Pursuit

Vitalia Island, Pix City, Flatwave Fortress.

In the middle of the night, Jabus was awakened by the butler. After two beautiful maids helped him put on his shirt, he finally looked at the butler and asked, "What is it?"

"Master, Miss Jennie dreamed that Lord Jordas died in battle," the butler reported with his head lowered.

Jabus fell silent for a moment, then asked, "Died in battle? The Pirate's Son?"

"Yes," the butler replied with a nod.

Jabus looked at the butler in confusion. "Jordas had the Ghost Bride and was skilled with the blade. I find it hard to imagine... how could a mere pirate kill Jordas?"

"Miss Jennie suspects that the Pirate's Son possesses a cursed relic. He paid the price of one arm and unleashed a beam of white light that killed Lord Jordas," the butler answered.

Cursed relics were simply unusable by ordinary people, and even using one demanded an enormous price.

Jabus narrowed his eyes slightly and said coldly, "Go summon Joyce and Julian. Tell them I have instructions for them."

"Yes." The butler immediately withdrew.

Ten minutes later, two blond men arrived under the butler's guidance.

"Jordas was killed by the Pirate's Son. The blood debt of kin cannot go unavenged. Moreover, the Pirate's Son is suspected of possessing a cursed relic. Given time, he will surely become a grave threat. The two of you will make the trip. One week from now, I want to see the Pirate's Son's head hanging in Jon Harbor!" Jabus said, looking at them.

Joyce smiled. "Uncle, I guarantee that one week from now, the Pirate's Son's head will be hanging at the harbor."

"Very good. I'll wait and see. Go!" Jabus said with a nod.

The next moment, Joyce's body transformed into countless paper men and flew away, while Julian gave a slight bow before his body scattered into countless bats.

At dawn, the storm stopped.

The sun gradually rose, and the sea was calm as a mirror, as though last night's raging waves had been nothing but an illusion.

Jon ate a bran cake with one hand while steering the Glory beside the Black Knife with the other. A gangplank was quickly set up between the two ships, and the controlled marines began transferring the Glory's supplies onto the Black Knife.

Hawkins personally boarded the Glory to study Jordas's corpse, but he found nothing unusual.

In the end, Hawkins simply gave Jordas a sea burial, keeping only a bottle of blood to study at leisure when he had the time.

"Captain, your blade!"

Hawkins returned to the Black Knife with the bottle of blood, and Jon came over, offering him a black blade as if presenting a treasure.

The Black Knife actually had two meanings. One was that the Black Knife's keel resembled a black blade and possessed tremendous offensive power in a collision. The other was this black blade in the truest sense of the name.

It had no name—or rather, its name was Black Knife. It was a weapon Hawkins's grandfather had obtained by chance while fishing at sea.

Hawkins set down the bottle and accepted the Black Knife from Jon. He drew it straight from its sheath and plunged it into the deck, then gently stroked the blade with his right hand, yet he could not make sense of what material it was made from.

He had seen countless wondrous materials in the past, but he could say with certainty that Black Knife was not any known material from the previous universe.

Black Knife was not particularly sharp. Its only advantage was its sturdiness. Three generations of the family had used it as their weapon, yet despite countless knocks and clashes, it had never been damaged.

"This world really does have all sorts of strange things."

Hawkins sighed inwardly, sheathed Black Knife, and hung it at his waist without continuing his research.

Though everyone possessed curiosity, Hawkins was never some research fanatic. If he could not understand something, he would set it aside for now. Time would naturally provide the answer.

Once all the supplies had been moved onto the Black Knife, Hawkins commanded the marines to sever the iron chains linking the two ships and sailed away aboard the Black Knife.

Jon had already changed into dry clothes. He came over and asked Hawkins, "Captain, where are we going next?"

"Little Will Island."

He turned and returned to the captain's cabin. Now that food was plentiful, it was time to properly modify this body.

This body was far too frail, and humans themselves possessed many limitations. Though he had no intention of turning it into some inhuman monster, it still needed at least a few fundamental abilities.

First, the body had to become stronger.

Although Hawkins had always despised this body for being too frail, "Hawkins's" body was actually already considered fairly strong in this world. Otherwise, he would not have been able to suppress the pirates beneath him.

But for Hawkins, this was still nowhere near enough. He needed to become even stronger.

The food transferred from the Glory was not dried provisions like jerky, but something resembling bran cakes—coarse, dry, hard, and difficult to swallow.

Hawkins washed down more than ten of them with water, then felt his stomach swell. Once he controlled his stomach to digest them rapidly, he soon felt the urge to relieve himself.

"As expected, the nobles never treated the marines as human beings."

Squatting over the toilet bucket, he silently sighed while expelling impurities.

More than ten bran cakes had entered his stomach, yet their nutrition was not even equal to the three pieces of jerky he had eaten before. No wonder none of those marines were a match for pirates in one-on-one combat.

The nutritional gap alone was simply too great.

After leaving the toilet, Hawkins gave up on eating more bran cakes. Although the things staved off hunger, what he needed now was protein and calories.

In the end, he used rope taken from the Glory to weave himself a fishing net.

