Starting from Zero

Silver Park returned to me after god knows where she went. Our crystal cannons are firing now. The giant boom made her jump and look around in panic. But when she watched the purple bullet slowly travel across the 30 kilo distance and knock an enemy ship into another, she looked at the powerful weapons with glittering eyes.

"Hey hey, what are these?"

"Crystal cannons."

"Oh, the same ones in system cities?"

"I...think so? But these are bigger than the ones you saw before. They came in four sizes. The cities use the smallest ones on the corners, and the second smallest one in the middle. What we have here are the largest, they have better range and power. Of course, they are costly."

Yeah...100 million each. They burned a big hole in my pocket. As I said, even a pile of pure gold the same size of these stuff would probably be cheaper.

"Can you sell them to me?"

"...Excuse me?" I’m not sure I heard that right.

"Do you sell the cannons?"

I shook my head. "It\'s not like I\'m being mean but, you better not buy them."

"Why?"

"What\'s the biggest ship you have at the moment?"

"The one over there, about 193 meters long. I have several more, of the same size." She looks proud.

"Not big enough."

"But that\'s the biggest standard our shipyards can build!"

"Okay. Look at that one." I handed her my scope and pointed to one of the Japanese ship armed with a crystal cannon.

"As you see, the ship has ONE smallest crystal cannon, as its ONLY weapon. They didn’t place more weapons because they need to spare the load weight to hold the crystal cannon." I took back my scope. "Your ship is just a tiny bigger than that, and slower. Now imagine what would happen if you put one of these giant monsters on it. Hear my word and give up. You can try and give it a shot, I mean, a real shot. I’m sure your ship is gonna break apart on itself if a large cannon ever shoot on your deck."

"But I want it!" Something’s shining inside her eyes.

Not that I want to make her feel sad, but even if I give her a cannon for free, it\'ll only throw 100 million into the ocean.

"Hey, look. How about this one?" I pointed to a Dragon Punch cannon. "They shoot 20 kilometers far, a lot better than those cheap things on your ship. I can give you a hundred right now!"

"No! I want the biggies!"

...I should’ve never let her here. Now I have to deal with the extra trouble.

I ran to the edge and called to her followers. "Can someone come here for a moment?"

One of them, probably the leader, moved to my ship. When he saw the crying captain he hurriedly rushed to ask what happened.

Then he walked to me and said: "I apologize but, this...weapon, can you please sell us one? Just one! How much for it?"

He gave me a 90-degree bow. Man this is embarrassing.

"I bought them at 100 million, and it was quite a hassle to transport them. I can’t just sell them to anyone!"

"I understand, restricted merchandise I assume? We deal with a lot of those. I pay you 120 million, what do you say? Please feel free to tell me your idea."

"Good price." I nodded quickly. That\'s 20 million instant profit I say! Now I’m beginning to understand why dad is selling all kinds of weapons to the other countries all day. The money is real!

"Lucky!" I summoned my number one companion. "Lift that cannon and put it to the other ship."

I spoke to the man again as Lucky started his work. "Remember, no shooting! Your ship WILL sink if you try to use that weapon right here."

"I get it. Thank you very much! Here\'s the payment."

He sent a trade request to me but--

"Oh good lord. Do you always carry all these cash on you? How do you carry it anyway? I can only have 80 million in my inventory."

"I\'m the vice-master plus financial accountant of our guild. The accountant of a guild is allowed to carry 2 billion crystal pieces. Where is your accountant? I\'ll give the money to him or her."

"Uh, no. We don’t have one right now." I called Rose over. Two people are enough for this at the moment.

"Is this okay, my good lady?" I spoke to the girl. By this I\'m trying to tell her to leave Bi-Lin. The enemies are only 20 kilos away now. I asked them to pick out enemy crystal cannon carriers as best as they can, or we would have been attacked by now.

Things said, the situation is already bad. We only have one crystal cannon on our tail which isn’t enough to suppress them, so they are going to shoot at us at any moment!

Silver Park looked at her new cannon and finally nodded. Good, we can escape now!

But...She isn’t leaving. Instead, the middle-aged manager caught my intention.

