thank goodness she didn’t come apart the moment she touched water…”
Hearing that, Ye Chui instantly lost his composure. So you didn’t have much faith in this ship either, did you?
Whatever the case, the Ten-Thousand-League Ocean Conqueror did make it into the bay and slowly sailed out through the circular entrance of Pirate Bay. The pirates on the shore watched the ship depart. They were men who had spent their lives at sea, and looking at that tottering wreck, their expressions were filled with indescribable worry.
These pirates were selfish to the core. They revered Ye Chui and accepted him as their leader only because he was strong enough to protect them. Asking them to sail with him to fight undead monks and rescue Irabesha? Not a chance.
Ye Chui knew this perfectly well, and besides, he thought they would only slow him down, so he had not invited them along. Now, watching him leave, the pirates stood for a long time. Then someone sighed, “What a fine boss we had. What a pity…”
“Mr Ye Chui is incredibly strong and a good man. He will definitely save Irabesha,” the prostitute Kaliya couldn’t help shouting in protest.
The pirates fell silent for a moment, then burst into roaring laughter, as if they had heard the world’s funniest joke. Only a few watched the direction the ship had gone, their faces quiet, lost in thought.
…
While the Ten-Thousand-League Ocean Conqueror sailed forth into the open sea in an atmosphere that somehow felt tragic no matter how you looked at it, the undead monk fleet of several dozen ships had already reached a stretch of water hundreds of miles away. Sunlight caused them severe harm, but by some unknown magic, dark clouds naturally formed wherever their fleet passed, shielding them from the blazing sun.
A strange black island appeared ahead of the fleet.
The island was called Watch Island.
It was from the western cliff of this island that Captain Dalin’s wife had once leapt to her death. It was on this island that Dalin had fused with the White Ship phantom beast and become the ghost ship. It was here that his naval subordinates had declared their separation from the Tidal Empire and become the despised pirates.
“…Back then the leaders of the three great pirate fleets were three admirals under Captain Dalin. They swore an eternal oath before the departing ghost ship, vowing to protect the seas in their own way and stop the Church’s invasion, or forever become walking corpses upon the ocean, living a fate worse than death. Oh, what a vicious oath that was.”
Aboard one of the undead ships, Red Beard told the story of the past to Irabesha, who sat across the dining table from him. The table was laden with food that looked delicious, yet the undead pirates standing nearby made her stomach turn. Irabesha was starving but had no appetite at all.
Red Beard picked up a red apple and offered it to her. “My dear, how about an apple?”
“I… I don’t want one…” Irabesha said, suppressing her fear.
“What a shame.” Red Beard brought the apple to his rotting nose and inhaled deeply, as if trying to smell its fragrance, but clearly smelled nothing. This enraged him. With a bang he hurled the apple to the floor, stood up, slammed both hands on the table, and glared at Irabesha with bloodshot eyes. “Look at what we’ve become! We live, yet it would be better to be dead. For over a month we have been unable to smell food, unable to taste fine wine, unable to enjoy a woman’s warmth. We are walking corpses, all because of the curse, Captain Dalin’s curse!”
Irabesha trembled as she stared at Red Beard. She was a strong-willed woman and, though terrified, forced out her anger. “Captain Dalin was the greatest man… You did wrong and were cursed by him for it!”
“Did wrong?” Red Beard threw his head back and laughed as if he had heard a hilarious joke. “We did nothing wrong. The three fleet commanders back then, Red Beard, the Watcher, and Black Sail, swore that oath to Captain Dalin. Yet Dalin betrayed our vow. He entangled himself endlessly with the Sea Angel as a ghost ship, allowing the terrifying power of the Sea Angel to seep into the ghost ship over decades. The Church’s missionaries thereby gained part of the oath’s power and twisted it into this curse, turning us into what we are now.”
Irabesha did not fully understand what Red Beard meant, but she grasped the gist.
“The only way to free us from the curse is to break that original oath! And breaking the oath requires the bloodline of Captain Dalin.” Red Beard suddenly lunged forward, seized Irabesha’s arm, and hissed, “My dear young lady, you may now finish your last supper.”
He performed a comical, exaggerated noble bow, then roughly dragged Irabesha out onto the deck. From there they could see the black island ahead, Watch Island. Named for Dalin’s wife who had watched and waited, it had once been a beautiful green island, but the evil curse had turned it into a place of death and decay.
Red Beard’s hoarse voice roared, “Land on the island! Prepare the altar!”
“No, no… you’ve got it wrong! I’m not Dalin’s bloodline!” Irabesha cried hurriedly.
“This pendant!” Red Beard pointed furiously at the pendant now hanging around Irabesha’s neck. “This pendant was left by Captain Dalin. When he became the ghost ship, he entrusted his only child to his first mate and left this pendant. It is the token of the White Ship clan. With it one can control the White Ship phantom beast. The navy under Dalin would obey the bearer of this pendant… Its name is the White Ship Pendant, or perhaps now it should be called the Pirate King Pendant?”
His words made Irabesha’s eyes widen in disbelief.
