Unexpected "Visitor"

In the forest, several fish-men of varying skin colors carefully made their way along the mountainside. The hot, humid environment made their skin itch, leaving them uncomfortable all over.

Splash...!

One of them finally couldn't bear it anymore. He unscrewed his canteen and poured the water over his head.

"Roar! That feels good!"

"You'd better use less. We're all holding back too!"

His companion hurriedly snatched away the canteen, shook it beside his ear, and sighed in relief.

Thankfully, half of it remained.

As fish-men, being forced into these deep mountains and old forests, where there were barely even a few streams, without carrying any water would have felt worse than killing them.

Wasn't the reason Dragon chose to settle in Cocoyasi Village because of the sturdy sandy soil near the sea?

After putting away the canteen, he turned to glare viciously at the villager leading the way.

"Hey, human! How much farther?"

"It... it's just ahead."

The villager was sallow and skinny, and he shuddered at the question. Before these fish-men with sharp teeth and claws, he was as weak as an infant, utterly incapable of resisting.

"Once we pass through these woods, we'll see the beach."

"Then hurry up and lead the way. Stop dragging your feet!"

"Yes!"

The fish-men perked up and continued through the forest.

The Ghost Ship Incident had enraged Dragon. He wasn't afraid of killing people and committing evil, but he couldn't accept taking the blame for someone else—especially a human's crimes.

Dragon knew very well that there were no fish-men in the East Blue besides his own.

So with one order, he had sent out these fellow fish-men who had grown idle in Arlong's Territory. No matter what methods they used, they had to find the culprit.

The fish-men had come to this village on the outskirts of Dragon's rule. Only after swaggering in, eating and drinking their fill, had they begun asking questions.

They had assumed the trip would be pointless, but someone had actually noticed something strange.

A few days earlier, during a torrential downpour, a villager gathering herbs in the mountains had become trapped there. Staying in the deep mountains at night was no different from courting death. There were countless wild beasts in the mountains, and even if the rain masked his scent, he still might not have been safe.

So he had headed toward the rocky area behind the mountain.

There was a secluded beach there that almost no one knew about except the locals. The surroundings were barren; not to mention wild beasts, there were not even plants. It could be considered quite safe.

But by the time he arrived, someone had already gotten there first.

A group of pirates had gathered on the beach for a feast. It seemed they, too, had stopped there because it was unsafe to sail during the storm.

Pirates were no good people!

Startled out of his wits, the villager had immediately fled. Driven by fear, he had actually run all the way back to the village.

After returning, he told the village chief what had happened. A group of strong young men immediately set off and sneaked back to the beach to investigate, only to discover in astonishment that the pirates were gone!

The bonfire was still warm, proving that he had not lied.

But strangely... the pirate ship had remained.

How could pirates possibly abandon their ship?

That was completely un-pirate-like!!

The surroundings were deathly silent.

The villagers observed cautiously for a long time before finally gathering the courage to investigate the ship.

There was still no one aboard.

Only the messy, greasy dining tables and the food that still retained some warmth proved that something had indeed held a feast on that ship before!

"A ghost ship!!"

Remembering the terrifying rumors that had spread far and wide recently, the group scrambled back to the village.

And afterward...

Even the ship had vanished.

No matter how they searched, that empty pirate ship had evaporated into thin air. They searched the entire beach but could not find a single footprint left by anyone other than themselves.

The villager returned home and fell seriously ill, becoming delirious. The villagers all said that the pirates he had seen that night had actually been ghosts, and that the ghosts had sailed away in the pirate ship.

The story sent chills down the fish-men's spines, but they had been born on Fish-Man Island and had seen grand sights before. They unanimously felt that something about this was suspicious.

Perhaps someone had deliberately created the "ghost" ship to spread fear.

They had followed the villager here to see whether they could find any clues.

Fish-men loved water and disliked land.

The group moved through the forest in silence, struggling along like deflated balls. After passing through the bushes, the view ahead suddenly opened up.

Standing on a cliff seven or eight meters above sea level, the leading fish-man, Kōbi, gazed out at the ocean with shock in his eyes.

"I never expected there to be such a natural harbor behind Klar Village! If it weren't for this search, who knows how much longer you would have kept this from us... don't you agree?"

This natural harbor had excellent terrain. Whether for fleeing out to sea or landing for an attack, it was uniquely advantageous.

"M-Milord."

The villager was startled and hurriedly knelt. "To reach this coast, you have to cross the entire mountain. The village has fished for generations and never comes here. We truly weren't trying to hide it!"

"I know. I believe you."

Kōbi grinned wickedly. "But whether Dragon believes you will depend on your luck."

With that, he exchanged a glance with his companions and leaped down.

