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While intruders were vanishing without a sound in the city, the sea had quietly filled with countless ships crowding the harbor entrance.
"We watch for now. The moment they turn toward our harbor, we open fire."
"Shouldn't we confirm who they are first?"
"No need. We'll sink them first and check after."
The cold edge in Haneul's voice made it clear that, unlike usual, her mood was genuinely foul.
"They're small ships and close, so fire the scatter shot!"
"Yes, ma'am!"
It might be a passing vessel, or even a guest — so the guns would hold fire until the ships came right up close.
Scatter shot would be far more devastating than an explosive shell at that range.
Just as the gun mounts aboard the Whale Shark class had been enlarged and improved, the cannons mounted along the fortress walls had been converted to turret form with wider bores as well.
And naturally, the bigger the gun, the greater its power.
"If they so much as change course this way, show them hell."
"Understood!"
Watching Haneul grind her teeth, the office workers were on high alert — she seemed like a stranger today.
"Kahahaha! Full sail, you dogs!"
"Slow down! Keep formation!"
"The later we arrive, the less there'll be left to loot!"
Typical pirates, sailing in utter chaos. Depending on the skill of the crews and how many bodies they'd crammed aboard, every ship moved at a different speed.
Naturally, they split into three groups. The gaps weren't huge, but still… figures.
"We have to come in at an angle! Turn too early and they'll catch on!"
"Worry about yourself, you bastard!"
"Hahaha! Miserable wretches, the lot of you!"
The pirates steered their ships at a slant, as if heading for the river mouth rather than the harbor. Still, men who had spent their whole lives at sea apparently knew a thing or two about handling a vessel.
"Kahaha! Look at those idiots just standing there gawking!"
"Heh heh heh."
"First pick of the loot is ours!"
They assumed the figures watching them from atop Daehan's walls were simply standing around. Since the cannons hid behind their turret shields, from a distance the battlements looked entirely unmanned.
The pirates couldn't have imagined that those guns were trained on them at that very moment, waiting.
"Turn now! Straight in!"
"Make it one clean turn, you dogs!"
And so the pirates swung their ships toward Daehan's harbor, ringed by its breakwaters.
"Kahaha! Too late, you fools!"
They could see people bustling about atop the walls, but figured that by the time the cannons were loaded, there'd be no chance to fire on them.
Muzzle-loading cannons took a very long time to reload.
BOOM! BOOM! KRA-KA-BOOM! BOOM!
"Huh?"
From walls that had seemed so far away only moments after he'd laughed, the thunder of cannons rolled out.
"They loaded in advance?"
Pre-loaded gunpowder, at sea? Something utterly beyond belief had just happened.
CRACK-BOOM, KRA-CHUNK.
"…"
He could say nothing more. A cannonball had punched straight through his chest and taken his lungs with it.
WHUMP. WHUMP. CRUNCH.
"Gwaaagh!"
"Kegh!"
"What in the—?!"
With the enlarged bores, some forty rounds the size of two adult fingers' widths spewed out in a single volley.
The range was so close that small ships were reduced to splinters whole, and the pirates were swept away as if by the stroke of an enormous scythe.
"Forward, now! Hurry!"
"We have to reach the gate while they reload!"
Pyeongan Naru's fortress had been built as a six-pointed star, with six gun batteries positioned along each triangle.
Twelve batteries in total were trained on the pirates right now.
And the pirates, thinking only of landing, had packed their ships with men as dense as bean sprouts in a shipping crate.
"Hiiiik!"
"This is hell!"
"Madness!"
What happens to a man when his ship shatters around him? Bodies burst apart on the lead ships, and blood washed back over the vessels following behind.
Drenched in someone else's blood and gore streaming down from above, the pirates of the vanguard were half out of their minds.
"Snap out of it! Now's when we charge, while they reload, you idiots!"
"Right!"
"Don't think about anything else!"
"Eyes on the money!"
