Bach's fat face turned a livid purple with rage. He advanced a step, spittle nearly spraying Caroline's skirts. "A stupid pig? You madwoman, you're at death's door and still running your mouth! You actually threw your last bit of money into the sea just to hear a splash? You think a few stories dressed up to sound profound will scare us off? Look at the mess at your feet!"
"Why waste words on her?" An ally from another merchant guild behind him shouted at Duncan, the Royal Capital Bank's representative. "Mr. Duncan, begin compulsory liquidation immediately! We don't want to wait another second!"
"Liquidate her now! Enforce the contract!"
Caroline merely raised a hand, looked at Bach with something close to pity, then addressed the Royal Capital Bank's representative beside her. "Uncle Duncan, do you know how I fought my way through all these years?"
Duncan froze.
Caroline continued without waiting for an answer. Her voice was quiet, yet like a confession in a church, every word carried a chill. "Never trust a vulture's mercy. Its stomach has room for nothing but carrion."
After speaking, she slowly approached Bach, close enough for him to smell her expensive perfume.
"Mr. Bach, can you smell it?"
Bach instinctively stepped back. "What?"
"The smell of carrion." Caroline's smile bloomed again, but this time, it was utterly uncanny. "You thought it was coming from me, didn't you?"
Her voice was soft, yet everyone heard it clearly. "Every good show needs a grand finale, doesn't it?"
Just then, a distant bell rang out from the harbor's watchtower.
Clang-!
Twelve noon.
Bach and the others paid it no mind, but at the sound of that bell, Caroline's smile suddenly turned cold.
She walked straight to the enormous stained-glass window and lightly touched it with a fingertip.
The magic array affixed to it dispelled the curtain of rain, revealing all of Wrong Anchor Harbor to them with unprecedented clarity.
Everyone instinctively leaned a step closer.
The harbor water was as murky as ever. The ships condemned to death lay quietly at anchor, like a graveyard waiting to rot.
"Ha! This is your trump card?" Bach burst into exaggerated laughter, rocking back and forth. "Letting us admire your failure more clearly? Caroline, you..."
His words caught in his throat.
Because the seawater had begun to boil.
Not from heat, but from a churning that made their scalps crawl.
At first, it happened only near one frigate's waterline. The hull planks seemed to come alive, something battering frantically inside them. The next second, a section of fat, white shipworm flesh forced its way out of the planks, like pus squeezed from an abscess!
The shipworm thrashed wildly in the water, its body swelling visibly, and then...
Squelch! With a muffled sound, that stretch of white flesh burst apart. Foul-smelling greenish-white bodily fluids mixed with scraps of wood exploded into a small, filthy cloud.
One was only the beginning.
Two, three, a hundred... almost instantly, the ship's hull "grew" a layer of white tumors that kept bursting!
Then came the second ship, the third... the entire harbor seemed to have contracted some terrible skin disease!
Countless shipworms "squeezed" out of the hulls. They were no longer gnawing; they were fleeing for their lives. They scrambled to vomit themselves out of the wood, then writhed, swelled, and burst in the water.
Squelch... squelch... squelch...
Clumps of white flesh surged up across the surface, then burst and vanished, producing a string of wet, nauseating sounds.
Soon, the entire harbor was covered in a thick, bubbling "corpse soup" made from shipworm carcasses and entrails.
The putrid, fishy stench seemed capable of penetrating the glass and crawling into everyone's nostrils.
It was spectacular, eerie, and as overwhelming as divine punishment descending upon them.
The hall was silent enough to hear a pin drop. Beside Bach, the head of a small merchant guild rolled his eyes back and toppled stiffly onto the floor with a dull thud, but no one paid him any attention.
"Wh... what is that?"
"The worms... are all dead?"
"How... how is that possible?"
Duncan, the Royal Capital Bank's representative, stared blankly at the spectacle outside. Then he whipped around and fixed his eyes on the woman standing before the center of the window. His lips trembled involuntarily, but he could not utter a word.
He understood. He understood everything!
The Golden Sail Merchant Guild's ships... could have been saved all along!
Once everyone came to their senses, every gaze converged on Bach.
As he stared at that white hell beyond the window, his first thought was not of balancing the accounts, but of Sea Wolf's scarred face and his bellowed demand: "Sign the Guaranteed Cargo Contract!"
The foolish brute he had thought was the first to surrender had actually been the first knife Caroline handed him!
Cold sweat soaked his silk shirt.
He had been duped! He had paid the highest possible price to hire fleets that might stab the guild in the back at any moment, and signed the most absurd compensation terms! He was not the one running the game. From beginning to end, he had been the pig fattened for slaughter!
"No..." A beastlike rasp escaped his throat. His legs shook uncontrollably, then he dropped to his knees with a thud.
He clutched his hair, his eyes bloodshot, muttering over and over, "Ships... money... contracts... the guildmaster will kill me."
Caroline slowly turned. She walked up to the kneeling Bach and nudged him lightly with the tip of her shoe.
"Mr. Bach, the feast is over."
She paid Bach no further attention, instead turning her gaze toward the creditors, whose faces now bore fawning smiles. Her voice rang clearly throughout the hall.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we can discuss the repayment of our loans on different terms now."
Under everyone's expectant gaze, she brought the feast to a close with a declaration.
"Effective immediately, the Golden Sail Merchant Guild will fully restore shipping capacity on every route."
"Furthermore, to thank our longstanding customers for standing by us through this difficult time..." Her gaze swept over the heaps of human sludge on the floor, and a cruel smile curved her lips. "Freight rates on every route will be reduced by another ten percent from their levels before the price increases."
That final sentence drained the last trace of color from Bach's face.
A ten-percent reduction meant no cargo on the market would go to the shipping capacity the Blackstone Hand had monopolized at inflated prices. Every day, every moment, the Blackstone Hand's treasury would burn.
Caroline savored his despairing expression, then added in a cheerful tone.
"It seems the feast the Blackstone Hand prepared for you will have to be theirs alone to enjoy."
"Welcome to my slaughterhouse. Do you like it, gentlemen?"