Starting from Zero

Before they walked to the door, Rin Ray spoke: "What do you mean tomorrow?"

"We get some well-deserved revenge." Zirai answered her. "The Japanese ambushed our port and almost ruined it this afternoon. Many friendly ships were destroyed, even our own ship was badly damaged. So tomorrow we’re going to prepare and return the favor."

"Sounds fun! Can I join you?"

"Just reach level 20 and leave the rookie village. We\'ll depart the day after tomorrow, you should have enough time to level up."

"I\'ll do it fast then. Remember to take me along!"

Now there\'s only Rose inside the room, and this feels a bit awkward. I looked at her face trying to read her mind, but she always dodges my eyes.

After some serious consideration I decided not to do anything too harsh anyway. I should wait for her consent for something so important.

"I\'ll...use the other room. Call me if you need anything."

She caught my back before I can walk away.

"No, stay."

"Ah if that\'s the case..." I quickly climbed back onto the bed.

"You\'re bad, you know that?"

"I never intended to be otherwise."

"Ugh. Just, sleep tight. No strange ideas, ok?"

"Nooo my good lady. As a fully functional gentleman I can\'t hold myself back!"

Rose raised her fist. "Then I shall teach you to do it."

"Alright alright. No strange ideas."

I washed and changed into my pajama. When I\'m finished Rose is already fast asleep on the bed. I lied down and gently held her in my arms. Now I can feel her tension, she isn’t sleeping after all.

"No worries. Let’s just keep it like this...easy...easy..."

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Oh shoot. I was planning to take it slow and gradually "make it happen" last night. But I fell asleep first!

"You awake?" Rose came out of the bathroom and left a kiss on my forehead. "Not so hurry. I\'m not going to run away."

"Ugh. You knew it all along."

Rose only chuckled and walked away. "I’ll go call the girls. Have something to eat and get into the game!"

I shook my head and got up. When I\'m finished with cleaning and eating, I told Butterfly to only wake me up for anything important and activate my helmet.

We\'re now standing at the port of Torrent Point city. It looks a lot better after the NPCs cleaned the place up, but debris and broken walls still can be seen everywhere.

Most of the team are still offline when we got into the shipyard. I only saw Violet and Merciless.

"Good morning!" Violet greeted me.

"Hello. How\'s the ship?"

"Weapons are all ready. We split up the energy crystals you took back. Half of them went into those waterproof shields. We also placed that big magic shield onto the ship, it\'s functional."

"What about the boosters from Atlantis?"

"Done, and powered. Now we only need to wait for the others and give it a trial voyage."

"Then let\'s hurry and go to Atlantis to get some more gold back when we have the time. I need to buy crystals cannons and fill the other four rotatable cannon slots."

Zirai spoke: "Let\'s buy five cannons. The one we have now is the weakest standard right?"

"What should we do with it later?"

"We sell it. King Conqueror will need it. Or we can sell it to Gale too."

"Good idea."

We boarded our ship and moved, when Big Pot happened to log in just in time and joined us.

I summoned Aldeina to help us navigate.

"Boosters on!"

I gave the order and then felt a surge of speed. We were prepared, but we still slid backwards. Four boosters seems a bit overkill, now the strong wind feels like knives on my face! With all the roaring air current, we need to yell to each other even if we stay close.

"THIS IS AWESOME!" Zirai shouted.

"Of course. It cost me millions!"

"Atlantis asked you for money?"

"They consume energy crystals!"

"I see. Say, how long will it take for us to reach Japan?"

"Four hours at most. Maybe even less, if we make some adjustments."

"Adjustments?"

"Do you know about hydrofoil boats?"

"You want to make Bi-Lin into hydrofoil??"

"Yup. That’s going to be a lot faster."

"It\'s too big!" Zirai gave me a doubtful look. "Do you think it\'s possible to make something as big as aircraft carrier into that?"

"This is a game. Anything can happen if we don’t break the basic rules. We give it a try when we’re back. We can always give up the idea."

"All right then!"

Aldeina signaled us to stop. Though our ship only came to a halt after some other distance due to the great momentum.

"I\'ll go there with Aldeina, wait for me."

