Starting from Zero

"I think so." The lookout called back. "There"s a line, with a fork on the top. Looks like a trident."

"Is the second flag a parrot?"

"Yeah it"s a bird. Not sure what bird though."

"That should be it!" King sighed.

"So what’s going on?" I asked him and tried to use my Star Gaze to look at the ship.
...A skull, wearing an eyepatch, with a pair of scimitars under it forming an X-shape. It’s pirate!
"Chief mate!"　　

"Command, sir?" 　　

"We turn around and avoid contact with them!" 　　

"Yes sir! Full helm right, everyone steady!" 　　

Bi-Lin made a 180-degree drift-around which should be impossible for its size. The movement forced everyone on the deck towards the left railings and caused a ten-meter tidal wave.

"Boosters full power! Get away from them!"　　

"Captain!! Unknown fleet up ahead!"

"Ahead??" 　　

I scouted the said direction. A fleet of at least 100 ships is there, and pretty close to us now.

"3 o’clock, another fleet. 30 kilos, 93 ships, approaching!"
"77 ships incoming, 33 kilos away." The lookouts gave out alerts one after another.
"We"re surrounded!" I yelled to Hawk. "We can"t get out now!"

King pointed towards our left-ahead. "Ziri! The enemies are still far from our 11. We may rush outside their formation if we’re fast enough!"

As he said, the two groups of ships are still apart from each other in that direction.
"Chief! Turn 11, full speed!"　　
"Yes sir!! Hold onto something you lot!" 　　

Bi-Lin was still making its clockwise turn, now it changed into another direction, throwing us to the opposite side. Our ship has no remaining speed after the two turns. The four boosters are tuned to full capacity, bringing a surge of waves behind our tail.
I’m confident in our firepower, but there"s no way we can fight against four fleets at the same time. These hundreds of ships only need one round of plain shots to tear anything into pieces.

"Everyone get to your cannons just in case! Big Pot, bring Pa.s.serby and go to the bottom level. Take some fire archers and swordsmen with you. We"ll use our motorboats when the time calls."

"Got it!"
With the orders given, now I can only pray that we can escape without getting harmed.

"Report!" A lookout shouted. "The enemies are moving close and cutting our route!"

"Loong"er!" I summoned my slim-bodied companion. "Give us a push. We need to go faster!"

"Cannons! Release the safe and load up!" Hawk ordered while waving of his sword. Looks like he"s ready for a b.l.o.o.d.y fight.

"Over there!" I shouted towards the crystal cannons. "Crystal cannon ready! Merciless and Violet, mount the front cannon. Zirai and Red Moon on the second, Rose and Yuri on the third, Gold and Wayne, fourth! War Chant, take Wuyuu and get to the tail cannon! And remember to wait for 30 seconds between each shot! Make every shot count! They are not the cheap toys you saw before!"

"Okay!" Wuyuu rubbed his hands and rushed away. Frankly speaking, I don"t quite believe him.

"Blue Wind, I don’t know about Hunters but you look like a melee cla.s.s. You"re in charge of leading our men into boarding fights if there’s any."

"Sure thing."

"King, you"re more experienced than me. I leave the piloting to you!"

"Of course!"

"Hawk stay with the other cannons, Elfy, you lead our remaining archers. That’s it. Everybody get ready!"

I stood at the front and watched as the

two fleets ahead of us moving closer. I don’t think we can make it. Bi-Lin is fast, really fast. But those pirate ships are no slower. They already closed up their dozens of kilometers of gap when I was giving the orders.

"Ziri? 20 kilos. They"re within range. Do we attack?" Hawk asked.

"Not yet. Let’s wait a bit."

"But our range is the only advantage now, if we wait--"

Boom! An explosion caused a giant water pillar near our ship.

What the--the enemies have something that can shoot this far?

"Attack! Return fire!!" I quickly yelled.

"Make small zig-zag turns!" King ordered the helmsmen.

Bi-Lin started to advance in a strange S-shaped manner. And it worked, because several follow-up cannon shots all fell into the water near us.

When the attack paused I quickly ordered everyone. "Their first round ended! Quick, shoot back! Crystal cannons, aim at their flagship and knock it out first!"

"Which one??" Wuyuu poked his head out of the cannon shield chamber.

"The biggest one!"

"You got it!"

Our five crystal cannons released their attacks at the same time. The big kickback force caused us to stumble again. And owww...my ears are ringing.
Great value pays off. The crystal cannons are all equipped with a.s.sistance aiming scopes, and the five shots all hit. The purple colored bullets went into the enemy ship as if it is soft cake.

Our Dragon Punch cannons began their display as well. The cannons located along our ship fired in sequence, from tip to tail. We have 1,300 of them for Christ"s sake!

I don’t know if we did enough damage or we simply scared them. The enemies didn’t fought back. Either way, this is a chance for us.
"Don’t stop, fire, fire away!!" Hawk roared.

More shots went away. Since our cannon formation stands really long along the ship, the cannons at the tip are already ready for the second shots when those at the tail are still waiting for the first. The pirates never did anything after their first wave of attack. Probably not expecting our firepower. Or maybe they"re planning to capture us without destroying our ship?

When we"re close enough with them I contacted Big Pot in my guild chat. "Bring out our men!"

"Finally. It’s shoooow time!"

Bubbles appeared on the water surface. Poom! Big Pot came out the water on his motorboat, with a fire archer sitting behind him. Then Pa.s.serby and the rest of our motorboats all showed up and rushed to the pirate ships with roaring engines.
The pirates made their attacks again, aiming at the motorboats. Of course those fire archers mean a lot of trouble if they get too close. However, the motorboats are only about a meter in length, with really slim design. Cannons can"t aim at these speedy vehicles at all, so the only thing they can do is making mess fire and hoping for lucky hits.

