Free Web NovelThe mist had not yet fully dissipated.
Dozens of pirate skiffs tossed in the grayish-white swells, like a pile of rotten wood smashed by the waves.
But suddenly, an invisible string snapped taut.
Bows turned, rigging groaned under strain.
The movement didn't resemble a fleet changing formation; it was more like a school of sharks smelling blood suddenly turning their heads.
Without any hesitation, they clamped down on the formation cutting through the waves ahead.
The scene on the sea was bizarre.
On one side was gray steel, with black smoke from chimneys drawing straight lines in the air. ƒгeewёbnovel.com
The Red Tide's vanguard ships were like a row of precisely calibrated scalpels, steadily slicing through the ocean.
On the other side was rotten wood, with tattered sails hanging from crooked masts, and decks swarming with figures like a disturbed anthill.
No roars could be heard on the sea, only a sticky, gurgling sound churning within the mist.
It was a guttural 'gurgling' sound squeezed from thousands of throats, intermittent, like a drowning person blowing bubbles underwater.
On the high stern deck of every ship, several dark green shadows stood.
These fish-men were larger than ordinary thralls, their dark scales glistening with an oily sheen.
They didn't touch the rigging or the cannons, just stood there like shepherds.
The pulsating tumor in their hands was squeezed and deformed; with each compression, a high-frequency tremor rippled through the air.
It was an instruction drilled directly into the mind.
The fish-men's bulging eyes were fixed on the distant steel warships.
In their murky eyes, those iron ships belching black smoke were not war machines, but the perfect breeding grounds, offerings to the deep sea.
Smash them, lay eggs inside!
And in the lower holds, the real 'fuel' was burning.
Hundreds of bare-chested pirates were tightly strapped to their seats with leather belts, rough wooden oars flying in their hands at an unnaturally fast pace.
That was a frequency no human muscle could endure.
Some had shoulder muscles torn directly, blood flowing down their elbows; others had fractured forearms, white bone shards piercing through skin and flesh.
But no one screamed, and no one stopped.
They all wore the same expression: mouths stretched ear to ear, drool dripping from chins onto the planks, eyes vacant yet filled with joy.
The voice in their minds kept ringing.
Faster! Even faster! Crash into that iron wall!
They pushed their last breaths, driving these piles of rotten wood to the limit.
The hull's keel groaned under the strain, the entire ship like an out-of-control cannonball, lurching erratically toward that indifferent wall of steel.
The smoothbore cannons on the deck were already glowing red-hot.
To get off one more volley before contact, the heat from the barrels could singe eyebrows from a distance.
A loader, annoyed by the swaying muzzle, threw himself forward, wrapping his arms tightly around the scorching copper tube.
Sizzle—!
Flesh instantly charred, white smoke carrying the smell of roasted meat rising.
He didn't flinch; instead, he trembled excitedly.
His murky eyes looked at the skin stuck to the cannon barrel, his mouth twitching uncontrollably into a grateful, tearful smile.
Even with his hand ruined, he numbly used his body to brace the cannon, completing the final aim.
At this moment, he wasn't a person; he was a disposable part.
The marionette-like captain at the bow spread his arms, facing the sea wind.
The Red Tide vanguard ship's main guns had already turned, their dark muzzles enlarging in his view.
In his eyes, it wasn't death; the flames spouting from the muzzle were a pink, warm door.
'So beautiful...' He drooled, like a child seeing candy, crashing into it with a pious expression... On the other side, the air in the armored command tower was stuffy, smelling of engine oil and heated brass.
Special glass filtered out the roar of the waves outside, leaving only the continuous hum of the engines, like a giant steel beast snoring beneath their feet.
Cortes stood before the command console, reaching out to touch the speaking tube beside him; the cool touch of the copper pipe felt reassuring.
This ship was too good.
Sometimes, waking in the middle of the night, he'd still instinctively worry if the lower hold was leaking or if the mast would snap in a storm.
