Shrouded Seascape

The crew members of the Narwhale stood on the deck with solemn looks. They had just discovered that their gunner, Lily, was kidnapped by the Pope.

"Cheer up and get moving, everyone. Once we've sorted out the matters here, we'll go and rescue Lily!" Charles said firmly.

Grace's face brightened up before dimming upon realizing something. "But they're already gone… how can we find them? There's no way we can find them..."

"Who says we can't find them? They managed to leave a mark on us to track us down, and we can certainly do the same!"

Charles put a hand on his empty eye socket, and a spider twitched slightly in a dark corner of the lowest part of the Pope's airship.

Previously, the Pope was standing idly by instead of preparing to launch an all-out attack against Charles. The sight made Charles feel doubtful about the Pope's true purpose. He had his own reservations, and it felt like his assumptions were correct, and he had made the correct course of action.

When the crew heard that Charles could track the Pope's airship, they perked up, eager to rescue their comrade.

"Let's stand by for now and look for the mark that the Pope had left behind on our ship. Otherwise, he'll just run away from us the moment we approach him," Charles said.

Just as everyone was about to patrol the ship and scour it for anything suspicious, a bizarre voice resembling a duck's quacking echoed from Grace. "It seems that Governor Charles has become quite astute~ I guess people truly learn from their mistakes."

Charles frowned and turned to Grace.

The young girl was craning her neck and was staring at her own back in horror. The bizarre voice had come from her back.

Charles moved quickly and ripped open Grace's top. A strange, brass-colored tattoo depicting a man's ugly face was on her emaciated back.

"When did you get this tattoo? Who gave this tattoo to you?"

"I-I don't have any tattoos. I don't know where it came from, either."

Hearing that, a black spike appeared in Charles' hand. He pinched Grace's shoulder as if he were picking up a chick. Then, he raised the black spike in his hand and thrust it into the edge of the tattoo.

Tears instantly welled up in Grace's eyes, and she let out a pained groan that she immediately stifled by covering her mouth with both hands.

At first, Charles wanted to carve the tattoo out of Grace's skin, but he found its texture to be a bit too odd. With that, he moved the tip of the black spike beneath the tattoo and pried it off Grace's skin.

The tattoo arched up slowly until it was pried off Grace's back. It landed on the deck and left behind a bleeding hole in Grace's back.

Grace leaned against Charles, huffing and puffing in pain. Charles pushed her away and strode over to the face on the ground.

The head was just the size of a fingernail, and it had an ugly and terrifying face made out of intertwined gears and flesh. The head was being supported by thin, crab-like legs, which allowed it to move back and forth.

"Swann," Charles said with his brows knitted tightly. The head belonged to none other than Swann, the former Governor of the Albion Isles.

"Has it been a few years since we last saw each other? I never thought that we'd get to talk again like this. Fate truly is marvelous," Swann commented.

Charles stared at Swann in front of him and started piecing the puzzle pieces together. Eventually, Charles seemed to have understood what the other party wanted to discuss with him.

"You want to collude with me to kill the Pope?"

The head's thin, crab-like legs bent slightly, allowing the head to make a nodding notion. "Truly astute, Governor Charles. You're getting smarter and smarter. You see, we don't really have much of a grudge between us, do we?

"In fact, the both of us were taken advantage of by that ass-seller Lylejay.

"As for that incident on the Albion Isles, I forgive you for what you've done at the time. If I were in your position, I would take advantage of my own downfall as well."

Charles stared wordlessly at Swann, and he seemed to be thinking about the possibility that this was a trap that the Pope had made for him.

"Whether you believe it or not, I decided to escape with him because I want to avenge my islanders one day!!

"Yes, the Pope is powerful, but the Light God is dead, so he has no one backing him up. Tell your woman to come here. With your combined strength and my ambush, that guy is definitely going to die!" Swann roared, his eyes showing extreme hatred.

Charles seemed a bit surprised to hear Swann mention his wife.

"You know Anna?" Charles asked.

"Of course. How would I not know her when she captured us to take advantage of the power inside of us for her experiments? Wait, you don't know that she captured us? Didn't you order our capture?"

Charles fell silent and became engrossed in his own thoughts. Then, he turned to the crew members watching from the sidelines and said, "Start heading in the 6 o'clock direction from our current position. The Pope's airship is in that direction."

After saying that, Charles bent down and picked up the head before heading to the Captain's Quarters.

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Upon entering his quarters, Charles hurled the head onto the table and asked, "Aside from what you told me earlier, did Anna do anything else? I want to know every single detail, and you better answer me properly. This will determine whether I'll proceed with our alliance or not."

Of course, Swann was not going to keep any secrets for Anna's sake, so he decisively spilled the beans.

"She did many things… she did many bizarre experiments that I couldn't understand. All I know is that her experimental subjects included not just a ton of able-bodied people but a variety of monsters as well. I hate to admit this, but Hope Island's technology is more advanced than Albion Isles' technology."

"A ton of able-bodied people?" Charles frowned slightly at the remark. Does Hope Island actually have so many criminals for her to use as experimental subjects?

"Your woman has extorted the Pope of his method to absorb the power of Divinities, and according to the Pope, she's been using that method to become stronger.

"Her strength has improved by leaps and bounds. When we escaped, she could already be considered Level 14 according to the power ranking system of the Subterranean Sea.

"She's also absorbing the power of a variety of things, not just the power of Divinities. Ah, right; sometimes, she'd bring over a young girl with her. She'd absorb some of the power inside of that young girl."

Charles' heart skipped a beat at Swann's remark.

"What does she look like?" Charles asked. A tremor ran across his heart, which was supposed to be as hard as iron.

"She was a very beautiful young girl, and she had a pair of special green eyes with cross-shaped pupils. If she had been on my island at the time, I would have made her come to my mansion and made her warm my bed.

Bang!

Charles slammed his fist on the table, creating a large dent in it.

Swann was instantly nervous, afraid that his careless tongue would extinguish any hopes of a collaboration with Charles.

"Calm down, man. Is that young girl your woman? If so, then I apologize. I was just talking randomly, so don't take it to heart, all right?"

"I hope for your sake that you're not lying to me," Charles said, enunciating each word slowly as he stared deeply at Swann.

"Of course, I'm not lying to you! Why would I even lie to you when it's none of my business? Was that young girl important to you? Then, you and your wife can talk about it at home. Can we address my concern first? I hope you haven't forgotten, but your mouse is still in the Pope's hands!"

Charles didn't reply. Instead, he stood up with a gloomy face and took out his diary. He flipped over to the second-to-last page and exclaimed, "Sparkle, tell your Mommy to come over here! This is extremely urgent!"

Sparkle's portrait flickered slightly, and that was it.

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