Though the original Hawkins had a fisherman for a grandfather, he himself did not know how to fish. The current Hawkins, on the other hand, was no stranger to it.

Half an hour later, he and five marines hauled up the net together. The catch weighed over seven hundred pounds, and he immediately held a grilled fish feast aboard the ship, though the only real living people there were him and Jon.

At first, Jon was quite happy. After all, he had been starving badly these past days.

Previously, the Glory had pursued them relentlessly. Large and small battles never ceased, and food was scarce. Before they were even defeated by the Glory, several pirate brothers had been unable to bear the despairing atmosphere and jumped into the sea to kill themselves.

Now that he could eat meat, Jon was overwhelmed with emotion. Sure enough, as long as one struggled on, good things would eventually come.

But as time passed, he gradually sensed something was wrong. The captain had already eaten his fifth fish. The fish of the Pras Sea were huge and heavy, with each fish weighing over thirty pounds. Though pirates were generally big eaters, no one could eat five fish.

More importantly, Hawkins's abdomen showed no rise or fall at all. Instead, his entire body seemed to be changing.

Jon's heart pounded wildly. He had actually noticed earlier that something was off about Hawkins, that he was not quite the same as the captain from before.

As countless clues linked together, a guess suddenly surfaced in his mind. "Captain, could you have been possessed by an evil spirit?"

Perhaps because they had done too many guilty things, pirates often believed in all kinds of strange rumors.

Jon had heard of cursed relics before, but he had never seen one with his own eyes. After all, nobles generally had no need to act personally. Their guards were enough to solve most problems.

If he had not personally seen Jordas use a cursed relic, he would have treated it all as a story.

But since cursed relics truly existed, did that mean evil spirits and sea monsters truly existed as well?

And now, he discovered in terror that Captain Hawkins might really have been possessed by an evil spirit!

Hawkins's eyes changed from azure to gold, while his pupils gradually transformed into six-pointed stars. As he ate, he suddenly spat out several decayed teeth, and the scars on his face gradually faded away.

These changes were not especially obvious, and they had occurred slowly over several hours, but in Jon's eyes, they were still terrifying. The fear in his heart continued to deepen.

While Hawkins was in the toilet, Jon decisively lowered a lifeboat and decided to flee to the Glory, away from his captain.

Although quite some time had passed, no one was steering the Glory, so it was not actually far away. He had eaten plenty of food and was full of strength now, so rowing over would not be difficult.

"Was it really still too obvious?"

When Hawkins emerged from the toilet, he found Jon nowhere to be seen. Then he spotted Jon in the lifeboat in the distance and guessed what Jon was thinking.

However, Jon knew the original Hawkins like the back of his hand, so it truly was not ideal for him to remain.

Hawkins did not care that Jon was running away. With Jon on the ship, many things would have become easier, but if Jon wanted to leave, he would not stop him. After all, he was not a cruel man.

After consuming such a large amount of food, his left hand was slowly growing back. It would probably take a few more days before it fully regenerated.

Next would come the deep modifications. On top of greater strength, he needed an electric eel's ability to generate electricity, the ability to breathe underwater, and the ability to rapidly heal wounds.

All of that required modifications at the genetic level, and no mistakes could be made.

Humanity's first step toward civilization was mastering fire. Its second step was mastering electricity.

Whether through direct electric shocks, electromagnetic weapons, Gauss weapons, plasma weapons, or even electromagnetic radiation, electricity possessed tremendous offensive power.

There were many things in this world that Hawkins did not understand, so he would still prepare the necessary means of self-defense properly. He could not count on every enemy being controlled by his Mind Virus.

Besides, the Mind Virus might not be able to control those who possessed cursed relics. That marine officer was the best example.

For the next two days, Hawkins did nothing but eat.

His weight rose from ninety kilograms to one hundred and eighty. The muscles throughout his body became developed, and many organs that humans did not possess grew inside him.

His left hand had already regrown, but it had not yet fully matched his body. It was like a smaller arm had been transplanted onto him and still needed time to adjust.

Paper men?

Suddenly, through Jon's consciousness, he saw a great number of paper men flying through the sky.

He had not controlled Jon. He had merely placed a Mind Virus within Jon's consciousness as a precaution, and now Jon saw a great number of paper men flying toward the Glory.

Jon wanted to flee, but in the blink of an eye, countless paper men surrounded him, as though he had fallen into the eye of a white tornado.

"Where is the Pirate's Son?"

One of the paper men moved close to Jon, and Joyce's voice suddenly emerged from the paper.

Jon said in terror, "My lord, the captain... no... the Pirate's Son is aboard the Black Knife."

"Where is the Black Knife?" Joyce continued asking.

Jon answered tremblingly, "I don't know. He's been possessed by an evil spirit. I was afraid he would kill me, so I ran away. I truly don't know where he went."

"Then you're useless!" Joyce said coldly.

Jon wanted to beg for mercy, but the paper man directly sliced open his throat with its "body." He clutched his throat and made several hoarse choking sounds, then collapsed weakly as the light rapidly faded from his eyes.