92. Special Attack! Monolith Buster Crash!

「P-Pirate ship spotted!!」

The ship’s crew began the panic the moment they heard the watchman’s shout. Likewise, the children immediately stopped eating and instead began looking around with anxious looks on their faces.

Seriously? Fuck those shit eating retards! Fran was just starting to relax and have fun! I was NOT going to let them get away with this.

The twins immediately went to go get the captain, who proceeded to explain the situation.

「It looks like we’re about to be attacked by a fleet of pirates」

「Fleet? How many?」

「Eight ships in total.」

Huh, that’s actually a pretty decent number.

「What do you think of our chances of breaking through and escaping?」

「I’m afraid it’s not possible. They’ve many a speedboat.」

「Then shall we fight?」

「With all due respect, your highness, I wish for you and your sister to board a lifeboat and escape.」

「Would it not be possible to fit us all on the aforementioned lifeboat?」

「We would fit, but most of us will need to stay behind in order to fight the pirates and thereby draw their attention. The plan is currently to have your highnesses escape alongside the children and a few select others.」

「I refuse to to allow that to happen. I cannot allow myself to escape whilst making sacrifices of my retainers.」

「I too support my brother’s sentiments. We refuse to escape by ourselves.」

If I was still human, I likely would’ve nodded my head in approval. I liked the way the prince and princess thought. Normally, this kind of situation would resolve itself by having a few subordinates act as decoys while they escaped. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that escaping with their lives was precisely their duty as royalty. The only possible way to describe the two royals currently protesting that exact action was that they were naive.

But that was fine. I rather liked them, and I didn’t really think there was any sort of issue with royalty acting the way they did.

「I am also against the idea.」

「You too Serid? I see you understand the value in having us all escape together.」

「I am against that idea as well. My belief is that we would do best to surrender.」

「What!? You fool! How can you possibly even consider the idea of surrender!?」

Salrut roared in anger in response to Serid’s sudden suggestion.

「We cannot best them in combat.」

「And that is precisely why we should allow the prince and princess to escape while we buy them the time they require!」

「So you mean to say that you believe the two of them will be able to navigate the ocean and safely return home in nothing but a miniscule rowboat? It would be much more favourable to declare the highness’ identities and surrender. Pirates are crude, but it would be but nonsensical for them to go out of their ways to make enemies our country. I can assure that the pirates will not harm the prince nor princess, but instead, demand ransom as compensation for their safeties. There is no reason for us to resist. Resisting will do nothing more than anger our enemies and eliminate any potential means for negotiation.」

His proposal did seem like it was supported by a decent amount of logic, but things probably wouldn’t go as smoothly as he thought they would.

「Your proposal is ridiculous! I refuse to acknowledge its viability.」

「Learn your place, Salrut. A mere knight like you has no right to participate in this conversation.」

「I am their highness’ guard. I have the right to act according to my discretion in times of need.」

「How impudent you are. Did you perhaps think that being promoted to their highness’ guard provides you the right to argue against me?」

「Impudence plays no part in this ordeal! My duty is but to protect, and that is precisely what I am attempting to do.」

「Silence foreigner! You are nothing, a mere dog picked up by the queen upon a whim! I have more than enough reason to doubt the truth of your words.」

「I see that you’ve stooped to the level of insults now, Serid.」

「And for what reason would I not? You are but encouraging a measure that would bring more risk to their highness’ than necessary. Truly, I have begun to doubt your motives. Did you really take flight from the Kingdom of Reidos? Is that but a pretense? A lie? Is it not possible, or rather, likely, for you to be merely aiming for our country’s Godblade? I think it so.」

「Godblade? In possession?」

Fran joined in on the conversation happening between the two old men because her ears caught something that grabbed her attention.

「I-Indeed. Our country is in possession of a single Godblade.」

「Don’t you dare call the Fyrias Kingdom your country, you damned Reidosian!」

「I dare you to repeat those words!」

And so, the two old men started arguing once again. Ew.

You know, thinking about it, aren’t they like, kind of wasting a lot of time doing this?

『They’re being a bit of a pain in the ass right, so what do you say to fixing their pirate problem, Fran? They’ll probably tell us more about the Godblade if you ask later anyways.』

（Nn. Good idea.）

『Man, why did this have to happen in the middle of a meal anyways…』

（Sushi. Tasty.）

『Urushi, stay here and guard the prince and princess, alright?』

（Woof!）

（Save sushi. I want.）

（Bark!）

『Oh, did you end up taking a liking to it?』

（Nn. Only second to curry. Tasty.）

Welp, still doesn’t match up to her beloved curry apparently.

「Wait, Fran, where are you going?」

「Nn? Sinking enemies.」

「What? Wait! You’re acting far too recklessly!」

The prince tried to stop Fran by grabbing ahold of her, but she easily dodged and stepped up onto the ship’s railing.

「Be right back.」

And with that line, she leapt.

「Kyaaa! Fran!」

「Fran!」

The children rushed up to the ship’s railing in haste. They’d assumed that she had dived into the ocean, but yeah, no. Not even Fran could board a pirate ship with ease if she had to swim up to it first. And that was why they didn’t see her swimming when they peeked over the deck. Instead, they were greeted by a rather peculiar sight. Fran was using magic to hop through the air.

「Woah!」

「That’s amazing!」

「Fran’s flying!」

I activated telekinesis and let her get on top of me. To the children, it looked as if she was surfing through the air.

It took us about thirty seconds to get up above the pirate ships. The flag they had raised was one with a skull inscribed upon it. In other words, the people we were about to fight were the pirate equivalent of basic bitches.

