Chapter 1031: The World Is a Kaleidoscope (13)

At the end of the cabin corridor, Qing spotted a hole cut downward, with a ladder fixed into it.

A ladder? Not stairs? Then again, thinking about it, of course a ship would not have stairs laid in like that. So Qing simply hopped down to the upper deck anyway.

At once, an immense wave of heat, as if she had stepped into a steam bath, brushed hard across her exposed skin.

Unlike the narrow, dim, stifling cabin corridor, the upper deck was wide open to both sides, a broad space with cannons lined up in rows to port and starboard.

The upper gun deck. The gun room where the smallest cannons were gathered, and also the one that fired hot shot, because the cannonballs were smaller and there were all sorts of considerations about fire risk.

United Company, fourth deck, upper gun deck.

In the brazier lined up down the middle, large iron balls were roasting red, sizzling.

It was already hot weather, and now there were several braziers heating lumps of iron. How could it not be sweltering?

“[What’s this, a woman? Hah, what a total milk cow. Pretty for a monkey, too. Looks like one of the bastards who finally got lucky hid her away in secret. Today—no, that’s not it. Whatever, get the hell out already!]”

A gunner in fireproof gloves spotted Qing and made a big shooing motion with his hand, like he was telling her to hurry up and leave.

At that, Qing walked over with a bright smile on her face.

And then.

AAAAAAAGH!!!!

At the sudden, agonized scream that rang out, the gunners busily preparing the third wave of bombardment all snapped their heads around at once.

There, from the sailor whose face had been buried in the SIZZLING brazier, came the violent sound of meat roasting, the scream pouring from a head that was being cooked, and the sight of flailing arms and legs that no longer knew what to do.

Feeling all eyes gather on her, Qing finally released the head she had been pressing down, then looked around with an innocent expression, as though asking what the problem was.

And then, above the backs of her hands on both sides, something strange rose sharply into view. It was white—deathly, glaringly white—yet with five fingers grown grotesquely long, as twisted and bizarre as the hatred warped into them. The hand of some giant monster.

If they had been from the Central Plains, and if they had belonged to the martial world, they would have understood at once what kind of thing that monstrous hand was.

Minor Water Demonic Art. A Minor Water Witch. No, more than that—a great demon who had reached the stage where her mental image took form.

But the Dutch did not know that.

All they saw, beneath that beautiful face, were hands that belonged neither to man nor beast. Only the reflected image of a creature of endless horror.

Then the monster’s body split into eight.

One ran. One strode quickly. One bounded on all fours like a beast. One clung to the ceiling and moved along in great strides. Half-transparent monster-shapes filled every direction.

“AAAGH!” “Hrk—!” Someone screamed, someone fainted and toppled over, and with CRASHES and THUDS as men shoved and fell over one another, panic spread.

In the middle of it all, the monster lashed out with a forepaw.

Something that had been someone’s right arm fell in pieces without so much as the sound of being cut. The monster STOMPED, leaving an afterimage, and at the same time thrust out its fingers again and POPPED someone’s eye straight out; at the tip of those sawlike nails, an eyeball came dangling free with a long tail still attached. Then it raked open someone’s belly skin, and hot intestines spilled out in a rush.

Die, monster!

Someone raised a gun in desperate courage, trying to smother fear by sheer force of will. The barrel was short, the muzzle flared wide: a blunderbuss. The monster reacted at once and lunged.

BANG!

The instant the loaded shot burst out with the flash, the monster’s body split apart all over again.

The sharp iron shot tore through those half-transparent afterimages and instead slammed into innocent sailors, dropping them in an instant in a spray of blood.

“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot, damn it!”

Shrieks of terror exploded everywhere, and the gunner’s face went blank for an instant, as if asking himself what in God’s name he had just done.

Then—SNICK.

A cutting sound suddenly came from inside his body, followed by the sick plunge of feeling as if the floor had vanished under his feet. The gunner collapsed, and in front of his eyes rolled the strange sight of the foot that had, until a moment ago, belonged below his own knee. His mind snapped, and he screamed...

The upper gun deck filled with thick panic, incoherent shock, one-sided slaughter.

The braver ones squeezed out every last drop of courage and charged in with their cutlasses raised high, but—

Behind the monster, which was toying with the sailors and grinning so wide the corners of its mouth seemed about to tear to its ears, one courageous sailor lifted his cutlass high and struck down.

