Finding the Target, Naval Battle

"Hahaha... After so many days, we finally ran into a merchant ship. Oh? It even has a warship escort. Boys, we've got work! Get your asses up, raise the sails, and ram them."

After sailing for a full two months without seeing so much as a hair, Old Jack sat bored at the bow, using Mage's Eye to watch the sea and make sure they did not sail into a storm. As first mate, that was part of his duty.

He did not spot any storms, but he saw two tiny black dots in the distance. After adjusting Mage's Eye's focus, he quickly confirmed that they were a merchant ship and an escorting warship.

They looked like ships from the Kingdom of the Netherlands, but did that make any difference to Jack? No. He had nearly gone mad from boredom, so he did not care what country the warship belonged to. In any case, it could never win against the Undead.

"What? What? We finally found a target?"

Higgs was even more excited than him. Unlike Old Jack, who had possessed extraordinary power before and had already been a Mage Apprentice for some time, Higgs had only just gained his power and desperately needed to experience his own strength.

Especially after putting to sea, he had also received the latest version of the Dark Forge Meditation. He had been eager to find something to burn as fuel and see whether it was really as miraculous as Old Jack claimed.

He had long coveted Old Jack's ability to control corpses and skeletons, but his spiritual power was insufficient. He simply could not cast Zombie Reanimation.

As for Skeleton Resurrection, he was still grinding through basic occult knowledge. It would take at least a month or two before he could finish learning those fundamentals.

Although Higgs and Old Jack were both test subjects, Yang Mu had not simply given them a meditation method and left them alone. He had also provided them with a vast amount of occult knowledge and spell models appropriate to their respective levels.

He was essentially training them as genuine Mage Apprentices. After all, he wanted to establish a new path for Mages, and mass-producing new Furnace Mages was one of his experimental goals.

When Jack used Flame of Annihilation to burn fuel and increase his strength, Yang Mu had already felt the power being transmitted to him. Though it was not much, the feeling of gaining something without working for it was wonderful.

The amount was small only because there were too few Furnace Mages. Once the Dark Forge Meditation was perfected and spread around, would there still be too little power?

After learning Skeleton Resurrection, Jack learned another new spell: Bone Shield. It was the most basic defensive spell of a Necromancer's bone school, summoning two shields to float beside him and block attacks.

He could also continuously control them with spiritual power, moving them anywhere he wanted as long as they remained within three meters of his body.

After casting it for the first time, Jack had already developed other uses for it. A range of three meters around the body might not amount to much on land, but on a ship, it was already a considerable area.

The two shields could serve entirely as weapons. He could control them with spiritual power and ram people. While his spiritual power was not enough to kill someone with a shield bash, it was more than enough to knock them down in battle.

Just imagine it: in the middle of a fight, an enemy rushed toward him, only to suddenly be knocked down by a Bone Shield. Meanwhile, he held two huge pirate cutlasses. How could that enemy possibly survive?

At Jack and Higgs's call, the crew grabbed their weapons, worked the sails, adjusted the Undead's direction, and headed straight for the distant warship.

As the Undead drew near, the warship's crew also noticed them. Seeing the skull flag flying high above its bow, the cannons along the warship's sides fired in unison.

There was no need to mention their accuracy. They were smoothbore cannons firing solid shot, so accuracy was practically nonexistent. The few cannonballs that seemed about to hit the Undead were directly swatted away by its tentacles.

One slipped through, but before it could land on the deck, a white bone shield blocked it. Cannonballs in this era did not explode. While shattering the Bone Shield, the cannonball also exhausted its own kinetic energy, and when it fell onto the deck, it caused no damage at all.

"Huff, huff, huff... Hahahaha..."

Seeing this, Jack panted heavily and laughed wildly. What kind of power was this? Even cannonballs could not penetrate it. Who could possibly be his opponent now? Who could kill him?

It was not just him. The other crewmen's eyes turned red with envy. They wanted such power too.

Higgs's eyes were red as well. Unlike the others, he already possessed similar power; it just was not strong enough yet.

Burn, burn, burn! As long as I burn enough strong people, I'll have power like this too. What else is there to say?

As the Undead's ram pierced into the warship's hull, eight tentacles tore every cannon from its gunports and swallowed them into its belly.

Higgs transformed into a Fishman and charged onto the enemy warship first, howling all the way.

Jack followed close behind with dozens of undead, and only then did the Undead's crew board the ship.

With undead that did not fear flintlock guns leading the way, they naturally would not risk their own lives. They were not the first mate or second mate, completely unafraid of flintlocks.

Sure enough, the moment Higgs boarded, dozens of flintlock guns focused their fire on him. Lead balls struck his scaled armor, leaving dent after dent. Only a very few managed to break through his weaker scales.

Seeing that a second volley was about to come, he grabbed a wooden barrel beside him and hurled it over.

The naval soldiers preparing to rotate fire were immediately knocked sprawling. Higgs did not stop, throwing whatever he could get his hands on as he charged toward the crowd.

By the time Jack boarded with the undead, Higgs had already plunged into the crowd and begun a massacre.

Flintlock guns were extremely slow to reload, and the flintlocks of this era were still muzzle-loading weapons, not even breech-loaders. Faced with Higgs already charging into their ranks, they could only abandon their guns, draw their sabers, and fight him in close combat.

But against scales that even bullets could not easily shatter, what use were their swords and blades?

Their blades struck the scales, producing nothing but showers of sparks.

Higgs was like a heavily armored knight in full plate charging into the crowd—except a heavily armored knight with almost no burden at all, whose strength, speed, and reflexes surpassed human limits in every way.

Against such a monster, even well-trained naval soldiers could only be slaughtered.

Just as Higgs was killing with relish, several vicious dogs as tall as men rushed out of the cabin and knocked him down. One bit into his arm, its sharp teeth easily tearing through his scales.

Just as one of the vicious dogs was about to bite through his throat, Jack arrived. His entire body glowed red as he kicked the dog flying, then slashed the remaining dogs with the cutlass in his hand.

The vicious dogs yelped in pain, released Higgs, and pounced at Jack.

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