Chapter 113: The Tin Knight and The Land of Sea Breeze (2)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 113: The Tin Knight and The Land of Sea Breeze (2)
Outside the monitor, you burst out laughing.
Franka clutched her head, wondering how the timing could possibly be this bad, but from your perspective, this was an entirely predictable turn of events.
Of course. How could a ship possibly set sail without any trouble after arriving in a port city?
Whether the weather was a total mess, a sea monster was on a rampage, or at the very least, some pirates were wreaking havoc—it was only natural for something to go wrong.
A matter of course in a game. Of course, well, that is…
Inside the Tin Knight, you suddenly looked around.
You saw Dorothea, Adelaide, and Sophia.
In front of the monitor, you also looked around.
You saw a lonely, empty room.
A small question surfaced in a corner of your mind.
Is this really a game?
Are they all just characters?
What if it isn't a game? If they're all real, then what is this situation? This mysterious little room? Your state of being?
You felt a strange sense of suffocation.
The more you engaged in serious contemplation and deep thought, the more you felt like you were sinking into the depths of the water, shackles bound to your feet.
You stopped thinking.
The more frivolously, impulsively, and whimsically you acted, the more the stuffiness faded away.
Once again, that dreamlike, floating sensation returned.
You even forgot what you had been agonizing over just moments before.
You decided to simply enjoy the adventure unfolding before your eyes.
*
[The ‘Tin Knight’ asks which of the three he should beat up first!]
[The ‘Tin Knight’ says that since he’s at sea, he’d like to switch his weapon to something like a pirate sword!]
At the Tin Knight’s words, Adelaide tilted her head.
“Is there such a thing as a weapon exclusively for pirates?”
Sophia answered.
“He’s probably referring to a cutlass. You know, the ones that are curved like this.”
“Ah, I see.”
Dorothea, who had been watching the somewhat bizarre scene of a 500-year-old sealed vampire explaining weaponry to a girl from a modern knightly family, let out a deep sigh.
As with anything, someone who has experienced a situation before is quicker to react than a novice.
While Franka was struggling to pull herself together after her meticulously tuned plan had been so spectacularly shattered, Dorothea, who had been through similar experiences several times, forcefully snapped her back to her senses.
“Hey. Funny hair.”
“…Are you talking to me right now?”
“We’re not exactly on a first-name basis, are we? More importantly, how much time do we have? I mean, how long until the Witch of the South realizes you’re gone and starts to act?”
Franka’s expression momentarily flashed with indignation, but she must have recognized the importance of the question, as she soon answered with a serious tone.
“Considering the time it took to get here and the time it’ll take to get to my master’s island, we have to leave by tomorrow morning at the latest. Even if she’s slow on the uptake, we must depart by evening.”
“Any way to extend that?”
“If there was, I would’ve used it already.”
“So we have to solve everything within the day.”
Dorothea thought.
She couldn’t tell if this was simple misfortune or someone’s deliberate meddling, but one thing was certain: dragging this out wouldn’t do them any good.
“First, let’s split the personnel… no, never mind.”
Dorothea, who had been about to suggest her usual tactic of splitting up to resolve things quickly, changed her mind after a moment’s thought.
‘Splitting up when the Witch of the West is nearby is too dangerous. There’s no telling when that Algind woman might show up. Even with the time limit, it’s better to stick together.’
“You said the problems were pirates, a sea monster, and the weather. Setting the others aside for now, wouldn’t it be faster to just pay the ransom and get the hostages back from the pirates?”
Thump. Beside her, the Tin Knight stared at Dorothea with eyes of disbelief.
[The ‘Tin Knight’ is appalled!]
[The ‘Tin Knight’ insists that you cannot yield to a filthy hostage situation!]
Dorothea gracefully ignored the Tin Knight’s words, and Franka couldn’t hear them in the first place.
Franka seemed to ponder for a moment before asking a subordinate standing nearby.
“So, how much are those scumbags demanding?”
“W-Well, that is…”
As the subordinate nervously stated the amount, Adelaide, who overheard it, hiccupped.
Even Dorothea, whose attitude had been ‘it’s not my money, so who cares,’ flinched for a moment.
Sophia touched her fingertips to her lips and remarked, “Hmm, based on the market prices I’ve read about, that’s enough to commission two brand-new galleons. Even for the ransoms of several skilled sailors, that’s an unreasonably exorbitant price.”
The amount was clearly not something Franka could hand over easily either, as she scowled in displeasure.
Her subordinate bowed his head, looking ashamed.
“…I apologize for failing to manage our personnel properly, Young Lady.”
“It’s fine. I’ll deal with reprimands later. For now, just prepare the money.”
*
Strictly speaking, Franka wasn’t the kind of employer who cared that deeply for her people.
The reason she readily agreed to the deal was less about valuing her sailors and more about the fact that any harm befalling them now would disrupt her mission to rescue the children.
