Starting from Zero

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Alert: Moderate offensive content against Japan.

I modified and deleted certain parts in this chapter, or the alert level could be "severe".

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The Korean ships haven\'t left our side when our lookout sent alarm again. "Another battleship formation ahead, 40 or more, approaching our location!"

I quickly checked the direction. I also found out one extra information.

"Japan ships!"

"What??" Everyone switched their attention from the Koreans to the newcomers.

"...I can only see some distant shadows. How can you tell they\'re Japanese?" Hawk asked while looking through his scope.

"My ring, remember?" I pointed at my Star Gaze.

"Captain!!" The flagman spoke. "Message from Korean fleet, that those ships belong to the Black Dragon marine force from Japan, be very careful! Korean ships had a fight with one of their squadrons this morning, now their main force came!"

Rhona reported that they have a total of 107 pirate ships at the moment. It would have been more if they didn’t lose a good number of them to the Indians. So, 108 ships including Bi-Lin. The pirate ships are also generally faster than ordinary player ships, of course, being pirates means you need to catch other people so speed is important.

108 vs 40-rish. I’m confident we just need one round of volley to devastate them.

"Tell the Koreans to leave this to us. After all, everyone should try to get rid of junks in the public."

"Make sure you kick a lot of asses!"

Ha, I think I really should meet their captain someday.

"Distance report!" I called to the lookout.

"33 kilos, closing in fast!"

"Good." I turned to my team. "To your positions. Ready the crystal cannons now, they’re within range soon."

"We should go back and order our own fleets." Rhona and the breaded Russian said.

I stood in the front of the ship, looking at the approaching enemies. Since we have good firepower now, I only feel excited about the coming battle.

"31 kilos!"

Now I don’t need my scope to get a clear view of the incoming ships.

Wait, is that--

"Distance?"

"30!"

"Violet, fire, fire now!! They have crystal cannons too!"

When our crystal cannons released their fire, one of the enemy ships unleashed a purple flash almost at the same time.

"HARDPORT!!"

Bi-Lin made a sharp left turn, almost knocking into another pirate ship nearby. The enemy ship carrying the crystal cannon is obviously more clumsy than us, since our bullet landed right on their tail. A big explosion sent their front half up into the air, which then dropped back into their formation, causing more ships to sway sideways.

Bi-Lin already escaped its original route. The enemy shot landed into the water harmlessly, but it still stroke up enough water to wash the entire deck wet.

I\'m already scouting the enemy ships again. Maybe they have more than one cannon.

There!

"Crystal cannons, attention! Enemy fleet, front-left corner, another target!"

"We\'re still cooling, how about the others?" Violet yelled in the guild channel.

"I see it!" Zirai\'s voice and her second crystal cannon sounded at the same time. The enemy shoot as well, when our bullet traveled halfway.

King raised his hand to give evasion order but I stopped him.

"Don’t. They missed, probably because they\'re trying to dodge our attack."

Our shot landed on their front deck, turning our target into flying wooden shards. Nothing can survive from these powerful weapons yet so we’ve got to avoid them at all cost.

As I said, the enemy attack went into the water again. From the looks of it, the second cannon is smaller than the first. I guess not everyone can afford these stuff.

I began to search for other cannons. And now I have some experience in it. These cannons have great kickback force, and are way bigger than other cannons. Even the smallest version has a 5-meter long barrel, which means I only need to pay attention to big ships, because they need the size to support the bulky weapon, while also keeping it accurate.

With that in mind, I quickly located 7 more crystal cannons.

Then I told my idea to everyone, so I no longer have to give the order myself. Our crystal cannon operators fired on their own will. The enemies tried to evade, but four of them were still destroyed. However the remaining three cannons shoot at the same time. This time, they used the three shots to cover everyone possible evasion route. Two shots were aimed towards both sides of us, while the last one will land in front us, which means we will run into the bullet unless we can backtrack.

Backtracking is, of course, impossible for sailing ships. But Bi-Lin is not a sailing ship!

"Reverse the boosters! Full speed!" King already gave the order.

