Chapter 144: Pirates (Part 3)
Under the sunlight, the pirates looked at Michel with sweat running down their foreheads. Their eyes met, uncertain, like beasts accustomed to violence who, for the first time in a long time, felt an invisible pressure tightening their chests. No one knew whether they should attack.
A heavy silence dominated the ship’s deck until the voice of their leader rang out, dry and full of contempt. He was also rank 7.
"Since when have you all been such cowards?" His gaze swept over each of those present like a knife. "You are pirates. You have raped, plundered, killed... You have bathed in the blood of innocent people, pregnant women, and children. And now, for a mere young man who is not even twenty years old, you dare to tremble?"
His voice hardened.
"Don’t hesitate. If you do... I’ll kill you myself."
The words fell like molten iron on their hearts. The doubt that consumed them turned to rage. Their muscles tensed, and their blood, which had seemed frozen, began to boil again. The pirates’ morale rose with savage violence.
Soon, they began to shout, bang their weapons against the wood, and sing.
"Hey! Hey! Hou! We are the tide of pain, we seek neither gold nor honor."
"Hey! Hey! Hou! Blood is our soap, and the river, our dungeon."
Michel’s smile widened as he watched the pirates rush toward him like stampeding pigs, ignorant creatures marching straight to the slaughterhouse. The expression on his face was not one of fear or tension, but of enjoyment.
He responded in kind: returning violence with violence. His sword danced, cutting mercilessly, and the air was stained red with the blood of those who fell before him.
But the pirates’ chant did not cease. On the contrary, it grew louder, like a collective roar seeking to drown out the cries of agony from their own comrades.
The chorus resounded with a brutality that chilled the blood of the spectators.
"With the Hey! and the Hou! the boat moves forward, we don’t care about the substance."
"Blood flows, booty falls, and in the end, no one is spared from our law."
The attacks multiplied, but Michel moved gracefully. He looked like a dancer in the midst of carnage. He dodged blows with ease, and with each counterattack, his coin sword claimed a new life: heads split in two, stomachs ripped open, spilling entrails onto the stained wood.
Suddenly, Michel took two leaps backward. The smile never left his face. With a precise movement, he launched two aura cuts that materialized in the form of black dragons.
The beasts lunged forward, roaring, devastating everything in their path. The pirates fell to pieces, but even in death, the chanting did not stop.
In fact, it grew even louder. The sound of those voices, drenched in blood and madness, shook the spectators, who watched with growing terror.
"Plunder! Drink! And desecrate, that is our song."
"There is no god to watch over us, in this floating and faithful hell."
Michel continued cutting, with increasing pressure, with increasing coldness. The corpses piled up at his feet, the floor became a thick, reddish pool, and the metallic stench of blood saturated the air.
Amidst this grotesque spectacle, the pirates’ chant was the only thing that dominated the scene.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
The sound of applause broke the symphony of the chant. It echoed throughout the venue, forcing everyone to turn their attention to Michel.
He applauded himself, with the sword of coins resting under his armpit. He did so calmly, as if he were in the middle of a theatrical performance and not a field of slaughter. On his face was a broad, dangerous smile. It was the smile of someone who was not only fighting, but enjoying every moment of destruction.
"You are truly unique..." His voice rose with a mocking, wicked undertone. "Despite dying like pigs, you continued to fight. Splendid."
The smile widened even more, almost monstrous.
"Continue to entertain the pigs with your deaths. At least your lives served to alleviate my boredom."
This time, the pirates did not hesitate as they had in the first attack. They all charged at once, singing with a ferocity that bordered on insanity. Their throats overflowed with song, even as the sword of coin mercilessly took their lives.
Some died quickly, with a clean cut to the throat or heart. Others, however, suffered more cruel deaths: bodies pierced, lungs drowning in blood, limbs severed. And yet, neither pain nor the imminence of death was able to silence their voices.
They continued singing.