"Excuse me." He beckoned at me, asking for private room to talk. He\'s speaking Chinese too. Then why didn’t they send this man earlier?? (We\'ve been communicating through our flagman translators until now)

"What’s the matter?" I led him away from the young captain and asked.

"Our ships are not as fast and I don’t think we can escape from the Japanese now. I hope you can escort the lady back to our port."

"Huh? What about you then?"

"We\'ll split up and run, to minimize our lost, hopefully."

"But--"

"Truth is, we’re bodyguards, hired by the lady\'s father. Our job is to protect her, including when inside the game, so can you please take her away? Losing ships is not something we\'ll worry about, but we definitely can’t let the lady get harmed. 5 million crystal pieces if you return her to safety."

5 million! Just to transport a player! I\'ll never find a easier job than that!

"Alright, let her come." I took out Rhona’s sea chart. "Give us the location."

When we\'re done we walked back to Silver Park. "Silver, looks like your men have some other business here, so I\'ll take you back home."

"Other business? Go ahead then!" She nodded to the man.

"Okay. Stay safe with these new friends, my lady. They promised to send you back to the city."

The man jumped back to his ship.

I told the flagman to return to his post and send a message to our fleet.

"All ships, follow Bi-Lin and retreat!"

"Full speed!" Chief officer ordered our men to speed up.

Without the Korean ships to worry about, we gained enough speed to leave them behind. The Korean fleet moved apart into 10 smaller teams running in different directions.

The Japanese fleet also split up into 10 squadrons and began to chase them respectively.

Rose and Yuri took Silver to look around the ship, while the remaining crew stood watch on the deck.

"They are actually trying to get all Korean ships?" Hawk exclaimed while looking at the enemies moving.

"Greedy bastards." I cursed.

"What do you mean greedy?" Coin asked while looking through her scope.

"The Koreans are obviously willing to risk minor forces to save their main. A careful enemy captain would divide his fleet into two or three and focus down the same number of Korean ships, to ensure victory. Now they went into ten! They\'re trying to get every last one of the Koreans."

"Why is no one coming for us then?" Coin asked a silly question.

"Would you chase someone if they can move faster than you?"

"Oh."

"What\'s the plan now?" Zirai asked.

I looked at King. "Any advice?"

He considered for two seconds.

"If I were you, I turn back now and pick out the small Japanese teams one by one. We’re fast, and have better attack range. When we get rid of all their crystal cannons we can stay at a safe distance and shoot at them while they have nothing to fight back, and we\'ll continue to stay safe as long as we don’t get surrounded."

"I agree!" Hawk spoke. "We can just run away again if something bad happens. They\'ll never catch us."

"Then we have all the reason to do just that." I agreed. "Tell our ships to return to the battlefield! Time to hunt!"

"All units turn around!"

Our pirates made a giant U-turn and moved back to the enemies. We also moved slowly, to make sure the Japanese don’t notice our plan too soon. We chose one of their small team which is closest to us as target. That team of ships are also located in the middle or their force, If we can get rid of it before the other teams get alerted, the rest of the teams will be too far from each other to communicate.

Judging from the number of vessels in each of their teams...There’s no way we’ll lose with our cannon advantage.

We waited for about half an hour for the enemies to completely scatter.

"It\'s time. Full speed ahead, attack the enemy formation straight ahead!"

Our 108 ships charged together. A small Korean team of about 20 ships is escaping on our route. When they saw us move back they immediately realized what we\'re trying to do and moved sideways to give us passage.

Same old practice. My first job is to scout for any crystal cannon carriers. The enemy team contains 137 ships...and I only found 5 targets in there. Maybe we knocked out too many of them in the previous fight.

"Crystal cannons ready!" I gave the signal and waited for our ships to get into firing position.

"Fire!"

The crystal cannons on our ships roared purple flame at the same time. Four of the target ships broke down on the spot. Too bad we sold a cannon just now or we would have cleared them out in one go.

"Evade!!" King roared to the helmsmen when we saw the only enemy crystal cannon shoot at us.

The incoming bullet only fell into the water about a hundred meters to the right of our deck, soaking us wet.

