Chapter 98.1: The Major Pirate Groups
“Was that a mirage just now?”
Captain Kuka rubbed his eyes and looked in the direction where the pirate ship had completely disappeared.
They had been traveling at breakneck speed, and now, across the vast expanse of ocean, there was no trace of the Green Skull pirate ship anymore.
“Or did I get poisoned and start hallucinating?”
The crewman beside him also wore a solemn expression. “It’s very possible we were hit by poisonous miasma.”
Some sea monsters could spew poisonous mist, creating a fog barrier over a certain stretch of ocean that interfered with human perception.
For example, they might see a box of bread being hauled up in front of them and happily rush over to open it, only to discover that what had actually been hauled up was a poisonous sea snake.
“You’re right. Looks like this sea monster’s poisonous miasma isn’t very powerful. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have let us see something as ridiculous as the Green Skull pirates racing us for speed.”
Poisonous miasma was generally capable of causing hallucinations.
A scene this blatantly fake was practically the mildest possible version.
Kuka first cautiously looked around in all directions.
For all he knew, right now, on the seemingly calm sea before his eyes, there could be a gigantic sea monster sharpening its tentacles and scraping its fangs, waiting to start its meal.
Without panicking, he took out the “Eye of True Knowledge” hanging around his neck and held it up to his eyes, scanning the surroundings.
This “Eye of True Knowledge” was a treasure Captain Kuka had fished out of the sea eight years ago. It could see through illusions, allowing Captain Kuka and his Sun to escape successfully from the mirages created by sea monsters time and time again.
But now, he used the “Eye of True Knowledge” to inspect everything above and below, to the left and right. Whatever scene he saw with his naked eyes was exactly what the “Eye of True Knowledge” showed him.
Captain Kuka, who had been completely unruffled just moments ago, was genuinely starting to panic.
“What’s going on? It isn’t an illusion? And there’s no poisonous miasma either?”
The crewman beside him, who had been waiting for Captain Kuka to lead them through the poisonous miasma, was equally astonished.
“No poisonous miasma?”
“Th-then what we saw just now… was real??”
The Sun wasn’t very large, being about the size of a small fishing boat.
At this moment, Kuka and the six crew members aboard the ship were all starting to panic.
Kuka covered his face and came to a conclusion:
“Those pirates have gone insane.”
The crew nodded in agreement, their worried expressions growing even more grave.
There were many different kinds of pirates on Green Billow Star, and naturally, the poisonous miasma they released could be used in various ways as well.
Most poisonous miasma was hallucinogenic. As long as one left the affected area, there usually wouldn’t be any serious consequences. But there was also an extremely rare type of poisonous miasma that, once inhaled, began destroying the victim’s neural pathways. If too much was inhaled, it would cause severe cognitive confusion.
Simply put, they would go insane.
“I saw… all of them smiling…”
The crewman recalled the pirates’ enthusiastic smiles and couldn’t help shuddering.
“It was terrifying. Every single one of them was smiling. Every one of them!”
They had been smiling so brightly, so enthusiastically, with not a trace of gloom on their faces.
How could there possibly be nothing wrong with that?!
Kuka said heavily, “Looks like all the pirates have gone insane.”
Every single member of the Green Skull pirate group had gone mad!
This was definitely not good news.
Crazy pirates were far more difficult to deal with than pirates who were in their right minds.
In the past, whenever they encountered them, if they were pursued, they might still have been able to flee into the waters inhabited by high-level sea monsters.
Those high-level sea monsters might not be disturbed by a small boat, but they would certainly be attracted by a large ship.
Naturally, the pirate group wouldn’t risk going after insignificant little fry like them. They would have no choice but to retreat in frustration.
But things were different now.
People who had gone insane saw everything differently from normal people. There was a very real possibility that they would deliberately charge into the territory of high-level sea monsters and get themselves killed.
Whether the other side died or not had nothing to do with them.
But as long as they stayed too close to someone who had gone insane, they really could end up being dragged down with them.”
Moreover, when pirates attacked ships, they were generally after the supplies and people aboard. They rarely used their cannons to simply blow an entire ship apart. Instead, they would precisely target various parts that affected the ship’s ability to sail. Under such circumstances, a pursued ship could still potentially escape by maneuvering skillfully.
