Starting from Zero

"But what?" Why do problems keep coming for my ship even after the war??

"The hole disappeared!"

"Disappeared?"

It took me several more seconds to comprehend that one.

"What do you mean \'disappeared\'? The breach just, gone?"

"Ugh. Just come with me, you\'ll see." He pulled me and ran over to the back.

And he\'s right. The hole is not there any more. Last time I checked, the breach exposed the entire lifeboat chamber inside. Now we\'re inside the chamber, and all the walls are intact, as if the damage never happened! But the lifeboats are obviously damaged. Some are still broken, and some others are missing.

I touched the supposedly broken wall. It\'s real, in perfect condition.

"Did you see how this is fixed?"

"Not me. Wuyuu saw it."

"Where is he?"

"Inside his cabin!"

"Tell him to come!"

He did, dragged by War Chant and Merciless.

"What do you want??" He struggled.

"Tell me about what happened to this hole."

"I don\'t know!"

"Didn\'t you see it?"

"I did, and that doesn\'t mean I know what happened! Can you learn how to make nuclear bombs when you see one explode?" He\'s not cooperating.

But that makes sense.

"So... can you at least tell me how it looked like?"

"Oh that\'s no problem." He shook off his two captors. "I was enjoying the moonlight. As the light shined inside, I saw the edge of the breach begin to glow. It was not easy to notice. Like dim stars. Then the hole started to close up. It took ten minutes or so and the area is sealed! That\'s it."

"The moonlight huh?" I think I know what happened. "Hawk, are those holes on the sides of our ship still there?"

"They are."

"The moon is... behind us right?"

"That\'s right."

"Very well. Let\'s go up there. Chief, tell them to pull the ship 90 degree!"

"Yes sir!"

The order is already through when we reached the deck. Now the moon is casting light on the left portside. We stretched our heads over the railing and looked at the damage. Yup, those within the moonlight are "healing up". I looked at the Lunar Emblems, which are giving out a gentle, pale blue light.

So that\'s what\'s going on.

This will save me a lot of repair fee! From now on if the ship gets damaged, we simply get it a moonbath!

"We\'re good!" Hawk pointed to those once damaged areas.

"Chief, turn around! Give the other side some light!"

"Yes sir! You heard the captain!"

Bi-Lin soon returned to its most glorious state like it just came out of the shipyard. Apart from our lost and injured sailors, and some missing lifeboats, that is.

"Oh right, Hawk, tell all crew to come here and line up in pairs. Make them form up a human conveyor belt, towards the cargo area."

"What for?"

"I have something to move around!"

I walked to the edge and waved to Loong\'er. The Mermen began to hand those gold blocks to Loong\'er one after another, while Loong\'er toss them over to the deck using her long tail. I transformed into werewolf so I can catch them one by one.

Big Pot came to assist.

"Careful, these things are super heavy."

"Leave it to me!" He puffed up his chest. "I\'m a warrior, not those squishy wizards."

He took ahold a block from my claws.

"You ready? I gonna release!"

"Yeah, do it-- woooah!"

Splash! He toppled to one side and fell into the water with the block. Several Mermen quickly fished him out.

I handed a second block to Hawk and Merciless. They too underestimated the weight of it, and they almost fell.

"What on earth is this?" Hawk asked with stressed voice.

I whispered into his ear: "Gold bars!"

"Huh-- Owwww!"

"Arrrgh! Hey what the hell? My foot!"

The block slipped from Hawk\'s hands when he was shocked, which crashed onto their feet.

Gold Coin joined us and looked at all the yellow objects with round eyes. "This...this is pure gold! We\'re so rich !!"

"Gold??" Now everyone came and inspected them in awe.

I helped Merciless, while Elfy helped Hawk away to do something about their feet.

"Where is Gale, and Red Moon? I can pay my debt now."

"They left with Righteous League!"

"Oh shoot. That will wait then."

I returned to the front deck to help with transportation. Rose looked at the working sailors and asked: "Wherever did you find so much gold? And who are all the male Mermaids?"

"I did a trade with them." I told them my adventure into Atlantis. They all joined the work with starry eyes.

The only drawback of these valuable things is that they\'re too heavy! They haven\'t filled up even half of our cargo space, when the water has already reached our bottom level chambers!

Big Pot poked his head out of one of the windows down there.

"How does it look?" I asked him, "Can we continue?"

"No! Any more and water will come inside!"

