Starting from Zero

We returned to our suite. I paid some tip to the helpers and asked one of them to stay behind.

"Do you have network ports here?"

"Yes sir. Each room should have a couple of them. I can bring your wireless routers too if you need it."

"We"re playing [Zero] on our beds. Four of us."

He pointed to a small lid near the bedside. "You should find them there."

"Nice. Thanks!" I tipped him again and ordered him to bring some food. We haven’t had any dinner yet. 　　

The girls already returned when the food is ready. They bought four full-cover game helmets, expensive ones. The bed is enough to hold four people but...still, I decided to use a lounge chair and let the girls use the bed.

I was hoping to enjoy some time with Rose, but now...sighhh.

We logged in and came to the port. However the scenery around us scared us a bit.

Smoke covered the entire city, it should be still bright at this hour but the sunlight only showed us a dim orange after pa.s.sing through all the smoke. Around 40 battleships are in line not far from our port, roaring flames at us.

"What the f.u.k"s going on? Someone"s shooting at the port?"

Zirai dragged a random player over. "What happened? Who are those ships?"

"The j.a.panese came to revenge! We beat them the last time and they just come to attack us when they heard our ships are all under repair!"

"...To the shipyard!" I dashed towards where Bi-Lin should be anch.o.r.ed. Zirai and Rose followed behind.

The shipyard is no better than anywhere else. Holes and tears are everywhere now, but looks like the enemies don’t know that Bi-Lin is here or they should have already demolished the shipyard first.

We entered and saw all the workers still doing their jobs on the ship, by which I mean they’re carrying materials and tools onto the ship while trying to avoid all the flying cannon shots.

Hawk saw us and quickly came. "Finally!!"

"Situation?"

"As you see!" He kicked the ground. "We can"t use our cannons in the yard now. We can try to shoot our crystal cannon but that will expose our position and attract concentrated fire!"

"But we can’t just wait here!" Zirai yelled. "Bi-Lin is our only hope, we can’t let it sink like this!"

"But we don’t have cannons that can shoot from inside the shipyard!"

"Did you check those long-range ones we asked the weapon smith to build?"

"I did."

"They done yet?"

"Yes but each of those costs 100 thousand crystal pieces, there’s no way we can afford them!"

"What?? That’s enough money to buy a freaking ship! Isn’t Bastion Cannon like, only 3 thousand?"　　

Hawk explained: "I think it’s worth it. They mixed different technologies from j.a.pan, India and us. The new cannon is called [Dragon Punch], they can shoot 20 kilometers, 10 shots per minute, and they’re as powerful as crystal cannons!"

"How many cannon chambers do we have after the modification?"

"1,300, after removing unnecessary paddle rooms. "

"...That"s, 130 million crystal pieces to fully arm the ship with the new cannons. And I haven’t considered extra sailors and ammunition..." I feel faint.

"The ammunition is cheap. 3 crystal each shot."

"Cheap?? That"s 3,900 crystal gone for each full volley. This ship’s going to burn 39 thousand crystal pieces every minute!"

"Well I can’t help with that!" Hawk shrugged.

"Wait here. I"ll see if I can pick up the cannons in advance and pay them later."

"Alright!"

I took the girls to the weapon shop. The shopkeeper nearly threw himself at us when he saw us.

"You have a big ship right??"

"Uh, yeah. What’s wrong?"

"And you need cannons?? Do you want to buy these [Dragon Punch]? If you can drive the pirates away then I don’t have to move my shop!"

Oh! Now this is convenient.

"That’s what we want to do but we don’t have enough money." 　　

"You can pay me back later, and I won’t ask for any interest!"

Bingo. 　　

Zirai looked at the ma.s.sive cannon array in the storage and scratched her head. "So how do we take these things back?"

"I...don’t know."

Now this is a problem. Last time we used thousands of sailors to transport only 600 cannons, and it took us like six hours. Now we neither have the time nor the hands!

The weapon smith gave me an idea. "You can go to the Sailor Union and borrow some men to carry and operate the cannons. Tell them to put the warrant on me."

"Ah thank you sir!"

With the weapon smith’s words, we hired 3,900 cannoneers. Our ship can hold a total of 16,000 sailors now, apart from cannoneers and some necessary utility sailors we can hire another 11,400 combat sailors. In the end we put 4,000 heavy swordsmen, 5,400 fire archers and 2,000 mages (500 each type) on the ship.

After some calculation, my debt is now...140,690,000 crystal pieces... This means I need to spend another two full shipments of gold to pay the debt later!

I dragged myself to the shipyard with grieve mood. The NPCs already took all the a.s.set here.

"However did you trick them?" Hawk asked me with round eyes.

"Trick? I owe them 140 million crystals now! Who was tricked??"

"But you have all the gold from Atlantis." Coin joined the conversation.

"They don’t give me the gold for free! I need the exchange those with energy crystals, and those stuff cost a lot of money! I’ve done the bills before. After I provide enough energy crystals to Atlantis, my net income should be somewhere around 3 gold shipments. Now the modification of Bi-Lin took away 100 million, which is almost two shipments of gold. And I also need to buy the magic shields and crystal cannons. So in the end I probably need to spend dozens of millions instead!"

"Are you sure you can pay it back at all?" Coin is now staring her eyes out. "We’re on the same boat, and the debt will be considered as ours! Does this mean I’m going to owe people money too??" 　　