Bi-Lin halted on the water as if it just ran into an iceberg. Then the giant vessel began to move backwards. A high tidal wave and several vortexes appeared in front of us due to the disrupted water currents. Thank got King already asked the other ships to stay far from us so we have enough room to maneuver.

Three water splashes went up in front of us, not causing any damage.

"Cancel the reverse, full speed ahead!" King ordered again.

These movements already gave us the urge to puke. Now we really need some targets to vent off our bad mood.

Our tail crystal cannon fired first. Wuyuu is there, so this is not surprising.

The other four crystal cannons followed up. Five bullets hit the remaining three targets, announcing the end to the Japanese crystal cannon carriers.

So this is what the Koreans meant. 9 crystals cannons can be devastating to any ordinary fleet. But still, the Korean fleet fought with their squadron and survived...I need to go and learn their experience when I have the chance.

"Watch out! Cannon fire incoming!" King knocked me to the floor, when a cannon shot pierced the air above my head.

"Give me the distance!"

"23 kilos!"

"They still have something that shoot this far??" I watched in shock as the cannon shot landed on one of the pirate ships behind us.

"Over there!" The lookout warned.

But when we checked his signal we only saw a mast pole slowly going under the water.

"Submarine ship again??" We both yelled.

"Maybe they built more of them!" King spoke.

"I hope we know which city the shipyard is located, so we can go there and steal their blueprint."

"Hey boss, I have an idea." Coin said in the guild channel.

"Idea?"

"Yeah. Say, if we damage the ship, or submarine or whatever, it will have to go home and get repaired. It will probably go back to its manufacturing port, so we only need to trace the ship to find the blueprint."

"Not practical. How do we follow a ship on the sea without anything to cover us? And, how do we control our power to damage but not sink the ship?" King said.

"I can ask Aldeina for the following part." I summoned my seaborne companion. This should be a simple task for a mermaid.

"As for damaging it..."

"Damaging what?" Aldeina asked.

"A ship under the water." I pointed down at the sea.

"Oh, we can do it." She answered. "We can just open some holes on the ship. They can\'t stay submerged with all the holes right? And surely they will return to repair themselves."

"How do we make these holes then? We don’t even know where it is now."

"Ah don’t worry. I\'ll go find it. I can hear the location of anything moving in the water within 20 kilometers. "

"Aw shoot. This is not fair." King yelled. "Your ship even got a sonar system?"

"Well, I didn’t know till now."

"I\'ll get to it then!" Aldeina quickly jumped down.

"Captain! 20 kilos, they\'re within range of the Dragon Punches!"

"Signal the pirate ships to change into cannon-ready formation!"

They’re all equipped with pirate-standard cannons which can shoot 20 kilos far. I think they got the cannons from seizing other Indian ships and then modifying them, since the pirate cannons fire even farther than the long-range shooter we saw before, and are almost as powerful as the Dragon Punches.

All our ships now turned our side towards the enemies, with Bi-Lin in the center, while the other ships stay near each other tip-against-tail to form a fan-shape array.

"All units in position!" The flagman called.

"Fire at will! Take the faster enemy vessels as high priority targets."

Soon, our ships began to free-fire at the distant enemies. 108 ships means...we have a total of 22,050 cannons facing them. Man this is some serious firepower. Countless cannon rounds rained down upon the Japanese players, causing explosions everywhere. Apart from those missed shots, each of the target took somewhere near 300 shots to the face. A dozen ships went under the water on the spot, and the remaining ones are nowhere better.

A rough voice appeared behind me. "Hey will ya look at that! I never thought we pirates can manage such a fight!"

It\'s the breaded Russian guy.

"Aren\'t you supposed to command your people?"

"Heh. There\'s nothing to command about. They only need to shoot as they want, and it\'s not like I need to stay and teach them how to do that. Say, we found a mighty powerful leader today! I can’t wait to get back home and tell those old fellows what I did!"

"What you did? Is beating up Japanese something worth celebrating for you?"

"Well, no. Truth is, these ships are regular player armies that usually stay in their ports, we pirates rarely dare to set our eyes on them. Now I can finally tell them that I beat the shit outta a freaking army!"

