From boarding the ship to killing the Necromancy Mage, Renato had spent less than two minutes actually fighting, but the cleanup aboard the Pickle Barrel had lasted until dawn.
After the rune-reinforced mainmast collapsed and lodged in the poop deck, most of the stern cabins had caved in, becoming ruins piled with zombies and broken planks.
When the mast, over twenty meters long, came crashing down with its yards and rigging, it had nearly torn the entire poop deck off the hull. The oak bulkheads looked as though a dragon had taken a bite out of them, with jagged breaks running from the deck down to the ship's side.
Wood splinters, iron bands, broken pulleys, and shredded canvas lay mixed together in a sloping mound of wreckage, giving off a strange odor of sawdust mingled with rotting corpses.
With quite a few badly injured undead buried beneath the wreckage as well, Selina and Renato had to lay them back to rest while digging for anything valuable that might remain.
One zombie had its spine broken by the mast. Only its upper body still writhed in the broken timber, its fingers clawing uselessly at the planks as it tried to bite Renato's arm.
Even after the Undead Mage who had raised them died, the Zombie Pirate Sailors continued to carry out his orders.
Every pile of timber they cleared yielded at least two or three such mutilated bodies. Renato pierced their skulls one by one with the Silent Lady, the faint light of the Holy Sword Oil remaining on its blade flickering in the darkness as it purified those frenzied souls.
For Renato, this cleanup was far more troublesome than the battle itself.
He rummaged repeatedly through slippery timber and rotten flesh, his fingertips occasionally brushing slimy severed limbs or cold