Refitting the Black Blade

At night, a bat landed in House Town.

It hung upside down from a clothesline on the second floor of a wooden house, its eyes fixed on the Black Knife in the distance.

Since Julian had been unconscious for some time, Conrad had no choice but to send a bat to gather information.

These ordinary bats had vision far inferior to Julian's, but Conrad possessed the ability to temporarily enhance a bat's five senses. At this moment, this bat could be called a clairvoyant eye that saw a thousand miles.

Conrad had no desire to offend Hawkins. After all, there was no deep-seated blood feud between him and Hawkins.

Before Hawkins harmed his interests, he did not intend to make the first move against him.

"No one? There's the scent of blood!"

What the bat saw was quickly transmitted to Conrad's eyes on Bottle Island.

As a vampire, Conrad was extremely sensitive to blood and could accurately determine its freshness.

There was fresh blood aboard the Black Knife, no more than twenty-four hours old. In other words, someone had been injured.

Then he discovered fresh blood atop another building. The bat flew to the roof to inspect it, followed the blood trail to a storage room, and found Arthur's blood there as well.

Gradually, Conrad reconstructed the scene in his mind.

"So that's how it was."

After discovering the wine barrel shattered by a blowdart tube, Conrad finally understood what had happened.

Still, he was curious. Who had put a bounty on Hawkins? And to hire an assassin with a Cursed Relic, the price the other party had paid could not have been small.

Was it Dempsey, or Aldrich?

Compared to him, Liam, and Mallory, Hawkins was undoubtedly a greater threat to Dempsey and Aldrich.

For a long time in the past, Hawkins had only operated in the Pras Sea and the Sylvia Sea, so his conflicts with Conrad and the others had not been severe.

"But where did the Son of Pirates go? Did he learn that there was a bounty on him, abandon the ship, and flee?"

He had not fed for a long time. His craving for blood was nearly driving him mad, and only sleep allowed him to retain his sanity. It was not until he caught the scent of an unfamiliar bat and an unfamiliar person that he awoke from his slumber.

Conrad's gaze fell on Julian. He did not want Julian to die, because Julian was an excellent pair of eyes. As long as Julian became a bat, he could gather more intelligence through him.

In an instant, he used his ability to control the bat's transformation. It gradually changed from a bat into a tiny winged person.

"Julian, perhaps you don't know this, but Jabus has already gone mad," Conrad said faintly as he looked at Julian.

Julian looked at Conrad and narrowed his eyes. "What do you want me to do?"

"Pledge yourself to Hawkins!" Conrad answered.

Only if Julian pledged himself to Hawkins could he obtain intelligence steadily. Hawkins's every move would be unable to escape his eyes.

To be honest, Conrad had raised his assessment of Hawkins's danger time and again. From the scattered clues in House Town, he could determine that Hawkins was far more terrifying than he had known. He needed more intelligence and more preparation.

Those preparations might not necessarily be needed, but if Hawkins chose to become his enemy, he would kill Hawkins with thunderous force.

Julian said hoarsely, "Hawkins won't trust me."

"Could it be... Hawkins truly possesses the power to see through people's hearts?" Conrad asked with great interest.

If that were the case, Julian truly could not infiltrate Hawkins's side. But Conrad did not intend to give up on Julian. After all, Julian was his most natural pair of eyes. As long as he lived, he had value.

Julian said seriously, "What makes Hawkins most terrifying is not only his unfathomable strength, but also his inscrutable thoughts!"

"So that's how it is. He really is a terrifying person. Then forget that suggestion," Conrad said decisively.

The bat slowly returned to its original form and hung upside down right beside Julian. Julian also sensed that something was wrong and wisely closed his eyes.

The red liquid crawled onto the ship, gradually taking human form.

"Where are they?"

The humanoid swept his gaze around and found not even a patrolman on deck. Was this really a pirate ship?

Under normal circumstances, there would definitely be people patrolling a pirate ship. There would even be combatants keeping watch atop the crow's nest, ensuring enemies could not quietly sneak aboard.

Yet the Black Knife was completely deserted. Let alone patrolmen, there was not even a single sailor.

The humanoid entered the cabin and found it equally empty. In a fit of rage, he directly transformed into a liquid giant within the cabin and burst the Black Knife apart.

"Did some other bastard beat me to it? Damn it!"

After venting his fury, he smashed through the bottom of the ship and entered the seawater, cursing inwardly.

With its hull smashed through, seawater immediately flooded into the cabin, and the entire ship slowly sank beneath the waves.