They were already inside; there was no turning back now.
Ship after ship squeezed its way in, jostling and jammed together. And then the fog blanketing the fortress lifted.
KU-KWA-KWA-BOOM.
"What—!"
"No!"
In the brief span it took the smoke to clear, the pirates had covered only a third of the remaining distance — and then came the sound of cannons firing yet again.
"How?!"
WHUMP-WHUMP-WHUMP.
Amid sounds impossible to tell apart — flesh bursting, or wood — more ships and men erupted into fountains of red and vanished.
KU-WAAAAANG.
Then the powder barrels the medium-sized ships had carried to blow open the fortress gate, unable to withstand the pressure of the shells, went up in a chain of explosions.
"Kegh!"
"Gwaaak!"
With the blast going off right beside them, the ships sailing alongside were shoved sideways and capsized. Men aboard the nearest ship died as their bodies ruptured from the shockwave alone.
"What's happening? What is going on?"
"Come on, let's go! Time for us to have our fun too!"
Still without a clue, the middle group and then the rear group stepped one after another into the mouth of hell.
KU-KWA-KWA-BOOM.
Each time the cannons roared from the walls, ships entering the harbor were erased like marks from an eraser — had it not been for the screams, it would have been a rather satisfying sight.
"Hueeeh…"
"Save me…"
There had been a full three thousand of them. Garbage lives scraped together from the armies of half the nations of Europe — but they wanted to live too.
Yet unable even to turn their ships around, they died under the cannons one after another.
It was a wide harbor, but so much blood had spilled that the water turned a deep crimson.
Perhaps today this would have to be called the City of the Cruel Angel.
"Please, spare us!"
"Mercy, please!"
Pirates who had swum ashore now groveled on the ground, begging. Roughly a hundred of them knelt, faces pressed to the stones.
Others had surely swum away outside the harbor, so the true survivor count was likely higher.
Step. Step.
Through the ring of armored men surrounding them, Haneul walked out.
"Lady Angel! Please, spare us!"
"We were wrong!"
"Holy Maiden, please!"
They had heard the stories too. A big part of why this place was called the City of the Angel, the City of the Holy Maiden, was the castle lord rumored to be as beautiful as an angel herself.
Someone kind enough to tend beggars and heal the sick — surely someone like that would spare them.
"Hey! Quiet down, or else!"
"…"
Haneul barked at them like a whip crack. With those terrifying eyes, today she looked less like an angel or a holy maiden and more like a genuine witch.
"Now! Who sent you?"
"…"
"…"
The pirates hadn't come knowing any details, and knew little worth telling, so silence was all they could offer.
"Hm? Should I tie stones to you and send you off to your friends?"
"Hiiiik!"
"I don't know!"
"We're sorry!"
"Please, spare us!"
Tied to stones — didn't that mean thrown into the water?
The courtyard before the fortress erupted into clamor again, desperation outweighing fear.
BANG!
"I said QUIET!"
"Eep!"
"…"
When Haneul drew her revolver and fired into the air, the pirate mob fell silent once more.
"Not one of you knows who sent you?"
"I really don't…"
"Me neither?"
"Someone gathered us, but who?"
They asked each other as if genuinely puzzled — and seemed genuinely puzzled.
"So none of you wants to live, then?"
"What?"
The pirates went slack-jawed. The face before them was unmistakably an angel's, a maiden's — and yet something about her felt thuggish and dangerous. Wasn't the rumor wrong somehow?
"One last question. Think carefully. There has to be some clue as to who sent you, doesn't there? Think hard. That is, unless you happen to have gills and can breathe underwater."
"…"
"Gulp…"
The pirates concluded that something had been very badly garbled in the stories they'd heard. This woman was more terrifying than any pirate captain they'd ever served.
"Uuuh…"
"Come on, remember!"
"Think of something, anything!"