"Let\'s seal them up. We can always open them again when we\'re done." Coin suggested.

"Let\'s do it then."

With an order, the sailors nailed up all windows of our paddle champers. Now we can load more gold.

Human desire has no border. We\'ve reached our limit again soon.

But human brain has no bounds either!

We put all remaining lifeboats into the sea. King Atlantis only agreed to provide "ten boats", so I decided to load all cannons onto the small boats instead. Then we used cable ropes to line them up behind Bi-Lin. We threw all spare cannons, ammunition and supplies into the sea. Then we sealed all the cannon rooms and reinforced the side rails.

Bi-Lin\'s freeboard should be around 8-9 meters under normal operation load, now it\'s down to less than 2 meters! The sea is pretty calm today, or else I\'m sure the ship will go under easily.

It\'s midnight, everyone went offline. I removed the crystal from crystal cannon and handed it to Aldeina.

"How do I find Atlantis again when I return?"

Aldeina held her chin for a while.

"Do you have vacant companion slot?"

"Only one. Why?"

"Give me your hand."

I complied without thinking too much--

"Arf! Let-let me go! Oww!" I pushed her head away. "Why are you biting me??"

I looked at the two rows of teeth marks on my wrist.

Gulp! She swallowed some blood, and licked around her lips as if she just drank something sweet.

"Thanks for the treat, master. I\'ll help you navigate the next time!"

She gave the energy crystal to one of the Merman and asked him to go back.

"What do you mean ‘master’?"

I already knew what happened but my brain refused to accept it. I quickly opened my status bar, the [Companions] is now 9/9, and is grayed out, which means it reached the limit!

"Why did you do that??"

"What? I\'m level 800 you know. Even your dragon won\'t defeat me easily when fighting in the water. Come on, trust me."

"Aren\'t you supposed to become an egg? And, your level?..."

"I offered to become your companion by blood oath, so my level is only reduced to your level, 451. There\'s no need to start over from a child."

"Arrgh fine! There\'s no refund anyway."

"That\'s the spirit." She gave me a hug. "I won\'t let you down. I\'m good at a looot of stuff."

I don\'t have the spirit to argue anymore, so I just asked the chief to return to port and logged out.

I logged in earlier the next day. To my surprise, Bi-Lin is still sailing. We haven\'t reached the port yet.

"Still on the way?"

"Of course!" Zirai is already here. "We can\'t use any paddles, we\'re overloaded, and with all those lifeboats tailing behind, also overloaded! This is the best we can do just using those sailcloth! The wind was good in the night or we won\'t be moving at all!"

"Well, I guess we at least need to pay for SOMETHING for all the gold bricks." I looked at the sea, wait, it almost reached our deck!

"What\'s going on? We didn\'t load the ship like this."

"Some of the windows aren\'t tight enough. We\'ve been taking water. The sailors are working hard to get the water out now, or you would have appeared in the sea when you logged in."

"Ahem. Well, I\'m trying my best to help us prepare for the war."

Zirai\'s attitude immediately changed when hearing this.

"I agree!" She pointed to those long-range cannons we took from the Indian ship. "Now I hope we can reproduce those."

"Don\'t worry. We got money, there\'s bound to be someone who can do it."

Now I think about it, this is the first time I feel like doing anything I want in the game!

"Ah, good morning early risers!" Passerby appeared behind.

"Not there yet?" Wayne came too.

When we saw the approaching port, everyone has logged in. There are many ships moving around the place, the most eye-catching one being King\'s Ocean Might. They\'re departing.

When we went by each other he stretched his head towards us.

"What happened to you guys? Someone else attacked you last night? You\'re almost sunk!"

"It\'s okay! We uh, sort of, got a leak!" I gave him a silly smile. Of course I can\'t tell him we have too many gold blocks on the ship!

"You need a pull?"

"That would be perfect."

Ocean Might towed us into the port and left for their own business. Our first job is of course unloading all the gold. Tarry any longer and we\'ll sink for real!

We can\'t pile the stuff on the cargo platform so I asked our companions, which means Lucky, Phiona, Skyfire, Tank, Loong\'er, plus two Titans, to carry them directly to the bank.

The reception lady literally stuck her eyes out of their sockets when we dropped all the blocks in front of her desk. Our first batch of gold is converted into crystal pieces and transferred to my account, swiftly.

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I just noticed the editor made the blank lines look really weird, and sometimes there\'re no blanks where there should. Tried to fix, and failed.

Sorry about that.