The Gale Gives Chase

The journey back was exceptionally calm. This was already the seventh day of their return voyage. The Undead could remember sea routes, so they followed the path they had taken on the way there without worrying about getting lost.

Jack and the other crew members found nothing strange about Yang Mu staying inside the captain's cabin for seven days. Such things were common aboard the Undead.

The captain's strength meant he did not need to constantly show himself like an ordinary pirate to maintain control over the Undead.

As long as he remained alive, he would forever be the captain of the Undead. It was not merely a matter of the crew recognizing him—the Undead acknowledged only this master. If its captain disappeared, no one else would ever be able to board the Undead again.

Jack had replenished the undead under his command with the corpses from the lower deck. As for Higgs, he was still chewing through the fundamentals, clutching a book every day like a proper bookworm.

Strangely enough, the pirates aboard the Undead rarely played cards, gambled, or drank themselves stupid. It was not that they did not do those things, but they did not make them their whole lives. Most of their time was spent reading.

Yes, reading. A bunch of pirates who read whenever they had a spare moment and even discussed what they read with one another. If not for their vicious faces, their scars, and their pirate garb, anyone unaware of the truth might have mistaken them for students from some school.

The reason was naturally Higgs's experience: entering a treasure mountain only to leave empty-handed.

He had clearly gained the mental strength needed for spellcasting by burning corpses, yet he could not raise hordes of Walking Corpses and skeletons like Jack, nor could he casually cast Bone Shield to see whether he could develop new uses for it.

His mental strength was enough to cast Skeleton Resurrection once. Though he could only raise one or two skeletons, it would still have been a novel experience.

The problem was that he could not cast it. To become a mage, learning was the eternal foundation, and knowledge the ultimate pursuit.

So, for the sake of power—so that once the captain bestowed power upon them, they could quickly get started and gain strength as soon as possible—they began studying.

The facts proved that, given enough temptation, there was nothing people would not do, including pirates cramming advanced mathematics.

Since Yang Mu did not forbid them from reading some of the books he had written, these pirates had genuinely learned a thing or two through Jack's instruction and their own studies. As long as they made up for their mental strength through the Dark Forge Meditation, they might truly be able to walk the path of mages.

The Dark Forge Meditation had nearly flattened the threshold to becoming a mage. Anyone who practiced it could at least become a low-level Apprentice, and those with exceptional learning ability might go even further.

Just as the pirates sat on the deck reading, Jack suddenly rose to his feet.

"Hey, hey, you little brats. Quiet study time is over. Someone's caught up with us."

Jack clapped his hands to draw everyone's attention. At his words, they all put down their books and picked up their cutlasses again. The calm vanished from their faces, replaced by a pirate's cruelty.

"Boss Jack, who is it? We're not even on a sea route. How could we run into another ship? We didn't see a damn thing for two months on the way here."

A pirate grabbed a rope and swung over to Old Jack. Compared to a formal title like first mate, they preferred calling Jack Boss Jack.

"I hope you can still laugh in a moment. It's the fastest ship in the Kingdom of the Netherlands—the Gale."

"Damn it, you mean one of the three fastest ships on the sea, the Gale?"

The crewman who had looked so relaxed moments ago immediately went pale.

Smack. He was slapped across the head.

"What are you afraid of? Do you think you're still the useless wretch you used to be? Have you forgotten what ship you're on? It's just a royal warship. If they dare get close, we'll wipe them out."

Jack spoke arrogantly, but the moment his words fell, cannons boomed in the distance. Several shells were already flying toward the Undead.

Though the Undead swatted the shells away with its tentacles, the Gale was rapidly closing in from behind and firing without pause.

To the horrified eyes of everyone aboard the Undead, the Gale closed the distance at a terrifying speed and came alongside them.

Jack and the others nearly had their jaws drop. They knew the Gale was fast, but they had never imagined it could be this fast. Even as a steam-and-sail hybrid, it should not have been able to move at such speed.

Supernatural power had to be involved.

Dense cannon fire erupted beside the Undead. The Gale was no small vessel, stretching over a hundred meters long, and it carried sixty-four cannons along with a large supply of shells.

Two tiers of gunports lined each side, with sixteen cannons on each tier. Every volley sent thirty-two shells flying.

Even with tentacles growing from its hull, the Undead could not block so many shells in such a short time. For the first time, it endured cannon fire, letting out a deep, furious groan.

It tried to hook the Gale beside it with its tentacles, but the Gale instantly pulled away, keeping out of their reach while continuing to fire shells into the Undead's hull.

Though the Undead had devoured many ships and even swallowed a sea monster, making its hull exceptionally tough, it was still nowhere near strong enough to withstand close-range cannon fire.

The Gale was like a flirt who kept it dangling—never close enough for the Undead to grab, never far enough to escape, all while constantly batting its lashes at it. Those lashes were cannonballs.

The Undead could only rage helplessly, unable to do anything to its opponent. Jack, who had been so arrogant moments ago, was now scrambling about with his head covered, holding up Bone Shield as he carefully observed the situation through Mage's Eye.

Seeing that it could not catch up, the Undead finally seemed to remember that it possessed other abilities. Black mist spread from its hull, quickly turning everything within a mile into pitch-black night.

The Gale also lost sight of the Undead. The Undead could not catch it, but was it not easy to get away, especially now that the Gale had lost visual contact?

"General, we've lost sight of the enemy. Our probing cannon fire produced no sounds of impact. The shells hit the water."

Aboard the Gale, the first mate held up an oil lamp as he spoke to a middle-aged naval major general. He was the Gale's captain, Fearless Wind, Goss Roderick.

A major general of special standing in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, he answered to no one but the king despite holding only the rank of major general. He had also served as captain of the Gale for over twenty years.

Half of the Gale's reputation came from him. Though the Gale itself was already a fast ship, its construction had included a material known as Gale Sand, granting it speed far beyond that of ordinary vessels.

But it had never been this absurdly fast.

Undead