The only notable thing about the ships was that they had already sustained a fair amount of damage. It almost looked as if the pirates had just finished fighting another battle. One of the ships even had a giant hole in its side.

『The hell’s up with that?』

「Don’t know.」

『Oh well, whatever. They have their cannons prepped and stuff, so I guess can’t just ignore that one or anything.』

「Sink biggest last?」

『Sure, why not?』

「Nn. Starting now.」

『Er wait a sec, hold on. Why don’t we actually try going for that one first?』

「Biggest?」

『Yeah, I want to check if that’s the one their captain’s on. I also want to ask them a few things before we sink them all.』

「Understood.」

And so, we ended up attacking the ship that looked like the flagship first. The pirates onboard could do nothing but stare at us with their mouths gaping as we readied our assault.

「Starting.」

『Go for it. Make sure you don’t kill the captain though.』

「Nn.」

Fran leapt off of me, grabbed me on her way down, and immediately killed every pirate in her vicinity as she landed.

What happened afterwards was more or less a slaughter. Every single movement Fran made resulted in the death of a pirate. There were a few half decent fighters, but not a single one of them was even anywhere remotely close to a match for Fran. Their ranged options were completely nullified as well. None of the arrows or spells they loosed could pierce Fran’s magic barrier.

「W-who the hell are you!?」

「Adventurer.」

「Shit! This is fucking insane!」

「Die bitch!」

「No.」

「Gyaaahhh!」

It took us but a few moments to defeat every single pirate aboard the ship save for the captain.

「Damned monster!」

Oh what the fuck. I hate this guy already.

（Master. Not content?）

『Well yeah. Just look at what he’s wearing.』

「Nn?」

What the hell kind of pirate was he supposed to be!? He didn’t have any eyepatches, he didn’t have any wooden limbs, and he didn’t have any hooks, like what the hell! He didn’t even have a goddamn hat with a goddamn skull on it either! He’s literally not even a real pirate. Like come on! I was hoping he would look like Captain Hook, or maybe even Jack Sp*rrow, but no! This little shit doesn’t look like a pirate at all! Like what the fuck was this!? I feel fucking scammed!

『He’s literally dressed the exact same as any run of the mill warrior!』

The captain was wearing normal plate armour with a normal helmet. There was nothing interesting about his appearance at all. Well, I mean he did at least have a cape, and his armour was pretty high quality, but he looked literally nothing like the captain of a crew of pirates. I never would’ve even guessed it to be him. The only reason I knew was because I used appraisal.

「Damn you! Let go of me! Let go of me right this instant!」

Fran lifted the pirate as I voiced my complaints. Seeing a cute, little girl like her lift a huge, bulky man was kind of off putting actually.

『Oh whatever… Let’s just get the questioning and shit over with.』

（What to ask?）

『Ask him if he’s the one that commands the whole fleet.』

And so, we began to interrogate the pirate. Fran asked the questions while I figured out whether or not they were true by running them through the Principle of Falsehood.

The results of our interrogation were as follows: he was the fleet’s boss, they had a base with more guys there, and that they didn’t have any treasure because they’d only just left.

I wanted to ask the captain a few more questions, but we ran out of time. The other nearby ships had begun bombarding the one we were on despite the fact that their captain was still alive. How heartless.

「Those sons of bitches betrayed me!」

I’m not sure what he expected. They’d probably just end up getting a new boss if he died anyways.

『Alright, let’s go destroy all the other ships.』

「Nn.」

「Gyuke！」

Fran gave the captain’s neck a chop and knocked him unconscious. For some odd reason, he let out a really wierd noise as it happened. Moreover, his mouth had began to foam, and his eyes had completely rolled back into his head.

『The hell was that?』

「Nn? Cool effect. Good hit.」

『Eh, oh well whatever. We can let him live if you want. Just like roll him up and bring him with us or something.』

「Nn. Going.」

A second bombardment assaulted us as Fran picked up the captain and got back on top of me. They seemed to be aiming at us, but they couldn’t seem to hit because of how small of a target we were relative to what they were used to.

「Activating now.」

Fran activated her dimensional storage as she got above the other ships. This time, however, she wasn’t actually putting anything inside of it. Quite the opposite, in fact. Remember those giant rocks we happened to pick up the other day?

『Fuahahaha! Take this! Monolith Buster Crash!』

（Nn?）

『Er, it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.』

「Nn.」

The pirates were clearly thrown into a state of disorder. Well, can’t really blame them. A rock the size of their ship literally just appeared out of thin air.

Doing this allowed us to get rid of the giant rocks we had sitting around for no reason while also sinking the enemy’s ships in one go. It was truly an application of the classic two birds one stone concept.

Honestly, we probably could’ve just dumped the rocks in the ocean earlier, but doing that would’ve made it seem like I was illegally dumping garbage or something, so I felt kinda guilty about it despite the fact that I probably wouldn’t have been reprimanded for it anyway. This, however, made me feel pretty good if anything.

The dull sound of wood being torn to shreds rang throughout the seas the moment the rock hit the ship. This sound was immediately followed by a louder, metallic impact and then finally a series of screams. And that was that. The ship snapped in half and sank into the ocean.

「Next?」

『Hell yeah!』

We did the same thing to the other ships as well. The pirates tried shooting us down with magic and arrows, but their shots were too scattered and failed to accomplish much of anything at all given that all their attacks were completely negated by Fran’s magical barrier.

It took us less than five minutes to sink all eight pirate ships. Naturally, the flag ship was given the exact same treatment as the rest, and so, we managed to get rid of two thirds of the rocks we had in storage.

『Alright, that’s that. Let’s head back over to the ship.』

「Nn.」