The Blackblade Pirates had many enemies.
But most of those enemies would not go out of their way to pursue the Blackblade Pirates without sufficient profit.
After Hawkins dealt with Jordas, captured Julian, and killed Joyce, the nobles of every island had all turned their eyes toward the Black Knife.
They suspected that Hawkins possessed a Cursed Relic, and one of considerable power at that.
If a pirate force possessed a Cursed Relic, then the nobles would inevitably suffer the greatest losses.
Thus, exterminating this pirate force had become the nobles' most pressing priority.
The fat man's Meteor Hammer truly fell like a meteor from the heavens.
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, and he was blasted into the ground along with the hammer. The terrifying shockwave directly blew away the nearby trees.
Hawkins retreated dozens of steps. Once the dust settled, he hurried forward and asked, "Mark, are you alright?"
"Cough, cough. Captain, I think I'm not!" Mark answered with difficulty.
Hawkins hurriedly controlled his hair to grow, rapidly extending it into the great crater. Before his hair could touch Mark, the Meteor Hammer pressing down on him suddenly flew up and sped back toward the fat man.
By the time Hawkins wrapped his hair around Mark 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 Curse Casters were 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 full control of Mark's body.
Just as his severed arm could grow back, Mark's injuries were not actually difficult to heal. They merely required a little time.
Fortunately, the Meteor Hammer carried intense heat. All of Mark's wounds had been scorched shut, so he had not suffered severe blood loss or anything of the sort. Otherwise, he likely would not have held on 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 again.
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 around 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 and more scientifically optimized than a cheetah's. 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 sky and rapidly expanded to engulf the entire forest.
Countless trees were blasted into the air by the terrifying flames, rapidly turning to charcoal in midair. Animals too slow to escape died one after another in the blaze, until not even ashes remained.
The entire island shook wildly. 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. Looking back at the pillar of fire nearly five hundred meters high, he realized that he had calculated wrong.
Though the result would have been the same—he could not have caught the Meteor Hammer—in his calculations, the Meteor Hammer had not been nearly this powerful.
At last, he understood why Mark had been so badly injured. The Meteor Hammer's attack was equivalent to nearly 8,000 tons of TNT, and from certain details when Mark caught it, Hawkins could infer that Mark had absorbed at least ninety percent of its power.
"I made a mistake. I used old knowledge to judge an unfamiliar object in an unfamiliar world. If I had judged that I could withstand that attack, the consequences might have been more than merely losing my body."
As Hawkins watched the fire pillar gradually dissipate, he silently reflected.
At that moment, Mark coughed and awoke from his unconsciousness. When he opened his eyes and saw Hawkins, he asked in surprise, "Captain, we're not dead?"
Before he had passed out in the crater, he had sensed the Meteor Hammer leave. His heart had immediately skipped a beat, and he had reached the same conclusion as Hawkins: there was definitely a second wave of attacks. He did not believe Hawkins could withstand the Meteor Hammer's strike, so in the instant before he lost consciousness, he had mourned that he was surely dead.
"I think we're probably not," Hawkins said with a smile.
Only then did Mark notice that his arm had mostly healed, while the hole smashed through his chest had also scabbed over. He looked at Hawkins in astonishment and asked, "Captain, who attacked us?"
The original Hawkins had had so many enemies. Though he suspected it might once again be someone Jabus had sent, he could not be completely certain.
At that moment, the Meteor Hammer flew out of the forest ruins again and sped toward the distant sea.
"Captain, we need to leave now. That Meteor Hammer is definitely a Fierce-Tier Relic, and it's already infinitely close to Death-Tier," Mark said nervously as he caught sight of it from the corner of his eye.
Hawkins glanced at the Meteor Hammer and asked curiously, "Didn't they say Curse Casters have Curseguard, and as long as the other side has no Curse Power, they can't break through their defenses at all?"
"I'm not sure either, but that Meteor Hammer really did hurt me. This is the first time," Mark answered after coughing.
Hawkins had merely asked casually. He had never believed that a Curse Caster's Curseguard was absolutely invincible.
Absolute invincibility might exist, but it would not belong to Curse Casters, who were riddled with weaknesses. Hawkins had many ways to kill a Curse Caster; it only depended on whether he was willing to go to such great lengths.
For example, he could trap a Curse Caster through hypnosis or optical illusions. Even without attacking, the Curse Caster would starve to death on his own.
A Curse Caster was still human, in the end.
Humans needed food and air, so invincibility was never absolute.
However, from Mark's answer, Hawkins realized that the attackers likely knew of Mark's existence, and perhaps even had a Curse Caster behind them.
Precisely because they knew that Curse Casters possessed the Curseguard trait, they had sent a targeted assassin. Their purpose 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 before the Meteor Hammer could fall. This time, he stopped at the edge of a cliff.
When the Meteor Hammer fell, the earth once more shook madly. The pillar of fire rising into the sky was mixed with great amounts of steam, and a terrifying heatwave swept across the entire island.
In the hot wind, Hawkins looked toward the sea.
The germs he carried drifted with the wind, riding the breeze and spreading in every direction at astonishing speed.
On a wooden sailing ship 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 to always point toward the prey.
But if the prey moved too quickly, then if the wearer could not 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, then activated the lock again.
The fat man's Meteor Hammer had an interval between attacks. From the moment it struck its target until it returned again, it took roughly three minutes.
Those three minutes were her time to lock onto the target again.
To be honest, she was beginning to doubt whether continuing the attacks could kill Hawkins.
Hawkins moved too fast. She guessed that he possessed a Cursed Relic that could increase movement speed, because that speed had clearly exceeded the maximum a normal person could run.
"Try one last time. If it still doesn't work, 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 atop a wine barrel behind her suddenly opened his eyes. Looking at the air ahead, he said, "Be 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, there were too many germs riding the wind. The germs Hawkins had modified were mixed among ordinary germs, making them impossible to identify.
Especially since those germs carried neither curses nor Curse Power, the long-haired man's ability naturally could not pick them out from countless other 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, her breathing rapidly turning fast and difficult.
The others all rose to their feet, but before they could take any countermeasures, they too collapsed one after another.
"Have we... been... poisoned?" one bald woman asked with difficulty.
But by then, no one could answer her question. Ten minutes later, everyone aboard that wooden sailing ship had become corpses.