"Let’s support the war by means of war." Rose suddenly spoke.

"What do you mean?"

"We break enemy ships, pull them back, repair them and sell them to other guilds. Our people lost a good amount of ships in the recent fights and new ships are always in high demand. Also, we can collect the equipment dropped by dead enemies and sell them in auctions. If we can do a good job I"m sure we can maintain our deficit low."

"That’s still ‘deficit’ though." Coin commented. 　　

"I"m not finished." Rose said. "We bought a large magic shield and four small ones. Their effect don’t stack up so we should only keep the large one and sell the other four. If we make a good profit out of it we can even consider making a business selling these things. If we manage to sell them off...then there will no deficit. We may even earn several millions in the end."

"Nice one Rose!" Zirai applauded.

"I study economics. This is basic."

I saw a familiar figure among the running players and ran to it.

"Hey King. Why are you running around the shipyard?"

"Did you see my ship?" He seems almost losing his mind.

"The Ocean Might?" Hawk caught up with me.

"Yes! Where is it??" King grabbed Hawk"s clothes and shook him. 　　

Hawk only pointed at a mast pole on the sea surface which is...sinking.

"When the j.a.panese came their first move is to fire at your ship. Your people tried to pilot it away but the ship went down after the first volley. It’s not completely in vain though. Your people stalled their next attack so our coastal artilleries had time to launch a counterattack."

"Where are the other ships then??"

"The enemies came at dinner time and most people are not online. Many ships got broken while still in the port. We can’t really help them."

Hawk made a really good choice by NOT helping the other ships and expose Bi-Lin. It’s all over if we lost our own ship.

During our discussion, a random cannon shot exploded right in the middle of us and blasted us into the air. Hawk, Rose and King were killed on the spot, while me and Zirai managed to stay alive. I have a lot of HP and defense, while Zirai was standing behind me so I acted as her cover.

That was our own fault. The enemies are still shooting randomly at the port, we should have found somewhere safe, instead of talking in open s.p.a.ce! After they destroyed all the idle ships, the enemies began to fire free shots at the city. And our chatting group became the obvious target! Coin, Big Pot and Razor are still helping with the equipment on Bi-Lin, or our entire guild would have lost a level.

I picked up the unconscious Zirai and rushed into the shipyard for cover. However the cannon shots followed me and focused on the shipyard, so I put her down and left the place.

As I"m trying to run towards a small hill on the other side, a series of explosions went up along my trail!

d.a.m.n THESE j.a.p---

Before I can stop and call their names another sh.e.l.l dropped not far behind my back, causing me to run for my life again.

Several j.a.panese players on their ship are laughing and applauding while watching me running like a headless fly. To humiliate us, that"s exactly what they came for.

I came to a halt as I reached a severed cliff. But I didn’t have the chance to turn back as another cannon shot sent me off the landscape.

"Lucky!"

I summoned him and landed on his back. I quickly ordered him to fly higher. The cannon shots still followed but none of them actually hit me at such an angle.

We approached their fleet. Their side cannons cannot aim at me when we reached right above them.

Now only several deck cannons can shoot at me if they try to tilt the barrels straight upwards.

It"s funny that these idiots actually did that! And they fired! What were they thinking??

The shots flew in the air, missing their mark again. When they lost their momentum, the sh.e.l.ls began to fall backwards. Since the cannons can be angled in very precise ways in this game and there is no wind, the shots landed right back into the barrels.

Those enemy players were still laughing and hopping around several seconds ago, now they all jumped into the sea. I held my stomach and laughed hard as a series of fireb.a.l.l.s emerged on the surface.

Then I quickly retreated. There’s no way they"d do it again, so I only managed to destroy one ship. But of course I won"t leave without leaving any gift for them. I asked Lucky to shoot some fireb.a.l.l.s at random ships. Most of them went down into the water below, but we still ignited several of them.

In the air, I saw a big fleet approaching the battlefield. Looks like the ships from another city just came as reinforcement. Since there"s no more profit in staying here, the j.a.panese all lift their anchors and sailed away.

The reinforcement fleet tried to shoot at the escaping enemies but only caused minimal damage. In the end, the pirates destroyed most of our city at the cost of only a dozen ships. This reminded me of the Pearl Harbor incident...Our ships stayed in the port and got destroyed without doing anything from start to end.

Still, they didn’t get Bi-Lin, which means we have the strength to fight back. Now the whole city is in ruins. The shipyard is intact, probably because its poor design looked like deserted in the first place so the enemies didn’t give it much thought.

Hawk and everyone else came out from the resurrection point. They all sat down on the ground and looked at the smoking city in silence. I"m sure we don"t need to say anything cause we now all have the same goal set in our mind -- revenge.

This is the first time we received such humiliation, and this will be the last!

There were a total of 135 different ships from various guilds, plus more than a thousand fishing boats and utility vessels. Now they"re all broken wooden planks drifting on the water.

I told Hawk that there will be a plan for this and logged off. Need to cool my head a little. If I decide anything now it probably won"t be rational.

When I removed my game helmet I saw Zirai and Rose doing the same. They just looked at me without saying anything.

There’s no need. The br.i.m.m.i.n.g tears in Rose"s eyes and the burning flames in Zirai"s have told me enough.