Starting from Zero Vol 4 Chapter 103

Chapter 103: The Unknown Artillery s.h.i.+p
"Ahem. I uh, I'll go see the deck." I decided to quit first and left the room.

"Me too!" Rose followed me.

"I, you, um, you should get some rest!" Yuri came too. It’s hard to breathe in that room for some reason.

I stood on the deck. The chilling sea breeze made me feel a lot better. Rose hugged me from behind and I held her hands. We simply enjoyed the moment without saying anything.

"I'm risking my life fighting enemies and you losers came here playing t.i.tanic?? Go to h.e.l.l!"

"Ahh!!"
Something pushed us from behind. I can tell someone kicked us. The problem is, this is my s.h.i.+p, NPCs won't do that, and none of my teammates would, either. So what the fuc?

No time for that now cause we are going to fall into the sea at this rate!
"Transform!!"
I turned in mid-air. I used one claw to hold Rose's waist, then stuck the other into the s.h.i.+p's side. As I expected, the knife-like nails easily went into the metal, locking us in place.

Using the spikes on my armor, I climbed back onto the deck with several leaps.
"Who the f.u.c.k did that?"

"I did! Problem with that?"
It's the Spellsword we tied up earlier. What was his name? Wuyuu? He's staring at me in anger, arms crossed.

"Hey what's your problem??" 　　

"I just don't like you, sucker!"

"Ah is that so?" I'm getting annoyed. Anyone would when someone interrupts their romance like that. "Whick part exactly?"　　

"Everything about you! Are you the captain of this s.h.i.+p?" 　　

"So what?" 　　

"You told them to retreat?" He cracked his knuckles. "Loser! Weakling!"

"I did. Do I have to ask YOU to order MY s.h.i.+p?" I pushed Rose away and got ready for a fight.

"Why did you let the j.a.panese go?? What are you planning? A traitor?"
This is getting ridiculous.
"And you--Ow! What the fu--"

"ARE YOU TRYING to get everyone, EVERYONE, on your bad side???"
War Chant dragged him aside by pulling his ear. Then he turned to me. "I apologize, don't take him serious, he’s always like that. "

"No problem. But I'd advise you to take good care of your friend. Not everyone is good at forgiving people." I shouldn't push the matter too hard since someone's trying to be nice.

"Thanks buddy. Every time he's fighting pirates he loses all his mind. You know, we joined several fights before and none of the other s.h.i.+ps would ever let him on board now. When anyone doesn't sink the enemy s.h.i.+p or gets sunk themselves, this guy will just call them traitors."

"Huh, interesting. You two can follow us then."

"You sure?" He looks surprised. "He causes troubles you know."

"All you want to do is to fight the j.a.panese right?"

"Yeah but--"
I silenced him. "That's enough. You two are my vanguard captains now. Just do your job, I will--"
"ENEMIES INCOMING!!" The lookout interrupted our conversation with an alarm.

Boom!
An explosion erupted from the side rails of Bi-Lin. Cannon shot! Why did the alarm come so late, when someone already hit us??
"Give me their position!" I yelled while running towards the crystal cannon.

"Behind us! 5 o'clock, about 3,000 yards!"

"What??" I halted. "What kind of cannon can reach 3 thousand yards?"

"Those are long-range shooters! Three of them!" The lookout yelled back.

"I saw them too! There are more!" Chief officer reported while looking through his monocular. "They're getting close. And they're faster!"
He didn't even wait for my order. "All hands in position! Load the cannons! Helm! Full right turn! Cut the main sail, right oar

s, reverse pilot! Let's turn around!"

Hawk rushed up from the cabin area. "What's happening?? More enemies?"

"I don't know. They don't have flags. Probably j.a.panese. They used those long range cannons."
Chief officer gave his monocular to Hawk.

"...I see them. But why didn't they come out earlier? That sniping s.h.i.+p has only one of these cannon right? But they--"

"Whatever, let's get them under the sea!" I observed the enemy s.h.i.+p. "One, two... I see 18 cannons. How about you?"

"Affirmative. 18 of them." Second officer confirmed.

"20! Another two located at tip and rear!" Came from the lookout.