With that said, I took Aldeina to our bottom level. This is the modified cabin I asked the old designer to work on. Now the entire level is merged into one big room, with five side exits protected by waterproof magic shields. The shields prevent water from coming in but do not affect anything else. I can straightly walk into the water here. I also asked them to intentionally leak some water in here until it\'s about a meter deep, so I can park all those speedboats from Atlantis in this room. People can drive them through these exits and ambush enemy ships. That\'s going to be way deadlier than those suicide boats.

I followed Aldeina towards Atlantis. When I handed my last energy crystal stock, about a dozen kilograms, to King Atlantis, the Merman revealed a face-splitting smile.

I told him that I need two more shipments of gold as turnover to keep providing crystals. He agreed without a second thought.

"I wish we can establish a long-term business relationship and trade speedboats, crystals, and those yellow bricks." He said.

"Glad to. Also, I hope you can provide me with a thousand speedboats at the moment. We\'re going to attend a large-scale war, and we can only keep this up if we don\'t get beaten."

"Yes, yes! Take them. A thousand is an easy number really."

"Good doing business with you."

Same as last time, we asked a team of mermen to load Bi-Lin with gold until it\'s almost sunk before we return to our port. This time I took back one thousand assault speedboats and gold worth hundreds of millions of crystal pieces. Should be enough to get our revenge.

Bi-Lin cannot travel too fast with all the weight on it. However Atlantis is not really far from the port so we managed to arrive at nine. I saw Hawk and everyone else walking in circles on the port.

"FINALLY!! I was worrying that you took away the ship to fight the Japanese all by yourself!"

"I\'m not stupid. I just went out to do a trade. Now wait here."

I ran to the bottom level and activate a speedboat. This thing feels a lot like those motorboats. I controlled it to surf from under the water and dashed onto the port bridge.

"What do you say?"

"Cool! Now we have something to counter those accursed suicide bombers." Hawk walked around the new vehicle with excitement.

"I\'m planning to use these to ambush enemy ships. Imagine, if we put a fire archer at the back and ask a sailor to drive it... It\'s small, and fast. Those cannons are never going to hit it. It can even dive underwater for a short time as long as the passengers can hold their breath."

"Incredible!" Hawk is lost at words.

"Oh right, go to Atlantis and get another shipment of gold. I need to go buy crystal cannons." I told Hawk.

"Where is the place?"

"I\'ll ask Aldeina to stay on the ship."

With that settled, we quickly unloaded all the gold blocks. Bi-Lin is off fetching gold again, while I converted the blocks into currency and traveled to Domergor\'s camp. The guards all know about me now so we directly went into the camp.

"Again?" I saw my sworn brother busy with something. "More energy crystals?"

"That can wait. I’m buying those cannons this time."

"Ah, so you\'ve decided. Which one?"

"The biggest one."

"And how many?"

"Five!"

"That will be 500 million. In cash?"

"I...don’t have enough right now."

"Oh I knew it. Clark told me about you some time ago."

That caught me off guard. "What did he say?"

"That you\'re always in debt. We never know why you keep spending tons of money."

"Ugh. So he gave out my secret."

"He cares about you. He told me to help you when I can, and that he can take care of financial problems for you."

"He...asked me to borrow money from him?"

"That should be it. But since he asked, of course I\'d better not send you back to him again."

"So...?" Is he going to provide weapons for free??

"Perish that thought. You can pay me later, but you have to pay."

"I will!" I handed over all money I have. "Only have 100 million right now. Remember to load the cannons with your best energy crystals!"

"Don’t go too far damn you."

The cannons are already ready when we were talking. Now I can see them from close up, they look nothing like the one on my ship. Their giant barrels are over six meters long!

I was hoping that Skyfire and Lucky can each carry two of them and ask Loong\'er to take the last one. Now it seems impossible. Good thing that we have enough helpers to do the job. I summoned Phiona and Tank too, now we can get all five cannons into the air.

The dragons are fine, but Phiona and Tank would need to rest every several minute or they’ll drain their stamina bar fast. When they’re resting, Zirai will ask her Titans to carry the two cannons on the ground. It\'s slower but better than stopping.

We managed to drag all the new cannons back to the port before sunset. We installed them all onto Bi-Lin\'s upper deck. I don’t even need to ask the designer for extra outer shells since the cannons already have them. Better ones.