After all, in the first half of his sailing career, he'd always piloted those rickety wooden ships that creaked with every large wave.
Back then, when encountering pirates, his first reaction was to check the wind direction, the second to calculate the load; if escape was impossible, he had to be ready to jettison cargo to save their lives.
Until the Red Tide found Cortes and asked one question: 'Dare you sail a ship that doesn't heed the wind?'
And so he stood here.
Beneath his feet was steel, powered by steam, holding firepower enough to send any navy of the old era to the seabed.
Cortes glanced up at the Red Tide insignia hanging on the bulkhead.
'Blazing Flame.' He chewed on the name in his mind.
Lord Louis had given him this ship, and he had to prove this investment was worth every penny.
'Sir, targets entering firing range,' the first mate's voice pulled his thoughts back. 'Forty-two in count, still accelerating.'
Cortes didn't turn around; through the observation window, he saw clearly.
Those maniacs were coming.
In the mist, dozens of dilapidated wooden ships were charging forward like madmen.
Sails full of wind, bows plowing through waves, the freaks on deck waving rusty swords and bone clubs, mouths agape, howling something incomprehensible. fгeewebnovёl.com
Not even a decent formation.
This wasn't a charge; it was a desperate race to their deaths.
Cortes leisurely drew his command saber, its tip lightly tapping the chart table: 'Don't let the filth get close.'
His tone was like ordering sailors to wash the deck: 'Free fire. See them off.'
Boom—!
Followed by a second shot, a third... The twelve vanguard ships were like a cold-blooded firing squad, their broadside cannons firing in sequence.
The sound had a rhythm, clang, clang, clang, with a mechanical cadence.
High-explosive Shells traced orange-red arcs through the mist before plunging into that pile of rotten wood.
There was no back-and-forth probing.
One shell bored into a pirate ship's lower hold; after a muffled explosion, the entire ship burst apart from within like an overinflated balloon.
Shattered masts with burning sails flew into the air, falling to crush a group of still-laughing fish-men, instantly turning them into a rain of minced flesh and wood splinters.
Cortes watched this scene without a flicker of emotion on his face.
So-called courage was worthless before explosives produced on an industrial assembly line.
'Pathetic,' he muttered softly, but there was no pity in his eyes. 'You can't win by just shouting these days.'
Just then, several unnaturally fast, narrow skiffs emerged from the blind spots in the smoke.
They skimmed the sea's surface, wind magic straining their tattered sails to the point of tearing.
A few hundred meters' distance, gone in the blink of an eye.
Boarding action.
This was the pirates' only chance to turn the tide, and their favorite trick.
Over a dozen scaled freaks had already rushed to the bows, wailing as they swung barbed grappling hooks.
The hooks struck the Blazing Flame's hull with a screech of metal on metal.
But that was all; those hooks couldn't catch on the smooth steel armor plates, most slipping off directly into the sea.
The few that barely caught the railings snapped before anyone could climb up.
No one panicked in the command tower.
Cortes frowned, his expression like seeing a few cockroaches crawling on his dining table.
'Too dirty,' he sheathed his command saber. 'Open the valves. Burn it clean.'
The boatswain expressionlessly pulled down the red levers.
Sss—!
Hidden nozzles below the gunwales instantly opened.
What sprayed out wasn't water, but a viscous, dark-red gelatinous substance.
It was a special alchemical fuel, thrown like a curtain of rain, drenching those skiffs and the pirates about to leap aboard.
They were given no time to react.
The igniter lit.
Whoosh—!!!
A sudden wall of fire rose.
The oil-soaked wood instantly began to carbonize, its structure emitting a teeth-grating cracking sound.
As for those freaks, they didn't even have time to scream, directly burned into blackened charcoal, tumbling into the sea in their flailing postures.
The seawater boiled for a moment, releasing great plumes of steam, then quickly swallowed the wreckage.
Cortes straightened his collar and shifted his gaze forward once more: 'I said, don't let filth get on Lord Louis's ship.'
