Fear of Imagination

Facing the pirates around him, their eyes gleaming with menace, the warrior remained remarkably calm, without the slightest hint of panic.

He walked straight toward the campfire, stopped less than three meters from Harlett, and calmly bowed. "Greetings, Captain Bloodhand. I have come on behalf of my master to negotiate with you."

Clearly, he was none other than the soldier Raymond had summoned.

At this moment, this summoned creature, possessed of intelligence and thought no different from an ordinary person's, had regained his weapons and chainmail. An indescribable confidence radiated from him.

That confidence did not stem from his personal strength, but from his summoner—the Planeswalker Raymond, who lurked in the shadows and controlled everything.

"Negotiate? Who is your master? What makes him think he is qualified to negotiate with me?" Harlett asked with a sneer.

If the mysterious disappearance of twenty-five of his men had not made him wary, he would have already ordered this overconfident fool hacked into mincemeat.

The soldier noticed the cold cruelty and brutality in the pirate captain's eyes and smiled. "Since my master dared send me here alone to negotiate, he naturally prepared sufficient bargaining chips. For instance, the seafood stew you ate a few hours ago was laced with a deadly poison called ricin. And that poison is about to take effect."

Before he had even finished speaking!

Several human pirates with relatively weaker constitutions clutched their stomachs and collapsed to the ground.

The excruciating pain curled them into balls like boiled prawns.

The Half-Orcs and Hobgoblins followed close behind, dropping to the ground and vomiting without stop.

Dark red clots of blood could be clearly seen in nearly every pool of vomit.

As for the Trolls, who had the strongest constitutions, they had also eaten the most and ingested the greatest amount of poison.

When the poison took effect, it instantly triggered convulsions and severe shock. They lay flat on their backs, defecating and urinating uncontrollably as vomit rapidly blocked their esophagi and windpipes.

Before their organs could even fail, they had already suffocated to death.

In just a few minutes, more than two hundred pirates began succumbing to the poison one after another. Only the small group of eight Hobgoblins and two Trolls who had just returned remained unaffected.

That was because they had not had time to eat the stew containing high-purity ricin before being sent out on their mission.

At that moment, the entire beach was filled with anguished cries.

The stench of the poisoned men's excrement mingled with the sour reek of vomit, painting a scene straight out of hell.

Seeing the poisoned pirates writhing in agony around him, Bernard, still a captive, staggered back in fright.

He could hardly believe that he had just been one step away from death.

If he had carelessly taken even a sip of the cold stew, he would likely have died slowly in unbearable agony alongside the pirates a few hours later.

Waukeen, goddess of wealth, bless me!

The young merchant silently prayed to the deity he worshipped.

As for "Bloodhand" Harlett, who had witnessed it all firsthand, his face had already turned ashen, his eyes brimming with rage and murderous intent.

In the past, he had always been the one to toy with others in the palm of his hand. This was the first time he had been set up by someone else.

He did not even know who had plotted against him.

The soldier completely ignored the pirate captain's nearly boiling fury and continued pressing him. "Exactly four hours! The onset was precisely as my master predicted. Now it is your turn to choose, Captain Bloodhand. Will you negotiate, or will you watch your men die bit by bit under the torture of poison?"

In an instant!

The pirates who had not yet been wracked unconscious by pain all cast pleading looks at their captain.

Clearly, they did not want to die. They wanted Harlett to agree to the other side's demands in exchange for an antidote that would let them live.

"Are you not afraid that I will kill you?" Harlett abruptly drew his scimitar and held it against the soldier's neck.

The sharp blade even cut through the latter's skin. Dark red blood flowed down his neck, staining his chainmail.

Yet the soldier still showed not the slightest fear. With a blank expression, he merely asked, "Is that your choice? If so, then kill me at once. My master will take it as a declaration of war."

"You are not afraid of death?"

Harlett finally realized that something was wrong.

He had seen countless people in his life. Even paladins of unwavering resolve, willing to sacrifice themselves for righteous causes and to save the innocent, showed at least some fear of death before they died.

That was the instinct of all intelligent beings, something almost impossible to overcome.

Yet in the eyes of this human warrior, who looked only twenty-six or twenty-seven, there was truly not the slightest trace of fear. It was as though death were as ordinary as breathing.

"To die for my master is my honor. It is also the purpose of my existence."

As he spoke, the soldier wore an incomparably earnest, devout, and solemn expression.

He was neither lying nor deceiving Harlett. He was speaking the true thoughts in his heart.

But it was precisely this absolute fearlessness in the face of death and spirit of self-sacrifice that made Harlett's scalp tingle for the first time.

On Faerun, organizations capable of making their subordinates willingly die for them were generally either paladins and priests of good-aligned deities, or brainwashed demon worshippers.

Of course, it could also be the result of magic or Mind Control.

No matter what, it pointed to one extremely terrifying possibility.

The "master" the other man spoke of was very likely a powerful, sinister, and cunning spellcaster.

For a moment, the infamous Captain Bloodhand imagined an evil wizard in his forties or fifties, tall and thin, with cold, shadowy eyes.

He even suspected that the wizard had been hired by one of his enemies to cause him trouble.

After all, Harlett had spent years pillaging passing merchant ships across the seas without restraint. By exploiting human greed and weakness, he had steadily expanded his intelligence network and influence, earning the resentment of many.

Setting aside the organizations and temples of good-aligned factions, even merchants from Amn had repeatedly offered money to hire adventurers to kill him.

If he had not established certain "business" dealings with the Shadow Thieves and received advance warning before every attempted purge, he would have died countless times already.

Beyond that, other pirate captains also saw Harlett as a thorn in their sides and wanted nothing more than to get rid of him.

As the saying went, there was no hatred more naked than that between rivals.

No one wanted to see a pirate king rise in the Sea of Swords.

Unless...

That person was themselves.

"What does your master want from me?"

After a long silence, Harlett finally sheathed his scimitar, deciding to resolve the immediate crisis first.

Not that he cared in the slightest whether his pirate subordinates lived or died.

But if all two hundred of them suddenly died at once, then when he returned and was spotted by other pirate ships in the Nelanther Isles, they would immediately swarm him.

In these waters, filled with chaos, violence, and blood, only a strong force could compel those vicious fellow pirates to remain calm and rational.

Pirates had always spoken only through strength.

One band of pirates robbing another was nothing new. It had always been that way, from ancient times to the present.