A height of seven or eight meters was nothing to fish-men capable of enduring the pressure of the deep sea. They were natural warriors with physical abilities ordinary people could only dream of.

"Split up and search! Don't let your guard down!"

"Hahahaha, maybe those people already ran away!"

"If they really ran, Dragon will beat us to death..."

"Oh, right! Good point, hahahahaha..."

The group laughed heartily as they landed on the beach with thuds. In these waters, they simply did not believe anyone could be a match for fish-men.

"Hmm?!"

Having just risen from the sand, Kōbi's eyelids twitched. He suddenly turned his head toward the man standing at the entrance of a cave beneath the cliff to his right, stretching with one hand raised. His expression changed drastically.

"Who are you?!!!"

Faced with these unexpected visitors falling from the sky, Lowett was equally stunned. He blinked, ignored them, and turned back to ask.

"This is the nice scenery you were talking about?"

A bunch of bizarre-looking, musclebound fish-men in beach shorts?

I'd held myself in for ten days before coming out for some fresh air, just to see this?

"Roar!"

The Black Knight felt deeply wronged. When he had dug this exit, there had been no one outside.

"Forget it. The ghost ship situation has only grown more intense, and the pirates are already so terrified that they don't dare come near. It's time to go out for a stroll."

Lowett waved a hand and looked at the fish-men as though they were already dead.

"Surround them! I want them alive..."

The two of you want to surround the four of us?

Kōbi froze.

Am I the fool, or are you?

You even want to take us alive?

"So it really was you? The true culprit behind the ghost ships!"

One fish-man looked disdainful and was just about to say something when a hand suddenly stretched out from the sand and grabbed his ankle.

"What the hell is that?!"

He jumped in fright.

Why was it so... cold?

Having recovered to the level of an Elementary Mage, Lowett would not deliberately create something like Zombie Puppets, which even Spell Apprentices could make. They were the lowest-grade cannon fodder, after all, and had limited use.

But he would not deliberately reduce the number of Zombie Puppets either. To a Necromancer, the dead and the living were not much different. With this group of zombies around, his territory was livelier and had more of a human presence.

"Roar!!"

A rotten, stinking face emerged from the yellow sand. Under the fish-man's horrified gaze, it opened its mouth and bit down hard on his leg.

In an instant, blood splattered everywhere.

"Aah!!"

"Careful, the enemy is beneath the sand!"

"No, they aren't humans—they're monsters!"

Watching hundreds of zombies crawl out from beneath the sand and surround the four fish-men, Lowett stroked his chin.

"Red blood? If I remember correctly, they still retain genetic ties. So they really are biological constructs similar to beastmen?"

The beastmen of the Mage World were not those green-faced, fang-toothed creatures. They were fox-men, tiger-men, bear-men, ape-men, and so on.

They were experimental creations of the Life School, which had sought to prove that it could surpass the Necromancy School by attempting to create the birth of "life."

"If your heads were a little more distinctive, I'd suspect that some senior had come here to make a move."

Looking at these beings whose appearances were closer to "human" than "fish," the interest in Lowett's eyes deepened.

His fingers trembled slightly.

The Black Knight at his side turned into an afterimage and charged out, then vanished in an instant.

Squelch!

A fish-man had just turned around when steel cat claws pierced through his stomach and emerged from his back.

"You are... Hundred Schemes!"

The others were shocked. With Colonel Rat as their source of intelligence, Dragon had long since learned that Hundred Schemes Kuro had faked his death and escaped.

But they had never imagined that the person behind the repeated ghost ship mysteries was actually him!

The Black Knight did not answer. Instead, he vanished again, leaving deep claw wounds that exposed bone across another fish-man's chest.

"Hurry back and tell Dragon that it was the Black Cat Pirates!"

After all, he was a Pirate Captain with a bounty of sixteen million Beli. No matter how much these fish-men looked down on humans, they were not confident enough to ignore him completely. One of them opened his mouth and shouted toward the villager hiding atop the cliff.

Lowett's amused gaze shifted over.

The straight-line distance was less than twenty meters. The soul of a living person was far too conspicuous.

But...

"Pah! Go die, you monsters that are neither human nor fish!"

The villager glared with bloodshot eyes. "Even if I let you return alive, Dragon would still kill us for not telling him this coast existed."

"Bastards! Beasts! Garbage of the sea!"

"You all deserve to go to hell!!"

It had to be said that courage was truly a marvelous thing.

The roar of an insignificant nobody actually halted the frenzied slaughter on the beach for a second.

Then...

"Bastard!!"

Amid the unwilling roars of the remaining fish-men, the Undead Army surged forward and buried them beneath a mountain of corpses.

Wishing our great motherland a happy birthday!

Wishing all fellow readers a happy National Day!

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