He gave the order into the speaking tube: 'Maintain speed. Run them over.'
The Red Tide vanguard fleet did not pause, nor did it perform any superfluous maneuvers.
One steel warship after another formed a neat wedge formation, boiler pressure pushed to the red line, massive propellers churning the seawater to froth.
Just like that, they plowed ahead through the smoke, crushing the wooden debris and corpses on the sea's surface, pushing forward like bulldozers.
Before this moving wall of steel, that pitiful remnant of the old era wasn't even qualified to be a stumbling block... On the now-blurred sea, the scorpion writhed desperately towards the open ocean like a wild dog with a broken spine.
Miller stood on the aft deck, his hand holding the monocular telescope trembling incessantly.
Even from this distance, the sound of bone fragments being ground to dust seemed to worm its way into his ears.
In his view, the situation should have been a one-sided slaughter.
Nearly a hundred pirate ships in total.
Even if they were cobbled together from rotten wood, densely packed across the sea, they should have been like an unbreachable wall.
Moreover, those ships were crawling with those unkillable monsters, creatures that felt no pain and possessed immense strength—the most terrifying nightmare Miller had ever seen.
Yet the enemy had only thirteen ships, with that large vessel even lagging behind somewhat.
With numbers at a hundred to twelve, this should have been a tragedy of ants devouring an elephant.
'Huh?' A distorted, strange sound escaped Miller's throat.
There was no melee, no boarding, not even a reduction in speed.
Those twelve steel warships belching black smoke cut through like twelve red-hot knives slicing into rancid butter.
'Boom—!'
In the telescope's view, wood splinters erupted like a fountain.
The foremost pirate ships were directly smashed into fragments.
Those deep-sea monsters, impervious to blades and bullets in Miller's eyes, were as fragile as paper toys before the kinetic energy of thousands of tons of steel.
They tried to hook the decks with grappling lines, tried to block with their bodies.
But the iron ship didn't even shudder.
It just plowed straight ahead.
The ram at the prow split keels, the steel hull crushed hulls, and at the stern... Miller saw the most chilling sight.
The seawater there turned a dark crimson.
Propellers churned at high speed underwater, pulverizing all the wood, ropes, and the flesh and blood of those monsters drawn into them into a thick, viscous stew.
It was a true meat grinder.
'A hundred ships... that was almost a hundred ships...'
Miller's teeth chattered, emitting a rattling sound.
He saw a two-masted ship crawling with fish-men trying to flank, only to have its waist blasted apart by a broadside cannon shot, then rammed and sunk by a following steel warship.
The sea was littered with floating debris and severed limbs, while the twelve black plumes of smoke remained straight, remained indifferent.
They didn't even pause for the killing.
They just passed through, crushed whatever blocked their path, and continued forward.
An unprecedented chill shot up his spine to the crown of his head, causing Miller to slump weakly against the broken mast.
Just moments ago, he thought those man-eating fish-men were monsters.
But now he understood: compared to those beasts that only knew to tear flesh, these steel machines that coldly ground everything to powder... were far more terrifying.
Before Miller could even finish drawing that cold breath, the bleak sound of a horn echoed.
His pupils, just dilated with shock, instantly contracted to pinpricks.
The telescope nearly slipped from his hand... A horn sounded from deep within the mist.
The sound was muffled, carrying a damp, vibrating quality, as if blown directly from the deep seabed.
It even pierced through the roar of the steam turbines, causing every steel plate on the deck to resonate faintly.
Cortes's gaze hardened.
Those dozens of dilapidated ships just blown to pieces were merely a facade. Cannon fodder to fill gun barrels and expend barrel heat.
Now came the main course.
Waves were brutally torn apart as three massive dark shapes crashed through the mist, bringing with them a nauseating stench of blood and oppressive pressure, squeezing into the battlefield.
They could hardly be called ships anymore.
They were monsters, a forced fusion of old-era shipbuilding and deep-sea flesh.