But pirates who had gone insane really might not care about the cost and could fire their cannons from a distance to blow an entire ship apart.
Kuka took a deep breath.
“From now on, whenever we see a Green Skull pirate ship, we run as far away as we can.”
They had no idea how insane the other side had become.
Were they completely out of their minds, or only half-mad and half-sane? Either way, it was terrifying enough.
“If we run into any allies, we’ll tell them about this too. Make absolutely sure they don’t provoke the Green Skulls.”
A small ship like the Sun certainly couldn’t defeat the Green Skull pirate group, but that wasn’t necessarily true for some larger ships.
If the two sides encountered each other, there would definitely be a clash.
But now the Green Skull pirate group had gone insane.
Forget it, forget it. Why bother picking a fight with a bunch of lunatics?
The entire crew of the Sun, still shaken by the thought that they had actually escaped the clutches of a bunch of lunatics, changed course and continued sailing.
The news that the entire Green Skull pirate group had been driven insane by poisonous miasma also began to spread slowly across the sea—
—
“I’m really envious of the Changming Guild. They already have a ready-made pirate identity and a key they can exchange.”
After the Changming Guild departed with a Green Skull pirate ship, the major guilds that had participated in the battle all expressed their envy.
But there was nothing to resent about it.
After all, Qi Yi had bound the Replica Mask, allowing him to directly assume the identity of Soyi, the leader of the Green Skull pirate group. Naturally, he could therefore exchange for the Green Skull pirate ship first, along with Soyi’s Kansidang Key.
Luck was a form of strength, too.
If someone’s luck was good enough that, while fighting a fire-type superhuman, they could rely on luck to have heavy rain suddenly pour down from the sky and put out the flames, or, when facing an opponent with extraordinary combat strength, could rely on luck to make that opponent step on a banana peel and slip during the fight… the Blue Sea people would still consider that person to be truly capable.
It was much like in the primitive era, when someone happened to wander near a cliff and found a black bear that had fallen off the cliff by itself.
If that person carried the black bear home, then that was proof of their ability.
After all, all that meat on the black bear was right there in front of everyone, plain as day.
The key belonging to the Green Skull had been exchanged away.
The remaining major guilds naturally had no choice but to search for other pirate groups that possessed Kansidang Keys.
This was where the role of the local native, Yuan Moshu, became particularly important.
“A major pirate group… Let me think…”
Yuan Moshu looked at the Blue Sea people in front of him, who seemed to be waiting for him to pick items off a menu, and really wanted to rattle off a list of one, two, three, four, five.
But at this moment, his mind was completely blank.
All he could think about was the interior of the Little Blue Sea, which he had just been given a whirlwind tour of when he first boarded the ship.
—The Little Blue Sea, belonging to the trio of Song Xi, Shen Jinyang, and Wang Moning, was currently the largest ship, so everyone had decided to hold the meeting aboard it.
The main reason was that all the guild leaders were extremely fond of the Little Blue Sea.
The kind of fondness that made them wish they could buy it themselves.
Although they couldn’t afford it, whenever they had the opportunity, they still really wanted to come aboard and have a look around.
Song Xi was immensely proud of this and, with a grand wave of her hand, agreed to hold the meeting aboard the Little Blue Sea.
Purchasing the Little Blue Sea, along with the supplies and energy stored aboard it, had nearly drained 90% of the Little Blue Sea Guild’s total funds.
Considering how wealthy the Little Blue Sea Guild was, the price could absolutely be described as astronomical.
Yet any Blue Sea person who had ever been aboard this ship would feel that it was worth every penny.
The Little Blue Sea had originally been a luxury ocean liner on Velvet Star.
In terms of specifications, it had a gross tonnage of 70,000 tons, was more than 200 meters long, and a full 35 meters wide. Its height above the waterline was already roughly equivalent to a building of more than a dozen stories.
The guest rooms alone numbered 1,200, and they were meticulously categorized. There were interior cabins that were small but had everything one could need, ocean-view rooms with beautiful views of the sea, balcony rooms where guests could feel the sea breeze, and enormous luxury suites that had all of the above.
