The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor

“Such an enormous amount of ships. Why are there so many suddenly here at the Jigolaths?”

“They’re all phantom ships. With all the phantom ships gathered this is a disaster. All hands, prepare for battle!”

The huge fleet of ships behind Weed’s ship were all Phantom Ships.

After reporting to Drinfeld the high-speed ship tried to turn back to the fleet but couldn’t veer off in time, seconds later the bow of the ship was hit.

Weed’s Roar of a Lion rang out over the sea.

“All Phantom Ships! Prepare to fire!”

“Aye aye,….run out all cannons.”

“Was that run out the guns? My ears ain’t young no more, hey is that something trying to eat them?”

“Why isn’t it working?”

It was quite a sight to see the same scene was happening on board every ship of the phantom fleet. Seaweed had gown over the cannons after 50 plus years and the ghost crews were trying to cut away these tangles. Slashing at the seaweed with their knives sparks flew about and landed on the primed wicks.

“Fire!”²

Kwang Kwang Kwang!¹

At that moment some of the cannons exploded since maintenance is not something phantom ships take much care about.

“Was that proper cannon fire?”

One of the crew, a skeleton, then stuck its head into a canon to check conditions. This was after the wicks had already been ignited.

Kwang Kwang!

The cannon fired with a normal discharge and the skeleton’s head disappeared.

“Success. The cannonball fired properly. By the way, where’s my head? ”

The skeleton then wandered around on deck as a body looking for whatever might remain of it’s head!

“There’s no cannonballs. Did somebody get the munchies awhile ago and eat them? Or maybe they were lost while playing with them?”

“There are no cannonballs here, this is a merchant ship.”

“Lets use dried fish instead.”

Amongst the phantom ships were those that had once been merchants or passenger ships, those types never had cannonballs to begin with. Of course it was always possible to capture guns and ammo from other ships at sea if they didn’t have them.

“I’m going in. ku ku ku! Ok, Here I go!”

The ghost crews were entering their own cannons and firing themselves like cannonballs. This crazy kind of behavior is relatively normal on board a phantom ship.

The cannonballs fired by the phantom ships flew in concert over Weed towards the high-speed sailing ships. Columns of water soared high in the water around the high-speed sailing ships, the accuracy rate was very low. Cannonballs also exploded like fireworks as they hit each other in the air.

“Take evasive action!”

“We can’t avoid this many! Prepare the guns for a counterattack!”

The Captains of the High-Speed Ships had to try to prepare the cannons while their ships used zigzag course patterns. But the Phantom ships had just fired randomly without bothering to aim.

Most of them hit nothing but the sea but those that hit the High-Speed Ships exploded. The cannonballs that pierced through the deck and hulls lit up the ships with blazing hot balls of fire.

Sections of the hulls broke off and flames began to start.

“Fire!”

The High-Speed Ships were trying to fire back yet with every cannonball explosion their ships would shake violently causing the ships to roll from side to side.

“Ku-he-he-he! Hu-mans.”

Even in the chaos Ghost crews began to board. Giant slippery tentacles sprang up from the sea snatching sailors off the decks. Clinging to the hull the octopus-like-head of the Sea Monster began to rise out of the water.³

The Captain of the high-speed mission urgently sent a message to the Hermes Guild chat channel.

Stringer: We’re being attacked by Phantom Ships. This is an emergency we are being destroyed.

The Vice-commodore of the Haven Kingdom 2nd Fleet replied.

Pache: How many Phantom Ships are there?

During the Jigolaths engagements the Hermes Guild and the Haven Fleet shared a single chat channel, currently this channel was a hot topic and so had a lot of listeners from the Guild.

Stringer: Right now…there’s not much time to explain. This will be our last message as we’ll most likely be sunk. Our mission target; Weed’s ship, has transformed into a Phantom Ship, we now assumed that he is therefore also responsible for the fleet of Phantom Ships that are attacking us. All our ships will be destroyed in this battle! This is an A1 emergency request for aid!

Pache: How did the situation suddenly beco…acknowledged. We will be there A-sap.

By the time Drinfeld’s Main Fleet left the Unfreezing River and arrived at the high-speed convoy location they had all either sank or were on their way to becoming sea monster food.

They had gone looking for the High-Speed Convoy expecting to find Phantom Ships and Sea Monsters but even so they could not hide their shock.

“Well, though they told me ahead of time I didn’t believe it would have gone this far.”

High-Speed Ships that had Sea Monsters enclosing them looked to have had no choice but to give up. Ghost had boarded and were engaging in hand to hand combat on the ship decks. The hulls spat out flames and rolling clouds of black smoke. They had gotten here too late to prevent them from sinking into the sea.

“We won’t be able evade a battle of this scope.”

The tough part for the users of Drinfeld’s Haven Fleet was that they had only just left the mouth of the Unfreezing River. The position of the Phantom Fleet was waiting at the ideal location to open fire from the surrounding sea.

This meant that under the circumstances moving forward meant becoming nothing more than easy targets.

To gain his title of Grand Admiral, Drinfeld had fought his way through hundreds of maritime battles. He had the skill to bring about a complete reversal.

“Phantom Ships couldn’t hit a barn door. All armor reinforced ships to the front. Do not use evasive actions, bear straight ahead. 1st squad and 3rd squad will attack on the left and right flanks. They will attack from outside the Phantom Fleet range.”

Due to the huge number of Sea Monsters and Phantom Ships they were ready to hold their location and take them head on. Based on the sheer amount of firepower from the Phantom Fleet they were all hungry to annihilate the oncoming battleships.

Drinfeld felt this engagement would lead to a huge naval victory that could make up for the past public failures.

Phantom Ships had only one way to gain rewards, that was through victory in a naval battle. Also they could earn fame just like the land users did when they looted dungeons.

It was also fairly commonplace for all Phantom Ships to house treasure and antiques.

***end chapter 08⁴***

I’m sure you all got that this is the sound of ‘boom, boom, boom!

I think its more like ‘fire in the hole’ not sure. It only said Fire.

This was what it translated to, I triple checked for other words/idioms etc. but nope, octopus like head was it.

As always please keep in mind, this will not be a ‘perfect translation.’ I use machine translators and my reading of Korean is very minor at best. I do learn more all the time and I am always checking and consulting the Korean Dictionary. With all such translations I work very hard to stay true while also trying to bring some of the flavor of the characters and settings. All copyrights of this material belong to the author, Nam Hee-Sung.

*****end chapter 8 part 3 of 3*****