The one charging at the forefront was absurdly large—it was the tyrant.
Its freeboard was even taller than the Blazing Flame's, its original hull clad in thick, grayish-white rock.
And now, filling the crevices between the rocks was no longer mortar, but countless squirming deep-sea soft-bodied creatures.
They acted as living adhesive, firmly binding the stone armor to the hull.
The steel ram at the bow was engraved with Earth-element Runes, and at its base coiled thick tentacles, pulsating rhythmically.
'Focus fire on that big one.' Cortes's command remained calm, even tinged with a hint of disgust.
The twelve Hunter-class frigates swiftly adjusted their gun barrels, firing a broadside volley.
Boom! Boom!
High-explosive Shells struck the bow, erupting into orange-red fireballs.
Rocks flew, the living stone armor pitted and scarred, splattering mucus and blue blood.
But it didn't stop. The runes on the stone armor and the soft-bodied creatures worked in unison, forcibly absorbing the kinetic energy of the explosions.
Like a thick-skinned deep-sea rhinoceros, it plowed forward step by step under the barrage.
Then the second ship slid out, hugging the water's surface, its hull slender and pitch-black, coated in light-absorbing grease.
That was the Shadow Serpent. Just as cannon fire tried to lock onto it, a cloud of black ink-mist would explode around it, the hull twisting unnervingly, causing shells to skim past its edges and plunge into the sea.
When the third ship appeared, the air became intensely putrid.
Its sails were stitched from human skin and fish skin, its masts hung with desiccated human heads and enormous fish gills.
Hundreds of totem poles lit up on the deck, each with a mutated Fish-man Priest kneeling beneath it, their mouths wide open in silent shrieks.
A mental shockwave from the Deathwhisper swept across the sea.
The Red Tide sailors felt a sharp pain in their heads, but their usual strict discipline training took effect.
No one fell to their knees begging for mercy. They just gritted their teeth, fixed their eyes on the sights, and continued loading.
'Too close.' Cortes glanced at the approaching ram, a slight frown creasing his brow. 'Full reverse, create a firing window.'
The order was given, but this steel behemoth did not retreat as nimbly as usual.
The hull jolted violently, emitting a deep, muffled groan.
It was the drive shaft wailing at the edge of overload.
'Captain! We can't get the RPM up!'
The Chief Engineer's voice roared from the speaking tube, accompanied by the background roar of the boilers. 'The water's full of things! They're jamming our propellers!'
Below the surface, thousands of deformed deep-diver fish-men were frantically throwing themselves into the propellers.
Coated in thick fire-resistant mucus, enduring the leaking Alchemical Fire-oil, they used their bodies, their bones, the corpses of their comrades, layer upon layer, to clog the ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) high-speed spinning blades.
Screech—!
The teeth-grinding sound of grinding never ceased.
The steel propellers still turned, grinding the engulfed flesh into pulp, but this layer of pulp was too thick, too viscous.
Hundreds of corpses wedged between bearings and blades, forming a high-density flesh-and-blood brake pad.
The steam turbine's torque was still powerful, but this resistance severely hampered the warship's maneuverability.
The once-agile Hunter-class became sluggish, like a giant with legs covered in leeches.
The tyrant's shadow had already fallen over the Blazing Flame's bridge.
That ram, capable of smashing city walls, was aimed directly at the Blazing Flame's broadside, the distance shrinking bit by bit.
'Trying to drag us into the muck for close-quarters combat...'
Cortes glanced somewhat irritably at the blood-reddened seawater and that ugly stone warship.
Though mobility was impaired, his turrets could still rotate, his boilers hadn't exploded.
A Red Tide warship wouldn't sink from such a hindrance; it would only feel shame at having to let this filth get so close.
'Since you're so eager to get close, we'll oblige.' Cortes straightened his collar, turned to the Signalman, and said, 'The hounds are bitten. Request the hammer fall, and flip this table... completely over.'