CLANG.

The cutlass struck the monster’s shoulder and snapped short.

Only then did it slowly turn its head, as if to ask whether something had happened, and the reflected smile was vicious.

The sailor, locking eyes with the monster, saw that color there—those ominous eyes for which there was no possible expression.

“[H-h... abomination...!]”

Abomination.

A word for something more terrible than what people meant by monster. A thing truly foul and baleful, a monstrosity among monstrosities.

How could a man possibly stand against an abomination?

Only honorable heroes could stand against an abomination. But the age when heroes had been cut down and erased by guns had already come, and even the few that remained had gone into hiding. In a time like this, who was left that could stand against such a thing?

The cry of abomination from someone’s mouth shattered the reason of sailors who were already pale with fear.

A single word that blew away even the fighting spirit of the braver ones in an instant.

The sailors, having lost even the will to oppose it, scattered in every direction. One man dragged a cannon aside and hurled himself toward a gunport. Others tried to flee upward, but the ladder to the deck above had already been broken, and they trampled and crushed one another in a spectacle too hideous to look at. In the middle of it, someone’s arms and legs kept falling away and rolling across the floor, the intestines spilling over the filthy deck added a few more geun of weight to the mess, and those writhing with limbs ground to pieces cried out for someone to save them...

United Company, third deck. Middle gun deck.

The middle-deck senior gunner, who had been pressing the middle gun deck to reload, suddenly turned his head to one side.

THUD, BANG, THUD, AAAAGH, don’t shove, hurry up, AAAH—the ladder leading down from the fourth deck had grown noisy.

And then he saw them: sailors not using the perfectly good ladder, but instead tumbling down in a heap as if someone had shoved them.

Men who ought to have been groaning over being pinned and crushed instead sprang right back to their feet and came rushing over wearing expressions like they had just seen the most dreadful thing in the world.

“An abomination! It’s an abomination!” “An abomination showed up! We have to run, right now!” “That’s not the problem! The cannons, the cannons! Grapeshot, grapeshot!! Hurry! We have to fire grapeshot!”

“No, calm down—what the hell are you all talking about? And for God’s sake, Ruben? Why are you here?”

The senior gunner of the middle gun deck, who had been hurrying the third wave along, pulled an already brutal-looking face into a hard scowl.

All the upper-deck gunners who should still have been up there reloading on the upper gun deck had come rushing down together, making a total fucking scene.

Even the upper-deck senior gunner, who ought to have been commanding the upper gun deck, had come down with them and was losing his mind as well.

And what were they saying?

There was no way some bastard bold enough to lay a finger on the home office’s newest vessel existed in the first place, and even if this was coastal water, they were still a full mile off shore. There was no way anyone could have sneaked in and attacked them here.

And then what, an abomination? Since when did abominations exist in the world?

Wasn’t that the kind of thing people only said to scare little children? If you don’t listen, an abomination will come eat you, CRUNCH CRUNCH, starting with your fingertips and your toes while you’re still alive.

So of course the middle-deck senior gunner’s expression twisted hard.

“Can’t you see we’re in the middle of an operation? Even if this were a joke, there’s a time and place for it! Is this the time to pull dangerous dog-like filth like this in the middle of live firing?”

“It’s not a joke! This isn’t a joke!”

“Grapeshot! The cannon, the—grapeshot!”

Suddenly, one of the upper-deck gunners cried out for grapeshot at the top of his lungs like he was about to cough up blood, then clung to the nearest twenty-four-pound cast-iron cannon and started heaving it backward with all his might.

“H-hey, what the hell! You little shit! Get away from that! Don’t touch it! Back off!” “You crazy bastard! What are you doing!” “Drag him off! What the hell is wrong with him!”

The startled gunners grabbed at the sailor, but his eyes had completely rolled over, and he screamed back at them.

“N-no! The cannon, the cannon! It’s coming! Grapeshot! We need grapeshot, we need grapeshot!”

Even with both arms seized and his waist grabbed as well, the upper-deck gunner still would not let go of the cannon. It was such a desperate sight that the others were infected by it too, and they rushed in together and began dragging the cannon out by sheer force.

One of them snatched up a wrapped powder charge. Another frantically ripped at the netting around the grapeshot.

At that, the senior gunner screamed in horror.

“You insane bastards! What the hell is this! Why are you doing this?! Damn it, boys! Do something about these sons of bitches! Drag them out! Drag them out, damn it!”

