Doing the Math for Nami

"..."

As Nami sobbed her heart out, the pirates exchanged glances for a while, then whispered among themselves. "Who's this guy?" "Never seen him..." "He looks kind of familiar!" "I think I saw him with the captain a few days ago, when we'd just come back for our break."

"Of course I remember this little thief."

Captain Yurika stood up. The scars all over his body ached faintly around this time every year, so he had been lying here resting lately. He hadn't expected an idiot to come knocking.

He looked coldly at Ruidio. "But who are you? I don't remember you."

Nami felt as if she'd been struck by lightning. That bastard Ruidio had actually claimed he'd accepted a commission to catch her, a little thief. But it turned out they didn't even know him!

Of course they didn't. The system radar had found the quest. He'd just happened to be passing by and picked it up.

Ruidio said to Yurika, "Just tell me, did I help you catch the thief or not?"

Yurika looked at Nami and gave a cruel smile. Nami turned green with fright.

"All right!" Yurika nodded. "You've helped us take care of something that's been on our minds. What do you want? Do you want to join us?"

[Quest completed]

[Quest reward: 15 essence]

"What do I want?"

Ruidio pointed behind him. "I want to say something to her."

The other pirates burst out laughing. "Hey, hey! You caught her for us, so you can't back out now, even if she is pretty! Hahahaha!"

Ruidio said, "Nami, what was it you said you'd noticed I liked?"

"Huh?"

Nami's eyes were full of tears. She froze at his words, then suddenly had a flash of inspiration. Taking a deep breath, she shouted, "Ruidio! I'm begging you, take out these pirates! Save me!!!"

"Huh?" The pirates present were stunned.

[Nami has commissioned you: eliminate the pirates]

[Estimated difficulty: ★]

Before Yurika could react, a Seastone short staff, a full ten kilograms in weight and half a meter long, smashed into his face. He could almost hear the sound of his facial bones shattering echoing inside his head.

The pirates saw Ruidio reach out, and a long blade and a three-section staff fell out of thin air.

The blade dropped straight to the ground, but he caught the three-section staff and swung it with a whoosh, sending their captain flying.

He spun through the air like a human top, blood spraying in a circle around him...

Half an hour later, back on the beach, Nami had untied the ropes binding her. Only then did she realize that Ruidio had tied a slipknot from the start. As long as she knew how, she could have freed herself easily.

I was scared out of my wits! Otherwise, how could someone as clever and resourceful as me have missed it?

Nami puffed out her cheeks and patted her face. It was all that guy's fault. He was mysterious, inexplicable, strange, and did whatever he pleased. He really wasn't at all...

She slowly froze as she saw a figure emerge from the woods.

After sending the captain of the Tulip Pirates flying with one blow, Ruidio had quickly subdued all the pirates present and herded them into the woods on the island. He had only just come back out.

The blood-soaked three-section staff Playful Cloud hung over his shoulder, and blood kept sliding off the sharp, gleaming blade he dragged in his hand...

Ruidio wiped his mouth and casually swung the blade to the side. With a swish, all the blood flew off Malevolent Shrine and splattered against a nearby tree trunk.

"What's wrong?" He noticed that the way Nami was looking at him seemed off.

Nami's face was slightly pale. "What... what did you do to them?"

Ruidio asked, puzzled, "Wasn't it your commission? You wanted me to eliminate these pirates, didn't you?"

"I said take them out! I only meant for you to beat them!"

"Same thing." Ruidio casually tossed Playful Cloud into slot 1 of the three-in-one system and put 1 essence into slot 2 to give it a quick repair. All the bloodstains were cleaned off in the process.

Malevolent Shrine didn't need that. How could such a fine blade be stained by that kind of blood?

Just as Ruidio was about to bundle the blade and the three-section staff together and toss them into the system backpack as one object, as he usually did, he suddenly froze.

[System backpack (1/3): Seastone x131000; (empty); (empty)]

How had the backpack gained a third slot?

Ruidio checked the quest records. Sure enough, the result of the one-star quest Nami had just commissioned verbally was right there:

[Quest completed]

[Quest reward: 50 essence; system backpack slot x1]

[Remaining essence: 2185]

A mere one-star quest had dropped a backpack slot!

Nami, you're no Cat Burglar. You're a beckoning cat!

Delighted, Ruidio gathered Malevolent Shrine and Playful Cloud together and tossed them into the backpack as one object.

The rule for storing and retrieving things from the system backpack was that they came out the same way they went in.

In theory, Ruidio could put both the blade and the three-section staff on a ship, then put the whole ship in one system backpack slot. But then he wouldn't be able to take the blade or the staff out separately; he would have to take out the entire ship.

[System backpack (2/3): Seastone x131000; weapons x2; (empty)]

Ruidio clapped his hands. Seeing that Nami still had a troubled look on her face and seemed uncomfortable, he said, "I have evidence that this group of pirates destroyed more than one village or town. The world will only be better off with them dead."