"Huh... When I saw you earlier you got like, 50 ships in your fleet. Can’t you beat them easily by yourself?"

"Actually...Yesterday I brought the whole Black Sea Fleet with me. We never acted as one before, most time people just go and hunt with two or three vessels at best, sometime even one. Pirate is not an easy job as it may sound."

"What about Rhona?"

"Rhona?" He checked around and made sure the woman isn\'t here, before he answered: "She is in charge of all pirates in the European region, and what she brought yesterday was over half of their pirate population."

"She--really?"

"No kidding. But still, she\'s not the biggest pirate among us. You remember that man called Tang, who gave up the duel? He has every type of weapon you can think of among his ships. Have you ever heard of the ‘Blizzard’?"

"Nope. What’s that?"

"I\'m not sure. It\'s a...box, with holes on it, filled with arrows. You light a fire, then the arrows all shoot out. I think it’s kinda like those fireworks you guys use during festivals in your country? The arrows fly far, and they\'re strong. We would never fight him when there\'s another option."

That...sound like the earliest rockets in ancient wars. If he has something like that then it’s very possible that this "Tang" person is a Chinese.

Something interrupted our conversation by knocking me flying. Oh for the--did someone count how many times I’m hit by cannons?

The Russian was still talking with his eyes closed. When he noticed the empty air in front of him, I\'m already trying to get up from the broken wooden boxes on the other side of the ship.

"Where did that come from??"

Aldeina emerged from the water and pointed down. Okay that’s the answer.

"King, take over the command for now."

I rushed to the bottom level and activated a motorboat. My armor set lets me breathe underwater so I don’t have to drive the boat on the surface like the others.

I followed Aldeina, towards the "submarine". You caused enough trouble for us today.

The strange ship is still moving slowly towards Bi-Lin, totally unaware that someone found it. Now I had a good look of it...it looks nothing like submarine. It\'s just an ordinary sailing ship if you don’t consider the environment. About 40 oars are pushing it forward by making routine movements similar to how you do breaststroke swimming.

I moved close to inspect the connection points between the oars and the ship. The ship has multiple layers of protection, and there are some complex gear system between the outermost layers. There are 20 oars on each side. But from the size of it, they could have added more oars than that to provide better movement...I guess they can’t completely seal the connection points. That explains why they need to return to the surface often, to get the water out.

That\'s all I need to know. We may not have a easy time copying them but, it\'s certainly easy to destroy it.

I asked Aldeina to move to the opposite side, then we took out some cheap arrows we prepared and stuck them into the exposed gears. Oh ho ho. Don’t blame me for this...

The fragile arrow shafts were easily crushed to pieces by the gears, but the metal arrowheads remained in there. The Japanese must have been shocked by the sudden failure in their machine. I can already hear their panicked discussion on the other side.

They can still choose to emerge, but they didn’t. We\'re pretty close to Bi-Lin now, poking their head out of the water will definitely attract our full firepower.

A...stick, appeared from the top of the ship and moved around. Ah that must be their periscope which is used to see the surroundings.

The scope is spinning around trying to locate the problem. It stopped spinning when it turned to my face.

I gave the scope my middle finger. Then I pointed at them, held my neck and pretended to be drowning, by which I\'m telling them that this will be their imminent fate.

I heard that Japan sells pretty delicious canned fish. Not sure if they will enjoy being canned themselves.

Running out of oxygen is one of the most terrible ways to die. Some bubbles appeared under the ship and they began to move upwards. Looks like they chose to fight Bi-Lin head-on instead of getting suffocated.

But since I\'m here...

I summoned Loong\'er and asked her to pull the ship back down.

I heard a low noise. Four unknown objects came off the ship. That must be extra weights, because the ship suddenly gained speed and started floating despite of Loong’er\'s effort.

I tried summoning Lucky. If I remember right, western dragons can swim, you just don’t see it often.

As expected, Lucky was only surprised by the water a little before he regained posture.

Under my command, he stood on top of the ship and used his wings to blow water upwards, causing the ship to drop again. With two mighty creatures holding it down, the ship has no chance to escape now.

