Pirate Kingship

Chapter 365 - 307: The Sea is Full of Acquaintances

Chapter 365: Chapter 307: The Sea is Full of Acquaintances

Ever since the Flame Rose battled Red Beard’s Third-Rate Ship, the Goddess of Vengeance, and Violet, following Byron’s guidance, had seized the leeward position, she had grown accustomed to not questioning his various peculiar requests.

Without a second thought, she immediately slapped her traveler’s bag.

A pile of copper ingots CLANGED onto the deck.

The bag of this Third Order Grand Artificer was filled with all kinds of alchemical materials. Copper ingots were just one of the most basic, and her reserves were plentiful.

Unlike untarnished bronze, which is golden throughout, pure copper has a rose-red hue. When oxidized in the air, the surface layer of verdigris turns purple.

It was the most economical and practical conductor of the electrical era, with the potential to become "the world’s first electric wire."

But since the technology tree had not yet been advanced, Violet and everyone else had no idea what this material could be used for.

She simply unfolded the circular Alchemy Array and activated Alchemy to manually draw each ingot into standardized copper wire, roughly as thick as her little finger.

"Speed up, I’ll hold him off," Byron said, then once again raised his longsword and lunged toward Smith—the Gladiator clad in the Armor of a Hundred Beasts.

With the Storm Wings accompanying him and his greatcloak billowing fiercely, he moved as swiftly as Thunder, his feet not touching the ground, leaving only a trail of afterimages in the rain-soaked air behind him.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!...

A streak of brilliant white, like a silver serpent, weaved and sliced around Smith. With "Flow State," a swordsmanship realm capable of finding any opening and severing steel, Byron severed the beast souls on the Armor of a Hundred Beasts one by one.

Under normal circumstances, of a person’s hands, torso, feet, and footwork, the hands are the fastest and the footwork is the slowest.

But now, Byron’s movement speed alone was faster than the sword swings of others of the same order!

Flitting left and then suddenly right, he seemed even more phantom-like than that creature scrambling all over the deck of the Black Coffin.

By himself, he filled the gap in firepower created by Violet’s absence.

The Gladiator relied on his extraordinary Beast Intuition to block left and right. He could only desperately defend his vital points, managing an occasional counterattack thanks to the quality of his armor.

But he believed he would not be the first to falter and did not forget to taunt Byron:

"Give up! Everything you’re doing is nothing but a death struggle!

What reward do you think the Kingdom offered to compel the service of a Fourth-Order Heroic combatant like me?

As an advance, the lives of all the natives on the islands within the Circulation Zone controlled by Castilia have already been paid to me.

You’re not just fighting me; you’re fighting the manpower and resources of Castilia, the Maritime Hegemon itself!"

Byron ignored his words completely, his concentration absolute. His Sword Moves, beyond the basic slashes, Thrusts, and cuts, seemed to be undergoing some wondrous new development.

His swordsmanship was already making great strides on the path of "Flow State," and now he was gradually touching upon an even more profound realm.

This was the second layer of "Flow State": Divine Sight!

Some described Divine Sight as gaining the senses of a god, or even likened it to Angel’s Descent into one’s own body, where every move was as if divinely guided.

Upon reaching this realm, it seemed one could truly, with a humble mortal body, faintly touch the very edge of the Divine Domain—to give birth to the Self God in the deepest recesses of the mind.

To reach this second realm of the mind, there is but one secret: "Empty your cup, so it may be filled again; it is through emptiness that one achieves wholeness."

It was a transcendent state achieved by discarding all distracting thoughts and attaining extreme focus, where one executed moves and then forgot them—a state of "knowing the move, then forgetting the move."

The wind and rain, the ocean waves—elements that, as a Storm Admiral, he inherently had some control over—gradually began to breathe in unison with Byron.

Even the Storm Wings on his back seemed to transform into two massive cleavers. They were no longer formed of ordinary air currents, but of Byron’s incomparably sharp sword-intent manifested as wind!

Moreover, it was a sword-intent wind animated like Storm Elves. The powerful, heavy wing strikes seemed controlled by a master swordsman, as skillful as Byron’s own swordsmanship.

Even merely touching the fringes of Divine Sight had completely renewed his Sword Moves, from the inside out.

And Byron’s Talent, Weather Intuition, his perception of meteorological phenomena, became sharper than ever. Wherever he looked, dense World Rifts began to appear.

Precisely then, an accident occurred among the Wings of Death fighting the skeleton sailors at the bow of the ship.

"AH—!"

A Marine, who had prematurely placed a Gold Coin in his mouth, made a careless mistake and had his jaw viciously smashed by an enemy’s Warhammer.

The Gold Coin flew out.

His living-dead body instantly reverted to its human form. Pain once again assaulted his brain, and an exceptionally shrill scream tore from his shattered mouth.

What was worse, shattered pieces of jawbone, teeth, and flesh flew far from the battlefield, plunging into the turbulent Sea of Origin Matter.

In the midst of the chaotic battlefield, even Byron found it difficult to attend to such a sudden emergency.

The next moment, the already surging waves began to boil. In the blink of an eye, they transformed from pitch black to a horrifying crimson.

Man-Eating Pomfret!

The Man-Eating Pomfrets that had been lurking tens of meters below, never straying far!

They spread out densely around the three warships, so numerous that one could not see their end.

One only felt that the sea was red, the waves were red; even the pitch-black sky was dyed crimson by the faint Supernatural Aura emanating from them.

These sightless Man-Eating Pomfrets, upon smelling blood, immediately leaped from the water as if crazed, lunging towards the direction where the human blood had fallen.