The Clash

A stray bullet sliced a bloody gash across Simon's arm.

The flesh was torn open, and blood instantly soaked through his sleeve, dripping from his wrist onto the blackened wooden deck. Instead of backing down, Simon grinned maniacally.

He felt his Principle becoming whole, a flood of extraordinary knowledge that originally belonged to this body surging into his mind.

The spilling of his blood only triggered a wild resonance of the Heart Principle within him.

Thump! Thump! Thump!

A heavy, muffled heartbeat, like a war drum, suddenly exploded inside Simon's chest. Heart was an unceasing dance, the ultimate vitality and resilience of mortal flesh.

At this moment, the intense pain was no longer a burden; it had become fuel.

Simon's eyes instantly became webbed with bloodshot veins. Strands of dark red light flowed rapidly beneath his skin, and the bleeding from his injured arm actually stopped at a visible rate, the torn flesh stitching itself closed under a bizarre force.

An inhuman, monstrous strength erupted from his marrow. With a backhand swing, he deflected an incoming spear, throwing himself into the crowd of pirates like an enraged bull.

“Get lost, you scum!!”

Simon roared, swinging his cutlass in a bright, snowy arc.

A pirate had just stepped onto the deck, and before he could even find his footing, Simon's brutal strike cleaved through his steel blade and cut him down.

However, too many pirates were rushing forward. The two ships slammed side-by-side, grappling hooks biting deep into the timber. As soon as the wooden gangplanks were thrown down, five or six bandits—reeking of sweat and wielding boarding axes and pistols—charged across, howling as they came.

“Alvin! Are you dead down there?! Fire the cannons!!”

Simon kicked a pirate square in the stomach, the immense force sending the man flying backward to shatter the railing behind him. But Simon's own back took a heavy blow from a cudgel, making him grimace in pain.

Meanwhile, in the lower wooden gun deck, the light was so dim that figures were barely visible.

The space was thick with the acrid smell of black powder and the musty stench of old grease. The sound of waves crashing against the hull was amplified several times over in the enclosed space, making their eardrums throb.

Alvin stood behind the leftmost black iron smoothbore cannon. His right hand had turned completely iron-gray, with faint dark red sparks flickering beneath the skin.

“Stop nagging! Do you have a death wish?!”

Because this old black iron cannon was so ancient, its crude cast-iron bearings had long since seized up in the carriage. Two phantom gunners were blankly prying at it with crowbars, but to no avail.

The enemy pirate ship had closed in too tightly. If they couldn't adjust the angle and fire immediately, The Voyager's port side would be completely overrun by the boarding action.

Alvin stepped forward, shoving the two obstructive figures aside. He slammed his right hand down onto the jammed black iron carriage.

Boom.

A searing, invisible heat instantly erupted from his palm.

The iron parts, which had been rusted solid, were forcibly reshaped and realigned with a gut-wrenching screech.

“Turn, damn it!!”

Alvin's forehead bulged with veins. Exerting force with a single hand, he forcibly dragged the thousand-pound black iron cannon sideways along its wooden tracks, aiming the gaping black muzzle directly at the midsection of the pirate ship below.

“Pull the lanyard!!”

Alvin yanked the lanyard at the breech of the cannon.

Boom—!!!

A deafening roar exploded in the cramped gun deck. The massive recoil sent the cannon jerking backward, cracking the wooden deck planks as thick, boiling smoke instantly engulfed Alvin.

At close range, the solid lead shot carried devastating kinetic energy, instantly shattering the pirate ship's hull. Splintered wood exploded outward like a shower of petals, tearing three pirates charging across the gangplank in half. Under the sheer force of the blast, the entire boarding gangplank and several thick hemp ropes were ripped away, causing the unbalanced pirate ship to collide heavily with a dull thud, its bow forced back several meters.

“Good shot!!”

The pressure on Simon up on the deck eased instantly. Seizing the opportunity, he sliced through a taut cable beneath his feet. Released from the tension, the grappling hook snapped back violently, dragging two climbing pirates down into the freezing sea with it.

Yet before they could even catch their breath, a sharp whistling sound echoed across the water once more.

To the starboard quarter of The Voyager, the persistent greyish-white fog was suddenly ripped open.

A second and third pirate ship had already used the wind to complete their turns. They aligned themselves in a staggered formation, their dark gun ports swinging open simultaneously as dull smoothbore barrels aimed directly at The Voyager's defenseless and highly vulnerable stern.

On their decks, the pirates lit torches, grinning as they brandished their lanyards.

It was a full broadside of over a dozen smoothbore cannons.

At this distance, if that volley of solid shot connected, The Voyager's aft deck, engine room, and even its fragile keel would be completely shredded in seconds.

Meanwhile, Simon was pinned down by two fearless pirates, and Alvin was frantically clearing the bore of the second cannon down in the gun deck, with absolutely no time to adjust its aim.

In the shadow of the poop deck.

Ryan took a deep breath, channeling all the Glory within his body into his eyes.

He slowly removed the thin-framed glasses from his left eye. A brilliant flash of light flared within his pupil.

Unlike Ryan's original Glory, this light carried no immense energy; it was a light of reason and knowledge, entirely devoid of warmth.

This unearthly halo swept imperceptibly across the sea, instantly washing over the decks of the two pirate ships behind them.

The four pirate gunners who were about to pull their lanyards froze in unison.

The mortal minds of these men were instantly incinerated. The four gunners' eyes bulged, a bizarre white film even surfacing over their eyeballs. They let out brief, agonizing shrieks before collapsing limply over their guns. In their death throes, their twitching fingers violently yanked the lanyards off-course.

Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

Over a dozen cannons still roared.

But because the gunners had lost control at the critical moment, the originally lethal volley completely lost its accuracy.

Several heavy solid lead shots whistled past The Voyager's masts and poop deck, the rushing wind even shattering a wooden eave above Ryan's head.

Immediately after, the iron balls slammed heavily into the surrounding waves, sending columns of water shooting over ten meters into the air, drenching The Voyager's deck in a chaotic deluge.

“Pah! What lousy aim! Are those blind fools even looking?!”

Simon wiped the seawater from his face and cut down the last remaining pirate on the deck.

The remaining pirates looked at the bodies strewn across the deck, then back at their allied ships, which had mysteriously fallen silent—some sailors even starting to mutilate themselves in a frenzy. The greed in their eyes was finally conquered by terror.

They shrieked in panic, scrambling back down the remaining ropes to their own ship, desperately hacking away at the grappling hooks.

The two ships collided with one last dull thud before finally drifting apart.

“Alvin! Pressure up the engine room!!”

Ryan put his glasses back on, concealing his left eye, which was throbbing with pain and tearing slightly from overexerting his Principle.

“First mate! Hoist the sails!”

“Let's break through while the fog is still thick.”

“Aye, Captain!!”