African coast, Salva Mega Dock.
As far as the eye could see, dozens of dilapidated old ships lay quietly on the muddy flats left behind by the receding tide. Like the corpses of giants, they exuded the decaying air of extreme old age beneath the lonely afterglow of the setting sun.
One vessel that could still be called "new" barely retained some youthful vitality. Unlike the other cargo ships, it had not yet faced the fate of being dismantled for scrap due to years of disrepair or aging equipment.
Hundreds upon thousands of Black workers moved through the dim interior of the ship like busy ants, neatly stacking crates of military weapons—guns, grenades, and even large items like shoulder-fired rocket launchers—inside the cargo hold.
To the Black workers doing the labor, those nailed-shut wooden crates filled with firearms and grenades were no different from bread and butter. At least, that was how it was in Africa.
These far-from-advanced weapons would be sold by the ship's owner to African warlords or tribal chiefs, armed groups from Chechnya, and certain religious organizations claiming to fight for freedom.
Ulysses Klaw, a black-market merchant on the African Continent, dealt in far more than arms. In fact, this burly, bearded man occasionally moonlighted as a mercenary or robber—his targets usually being valuable rare antiques or highly promising research equipment.
What seemed rather unbelievable was that this black-market merchant, born into a military family, actually held a doctorate in physics. It was said that he had studied acoustics for a time.
Of course, most of the time, Klaw remained a diligent middleman, reselling military supplies for enormous profits. Nearly every warlord, minor national leader, mercenary organization, and multinational security company across the African Continent had done business with him to some extent.
This black-market merchant had