I used Phantom\'s telepathy to sent Aldeina a message: "Keep it there, and block the exit too, so no one gets out."

"Leave it to us." Well Aldeina can speak just normally here. Convenient.

When I began to return to the surface I hear someone trying to break through the ship from inside. Maybe they chose to get drowned than being trapped in there.

"Do you know any support spell?" I asked Aldeina.

"Yup."

"Let\'s see...use something to reinforce the ship, then buff the people inside so they can live longer."

I went out of the water only to find out the battle has ended. The last enemy ship already sank.

"That’s...fast." I walked to Hawk and King.

"20 thousand cannons versus 40 ships. Of course it will be fast." Hawk looks proud.

"Where is that submarine?" King came to me.

"Still down there. I broke their mobile system and my companions trapped it in the water. We wait for the crew inside to die out, then we can recover the ship. We won’t need to find the blueprint if we have a model with us. Now let\'s collect our spoils!"

The water ahead of us is filled with glittering equipment and items. This is all money!

"Get to work you lot!" The Russian man called out, then his pirates rushed to the loots on their small boats with impossible speed and returned them to Bi-Lin.

"Nice!" Coin checked out a golden colored chestplate in her hands. "And this...and that! Oh my gosh I don’t know how to pick!"

"Put them all into the storage." I told Hawk. "When we return, keep those we can use and sell the rest. We keep 50% of the money as reserve fund, distribute the other half among the team and the captains."

"Really??" Coin has two dollar marks in her eyes. "Let me keep Wayne\'s share too. He\'s going to waste the money anyway."

I chuckled at Wayne who didn’t even protest. Good thing though, since it seems Coin accepted him.

Coin then looked between Wayne and me. "Just so you know, You need more than this to date me!"

...That part of her is not going to change.

When we’re finished putting away the loots, bubbles appeared near our ship, followed by a ship mast and Lucky\'s giant head. The main hull is still inside the water.

"It’s quiet in there." Aldeina knocked at the ship and spoke.

I checked the time.

"Take it easy. Give it some more time."

Curses came out from the supposedly quiet ship.

Play dead huh? That’s too basic. I have all the time to wait for you guys become corpses.

We waited for another half an hour before we finally pulled the ship up. Now it only contains dead players and NPCs, which can be distinguished by their clothes.

"What’s that smell?" Violet and Merciless said when they stepped into the hatch.

"Someone puked and...ughhhh."

"Well I heard that people can get incontinence when stressed to death." I lowered my helmet mask.

High-level knight masks can usually filter out hazardous air, but not everyone have them.

In the end, only me, Hawk, Big Pot and War Chant decided to check inside the ship. The ship is designed to be completely airtight. When the smell of diarrhea and someone\'s last night\'s supper are mixed together...I don’t think anyone without a mask can survive in here.

The walls inside looks all damp, which is understandable. We reached the cabins, looks like their resting area. The cabins are designed masterfully by utilizing the most out of the limited space they have. I\'m sure our own cabins will look terrible if we use the same space to build them.

"God I can’t take it. I say we give up this thing. At least I don’t want to enter here again." Hawk dashed back out, leaving a green-brownish trail behind his heel.

I kinda agree but I need to get a detailed idea of the ship\'s structures, so I advanced.

I entered their central control room, where the periscope is located. I kicked the corpse still hanging on the scope away and looked through it. Ohh nice, I saw Coin and Wayne chatting on Bi-Lin’s deck.

When there’s no more to see, I quickly rallied Big Pot and War Chant to back out. When we reached the outside, the team gathered to hear our findings.

"Wait!!" I dragged Big Pot and War Chant and jumped into the water to wash out the stains.

"How do you feel?" I lifted my mask and asked them.

"Gross!" War Chant said.

"That\'s not what I’m asking. What do you think of the ship?"

"Nice design, with a lot of problems but, can be a good idea to annoy the enemies."

"Just...annoying them?" Red Moon asked.

"Afraid so." I nodded. "To stay in the water, this ship has really small masts, and is too slow. They only have 40 oars, and the oars don’t work well because they need to keep them sealed. Several air rooms occupied too much space, they only have room for 12 cannons. That won\'t do any real damage."

