Chapter 1032: The World Is a Kaleidoscope (14)

How much time had passed?

At last, the bow of the flagship Golden Lion, which had been crawling across the sea at a snail’s pace, managed to draw close to the stern of the United Company.

Still, because a sailing ship was built with its stern deck higher than its bow, the full state of the deck did not come into view until around the time the Golden Lion’s auxiliary anchor had been dropped and hauled in about twice more.

And it was right around then that the lookouts watching the United Company from the forecastle discovered the carnage on the main deck.

When the lookouts came running back with the news, the first mate—who had come out to direct the marines in their crossing—grew grim.

Had a shipboard mutiny really broken out?

But why? For what reason? What were they after, and what were they dissatisfied with? Or was it Lady Joanna after all? He had heard reports that some sailors had been whispering that it was bad enough their fleet commander was a woman, let alone an evil witch, but he had not thought it was that serious.

“As of this moment, the United Company is to be treated as an enemy vessel. Return fire the instant you are attacked. Prepare to cross.”

At that, the sailors’ voices rose.

“Boarding plank! Hurry!” “Marines, stand by to enter! Muzzles up!” “Portside guns loaded on every gun deck!” “Lay the plank down!” “Lay the plank down!”

You might ask why, if they were about to cross over to a ship where a mutiny was presumed to have broken out, they were shouting loudly enough for everyone aboard to hear. Were they kindly announcing that they were coming over?

In fact, yes.

Because this was an invitation to surrender—or a threat—that said: we are crossing now, so give yourselves up quietly, or we kill every one of you.

The sailors laid long planks against the United Company’s rail, and the marines, holding their loaded flintlock muskets and flintlock pistols high, covered them while staring tensely at the United Company.

At last, the marines crossed the boarding planks.

The first mate crossed as well, heading for the United Company’s main deck.

And then, the full carnage on the deck opened up before his eyes.

Ahh... save me... ahhk...

The countless sailors sprawled across the deck forced out weak voices, groans, faint cries begging to be saved, some of them little more than exhausted whimpers...

Even now, every last one of them was still breathing, writhing in pain.

The whole scene was the embodiment of some vast malice, a horrific malice that had decided not to let them die cleanly, but to leave them twisting in agony and grant them only a miserable end.

The first mate snapped back to himself at once and grabbed one of the fallen sailors.

“Hey. Are you conscious? What in God’s name happened here? What happened?”

“Save me... the ship’s doctor, the ship’s doctor...”

Their intestines had been severed, their abdominal cavities punctured. They had been left exposed for a long time on deck in the brutal heat of Shanghai, under a sun so hot sweat poured like rain even if you simply stood still, and without a shred of shade anywhere.

On top of collapse from heatstroke, their wounds had begun to rot rapidly, and the toxins leaking from their torn guts had thoroughly contaminated their bodies.

Even the bizarre medicine of Qing’s homeland would not have been able to promise any outcome in a condition like this. Their consciousness was cloudy, their bodies felt as though they were burning, and their wounds were under constant digging agony. How could any of them have held on to their sanity?

“Damn it! Get everyone over here! We’re collecting the wounded! Hurry! Stretchers!”

The first mate barked the order and hurried among the injured.

“Mother, Mother. Mother.”

“...give us the bread we need, and as we forgive those who have wronged us...”

“I don’t want to die. Save me.”

“Mary, I was going to propose when I got back. I’m sorry...”

“Honey, I don’t think I’ll be opening that inn. Even without me... tell our children I love them.”

The murmurs of the wounded barely clinging to breath, the desperate repetitions of those facing death.

If Qing had heard them, she would have snorted.

The bastards who had been cheering in delight while watching cannonballs rain down on other people, on other people’s families, were only now calling for their own families and their god?

If anything, they should have died proudly as villains to the very end. Did they think anyone would pity them once they started acting like this, after already proving themselves harmful to the world?

But to someone else, it was pitiful beyond measure. Tragic, even.

To the first mate, these were precious subordinates, skilled sailors, and company assets.

Men so cold they had neither blood nor tears—insurance loss assessors, perhaps—might have processed a sight like this in purely administrative terms.

Who were they, what fate had they met, and above all, did a payout have to be made?

But not the first mate.

Why had these men met such a fate? Who was the culprit? Why had anyone committed such an atrocity? Why...?

The first mate ground his teeth.

Even in the middle of it all, he kept grabbing at fallen sailors, desperate to learn even the smallest clue behind this disaster.

And then, suddenly, someone’s mutter reached his ears.

“Mermaid...”

Mermaid. That was the Dutch word for a mermaid.

The first mate’s face tightened into a fierce scowl. A mermaid? Since when had mermaids existed in the world?

That was nothing but a superstition from the ignorant old days, from the era when people believed there was a giant waterfall at the edge of the world, when sailing itself had meant something close to suicide.

And yet—

“A mermaid, the mermaid’s curse...”

“It was a mermaid. A mermaid.”

“The witch sold us to the mermaid...”

It was the common testimony of the dying sailors.