"That's too many!"

Hawk complained when another round flew towards us. The shot broke our second main mast in half, the entire sail cloth fell down to the deck, causing us to scatter away. But it's too large, we're still covered under.

"s.h.i.+t that's powerful." I crawled away from the giant cloth and cursed at the distant enemy s.h.i.+p. "Hawk, to the crystal cannon!"
"Coming!" 　　

I entered the cannon slot and took aim. With the help of Star Gaze I locked up the enemy soon.
"Fire!"
Hawk pulled the shooting lever, releasing a violet bullet. We watched the bullet with a long trail going towards the enemy at pretty slow speed.
It didn't hit. My aim was good, but there's another problem.

Normal cannons are propelled by fire powders, while a crystal cannon's bullet is driven by the energy crystal. It has superior range and power compared to those iron rounds. The problem is, the bullet is too slow! It's big, and glowing. No fools would stay where they are if they see this flying fireball approaching them!
I said slow only in comparison with other weapons. The actually bullet speed it still fast. But the s.h.i.+p we're facing now is probably the fastest s.h.i.+p in j.a.pan, and we're too far away from each other. It took 12 seconds for the bullet to travel to them, during which the enemies already left their original position. I watched in distress as the bullet grazed past their tail and fell into the sea.

The attack isn't totally useless, it brought up a giant water pillar which caused a big tidal wave, slamming into the small s.h.i.+p. I don't know how much damage we caused but there's another bonus to it--a series of smaller water pillars went up around our s.h.i.+p, so the enemies made a full volley at us but our attack caused their shots to miss their mark.

Chief officer gave the order. "Full speed! Close in and ready ye cannons!"
We're facing each other head-to-head so we approached soon enough.

"Fire away!"

We started our attacks at the same time. There's no plan or strategy, we're simply shooting as fast as we can. They tried to keep distance, but Bi-Lin is no slower. And that tidal wave disrupted their movement for a good amount of time which gave up enough chance to catch them. s.h.i.+ps aren't cars, you can't turn around at free will. Well, may something like Bi-Lin with hundreds of pilot oars can.

The 300 side cannons on our side opened up almost the same number of holes on the enemy. They did the same, but that damage is negligible, considering Bi-Lin's size.

They went past us without turning direction, so they are just trying to gain distance again. I quickly ordered the chief officer: "Around! Go after them!"

"Drop the right anchor! Right oars reverse! Release the helm!"

The giant iron anchor hanging on the right side was thrown into the sea. The chain dragged the s.h.i.+p into a large U-turn which is usually impossible for large s.h.i.+ps. The two helmsmen released the giant wheel, which began to spin madly. I'm sure if any one of them did it earlier than the other, someone will be sent flying away.

The sharp turn gave everyone on the s.h.i.+p the urge to vomit. I've ridden a fighter jet before and I think this G force is as good as a fighter giving an aerobatic show.

Not only us, the enemies are terribly shocked as well. It’s like watching a 20-meter long overloaded cargo truck drifting on the road in front of your face!

Several s.h.i.+ps from the Righteous League are also within sight. Our maneuver raised a terrible sea wave which traveled all the way to them, almost knocking them over.

Now we're exactly facing the enemy's rear. Before I can give the order, Hawk pulled on my hand.
"Wait, we can try to take those cannons for ourselves. Maybe we can figure out how to build them."

"Nice idea." I left the cannon. "Chief! Hook them up!"
"Retract the ramming horn! Raise the ballista and bring the hook rope!"

A giant ballista came out of a hatch on the front of the deck. A dozen sailors carried a rope as thick as a human leg and installed it onto the weapon. There's a windla.s.s connected in the back, operated by another dozen sailors.
With a loud BANG! The bolt was shot towards the enemy s.h.i.+p. It precisely hit them in the rear and stuck inside.

"Reverse paddle and drop the anchors! Pull!"
Bi-Lin stopped solid. Sailors on the windla.s.s began to retract the rope, which quickly straightened up, causing the enemy s.h.i.+p to suddenly leave the water surface for a brief moment and drop down again.

"Archers!" I told our Archers to line up and ready for close combat.

