Late at night, on the shipping route from Toscarter Island to Blue Mountain Island, where Bayam lay, a passenger ship powered by both steam and sails belched black smoke from its funnel, racing along at a speed that nearly pushed its boilers to the point of exploding.
Close behind it followed a black sailing ship nearly two hundred meters long, its bow and stern rising high like a crescent moon sailing across the sea. The black mist it emitted reached the passenger ship first, enveloping it like an invisible giant hand.
This was the Death Announcer, the flagship of Agalito, the King of Immortality—a ship every vessel at sea dreaded encountering!
It carried more than a hundred cannons along its sides. Fierce-looking pirates loaded ammunition and took aim as its enormous sails, emblazoned with black tombstones, billowed in the wind. It picked up speed, about to catch the passenger ship ahead and unleash its first volley.
Soon, the two ships drew close enough for their sailors and passengers to make out one another's expressions. One side wore terror and despair; the other, excitement and brutality.
Unlike the other Pirate Kings, especially the King of the Five Seas, who had established a rule against killing captives, Agalito, the King of Immortality, was notorious throughout the five seas for his cruelty and bloodlust. Otherwise, the passenger ship he had already caught would have abandoned resistance long ago, surrendering most of its valuables to save the lives aboard.
Suddenly, the Death Announcer's swollen sails went slack. The excited pirates stopped what they were doing, their expressions turning to bewilderment. Even the thin black mist that seemed to shroud the entire stretch of sea dispersed in an instant, revealing the crimson moon in the sky.
Then the enormous single-masted sailing ship swiftly turned its