"I was planning to build some of them for the Goddess Alliance...Guess I better give up."

"Not really." King spoke. "Let’s try it. They work good if we use them to ambush enemy flagships from the dark."

"So what do we do about this one?" Coin asked.

"Find some ropes and trail it behind. We make some holes on it when we get back and wash it clean with sea water." Big Pot suggested.

"Let’s do it then. Find a pirate ship. We can’t put a burden on Bi-Lin since we have more fights ahead of us." I said. "Let’s keep moving. 40 ships is just a start. We’ll let them pay tenfold for what they did to our Torrent Point city."

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"Captain, another fleet coming from behind us!"

"Behind us? You mean from Korea?"

I raised my scope to see a group of ships with Korea flag moving to us.

"About two hundred. Woah that\'s a lot."

"Captain!! Battleships ahead as well!"

I quickly switched to the other direction.

"...Japanese ships. It\'s the Black Dragon marines again. I saw their flag!"

"How many?" Hawk asked.

"Never mind that, let\'s retreat for now." I told them.

"Huh?"

"There are at least a thousand ships over there!"

"What??" Hawk jumped.

"Tell all units to turn around! We get nothing by fighting them now! We\'re not defending anything, so better keep our force alive!" I ordered while still trying to inspect the enemies.

"What about those guys?" Hawk pointed to the incoming Korean ships.

"Flag! Tell them that a thousand Japan ships are coming at us, armed with crystal cannons!"

We are already moving back towards the Korea direction when we sent the signal. Their captain is fast to react. The large fleet all moved in union and turned back. As our ships are faster, we slowly merged into the middle of the Korean ships, while Bi-Lin approached their flagship.

People from both sides walked to the edges and looked at each other in curiosity. I asked one of the flagman to stay near me as translator. When the ships are close enough, I simply jumped to the other ship with only Hawk and King. Too many people will probably raise suspicion.

Their flagship is about 190 meters from tip to tail, relative big compared to ordinary sail ships. Though still a lot smaller than Bi-Lin.

A dozen people came to meet us. Their leader seems to be a...woman?

"Hello there, I\'m captain of Bi-Lin, call me Ziri. This is my first officer Hawk, and our advisor, King Conqueror." I talked first.

"I\'m captain of The Haena, my name is Silver Park. Greetings." She shook my hand.

The player looks somewhere near 16 years old... I only have one word to describe her looks--comic. She looks just as cute as those characters in comics.

The people around her though, are all adult males.

"So were you going to?..." I waved around the 200 ships they brought.

"To fight Japan of course." She smiled. "Didn\'t you plan to rob them clean just now? Why are they chasing you instead?"

"You heard about it?"

"Duh, we went past you a moment ago. You helped us stall the enemies, remember?"

"Oh, that was you? But...you repaired your ships already?"

She rolled her eyes. "This is another ship."

"You...have a lot of ships then?"

She considered for moment. "Apart from the broken ones and those still under construction...about 70 or 80?"

Wow shoot. Isn’t her rich. At least the add-up value of all of her ships can well exceed the cost for Bi-Lin.

"Captain!" My chief officer called me from my ship. "Japanese fleet is only 31 kilos away!"

"Damn. They\'re fast." I turned back to Silver. "Sorry, I really need to get back to my escaping plan now."

"Can I have a look around your ship?"

This is not really a good time but...

" ...Alright, come." I don’t really have a reason to refuse her.

I only had time to introduce my crew before she ran off on her own. Good, since I can’t be her tour guide at such a moment.

"Where is Wuyuu?"

"Here!" The man suddenly appeared.

"Mount the tail crystal cannon. We should be able to hit them now."

The Japanese are chasing us from behind so this can be an advantage. The crystal cannons can shoot no longer than 30, but our movement should compensate for the remaining distance. On the contrary, their crystal cannons won’t reach us easily.

There’s a problem though. The little Korean captain is still on Bi-Lin so we can’t leave the Korean ships. Bi-Lin and my pirate ships are forced to remain on the same pace with them, and I don’t think we can outrun the pursuers at this rate.