"What evidence?" Nami asked, puzzled.

The system's quest description, obviously. What other evidence?

Ruidio said, "If I'd let them live and they brought suffering to other people in the future, would that be on me or on you?"

Nami had no answer. She sighed. "You've got some nerve saying that to me. You threw up when you killed them, didn't you? I saw you wiping your mouth when you came out."

Ruidio said, "I just got tired from all the chopping and had a little food, that's all."

Nami looked at him with disdain. "Who are you kidding? You get tired?"

"Hey, hey, that's an exaggeration. I'm just a rookie..."

Chatting and laughing, Ruidio and Nami followed the beach along the coastline and soon found the Tulip Pirates' ship in a cove. It was a little smaller than the Buggy Pirates' ship, but still impressively huge.

The system valued Buggy's pirate ship at over 70,000 essence.

The Tulip Pirates' ship was roughly the same size. Even if it wasn't worth as much, it would probably still fetch a few tens of thousands.

Sometimes Ruidio was really frustrated with this lousy system. Why could it only synthesize things and not break them down?

If he could break down a pirate ship like this directly into essence, wouldn't he be rich?

Oh, system!

Ruidio shook his head and leaned against the bow of the Tulip Pirates' ship while Nami steered it slowly over to Buggy's pirate ship, which they had left by the shore. With a thump, the bows gently bumped together.

Ruidio took Nami with him as he got off the ship.

He reached out to either side and pressed a hand against each ship's hull.

He waited a moment, but nothing happened...

Question marks seemed to appear over Nami's head. "What are you doing?" Suddenly, she realized what he was up to and said in surprise, "Are you trying to make these two ships disappear, like you did with your blade? How could that be possible? They're so big!"

Ruidio said, "It's not impossible. There are rats on the ships."

It was a law of the universe: things like spatial rings and system backpacks couldn't hold living creatures.

If there were rat nests in the cabins or between the planks of the pirate ships, he couldn't put them in the backpack slots, and naturally couldn't send them into the [three-in-one] interface for synthesis. This wasn't the Munch-Munch Fruit...

Chapter 13: Doing the Math for Nami

"Help! Me!!"

Ruidio was wandering around Buggy's pirate ship, patting this and stamping on that as he tried to figure out how to catch the rats, when Nami suddenly ran screaming down the cabin passageway. Then she came scrambling back and rushed toward Ruidio, tears streaming down her face.

Thump, thump...

A strange set of footsteps approached along the passageway, sounding heavy and yet somehow light.

"Wah..."

A huge lion with its mane bristling poked its head in, trying to follow Nami into the cabin. When it looked up and saw Ruidio, the green glow of hunger immediately cleared from its eyes.

Nami hid behind Ruidio and cried, "How did we forget about it?!"

This was the lion kept by the beast tamer, the vice captain of the Buggy Pirates. It had been captured along with the others, but somehow it had escaped and been playing hide-and-seek aboard the ship.

Ruidio walked over with a smile. "How did I forget about you?!"

The big lion turned and tried to run, but Ruidio bore down on it like a mountain. The mighty king of beasts was pinned helplessly by a human's strength. The human locked an arm around its neck, choking it until its eyes nearly bulged out, and it kept pawing at the floor, begging for mercy.

Ruidio suddenly asked, "Can you catch rats?"

"It's a lion..." Nami shook her head.

"You're a lion!" Nami was speechless.

In less than an hour, the big lion had wiped out every rat inside and outside the two ships. It followed them ashore and crouched by Ruidio's leg, wagging its tail like a lapdog.

Ruidio reached out, and the two huge ships before them silently vanished one after the other... Nami had lost count of how many times she'd been stunned.

She had long known that Ruidio had some kind of ability, but making two enormous pirate ships disappear into thin air was a bit much, wasn't it?

[Slot 1: Buggy's pirate ship]

[Slot 2: Tulip Pirates' ship]

[Slot 3: (empty)]

When combining three things into one, the result was purely a matter of luck.

But when combining two things into one, he could put more or less essence into slot 3 as he saw fit...

From his experience so far, there didn't seem to be any essential difference between combining two things and combining three; the result was still down to probability. But Ruidio always had a superstitious feeling that putting a little essence into the empty slot 3 would improve the quality of the result...

So Ruidio tossed in 15 essence and began the synthesis.

Rumble...

A pink pirate ship suddenly appeared out of thin air on the empty sea, sending waves rolling over Nami's ankles on the beach.

The ship's size was somewhere between Buggy's pirate ship and the Tulip Pirates' ship.

"Haha, the color's lovely," Nami said with a smile.

Ruidio was speechless, but there was nothing he could do. He couldn't control how the synthesis turned out.

He tossed the pink ship into the three-in-one system and checked its valuation: 50,000 essence in total.

It wasn't worth as much as Buggy's original ship, which had been valued at 70,000, but it was still a large pirate ship in the same class. It wasn't too much of a loss.