Hawkins's Poison

The Blackblade Pirates had many enemies.

But most of those enemies would not specifically pursue the Blackblade Pirates unless there was enough profit to be made.

After Hawkins dealt with Jordas, captured Julian, and killed Joyce, the nobles of every island turned their eyes toward the Black Knife.

They suspected that Hawkins possessed a Cursed Relic, and one with no small amount of power at that.

If a pirate force possessed a Cursed Relic, the nobles would inevitably suffer the greatest losses.

Thus, wiping out this pirate force became the nobles' top priority.

The fat man's Meteor Hammer truly descended like a falling star.

At that moment, Mark confidently leaped into the air and caught the Meteor Hammer with his bare hand. But the next instant, his expression changed slightly as the Meteor Hammer smashed him straight into the ground, its terrifying shockwave blowing away the nearby trees.

Hawkins retreated dozens of steps. Once the dust settled, he hurried forward and asked, "Mark, are you all right?"

"Cough, cough... Captain, I think I'm not all right!" Mark answered with difficulty.

Hawkins quickly controlled his hair to grow, extending it rapidly into the huge pit. Before his hair could touch Mark, the Meteor Hammer pinning Mark down suddenly flew up and shot back toward the fat man.

By the time Hawkins wrapped Mark in his hair and pulled him up, Mark was already on his last breath. The hand he had used to catch the Meteor Hammer had suffered a comminuted fracture, and the spikes on the hammer had pierced through his chest.

"Didn't they say a Curse Caster is invincible against enemies without Curse Power?"

Hawkins was somewhat surprised, but he still immediately began treating Mark.

He inserted his hair into Mark's body, rapidly linking up with Mark's nerves and taking complete control of Mark's body.

Just as his severed arm could regrow, Mark's injuries were not actually difficult to heal. They merely needed a little time.

Fortunately, the Meteor Hammer had carried intense heat, cauterizing all of Mark's wounds. Otherwise, with symptoms like massive bleeding, he likely would not have lasted until Hawkins could treat him.

Hawkins quickly stabilized Mark's injuries, then turned helplessly to look at the sky. The Meteor Hammer came crashing down once more.

When the Meteor Hammer had flown away on its own, Hawkins had already guessed there would be a second wave of attacks.

A cheetah could maintain a stable top speed of roughly 100 km/h on flat ground. Converted, that meant it needed only 3.6 seconds to cover one hundred meters.

Hawkins was even faster. His leg muscles were more developed than a cheetah's, and more scientifically optimized. From a standing start to top speed, he needed only 0.05 seconds, and he could cover 105 meters every second.

Fifteen seconds later, the Meteor Hammer fell into the forest. Then, like a volcanic eruption, a pillar of fire shot into the heavens and rapidly expanded across the entire forest.

Countless trees were blasted into the sky by the terrifying streaming flames, quickly turning to charred carbon in midair. Animals that failed to escape died one after another in the fire, leaving behind not even ashes.

The entire island shook violently. Many houses in Puli Village collapsed outright, and the villagers fled in panic in every direction.

Hawkins stood by the sea with the unconscious Mark in his arms. He looked back at the pillar of fire, which was nearly five hundred meters high, and realized that he had calculated wrong.

Though the result was the same—he could not withstand the Meteor Hammer—in his calculations, its power should not have been this great.

He finally understood why Mark had been so badly injured. The Meteor Hammer's attack possessed the equivalent force of nearly 8,000 tons of TNT, and judging from certain details when Mark caught it, Mark had absorbed at least ninety percent of its power.

"I made a mistake. In an unfamiliar world, I used old knowledge to judge an unfamiliar object. If I had decided then that I could withstand that attack, the consequences would likely have gone beyond merely losing my body."

As Hawkins watched the pillar of fire gradually dissipate, he silently reflected on his mistake.

At that moment, Mark coughed and woke from his unconsciousness. Opening his eyes and seeing Hawkins, he asked in surprise, "Captain, we're not dead?"

Before losing consciousness in the pit, he had sensed the Meteor Hammer leaving. His heart had immediately skipped a beat, and he had reached the same conclusion as Hawkins: there had to be a second wave of attacks. He did not think Hawkins could withstand the Meteor Hammer's attack, so in the moment before he passed out, he had lamented that he was doomed.

"I think we're probably not dead," Hawkins replied with a smile.

Only then did Mark notice that his arm had mostly healed, while the place where his chest had been pierced had already scabbed over. He looked at Hawkins in astonishment and asked, "Captain, who attacked us?"

