Ian watched Azure Tide suddenly lose control of his emotions. At first, he was puzzled, then he seemed to understand something.
Thoughtful, he said no more and merely stepped away quietly, as though he had not seen the other man's lapse.
Only after withdrawing did he gather the other decision-makers in the camp again and ask about the current situation.
Thanks to Ian's strength, and with Ethan, Iron Hand, Blue Sail, and the others returning one after another, the young man swiftly took control of the entire camp.
"So three Ascenders had already died or gone missing before this?"
Ian frowned deeply. He had not expected the situation to be so severe.
The pirates had initially had four Ascenders. Their fifth and strongest, the captain, had vanished along with Sha Sha, and their whereabouts were currently unknown.
The exploration ship had five: two of Isengard's guards, two skilled fighters—Blue Sail and Azure Tide—summoned by the Platinum-Iridium Workshop, and one Wave Singer who had traveled with the Platinum-Iridium Workshop's ship.
In terms of Ascenders, the exploration ship held the advantage, but the pirates still outnumbered them.
The two sides had indeed been hostile toward one another, but both were merely underlings.
With neither the captain nor the boss present, and even the pirates' target absent, neither side had much heart for a bloody fight—especially since mutated ape-beasts and frost moths had arrived not long afterward. After a bitter battle, the pirates lost one Ascender, while the exploration team's Wave Singer, unable to call upon the sea tide, had also been focused down and killed by the frost moths.
Yet it was precisely because of that hard battle that the far larger horde of mutated beasts had been scattered. The attacks that followed were nowhere near as intense as the first wave,