"Wuyuu! Is your cannon ready?"

"Yes!"

He already shoot when he answered me. The attack brought down our last target.

"Signal the other ships. The enemies no longer have anything that can shoot farther than 15 kilometers. Let’s keep this distance while free-fire at them!"

All the pirate ships swarmed ahead when they received the order. The enemy ships aren’t fully armed like us, so our 108 ships can deal more damage than they expect.

We hurled over 10 thousand solid rounds down their heads in the first minute. The pirate cannons are also breech loaded, which use high-explosive rounds instead of the shot put balls for cheaper cannons.

Our sudden attack devastated our target without giving them any chance for counterattack. While the escaping Korean team saw the situation and decided to turn back to watch.

The enemies fell silent. Most of the ships are still floating, though badly damaged.

"Do we approach them?" Coin asked.

"I don’t think so. What if they\'re playing dead again to draw us near?" Zirai spoke to her.

"So we...keep shooting until there\'s nothing left?" Hawk proposed an easy solution.

"But we get less loot!" Coin protested.

"Fine. I\'ll go take a look." Zirai summoned her Skyfire and flew towards the enemies.

We watched her spin above for a while before she returned.

"How\'s it?"

"I don’t think they survived that one. But I can’t see below the decks. I can only tell you they’ll not remain afloat for long."

"Let\'s go then." I ordered our force to move close, with our cannons all stand ready, just in case.

We stopped at about a kilometer away, when I only ordered Bi-Lin to keep moving. The area is now filled with broken planks with shining items caught on them. Most of the floating ships are burning. I can feel the hotness from distance away.

We moved side-to-side against one of the ships. As I\'m rallying War Chant, Big Pot and Passerby to board the ship and take a look, a large, burning ship suddenly appeared from one side of us and charged.

"Back! Back!" King quickly ordered.

Our four boosters created four water beams in front of Bi-Lin. However, another enemy ship moved into our escape route and blocked us in.

There’s no time to make a halt now. We watched helplessly as Bi-Lin crashed into the roadblock, creating a terrible metal noise and a huge shake.

The enemy ship was knocked away as if a train ran into a family car. Whoever tried to block us didn’t expect Bi-Lin to have so much charging power even though we’re still moving at low speed. When the ship\'s bottom touched the water again, the sudden water resistance force caused it to tumble in the water, while losing pieces and parts in the process like a broken toy thrown onto the floor by a spoiled toddler.

"Oh god. " King looked at the flying ship in awe. "That was awesome."

"A-ha! Nice strike!" Wuyuu hopped in excitement.

"Hey wait. What\'s that?" Hawk pointed at the ship which is still rolling.

I followed his finger. "... I don’t see anything."

"Look at the broken wood. We don’t use such thin materials to build ships. I think something\'s behind them."

Now that he mentioned it...Yeah, those are not wooden shells that are thrown off the ship. They look like covers for something.

I focused on the still unstable enemy ship and noticed some...black patches?

"Oh shit." I pointed at the burning enemy ship in front of us. "Zirai, shoot that ship NOW!!"

I was too late. The ship already moved to one side of us and opened fire. There’s no way we can evade attack from so close. The entire left side of Bi-Lin was showered by countless cannon rounds.

"Godammit. Cannons! What the f*ck are you waiting for?? Attack!"

The sailors finally remembered their job and returned fire. With a deafening explosion sound, the full volley performed by all cannons on our side caused Bi-Lin to sway a bit.

Our power looks good enough but...the result is a bit unexpected. Instead of shattering the enemy ship, a series of sharp CLANGs intruded our ears.

"What the hell was that??" Wuyuu rubbed his ears and looked at our target.

The outer layer of the ship was completely destroyed by our attack but... Some dark metal is exposed under the broken wooden structure.

A metal ship?? It’s made of full steel!

So our previous attack only ignited its outermost layer of wooden materials without doing any harm to its inside.

However, Bi-Lin’s firepower is not to be underestimated. They may have built a thick defense but our Dragon Punch cannons still opened up some holes on them big enough to pass vehicles.