The original Hawkins had had so many enemies. Although he suspected that it might be someone Jabus had sent again, he could not be completely certain.

At that moment, the Meteor Hammer flew out from the ruins of the forest again, rapidly heading toward the distant sea.

"Captain, we need to leave now. That meteor hammer is definitely a Fierce-Tier Relic, and it is already infinitely close to Death-Tier," Mark said nervously as he caught sight of the meteor hammer from the corner of his eye.

Hawkins glanced at the Meteor Hammer and asked curiously, "Didn't they say Curse Casters have Curse Power protecting their bodies, and that as long as their opponent has no Curse Power, they cannot break through their defenses at all?"

"I don't know either, but that Meteor Hammer really did injure me. This is the first time," Mark replied after coughing once.

Hawkins had only asked casually. He had never believed that a Curse Caster's Curse Power protection was absolutely invincible.

Absolute invincibility might exist, but it did not belong to Curse Casters who were riddled with weaknesses. Hawkins had many ways to kill a Curse Caster; it was merely a question of whether he was willing to go to such lengths.

For instance, he could trap a Curse Caster through hypnosis or optical illusions. Even without attacking them, the Curse Caster would starve to death on their own.

Curse Casters were, in the end, still human.

And humans needed food and air. Therefore, invincibility was never absolute.

Yet from Mark's answer, Hawkins realized that the attacker likely knew of Mark's existence, and might even have a Curse Caster behind them.

Precisely because they knew that curse masters possessed the trait of curse power protecting their masters, they had sent an assassin specifically suited to the task. Their aim was likely to catch them off guard and cripple Mark first.

Mark had been too confident. He had probably never encountered a Cursed Relic capable of breaking a Curse Caster's defenses before, so his carelessness had cost him dearly.

At that moment, the third wave of attacks arrived.

Hawkins picked Mark up and left directly before the Meteor Hammer could fall. This time, he stopped at the edge of a cliff.

When the Meteor Hammer fell, the earth once again shook madly. The pillar of fire that rose to the heavens was mixed with a vast amount of water vapor, and a terrifying heat wave swept across the entire island.

Amid the hot wind, Hawkins looked out to sea.

The germs he carried with him drifted in the wind, riding it onward and spreading in all directions at astonishing speed.

On a wooden sailboat several kilometers away, the woman's middle finger suddenly twisted. She let out a muffled groan, then laboriously removed the ring with her other hand.

The Spider Ring's function was to lock onto prey. It guided its wearer so that they always pointed toward the prey.

But if the prey moved too quickly and the wearer failed to react in time, their finger could easily be twisted off. This was the second time Hawkins's high-speed movement had twisted one of her fingers.

Gritting her teeth, she put the ring on her ring finger and activated the lock again.

The fat man's Meteor Hammer had an interval between attacks. From the moment it struck a target until it returned again, it took roughly three minutes.

Those three minutes were the time she had to lock onto the target again.

To be honest, she was beginning to doubt whether continuing the attacks could kill Hawkins.

Hawkins moved far too quickly. She guessed that Hawkins possessed a Cursed Relic that could increase movement speed, because that speed had clearly surpassed the maximum a normal person could run.

One final attempt. If it still doesn't work, we'll launch a frontal assault!

Having made her decision, she silently waited for the Meteor Hammer to return.

At that moment, the long-haired man sitting on a wine barrel behind her suddenly opened his eyes. Looking at the air ahead, he said, "Careful. A deadly threat is approaching."

"What is it?" the woman immediately asked.

The long-haired man shook his head. "I can't see it, but my ability has issued a warning."

Although he could sense the germs approaching, too many germs were riding in on the wind. The germs Hawkins had modified were mixed among ordinary germs, making them impossible to identify.

Especially since these germs carried neither curses nor Curse Power, the long-haired man's ability naturally could not pick them out from among countless germs.

At that moment, the fat man suddenly sat down on the deck, his breathing gradually becoming rapid and labored.

"Rook?"

The woman looked at the fat man in surprise. Then her own vision began to blur as well. Before she could help the fat man up, she herself dropped onto the deck on her backside, her breathing rapidly becoming urgent and difficult.

The others all got to their feet, but before they could take any countermeasures, they too collapsed one after another.

"Have we... been... poisoned?" one Baldhead asked with difficulty.

But by then, no one could answer her question. Ten minutes later, everyone aboard that wooden sailboat had become a corpse.