And those figures only covered the guest rooms. The crew quarters hadn’t even been counted yet.
As a luxury cruise ship from before the apocalypse, the Little Blue Sea had everything a cruise ship should have.
At the bow was a grand theater with a single-level high ceiling and seating for 700 people.
The middle section contained shops, cafés, various restaurants, as well as escalators and elevators for sightseeing.
Farther back was a small library and a large conference hall.
Even farther back, the cruise ship had bars, mahjong and card rooms, an arcade, a fitness center, massage parlors, and saunas.
The stern housed the main dining restaurant. Three sides of the restaurant were lined with floor-to-ceiling porthole windows, allowing passengers to enjoy the scenery outside while dining. There were another thousand seats here as well.
Outdoors, there was also an open-air swimming pool surrounded by numerous sun loungers. The loungers had sunshades, and there was a drinks bar nearby. There was even a children’s playground.
Beside the playground were rows upon rows of neatly arranged planting boxes stretching a long way into the distance, filled with lush green vegetables.
Before the apocalypse, Yuan Moshu had never even been aboard a cruise ship this luxurious.
Yet he had actually gotten to see one after the apocalypse.
Although many areas remained closed because the Little Blue Sea Guild lacked sufficient manpower and its internal economy had yet to get fully up and running, the sections that had been preserved were already enough to leave Yuan Moshu completely dumbfounded.
This was the apocalypse, for crying out loud!
Even the Green Skull pirate group, which had been so arrogant and powerful for a time, couldn’t manage to have an open-air swimming pool.
Not to mention that the children’s playground had been preserved as well. At this very moment, many of the children of Little Blue Sea Guild members were climbing all over it and playing.
Although no one knew why the children’s playground had all those long poles sticking up from it.
Nor did anyone know how those employees’ children had managed to climb those poles, considering how long and smooth they were.
But none of that stopped Yuan Moshu from being deeply stunned.
The five crew members from the Inkshadow, who had boarded the ship with him, were just as stunned.
Yuan Moshu only had to glance at the expressions on his own crew members’ faces to know that they desperately wanted to jump ship and come work aboard the Little Blue Sea.
Haha, understandable.
As the captain, even he couldn’t help feeling tempted to become a crewman aboard the Little Blue Sea after seeing all this.
And now he was sitting in the Little Blue Sea’s enormous conference room.
In front of him were walls decorated with metallic accents. Beneath his hands was a broad, sturdy table, while beneath him was a wheeled chair—the likes of which he hadn’t seen since the apocalypse.
A slight glance to the side allowed him to see the ocean scenery of Green Billow Star through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
—There was even a huge screen here.
Several lines of text were displayed on it. Yuan Moshu didn’t know the Blue Sea language, so he quietly asked one of the Blue Sea people and learned that it read: “Pirate Allocation Plan.”
He didn’t know what everyone else was thinking, but ever since he had sat down, his mind had been filled with everything he had seen and heard while touring the ship.
So when someone asked him about the pirate situation on Green Billow Star, Yuan Moshu actually needed several dozen seconds to collect himself before he could answer.
“Sorry… This place is just too shocking. I’m still trying to process everything.”
As soon as he said this, the three-person group sitting at the head of the table, being the hosts of the gathering, all simultaneously crooked their mouths into identical smug grins, as though their expressions had been copy-pasted.
“No problem.”
Song Xi’s mouth curled into a grin, her eyebrows practically flying into the heavens with pride.
When she had originally been deciding whether to purchase this cruise ship, she had hesitated because of its price and the cost of maintaining it afterward.
But after giving it some thought, Song Xi decided to buy it anyway.
Because this cruise ship was simply too well suited for living!
It wasn’t only useful in a world like Green Billow Star, which was almost entirely ocean. Even in Blue Sea, as long as they paid the monthly fee for renting seawater, it was essentially equivalent to gaining an apartment building capable of housing 3,000 people.
It could house guild members, of course, but they could also rent out some of the rooms. The cruise ship had a total of fifteen decks, and in Blue Sea, where there was never enough land to go around, Song Xi felt that being able to purchase such a huge amount of space was an excellent deal.
<< _ >>