It was as if that song was the only strength they had left, a last link to the madness that defined them. An intangible wall to face the white-haired grim reaper, who glided gracefully among them. His every movement was precise, elegant, inescapable.
He took lives like an angel of death, cold, distant, and absolute.
Voices echoed amid the massacre:
"Hey! Hey! Hou! We are the tide of pain, we seek neither gold nor honor."
"Hey! Hey! Hou! Blood is our soap, and the river, our dungeon."
"To plunder! To drink! And to ravish, that is our song."
"There is no god to watch over us, in this floating and faithful hell."
But reality was inevitable. One after another, the pirates fell. Their numbers dwindled rapidly; the deck of the ship was covered with corpses and red puddles.
And yet, with each casualty, those who remained continued to sing with even greater abandon. The madness was reflected in their faces: bulging eyes, twisted smiles, an exaltation that only the blade and death could extinguish.
Michel, bathed in their blood, did not stop. He advanced without faltering, his sword cutting through the air as if it were cutting through the very resistance of the world. There was no mercy, no compassion. With cold movements, he continued killing until only the last ones remained.
The singing did not stop even in their final death throes. With their last breaths, the pirates still sang, dragging out the words like an oath that refused to die with them.
"With Hey! and Hou! the boat moves forward, we don’t care about the substance."
"Blood flows, booty falls, and in the end, no one is spared from our law."
Their voices died away. All that remained was the heavy silence of the dead, the river beating against the boat, and Michel standing in the middle of a field of corpses, still holding his sword.
Sitting on the roof of the ship’s command cabin, Kael held a purple apple in his hand. He took a calm bite while his calm eyes observed everything that was happening on deck. He had seen the scene from the beginning, without missing a single detail.
"Hmm... It’s good, but not good enough," he muttered, evaluating Michel’s performance against the pirates. His voice was low, like a fleeting thought that barely escaped his lips. "As a future demigod, he’s barely treading that path."
His gaze remained fixed on the conflict, without enthusiasm, without haste.
At that moment, he heard footsteps approaching. Without turning around, he knew who it was: the princess, accompanied by her faithful servant. Both of them had also been watching everything from the beginning.
"Your partner is quite capable," Audrey remarked, sitting down elegantly in the chair normally used by the ship’s captain. Her tone was light, almost as if she were trying to strike up a casual conversation.
Kael did not respond. He continued chewing the purple apple calmly, his expression remaining indifferent. He did not even turn his face toward the princess; to him, her words were as fleeting as the wind whipping across the deck.
Silence fell immediately.
Audrey, after a moment, held back. She did not insist any further. She knew full well that she was forcing a response that would never come. She remained silent and looked away toward Michel, who was preparing to confront the pirate leader directly.
But not everyone could tolerate such indifference. The maid, Martha, stared at Kael with barely concealed hatred.
Her gaze was cold, hard, and full of venom. She found it intolerable that he would treat her mistress that way, as if she were not even worthy of a glance. To her, it was a blatant gesture of contempt, an act of excessive arrogance.
Kael, however, remained unperturbed. He finished biting another piece of apple. For him, the anger of a maid was nothing more than an insignificant detail.
...
The pirate leader, seeing all his men dead, let out a long sigh. He didn’t say a word for a whole minute, as if he were praying silently for those fallen men whom he himself had ordered to be thrown to their certain death.
When the minute was up, the leader slowly raised his head. His eyes rested on Michel with a calm, cold expression, like the edge of a sword that had already decided to strike. Without hesitation, he drew his curved sword, which began to be covered with an intense aura of vibrant orange.
Michel responded immediately. In that short time, he had managed to recover some of the mana essence he had consumed. A dense black aura rose from his body, enveloping him completely until it took the form of a dragon.
The two stared at each other for a fleeting moment. The strong smell of blood permeated the air, seeping into their senses.
And then, in the blink of an eye, they both disappeared.
Clang!
The metallic clang echoed through the air, marking the start of the fight.