Lord of Winter: Beginning with Daily Intelligence

The battlefield’s shrieks, cannonades, and crashing waves were swallowed by an even more domineering sound.

“Wooooo——!”

It was a deep rumble, so low it made your teeth ache.

The mist was torn open, and what emerged first was the bow.

It was basically a moving black cliff face.

As it pushed forward, an extremely pungent stench instantly rolled across the battlefield.

This was the smell of industry, proclaiming its sovereignty over these waters.

A hapless pirate brig just happened to be crossing its path.

That ship had once been a hulking predator before merchantmen, but now it didn’t even qualify as a speed bump.

The Fernando didn’t blow its whistle, didn’t slow down, didn’t even bother to turn.

“Crack.”

The wooden keel turned to powder the instant it touched the steel bow, and tens of thousands of tons of steel kept surging forward on inertia.

Splintered planks, rotten canvas, and dozens of pirates who hadn’t even figured out what was going on were sucked under that massive black hull in a heartbeat, leaving only pale streaks of blood in the wake.

Before absolute mass, all technique, all courage, are a joke.

……

Inside the armored command tower, it was as quiet as an air bubble in the deep sea.

Thick bulletproof glass sealed out every trace of the destruction outside; the only sound was the low-frequency thrum of the steam engine coming up through the floor like a heartbeat.

The air was dry and warm, even faintly scented with black tea.

Fleet commander Arwin stood at the Sea Chart table.

His dark blue double-breasted naval uniform was pressed razor-sharp, every button fastened up to the very top.

He held a command sword in one hand, tapping it idly against his palm.

Louis stood beside him, cup in hand, as if watching a play that had been rehearsed a hundred times, though in truth he was quite curious just how far this ship could go.

Orland, on the other hand, had lost his composure a little.

The chief engineer’s fingers were shaking; his face was pressed to the glass as he stared, unblinking, at that enormous black silhouette of a ship outside.

Arwin saw the signal flags rising from the vanguard squadron, and through the fog he also made out the three big fellows trying to close in.

He turned, didn’t raise his voice, and spoke into the voice-tube in the tone of someone ordering in a restaurant: “Shipwide, first-class battle configuration.”

“Unlock the main batteries.” He lifted the command sword and pointed it toward the window. “Those three rocks blocking the way… clear them out.”

The Tyrant moved. In that brain which had already degraded into a fleshy tumor, there was only one rigid directive.

Unleash the crust of the earth, smash everything!

Dun-colored runes flared madly; stone swelled and bred like something alive, and in an instant a translucent spherical force field unfolded around the hull.

This tortoise shell had once tanked three broadsides from the Royal Navy and slipped away unscathed.

With that so-called absolute defense wrapped around it, it charged straight in like a rhino with no concept of death.

That was the tragedy of a puppet: it doesn’t know the era has changed.

“Armor-piercing high explosive—peel its shell off!”

“Boom——!”

The Fernando gave a crisp shudder, and two specially made pointed shells ripped through the air.

That much-vaunted earth barrier, supposedly immune to physical attacks, was as fragile as a sheet of wet toilet paper before the spiral kinetic energy of the Armor-Piercing Bullets.

“Puff.”

With a dull thud, the shell drilled through the rock without the slightest resistance, burrowing straight into the deepest magazine in the hull, where its fuse detonated.

The Tyrant was forced into a glowing sphere by the energy that blew out from its belly.

The next second, the entire ship simply vaporized.

Stone, steel, and all the disgusting soft-bodied things parasitizing inside it were erased in an instant in three thousand degrees of heat.

All that remained on the sea was a vast pit steaming white, without even a single decent plank left floating.

Legendary defense? In the face of yield, it’s all hot air.

The Shadow Serpent burst out right after, cutting wild S-shapes across the water. Black mist billowed out, spawning a dozen or so lifelike phantoms.

It wove among the illusions, fast as a streak of black lightning, thinking it could dance circles around that lumbering ironclad.

“Idiot…” Orland watched the ship darting around and couldn’t help but laugh.

On the second deck, twelve secondary guns elevated in unison.

No need to aim, no need to predict—just fill that patch of sea.

“Klang klang klang klang klang——!”

The ejection ports opened and scalding shell casings spilled onto the deck like a waterfall, chiming out a deliciously crisp metallic music.

Thirty rounds a second.

The dense shells pushed forward like a solid wall, covering every sector where the Shadow Serpent could move, with no blind spots.

The dozen illusions were shredded in an instant.

Then came the real body.

Its vaunted speed meant nothing in a bullet-screen so dense it was almost solid.

The first shell snapped its keel, the second tore its sails to rags, the third, the fourth… the hundredth.

In half a second that ship was hacked apart into fragments.

It didn’t even manage to get within a kilometer of the Fernando before it was reduced to a slurry of rotten planks bobbing on the waves.

Last came the Death Whisper. This necro-ship had never planned on going home alive.