The middle gun deck’s gunners also stared in shock—then not just with their faces. They moved at once, throwing down their cleaning swabs, powder charges, cannon securing ropes, whatever they had in hand, and charged straight at the upper-deck gunners.

The situation was that urgent.

Because a cannon that had already been fired was delicate.

It had only fired two shots so far, so it was not at the point of exploding from overheating, but the cleaning inside the barrel was not done yet. There could still be sparks left in there, and if powder went in before that was dealt with, it could explode.

And cast-iron cannon were brittle. If one exploded, sharp fragments would sweep in every direction.

A total catastrophe.

So when the gunners from the deck above suddenly went mad and tried something this dangerously suicidal, the men of the middle gun deck had no choice but to hurl themselves at them.

But even in the middle of all that rushing and struggling to stop them, one upper-deck gunner managed to ram a wrapped powder charge into the half-run-out cannon.

Then the one who had been screaming grapeshot, grapeshot with his mind completely gone slammed in a packet of grapeshot without even removing the wrapping.

Under the weight of the [N O V E L I G H T] grapeshot, the oil-paper-wrapped powder charge rolled down into the barrel.

Fresh oxygen got shoved in after it.

Deep inside, a single dying spark flared back to life with an eerie gleam.

Then a black scorch bloomed on the greased wrapper, and at the exact instant black powder began to sift free—

BOOM!!!

The cannon, not yet even aimed at the upper-deck ladder, exploded with a thunderous report.

The grapeshot, which should have blasted out in one direction, hammered the inside of the barrel from every side because the wrapping had not been torn away properly. In the end, the cast-iron cannon could not withstand it, shattered to pieces, and launched razor-sharp fragments everywhere.

A steel storm that ground human flesh apart.

A huge hole burst open in the wall, and the sailor standing between it and the blast was reduced to such small scraps of meat there was no original shape left to find.

The fragments that had lost some of their force passing through one body finished their short flights buried in the bodies of his comrades.

“AAAAAAGH!” “AAAAAGH!”

Screams burst out from every direction.

The sailors who were still mostly intact stood there completely blank, spattered with the wreckage of what had just been their fellow crewmen, their eyes only blinking once, then once again.

The sight was too unreal.

That was when it happened.

CRACK.

On the stern side of the middle deck, the ladder connecting it to the upper deck suddenly broke and fell to the floor.

Then, through the hole in the ceiling, wet hair slapped down, and an upside-down face peeked into the deck below.

No, what the hell is this now? What happened here?

Qing, who had first shoved the ladder out of the way and cautiously looked down after hearing the huge blast from below, frowned.

There was flesh and bone fragments everywhere, and hardly anyone whole. Men were rolling on the floor howling and screaming.

What was this? Why was it already a complete ruin down here?

Had someone, unable to bear the guilty conscience of that horrific crime of bombing civilians, gone and fired on their own side?

Hmm.

Well, even so, what had to be done still had to be done...

Tap, Qing dropped down onto the middle deck.

The approach of the flagship Golden Lion and the second ship, Zeelandia, was unbearably slow.

Because there was no wind.

In this damned summer weather, for all the heat and humidity, there was no wind at all. Only after the sun went down did a westerly blow in from the continent. While the sun was up, it was a season of endless stillness.

At a time like this, how could a ship move?

By dropping an anchor from the bow and hauling on it from the stern, inching forward a little at a time. A brute-force tug-of-war between ship and men.

In midsummer, on the sweltering sea, lowering and raising that monstrously heavy anchor was enough to soak the whole ship in the sailors’ sweat, but—

BOOM! A cannon report rang out from the United Company.

The sailors instantly threw themselves flat.

But thankfully, there was no impact. Only then did they cautiously crane their necks and look, and saw gunsmoke leaking from the middle deck of the United Company.

“What happened?!”

“It seems to be gunfire from inside the ship! Gunsmoke observed from the middle gun deck—it appears fighting is underway!”

“Damn it! Hurry! We have to bring the ships alongside as fast as possible!”

At that, the first mate, growing more frantic, drove the sailors harder, but how much faster could that possibly make them?

Throwing and hauling back up an anchor weighing several thousand geun was not the kind of labor that sped up just because you were in a hurry.

And so the two ships, with only their minds racing ahead, came lumbering closer and closer toward the United Company’s port and starboard sides...