She and Stari had grown up together. As a child she had met his grandfather and knew the old man had once been Dalin’s first mate. He later retired to Pirate Bay with his son, raised him, and when the son married and had Stari, the parents died in a shipwreck. The poor old man had then raised Stari alone.
Only now did Irabesha realise that Stari’s real grandfather was not that old man, but Captain Dalin himself.
Stari was Dalin’s blood descendant!
Stari had always dreamed of finding the Pirate King’s treasure, and his grandfather had constantly spoken of the pendant leading to it. It had not been nonsense. The pendant was the token that would let Stari command Dalin’s former navy, now the three great pirate fleets. With it Stari could become master of all three and the true Pirate King!
The Pirate King’s treasure was the three great fleets themselves!
But now those fleets had been cursed and turned into terrifying undead monks who felt only hatred for anything left by Dalin.
“Stari…” As the undead pirates dragged her onto the black island, Irabesha let out desperate cries of despair in her heart.
…
Meanwhile, aboard the Ten-Thousand-League Ocean Conqueror, Stari was running around like a harassed deckhand.
“The wind’s shifting! Mr Green, please lower the sail to half!” Stari stood on deck with one hand raised, feeling the breeze on his wet palm to judge direction.
Green, up on the mast’s crow’s nest, scratched his bald head and shouted down, “How do I do that?”
“Grab the rope on the left, pull the loop on the right, slowly… Never mind, I’ll do it myself.”
Having just finished reefing the sail, Stari wiped sweat from his brow. He glanced down and saw Ye Chui at the helm holding a compass in one hand and a sea chart in the other, looking very captain-like as he pondered something. Stari called down, “Mr Ye Chui, where are we now?”
“How should I know?” Ye Chui replied innocently.
“You’re holding the chart…”
“I can’t read it!”
“…”
Faced with Ye Chui’s perfectly justified answer, Stari could only slide helplessly down the mast, take the chart, and study it carefully. Though he had no real sea experience, he had grown up in Pirate Bay and dreamed of becoming Pirate King, so he understood charts reasonably well. He examined the chart, scanned the surrounding sea, and tried to spot distant islands for reference, calculating in his head.
“Stari, I’m hungry. Shaleme and I caught a super tasty-looking fish. Can you cook it for us?” Before he could work anything out, Guni’s voice rang out again. His train of thought broken, he turned. “Just a moment…” His body suddenly froze, and he whipped back around to look at Guni.
Guni and Shaleme were hugging a huge, fat fish covered in black scales, with long thin whiskers and a skull-like pattern on its head. It writhed in the arms of the two super-strong girls.
Stari instantly shuddered. “You… put it back right now! That’s a highly venomous Sea Skeleton Fish! It’s a low-tier magical beast, but its poison can kill a whale! Are you trying to die?”
“It’s poisonous…?”
Guni promptly tossed their hard-won catch back into the sea.
Stari wiped his forehead again. He now had to confront a very serious question. He looked around at Ye Chui’s group: Debbie, Lesha, and Shaleme were lounging on deck chairs as if on holiday; the three Dragon Turtle babies were happily playing with a ball… oh no, that was the talking head; Green stood properly in the crow’s nest, but why was he waving a brick around?
Ye Chui stood at the helm looking every inch a captain… except he was completely useless beyond the pose.
Stari finally had to ask the question he had been dreading. “Mr Ye Chui, if I may ask… how much sailing experience do you have?”
“Experience?” Ye Chui tilted his head, counting on his fingers. “Twenty, twenty-one… twenty-two, no, it should be twenty-three…”
“Twenty-three years?” Stari gasped.
“No, twenty-three hours. We only saw the ocean for the first time yesterday,” Ye Chui said with a cheerful smile.
“Yes… yesterday…” Despair instantly flooded Stari’s heart. Trembling, he asked, “If yesterday was your first time seeing the sea, how did you end up in Pirate Bay?”
“Oh, because our ship hit an iceberg and sank,” Ye Chui explained.
“An iceberg!?”
Where the hell did an iceberg come from around here!? Your ship-sinking style is way too high-end!
“Don’t worry.” Seeing Stari’s concern, Ye Chui patted his shoulder reassuringly. “Statistically speaking, sinking is unlikely to happen again so soon, so relax…” While he was speaking, Ye Chui suddenly heard a noise and listened closely. “What’s that sound?”
“Creak, creak, creak…”
A strange shuddering noise came from the hull.
Debbie and the others heard it too and craned their necks.
“Daddy, what is it?” Baby Elf hopped over to Ye Chui and asked.
Ye Chui looked puzzled, but then realisation dawned and his face lit up with delight. “Could it be the ship spirit?”
Everyone else: “Ship spirit!?”
“That’s right! I’ve heard that if the crew of an old ship truly cherish her, a ship spirit is born. They’re cute little creatures…” Ye Chui explained excitedly, and Debbie and the others listened with shining eyes.
However…
“Mr Ye Chui…” Stari’s face suddenly went deathly pale. “I think that’s the sound of the keel snapping.”
“What?”
Crash——
From a distance, the Ten-Thousand-League Ocean Conqueror drifting on the waves suddenly fell apart like a chair collapsing into pieces…