Even the survivor who had been found hiding inside a liquor barrel, sagging in exhaustion, panting, pale as paper, and yet still radiating the relief of someone who knew he had lived—even his testimony said the same thing.

A mermaid had appeared.

It was an immortal monster that knocked aside even blades with ease. A horrific devil’s creation that swung men around like sheets of paper and pierced through bellies with sharp claws, shredding intestines inside.

It had a beautiful face, but—ah, God—do not be deceived by that. It was a monster that devoured men. A mermaid, a mermaid...

“F-first mate, sir? About the search... what should we do? If a mermaid really did appear, then... then maybe this is the mermaid’s territory, and it got enraged because we fired the cannons...”

The sailors’ faces were clearly anxious.

Of course they were. Sailors were weak to superstition by nature. Their lives were staked on the whims of nature, so they could hardly help becoming people who believed in superstition.

The word mermaid alone had sent their morale plunging.

At that, the first mate roared.

“Nonsense! There is no such thing as a mermaid! I’ll lead the way myself! Everyone, move into the ship!”

However—

The state of the fourth-deck cabins, the upper gun deck, was even more horrific, a sight too awful to look at.

At least the victims on the main deck had still retained human form.

Their intestines had merely been hanging out to varying degrees.

But the gun deck was a place littered with severed chunks of arms and legs, gunners lying with their bellies split wide open and their guts spilled out, and limbs deliberately set on top of the brazier, already burned black and filling the air with the thick stink of charred flesh.

It was so hideous that even sailors with strong stomachs could not endure it. Gags, retching, and vomiting broke out all over the place.

The first mate forced down his own rising nausea, braced himself against a pillar, and started slapping the cheek of one of the few men still mostly intact.

“Damn it, are you—are you conscious? Get ahold of yourself. Come on, get ahold of yourself.”

“First... mate... sir...”

“Yes. It’s me. Are you conscious? What’s your name? Don’t fall asleep! What’s your name? Keep thinking. What in God’s name happened here?”

“Monster... run...”

“Monster? What do you mean, monster?”

“Guns don’t work... on the monster...”

A deeper crease cut across the first mate’s brow.

Monster? So on the deck it had been a mermaid, but down below they were calling it a monster?

“I’ve been cursed... I was attacked by a monster, so I’m going to fall into hell... I never should have boarded a witch’s ship... ngh... uh... heh heh heh...”

A quiet, shuddering sob.

The sailors, sinking into even deeper anxiety, moved on slowly, cold sweat running over them as they forgot even the midsummer heat.

The ladder was broken here as well.

The sailors who had to tie ropes to a pillar and lower themselves down instead felt as though they were descending into the belly of some terrible thing made of slaughter and corruption.

The middle gun deck too was a display of bodies too ghastly to speak of, and worse still, almost all those bastards were in the process of dying.

That was the truly horrifying part.

They had been left there alive.

The condition of the second deck, the lower gun deck, was even more appalling.

Most likely because the greatest number of gunners had been stationed there.

But though nearly-dead men—barely alive, yet already hopeless corpses-in-waiting—still groaned faintly, no culprit was found.

That left only the lowest deck.

The cargo section.

“First mate, sir... c-couldn’t we turn back now? This... this wasn’t done by a human being. It couldn’t have been.”

“What, Sergeant? What are you saying? You’re suggesting we go back and leave our brothers aboard ship behind?”

“But... they said it was an abomination. An abomination.”

The first mate looked back at the marines.

They all avoided his gaze and lowered their eyes. Every one of them clearly wanted to get out of there as fast as possible.

“There are no abominations! It’s all superstition!”

“There are. There are abominations. It was about forty years ago now, but I saw one with my own eyes. Back then, in Antwerp, the abomination that appeared in the city, it... it...”

The old marine’s voice trembled violently.

Not only his voice. His twitching jaw, his pupils going slack and unfocused as though the mere memory was enough to terrify him all over again—

“Don’t be ridiculous! That was a trick by those Spanish pig bastards! They spread sulfur and poison, that’s all! It was nothing but a hallucination! That was already proven!”

“No. I... I...”

“Damn it! Is this the time for all of you to spout weak nonsense like that? Then go back, all of you! I’ll save them myself if I have to! Cowards, go back! But remember this! There may still be comrades down below, praying desperately for our hands and our hands alone to reach them!”

The marines’ eyes wavered.

Because the word comrades had that kind of power over men.

It was the word that made people walk into the horrors of war of their own accord.

The search continued.

Unlike the gun decks, the cargo section was divided into many compartments, and now the marines, their breaths so tight they could barely make a sound, searched the hold in groups.

As the search went on, more critically wounded men were found, one after another, still barely clinging to life.

Which also meant that the sailors who had hidden themselves below to escape the culprit descending from deck to deck had failed, in the end, to escape its claws.

And then it happened.