She considered it an investment for her cute, golden-winged monkeys.
There was just one thing she hadn’t anticipated.
“—Why are only half of them here?”
The thing about criminals is that when their victims respond ‘sincerely,’ they don’t feel grateful. Instead, they think they’ve found a sucker and push their luck even further.
In response to Franka’s voice, which was thick with suppressed anger, the pirates jeered cockily.
“That’s because the market price changed, of course.”
“We demanded the ransom right away, but you people dragged out the negotiations with all your chatter, didn’t you?”
“We have to be compensated for the money we spent feeding, clothing, and housing your lady’s subordinates during that time. So that’s how it is.”
Franka’s subordinates were enraged.
“Nonsense! You said before that if we brought the agreed-upon sum, you’d release them all without any conditions!”
“Besides, what do you mean, food expenses? How much could that possibly amount to in just a day or two?!”
Above all, judging by the exhausted state of the gagged and bound hostages, it was painfully obvious that their captors had not been diligently looking after their health.
“Ah, enough with the chatter. For now, that amount only gets you the half we brought here. As for the rest, we’ll release them when you bring the same amount again. You’ll need time to prepare the new funds, so let’s meet again in, say, three days.”
But the pirates were shameless.
Their confident demeanor even radiated a sense of leisure.
“Let me warn you, don’t get any funny ideas. If so much as a scratch appears on our bodies, the other half of the hostages left at our base will not be safe!”
No matter how powerful Franka and her subordinates were, they couldn’t do anything about hostages held in a different location.
Of course, once those hostages were freed, the pirates might find themselves in real danger, but…
‘We just have to make sure we never see these guys again.’
From the very beginning, the pirates had no intention of honoring the deal.
The true genius of their scheme was to pretend to extort more money using the remaining half of the hostages, making their opponents believe they had a second chance.
That way, whether out of concern for the remaining hostages’ safety or the thought that they could be caught next time, their victims would let the pirates go without any trouble for now.
But once they were let go, that was it.
By the time Franka’s party realized they’d been tricked, the pirates would be long gone, having fled far, far away.
At least in the art of catching people off guard and backstabbing them, they were, in their own way, excellent.
However, there was something they had failed to calculate.
[The ‘Tin Knight’ points out that if those guys are pirates, they must know how to handle a ship, right?]
[The ‘Tin Knight’ asks if they can’t just capture them and force them to work!]
A certain witch, who had been watching the situation unfold with a canted posture, clearly displeased with how things were going, had just lent her ear to the insane idea of a madman.
And an alchemist, who, as mentioned before, wasn’t particularly concerned about the hostages’ safety, had immediately shouted “Deal!” at the necromancer’s whisper.
And so, the Tin Knight began his rampage.
CLANG!
“W-What?! Where did this guy come fr—Gack!”
“You bastards! Do you not care what happens to the hosta—Urk!”
“H-Hieeeeeek!”
The Tin Knight was rampaging bare-handed, without even drawing a sword, but for the pirates, that alone was a sufficient disaster.
The violence wrought by a six-foot-tall, full-body iron behemoth was far beyond what mere villains, incapable of even projecting sword energy, could possibly handle.
Watching the pirates being subdued one by one, Franka issued an order to her subordinates.
“Bring me some wood and metal plates.”
Franka’s subordinates faithfully carried out her command, and soon, wooden planks and metal plates were presented.
In front of the subdued, kneeling pirates, Franka reached out her hands to the prepared materials.
The materials touched by Franka’s hands split apart and reassembled, soon forming a square board about the width of a person’s shoulders.
In the center of the board was a hole for a person’s neck, and on the edge was a mechanism for opening and closing it.
At Franka’s signal, her subordinates fitted the boards around the pirates’ necks.
In full view of the pirates, Franka inserted a long wooden block into the hole of one of the boards.
Then, she snapped her fingers.
Snip!
A blade installed inside the board moved, and the wooden block was instantly sliced in two.
The pirates’ faces turned deathly pale.
“If any of you disobey my orders or cause any trouble, be prepared. I’ll tell you now, I don’t have much patience.”
[The ‘Tin Knight’ is satisfied, declaring this a just conclusion!]
Adelaide, watching from the side, wore a dubious expression.
“Um, is this really okay? I feel like there are a lot of other things we should be concerned about…”
Sophia replied.
“They picked a fight with not one, but two witches. Don’t you think they’re getting off cheap for that?”
“Still, what about the remaining hostages and all that?”
“Now that we’ve secured the pirates, I’m sure Miss Franka’s subordinates can handle it.”
“Oh, well then.”
Adelaide was convinced.
Perhaps due to past experiences, she was surprisingly unforgiving when it came to bandits.
Hostages captured by pirates (1/1)
Rampaging Sea Serpent (0/1)
Ceremony to calm the weather (0/1)
First mission. Complete.