The thousands of misshapen Fishmen on board screamed at once, their psychic Shock Wave surging out like a tsunami.

At the same time, its Catapults hurled countless flesh sacs packed with corrosive venom and plague up into the air, a green rain coming down.

It meant to drag them all to hell together.

Even if we die, we have to splash plague and Curse all over the deck of the Fernando.

“Too filthy.” Louis frowned, as if he’d just seen someone spit on a pristine white dining table.

Zzzzzz—!!!

On both sides of the bridge, four multi-barrel rotary cannons let loose a scream like cloth being torn apart.

The six barrels spun into afterimages.

An orange-red metal storm wove itself into a web of fire in midair.

Those flying Fishmen attempting a suicide charge never even got close to the rail; they were shredded into a blood mist in the air.

Meat sacs, venom glands, Curse media—everything was blasted apart midair by the dense hail of rounds.

Right after that, the flame ports under the rail opened.

High-pressure alchemized Petroleum roared out.

Whoom—!

A hundred-meter-tall wall of flame flared up around the Fernando in an instant.

The venom that slipped through fell into the fire, hissing and crackling as it burned away to nothing.

The flames even rolled back with the wind, like a gigantic whip of fire lashing viciously across the face of the Death Whisper.

The sail made of human skin went up in a flash.

That ship steeped in Curses and resentment turned into a colossal torch on the sea under the burn of industrial alchemy flame.

The Fishmen’s screams shifted from psychic attacks to pure howls of agony, then finally sank into silence.

Three minutes, just three minutes.

Three old-era legends strengthened by the power of the deep sea were reduced to ash and char.

The Fernando glided slowly across that still-smoldering stretch of sea.

Its black hull was spotless, not so much as a smear on it.

Suddenly, the surface went quiet.

The rhythmic slap of waves against the hull vanished; the black seawater thickened like boiling tar, bubbling and burping.

Then came a stench like a corpse dragged up from a trench after stewing for centuries.

The black water heaved, first thrusting up a tangled mass of soft tissue, then the shattered hull of a ship, brutally jammed into the tentacles of a gigantic octopus.

Wood and rusted iron had long since fused with flesh; there was no telling where the ship ended and the monster began.

The place where the mast should’ve stood was now whipping a few dozen massive tentacles, each suckered coil pulling up clouds of murky black water with every flex.

On the hull, countless eyes snapped open.

Large as Shields, small as coins, they rolled with a wet, rasping friction, boring into the steel leviathan ahead.

Then it opened its mouth.

The original bow simply split into a black maw bristling with fangs.

Its low-frequency roar slammed into the armor plating, making people’s bones ache.

In the armored command tower, Louis stood before the bulletproof glass, watching that swaggering lump of rot, frowning: “That’s disgusting.”

Alwin wasted no words. “Engine group, supercritical overload. Main gun, charge.”

Red alarm lights strobed like mad across the bridge.

The deck underfoot began to quake violently—that was the bellow of four vertical steam engines being forced past their limits.

The pressure gauges’ needles slammed straight into the red; superheated steam in the pipes shrieked, like countless beasts trapped in iron cages, hurling themselves against the bars.

The Fernando’s main gun lifted its head.

Blue-white arcs of electricity raced rabidly along the runes etched into the barrel; even the air around it warped in the heat.

Fire.

A massive Magic Explosion Bullet blasted from the muzzle, like a Light Blade with no thickness at all, stabbing straight into that roaring mouth.

The seawater along its path vaporized in an instant, the steam scattered before it could even rise.

The fusion abomination that had just been so arrogant didn’t even have time to scream.

On contact, tentacles, eyes, planks, flesh—every structure disintegrated in a single millisecond.

They were erased from the physical world by sheer heat.

Like someone taking an eraser and grinding it hard across the canvas.

The light faded.

All that remained on the surface was a hundred-meter-wide void; the surrounding sea held for a few seconds, then came crashing back in with a roar, colliding to throw up spray tens of meters high.

As for the Black Reef Prince? Not even dust remained.

On the distant deck of the Scorpion, there was a deathly silence.

The telescope slipped from Miller’s hand and smashed into his foot; it hurt like hell, but he didn’t react.

He slid down the rail like a sack of rotten meat, mouth gaping, lungs dragging at the air, but he couldn’t pull in a single breath of oxygen.

He stared at that black warship, still resting quietly where it was.

Hull black as ink, lines cold and sharp, not a single flake of paint missing.

What was that just now?

Was that Magic? Or divine punishment?

He’d always thought a pirate’s end was the gallows, or being swallowed by something stronger.

It had never occurred to him, not even in his nightmares, that something like this would be what finished them.

“This isn’t a battle at all…” Miller’s voice rasped like two sheets of sandpaper grinding together, loaded with despair.

Those so-called legendary pirate kings, those deep-sea monsters that made the Northern Territory tremble—before this steel flood, they didn’t even qualify as a proper tragedy.

They were just stains.

And being wiped away was the only ending they were ever going to get.