Pity. Luck belongs to me. The enemy attack came out with zero score. Some of our riders were knocked off their boats by the water waves but they can just climb back and keep charging.

Our crystal cannons stopped as our motorboats reached the enemies. Everyone made a drift-halt in union. The fire archers took out their arrows from their waterproof quivers and released their flame at the ships. Groups of pirate ships caught fire. These attacks are more effective than our cannons, since the cannons can only open several holes but cannot destroy their ships unless we hit their weakpoint, their ammunition depot, or cause enough breaches on them. While the fire arrows can easily ignite the entire ship if they don’t put out the fire in time. The pirates obviously did not spend enough money on ship materials, they’re all using cheap, easy-to-burn wooden hull.

Big Pot led his team back towards us when their job is done, while the pirates saluted them with their random cannon shots. When close enough, the motorboats tilted downwards and all dived into the water, entering our bottom level through the magic shields.

Big Pot and Pa.s.serby ran to us, looking wet and excited.
"That was AWESOME! And cool!"

"Any loss?" Actually I’m not worrying about losses when looking at the broken enemy formation, but I asked anyway.

"Not much. 7 boats were hit, and 12 fire archers were missing. They fell into the water and never came back."
Which is negligible.
We already moved into the burning fleet. They’re on fire but it will take some time for them to sink completely. Nevertheless, they can’t fight back now. Their only choice is jumping into the water and hope they survive.

"Ziri, some ships are blocking our path." King suddenly called.

"Chief, open the ramming horn."

"Yes sir! Ramming horn out! All hands brace for impact!"

With a booming noise, Bi-Lin cut threw the now manless ship straight ahead while throwing the other ships nearby off their course. The other fleets behind us can only watch as we gain more speed and sail away. We"re still within their range though, and they finally decided to make a full-a.s.sault on us with their cannons. I think they know they can’t capture our ship so they made up their mind to destroy us.

Countless shots rained down. Many hit, but our new magic shields from the Dark Sanctuary and Atlantis absorbed quite some damage. The cannons didn’t do much to our mythril platings after going through two layers of protection. Ahh...now I don’t regret spending all the money.
None of the rounds went through our hull. They only sank into the platings and remained there. Bi-Lin now looks funny with all the little "b.u.mps" around it...But this is better than getting sunk. It"s getting dark anyway. The moon will repair us up.

"Fare thee well my dear pirates!"
We sailed far from them using our speed advantage. It won’t be long before we completely go out of their shooting range. That said, we"re already pretty safe here, cause their cannons can’t do much to us at such distance.
The pirates stopped their attack. However instead of leaving, their gathered up and tried to follow us. 　　

When I looked at them using Star Gaze I noticed three small boats among them, going for their biggest ship in the center.

The people standing on the boats caught my attention. One of them is Asian, probably Chinese, because he"s wearing traditional oriental attires common in our port cities. I’m not sure though, such clothes is not exclusive to China. He’s a bald man with a terrifying face. I mean, there"s a lot of beard and muscles on him.

A Caucasian woman is standing on a boat beside him, who wears bright red hair and full-cover leather tights. It looks like those female riding suits seen in middle age European movies. She looks good too. A typical able woman, with high nose and spirited blue eyes.
Another terrifying-looking guy is with them. It is a bulky, Caucasian man with brown-ish mustache. Maybe a Russian? 　　

As I inspected them, another individual came into my sight. His brown skin suggests that he’s from India. I get the feeling that this man is in charge here...Which is weird. An Indian is leading a team of pirates?

They discussed something among themselves. I"m curious about what they’re planning to do so I ordered my chief to slow down our ship.
Their discussion turned into quarrel. The woman left their meeting first and returned to her own ship, angered. The big Asian man is next to quit, also in a bad mood. As for the Russian guy...he started beating the Indian up.

"What are they doing?" King and the others all looked at the strange scene using their scopes.

"No idea. Is that a global pirate union or something? They got every race over there. Well maybe except Africans."

"Hey look, I think the Indian man is gonna die at any moment." Red Moon said.

As he said, the Russian is now holding him up by the neck. The muscled man is a LOT bigger so the Indian cannot reach the ground or his a.s.sailant no matter how hard he tries. The color on his face indicates that he"s going to have a get-together with Lady Maria soon.
But looks like they are standing on an Indian ship. Most crew on the ship look brown, and they all rushed to help their leader.
Suddenly, a stream of blood surged towards the sky, which caused the crowd to scatter in panic. The Russian man now has a curved blade stuck inside his stomach. He stepped back a bit with round eyes, and collapsed.
At the same time, one of the fleet, probably Russian fleet, started shooting at the Indians.

The Indians quickly fought back. Now we’re looking at our former enemies fighting among themselves.
The woman"s fleet also moved in front of the Indians and started attacking them, followed by the Asian man"s fleet. They are communicating something with their flags, so I asked our flagman.

"What are they saying?"
"You...take care of...the...ahead...we will...these d.a.m.nable black...something...until one of us dies."

"What the h.e.l.l?" I scratched my head.

"Maybe their alliance broke apart and turned into a conflict." Hawk shrugged.

"Halt the ship!" I ordered the chief mate. "Let"s stay and watch. We never had a chance to observe a naval fight before, maybe we can learn something from it."
"What the h.e.l.l?" I scratched my head.

Hawk shook his head. "Maybe their alliance broke apart and turned into a conflict."

"Halt the ship!" I ordered the chief mate. "Let"s stay and watch. We never had a chance to observe a naval fight before, maybe we can learn something from it."