Conrad used his claws to untie the ropes binding Julian and said flatly, "You're free!"

After saying that, he flew away with aloof indifference. Julian had wanted to say something, but upon seeing this, he immediately gave up.

Julian had not fed for a long time, so his most urgent task was to find a target and drink blood. He spread his wings and swiftly flew away, heading in the exact opposite direction from Conrad. Yet that was exactly what Conrad wanted.

At noon the next day, Hawkins and Mark emerged from Eternal Space.

"Captain, where's the Black Knife?" Mark asked, his eyes wide as he looked at Hawkins.

Hawkins answered with a dark expression, "Under our feet!"

"Someone sank our ship?" Mark immediately grasped the key point and grew furious.

Hawkins swam to shore and twitched his nose. Every lingering scent left by animals the previous night passed through his mind, until he found the scent he needed.

"Julian didn't die. Instead, he flew away. That means the person who scuttled the Black Knife was one of Jabus's old subordinates?"

Hawkins was somewhat angry. Had he known keeping Julian alive would lead to this, he should have killed Julian from the start.

The truth was, he had not spared Julian out of kindness. He had mainly wanted to see how tenacious the life force of an animal-transformer like Julian was.

Simply put, he wanted to observe how long Julian could go hungry before dying.

He had just never expected Julian to cause the Black Knife to be sunk instead.

"No. The Black Knife can still be salvaged!"

After turning it over and over in his mind, Hawkins ultimately decided to keep using the Black Knife.

His body was Hawkins's body. If he gave up the Black Knife, the game would lose its fun.

After making his decision, he jumped back into the sea. Mark had only just climbed out of the water when he saw Hawkins leap in and hurriedly asked, "Captain?"

"Wait here!" Hawkins left behind those words before rapidly diving down.

The Black Knife lay crookedly on the seafloor, with many fish swimming in and out of its cabin.

Hawkins landed on the deck, then quickly entered the cabin. Before long, he found the reason the Black Knife had sunk.

A large hole nearly one and a half meters across had been punched through the bottom of the ship. It would have been stranger if it had not sunk.

Hawkins examined the hole and found that it was rather irregular, as though it had been punched through by a fist. He looked up at the ceiling, then reached a conclusion.

There had been a creature. It should originally have been small, but it expanded at the spot where he now stood, then punched through the ship's bottom and finally left.

In other words, it was a monster that could grow large or small and possessed extraordinary aquatic ability!

Once the ship's bottom had been punched through, the hull would inevitably fill with water. Escaping through that hole would be as difficult as fleeing the center of a whirlpool. Therefore, the other party was immensely strong and had powerful underwater mobility—enough power to break free from the whirlpool.

Hawkins emerged through the large hole and looked around, but found no trace of the other party's escape.

For the time being, he gave up searching for the enemy and instead carefully examined the Black Knife. Finally, he slowly approached the side of the ship and plucked several barnacles from the planks.

Barnacles could be called ship-killers. In the past, Hawkins had needed to expend tremendous effort clearing barnacles from the hull.

But now Hawkins felt he could make use of waste. Strands of his hair swiftly pierced into the barnacles one by one, and he began modifying them.

In truth, he had long had the idea of modifying the Black Knife.

Now that the Black Knife had been scuttled, there was no time like the present.

After modifying the barnacles one by one, Hawkins directly placed them onto the hull. Then he found plenty of seaweed and began modifying that as well.

Compared to altering his own DNA, modifying other organisms was much easier. Hawkins did not need to worry about their genes collapsing at all. Even if an individual's genes collapsed, he could simply find several similar ones and start over.

Before long, the seaweed had also been modified. He implanted it into the bottom of the Black Knife, then swiftly floated to the surface.

In fact, he had already remained underwater for over an hour.

He swam to shore, where Mark handed him a towel and asked, "Captain, do you have that internal circulation organ in your body?"

"Otherwise, wouldn't I have drowned after staying underwater for so long?" Hawkins replied carelessly as he wiped the droplets from his body.

Mark said seriously, "Captain, can you send me back to Eternal Space?"

"What's wrong?" Hawkins turned to look at him.

With a solemn expression, Mark said, "I want to continue cleaning the toilets!"

"Wait a little longer!" Hawkins refused, while looking out toward the sea.

Mark wanted to ask why, but soon discovered a large number of bubbles rising from the water. His eyes widened as he thought of an unbelievable possibility.

Sure enough, in the next moment, an enormous black shadow emerged from the sea. Then the mast stabbed rapidly out of the water, and the Black Knife rose from beneath the waves!