“Hraaagh!” “Aaaaagh!” “What happened?!” “An abomination! It’s an abomination!” “First mate! Over here, here...!” “Jesus Christ, it really is an abomination...!” “Hiiik—”

Shrieks of terror exploded. When he turned his head, he saw one man collapsed in the corridor screaming, and marines hurriedly aiming their guns toward the inside of a storeroom.

The first mate broke into a run and shouted.

“Damn it, hold your fire! Don’t shoot! We need to arrest the culprit! We need to arrest them!”

The first mate shoved past the marines and pushed forward.

And there—

Inside the dim storeroom stood the figure of a woman, perfectly still.

Her head, tilted to one side while standing upright, was bent at an angle no human neck should have been able to reach, nearly horizontal, with her wet, seaweed-like hair hanging limp along with it.

Her face was drenched in blood as though she had washed with it, and in the dark, the blood clinging there looked all the redder against her unnaturally pale skin.

And above all, that smile.

The corners of her mouth were drawn all the way up toward her ears, baring white teeth, yet there was not a trace of laughter in the shape of her eyes. It was a smile twisted into something ominous and grotesque.

Then suddenly, it moved its lips.

“Welcome. First time in the martial world?”

At the same time, a whisper slammed harshly into their eardrums.

A bizarre language whipping right beside their ears, like the hiss of a serpent, or wind blowing through a crack in a door, magnified a hundredfold, a thousandfold, and driven into them in a rush.

Though it was clearly standing in front of them, the voice felt as though lips had pressed right up to their ears to toy with them.

And the sound dragged its tail like an echo, layering over itself as it bored inward.

Was this what the whispers of a devil sounded like?

Abomination.

At the word that gripped the heart with icy fingers, the marines froze in place, not even realizing that at some point they had stopped breathing altogether.

And the whisper uttered by that thing found at the very bottom of hell—or rather, on the United Company’s lowest deck—had in fact been this:

“Welcome. First time in the martial world?”

Not the whisper of a devil, really. Just an ordinary whisper breathed out in a normal voice.

It was only that she had thrown voice transmission into it.

Qing’s voice transmission was always too loud, always absurdly booming, so the sound had come out a little big.

And besides, Qing did not know Six-Harmony Resonance.

Six-Harmony Resonance was called Six-Harmony because it came from every direction at once—east, west, south, north, and then above and below—so that the speaker’s location could not be pinned down. Qing, by contrast, had just fired off one thick, blunt, group-targeted voice transmission in a single direction.

So the pronunciation got smudged, and the afterimage of the sound spilled everywhere like she had spoken through a loudspeaker.

Still, what did it matter?

It wasn’t as if any of them could understand her anyway.

Why?

Well, because there was nobody in this era who could understand her hometown speech, a language from the far future.

Why?

Because when she had practiced Joseon speech while chatting with Kim, she had realized it. Her hometown speech and Joseon speech were just completely different.

Which, well, obviously.

But then why, exactly, was Qing doing this?

Why was she standing alone in a dim storeroom, twisting her head sideways with a grotesquely flexible bend of the joints using the Divine Thief’s secret technique, forcing a smile onto her face, and creating this creepy atmosphere on purpose?

Well.

That was just Qing being Qing.

I mean, they kept calling her an abomination and a monster every time they saw her.

And then the thought had suddenly come to her.

The bad guys all needed their heads smashed first, but just from a glance there had to be more than ten ships out there.

Sure, cutting evil bastards down was always fun and exhilarating, but this was going to take a lot of work.

Was there some way to go straight to the flagship—what did they call it, the flagship?

And after thinking that through, Qing nodded to herself.

Well then, sure. Fine. If they wanted an abomination, she’d be an abomination.

People said they granted the wishes of the dead all the time. So could she really not grant a single wish for those who were still alive—and for those who would soon die and burn in hellfire forever?

Fine.

She would be the abomination for them.

But what even was an abomination, anyway?

Was it something like a ghost out of a horror story? You know. One of those Eight-Foot Ghost things? Mm. Then what would that make her?

And thus, at long last, it was born!

The Five-Foot-Eight Ghost!

Qing had even seriously considered, for a moment, just rounding up and going with the Six-Foot Ghost.

But six feet felt too tall.

And it also had this kind of pathetic vibe to it, like she didn’t actually make six feet but was insisting she did anyway after stuffing lifts into her shoes.

So in the end:

The Five-Foot-Eight Ghost!

A fearsome ghost standing at the mighty height of five foot eight, peering over low walls, hopelessly obsessed with children, and terrifyingly good at luring them in.

You might say that just sounded like a tall woman who liked children.

Tsk. Ah, now hold on. Then by that logic, wasn’t the Eight-Foot Ghost just a lonely woman with gigantism?

What, were they discriminating by height now? Against people—no, against ghosts?

Look at it right now.

These Dutch barbarians had the Five-Foot-Eight Ghost right in front of them, and they were frozen solid with the exact expressions of people who had just seen a real ghost.

As if her whole body were announcing: I am a terrifying ghost.

Qing forced herself to endure the ache creeping into her jaw from pulling too hard, and the stiffness spreading through her neck, as she welcomed this shocking debut of the ghost.