Chapter 411 - 401: Sailing Carnival 3

Twenty Gold Coins. You could buy a ton of fish for that price next door.

Moira Lynch inspected the fish and found they weren’t salted. Instead, they had been gutted, deboned, and then air-dried.

They were also very simple to prepare—you just had to roast them over a fire to eat them.

Realizing she would be at sea for three months, Moira Lynch decisively bought out their entire stock of dried fish.

By the time the dried fish was packed, Shane Rhodes and the other players had trickled back.

Seeing that it was about time, the group began boarding the ship in an orderly fashion.

The entire ship held over twenty players, and including the crew, there were more than fifty people in total.

The game was set to last for three months, but the others didn’t know that. As a result, most of the space on the ship, aside from where the players were, was used to store various supplies.

Their living quarters and activity areas were restricted to the first floor.

Moira Lynch returned to her room, changed out of her temperature-regulating clothes, and then headed to the deck.

Quite a few players had already gathered on the deck, apparently to receive their work assignments.

Since Moira Lynch arrived late, the easier jobs had already been taken. By the time it was her turn, the only task left was to clean the deck.

The deck didn’t look dirty, but the job was anything but easy. The deck was huge, and cleaning it was incredibly time-consuming.

"It can’t be easy cleaning such a huge deck all by yourself. Why don’t I help you?"

A female player with her hair in a bun suddenly spoke up.

This female player had been assigned the job of cleaning the rooms.

Compared to cleaning the deck, this job was incredibly easy.

"Thank you."

Moira Lynch wasn’t fond of interacting with strangers, but she wouldn’t refuse someone who proactively offered to share her workload.

"That’s great! Let’s help each other out from now on."

Upon hearing that, Moira Lynch’s expression changed in a flash. "On second thought, never mind."

The smile on the female player’s face instantly became strained. "You’re refusing so bluntly... does that mean you’re not willing to help me?"

As she spoke, the other players shot condemning glares at Moira Lynch, their eyes seeming to ask, ’How can you be so selfish?’

However, Moira Lynch operated on a simple principle: if you have no morals, no one can guilt-trip you. She retorted unapologetically, "I can barely finish my own work. Why should I help you? And don’t give me that ’but I’m helping you’ line. I never asked for your help."

’If this were a novel,’ Moira thought, ’I’d be cast as the villainess.’

She had initially thought the player was abandoning her own task to help her. It turned out she just wanted them to "help each other."

Moira always had a habit of assuming the worst.

’This player helps me first, seizing the moral high ground. Then, when it’s time to work, she’ll ask me to take on a little more, and I won’t be able to refuse.’

’At that point, I’d probably end up doing the work of two people all by myself.’

’Even worse, I’d do all the work, she’d get all the credit, and I’d be expected to be grateful to her.’

’No way I’m going to be that kind of sucker.’

Shane Rhodes and his friends stood behind Moira Lynch, silently facing off against the other players.

"Fine. If you’re not willing, I won’t insist. I guess I was just getting ahead of myself. I only thought that since we’re all players and this mission isn’t easy, we should help each other out. I didn’t expect... Anyway, I’m sorry. It was my mistake for not thinking it through."

Seeing the girl’s teary-eyed, on-the-verge-of-crying expression, Moira Lynch scoffed internally. ’What a perfect little white lotus. Looks like I’ll need to be careful around her.’

Just then, Joy Rhodes’s voice suddenly echoed in Moira Lynch’s ear.

"That woman is a total white lotus. You guys stay away from her. Don’t let her sell you out and still be helping her count the cash."

Moira Lynch glanced at Joy Rhodes, just then remembering her talent: Thousand-Mile Transmission.

It allowed her to transmit her voice directly into someone’s ear, no matter the distance, as long as she knew their general location.

Because they had just set sail, the next few days passed uneventfully.

After finishing their own tasks, Shane Rhodes and the others would take turns helping Moira Lynch with her cleaning.

As a result, besides cleaning the deck, Moira Lynch had plenty of free time each day.

Of course, life on the ship wasn’t perfect.

Moira Lynch brought her breakfast out onto the deck.

A bowl of rice, a vegetable dish, and some fried fish.

To be honest, the meal wasn’t exactly meager. At least, the other players seemed to have adapted just fine, cleaning their plates every day.

But Moira Lynch and her friends were having a harder time adjusting.

After all, as the saying goes: it’s easy to go from a simple life to a lavish one, but hard to go back.

Faced with this kind of food, they really had a hard time bringing themselves to eat it.

And this was only the beginning. As everyone knows, the start of any journey is always the easiest part.

It was easy to predict that the next few months of their lives would be extremely difficult.

"Thank god I bought a bunch of food before we boarded. How would we have survived these next few months otherwise?" Kai York said with a sigh.

The voyage was only a few days in, but the quality of the food was already declining at a visible rate.

At the beginning, there had been multiple options, but now everyone got the same standard meal.

Shane Rhodes and Kai York were assigned to the galley, so they had a better understanding of the situation.

There weren’t many fresh vegetables left on the ship.

Vegetables are inherently difficult to preserve, so they hadn’t stocked many to begin with.

For now, there were still some leafy greens, but in a few more days, they’d probably be down to nothing but pickled vegetables.

Moira Lynch poked at the rice in her bowl, her gaze fixed on the calm sea. "How much longer is that person behind us going to stare?" she said.

With them staring like that, she felt too awkward to take out her other food to eat.

She was well aware that not many of the other players had stockpiled food.

It wasn’t that they didn’t want to; they just didn’t have the spare money.

Just then, a player walked over. Seeing that Moira Lynch and her friends hadn’t finished eating, his face immediately soured.

"Why haven’t you finished eating? I need to collect the plates for washing. Hurry up. If you’re not going to eat, don’t waste the food."

Ever since that first day, with the exception of Shane Rhodes and her friends, the other players had treated Moira Lynch poorly, always ostracizing her in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.

Moira knew that the female player from before was secretly instigating it, but she paid it no mind.

The woman had also tried to turn Shane Rhodes and the others against her, but none of them—not Shane, Kai York, Caden York, or Hugh Finch—fell for it. When she tried it on Joy Rhodes, she nearly got herself beaten up.

So, the woman decided to go all out and had them all ostracized by the group.