We unloaded the smaller cannon. Now it looks like child’s toy to us.

"Hawk, you got the gold shipment?"

"Oh, I was going to tell you."

He dragged me into another part of the shipyard, where a huge pile of gold is placed.

"What happened?"

"The bank in Torrent Point city told us that their storage is full, we need to trade the gold in another city. They already stuffed every bank in nearby cities so we have to go somewhere farther."

"Huh? How do we transport all these bricks by land?"

"I don’t know!" Hawk shrugged. "And there\'s another thing."

He dragged me around the small gold mountain. Several more piles of gold are hidden behind it!

"What the--how did you take back so many in one trip?"

"That King Atlantis was looking for you. When he knew you were not there, he sent his men and carried all the rest of the gold to the port, so we don’t have to run around again. He also said he trusted that you’ll deliver the rest of the crystals you agreed."

I looked at all the gold blocks in silence. I was always worrying about money, now I\'m worrying about too much money! This will definitely attract unwanted attention. We may be strong but we can’t fight against several groups of bandits at once. And there\'s no way we can hide it. The shipyard is not private, someone\'s going to see it sooner or later. The old designer is already doing us a big favor to let us keep the gold here.

Plus we just lost a war, more people will come to order new ships, and when that happens--

"Oh good god. What\'s going on?" Zirai walked to us with open jaw.

"Shh! Keep it down!"

I quickly explained the situation.

"We now have about a billion crystal pieces worth of gold here, and no bank near us will accept it. We can’t just keep it here!"

"I have an idea." Zirai said that without much hesitation.

"Really?"

"People from Atlantis see these as useless building bricks right?"

"Yeah, but I don’t think players will do that."

"We paint the blocks into gray and build a simple cottage near the port. I don’t think anyone is interested in stealing bricks off some random house."

"Sounds good but there\'s problem." Hawk shook his head. "First, how much time will it take us to paint all the blocks? And, that’s quite a big house if we use them all to build one."

"Um. How about melting them?" Zirai continued. "We find a blacksmith to melt down the gold and make them into other objects?"

"Won\'t do. People will still try to get them as long as they know it’s gold."

But that gave me a new idea.

"...Like Zirai said, we melt them. But we make some golden sticks instead of anything else."

"Sticks?"

"Sticks are considered as weapons. And if it’s weapon, it can be put into my bracelet inventory, no matter how many there are. It will be fast to make something simple too."

"Let\'s get to it then!"

Like last time, we hired a lot of wagons to transport all the gold to the weapon shop. The chief blacksmith fainted on the spot when he saw this. We quickly woke him up and told him our plan. It\'s his job anyway, so he agreed without much thought.

It took several hours to turn our gold mountains into almost a million golden sticks. It’s already 10 in the evening, so we put away the gold and logged off to rest.

We ordered some evening snack, when we noticed that Rin Ray is still inside the game.

"Oh, oh, guess what, someone started a fight with me today!" Rin Ray took off her helmet and suddenly spoke.

"Woah, you pvp’d with someone while still in the rookie village? "

"Yup. Some passing-by assholes were taunting a cute girl so I beat them up!"

"So...you turned into a ‘dragon’ and scared them off?"

Yes that was a pun, and she heard it.

We ended our brief meal while having our small quarrels and jokes.

Now I’m staring at Rose in embarrassment again.

"Can we...?"

"No strange ideas!"

"Oh, good night then." I turned to leave.

"No!" She dragged me back again. "I’m...afraid of dark. For real."

"But you slept just well in your own house right?"

"That\'s different. This hotel is too big and the room feels so empty."

"So you want me to stay, and without doing anything. I’m not a statue you know."

"Come oooon. You can have a hug, like last night."

"That’s even worse."

"What’s do you want then?"

"Well..." I gave her a wicked grin.

And she quickly flinched. "What-what are you thinking about??"

"Come on Rose. It’s going to happen sooner or--oof!"

A pillow knocked me over.

"Someone\'s murdering her husband!" I jumped onto the bed and press her down. When I turned the lights off, Rose stopped her movement due to the sudden darkness.

"Don\'t worry my dear. You can always trust me."