All combat sailors are standing ready on the deck now. The windla.s.s is still spinning, pulling us closer and closer. I stood at the tip and transformed into werewolf mode. I looked at the approaching s.h.i.+p while dripping some saliva from my mouth, totally ruining my leader image.
"All mine! Wooha-ha-ha-ha!"

"Go, go, GO!!" A figure charged past me before I can do anything else. I didn't see who that is but I can pretty much guess it. Wuyuu. No doubt about it. The s.h.i.+p's still far, and he just went there by traveling on the rope. Man, is that even possible? He's not slowing down to keep balance. Did he practice wire-walking before? The rope may be thick but it's swaying between two unstable s.h.i.+ps! And he rushed to the other end like it's nothing!

Well, only him anyway. No one else moved, since sailors only listen to the orders from me, or the deputy captain, Hawk. As for the other players, they're not stupid as to walk on this rope when there's an obvious better choice.
So now Wuyuu is the only one on the enemy s.h.i.+p. He's surrounded, as it should be.

"Archers!" I ordered the long range sailors to attack. This won't help Wuyuu escape but can at least provide him more options.

Our first round of attacks quickly ignited enemy s.h.i.+p's deck. There isn't much movement over there. Their s.h.i.+p is designed to leverage their extraordinary attack range and escaping speed so they didn't even consider the possibility of a boarding fight.

With a small collision (for us, at least), our s.h.i.+ps connected with each other.
"Now go!"
I gave the order and jumped first. I was planning to jump onto their tip but...I found myself landing in the middle instead. Thank goodness I didn't aim farther or I'll probably be swimming again.

Enemy sailors immediately closed up on me. I punched a random sailor into the sea and jumped towards the entrance to their cabin with an easy hop.

"@%^&*&)#$%....!"
Some incomprehensible speech reached my ears. I know it's foreign language but I'm sure it’s not j.a.panese. This is not a j.a.pan s.h.i.+p? Who else would suddenly attack us for no reason in a time like this?

I grabbed the yelling man and tossed him over to Bi-Lin. "Chief, lock him up!"

"Yes sir!"

I searched around for more players. Maybe they have someone who can speak our language. This is very likely since they came here as intruders.
A player wearing cloth turban answered my question.

"Indians??"
The battle is already over. They're totally defenseless. No defender sailors. We put the enemy s.h.i.+p under control and held a conference in the command room. King Conqueror has been with the Righteous League all along, when he heard this is our s.h.i.+p, he came up as a spectator.

"Yup, Indians." I told him. "They wear their clothes, and I know I heard that language somewhere before."

"We should have brought some prisoners." King sighed.

"We did. 7 of them."

"Really? Where?"

"Here on the s.h.i.+p. I locked them up."

"What??" He jumped. "They can't use teleport on the sea but they can always go back by killing themselves! Dead players get revived on the s.h.i.+p but once their s.h.i.+p is gone or captured they'll directly go back to their cities. Did you check on them?"

"Don't worry. We built all kinds of random cabins and rooms because we have too much free s.p.a.ce. Of course there are prisons too. As the captain I can force the prisoners to remain here for up to 24 hours, online hours. They either wait for my permission to get back or wait for that long. Oh, killing themselves is possible, but they'll have to do it until they hit level 20 and get sent back to the Rookie Village."

"So you haven't questioned them yet?"

"You speak Hindi?"

"Well, we can use the system interpretation, no?"

"Try it."

He fiddled around his system menus. "...So we can't use it on the sea."

"I told them to return at full speed. We can do it back at the port. Oh right, what's going on with the pursuers?"

"They returned to port." 　　
"Already??" Wuyuu yelled, then he turned to me. "Look! They beat up the j.a.panese and already returned home with all the glory!"

King continued: "They were hit hard by j.a.panese reinforcements. All s.h.i.+ps gone, everyone revived back at the port city."

Wuyuu went silent.

"Ohhhhh...the brave maiden..."
We heard a gentle, charming female singing voice. It almost feels attractive, and somewhat...strange. I don't think any player is singing, since all players are now guests on my s.h.i.+p and that voice isn’t anywhere nearby. As for NPCs...there are no female sailors!
Where did it come from?