The pirates were desperate in their own way. Perhaps it was the will to survive — the brain cells they'd killed with drink the night before began miraculously reviving.
"Ah! They spoke Portuguese!"
"Mine was French!"
"Huh? Mine sounded English?"
"Spanish, it was Spanish!"
Half the nations of Europe began pouring out of their mouths.
"Anything else?"
"Uuuuh…"
Language alone didn't seem likely to narrow things down, so Haneul asked for something more. The great brain-cell revival round two began.
But since the men had been gathered through two or three layers of middlemen before any work was done, no useful clue was ever going to surface.
"Ugh… this is so annoying…"
"My lady? Shall we process them?"
"Yeah! Send them all off."
"Understood!"
The moment Haneul gave the order, the pirates panicked.
"Please, spare our lives!"
"We'll live honest lives from now on!"
"Please!"
The pirates began thrashing in a final frenzy.
"Who said anything about killing you? Someone's got to earn a living, don't they?"
"…What?"
"Earning… money?"
"You're… sparing us?!"
These men were bound for Aoji. They wouldn't be free — but at least they wouldn't die.
After all, hadn't Aoji become quite livable lately?
Comrade Kim Il-sung had transformed the place into something almost comfortable. It had merely become much harder to get back out.
With public trains and convenience facilities multiplying, the cost of minerals exchanged for credit inside had dropped considerably.
"Mine hard enough, and who knows? You might even walk out before you die."
"…What?"
"What is she talking about?"
The pirates had a sinking feeling that something had gone very wrong for them.
"Damn it all! What kind of angel is this?!"
"Holy maiden, my ass!"
And then the cursing of Haneul began.
WHACK. WHACK. CRACK.
"Ghk."
"Urk…"
And so the office workers' beating began.
No one could tell who had said what, so it was handed out fairly — one for this guy, one for that guy, and the thick-skulled ones took two apiece.
One hundred or so laborers, knocked out in perfect harmony, would be locked in the warehouse until the next ship arrived, then shipped off to Aoji.
They had, after all, just won the chance to see the Daehan mainland that no outsider was ever permitted to lay eyes on.
"Damn it all…"
"What's wrong? You can open tomorrow, can't you?"
"This is an innovation, that's what!"
"Hm? That's true. This could probably draw every soul in Europe here."
Ugh… I'm so mad… A day later, or a day earlier — why couldn't those bastards have picked either…
"Nom nom. This is really delicious."
"See? That's exactly why I'm angry. You get that, right?"
"Here! Say aaah~"
"Aaah~"
Mm, delicious as expected. Ice cream rules!
The refrigerator had been installed just yesterday, and ice cream sales were supposed to start today — and then those bastards had to show up and crash the grand opening. My business ruined before it began. The men who died today, I'm officially ruling natural causes.
"Mmm, tasty."
"How did you ever think to make something like this?"
"Just… because?"
Strictly speaking, this is closer to an ice than true ice cream for now. It was fruit juice with extra sugar stirred in and frozen. The freezer function was weak, so it took ages — but that just meant selling it at a premium!
And already she had a feeling this alone would be a massive hit.
"This 'refrigerator' really is wonderful. We can even drink cold water now."
"Best of all, food keeps for ages."
A portable freezer was beyond them, but in a fortress equipped with steam engines, it was more than practical enough. Some of the things were as big as a house anyway — hardly something to carry around.
Me, I can cheat a little. Freeze it, stash it in subspace, and I can eat it any time!
"Oh right! Did you look for cows in Europe that give a lot of milk?"
"There's supposedly a spotted breed, but like you said, Haneul-nim, apparently they don't give all that much milk. Is that right?"
Not bred far enough along yet, huh? And here I thought they'd been at it for ages? Guess I'll have to wait a while…
"Then leave them be for now. Seems they've still got a long way to go."
"…?"
Mose didn't understand, but apparently more time was needed.
The day I get to eat real ice cream just keeps getting further away, doesn't it?