Things were not supposed to turn out like this.
Aboard the Gale, Captain Mengge Grayriver stared at the blinding meteors streaking across the sky, his face darkened with dismay.
"Where in the world did this mage come from?!"
Meteor Swarm, a ninth-circle spell—even if universally scorned as the embarrassment of the ninth circle—was not something ordinary Evocation mages could cast.
He knew every formidable power among the Silent Night Pirates. Why was there suddenly a legendary mage capable of casting Meteor Swarm among this pack of undead?
Where on earth had things gone wrong?
Watching the meteors plummet, Mengge Grayriver's memories flashed before his eyes like a revolving lantern.
He had always been the most outstanding among his peers. Blessed by the Lord of the Storm at an early age, he had become the youngest storm priest, his mastery of lightning far surpassing anyone his age. From there, he had risen through the ranks by suppressing bandits, eventually earning a place in the Raging Tide Navy. After rendering distinguished service in the war against the Emerald Dream Forest, he was finally appointed captain of the Gale.
In the entire Raging Tide Kingdom, there were no more than thirty warships of the Gale's caliber, making Mengge Grayriver once again the youngest captain of all.
Yet from that point forward, his life had taken a downward turn.
And it was all because of these undead pirates.
The Silent Night Pirates were an undead crew with a history spanning at least a millennium, boasting over a hundred ghost ships. The Raging Tide Kingdom had suffered grievously at their hands. Countless encirclement campaigns had been attempted against these pirates, yet every single one had ended in utter futility.
Because these ghost ships could submerge into the abyss, the undead could simply lie on the seabed for years without the slightest inconvenience. Even the finest swimmers of the Raging Tide Kingdom could not hold out underwater for more than a few hours, leaving them completely helpless against this pirate fleet.
Fortunately, for reasons unknown, the Silent Night Pirates never came ashore. Had they begun assaulting coastal cities, the Raging Tide Kingdom would truly have been driven to wits' end.
Youthful and ambitious, Mengge Grayriver had taken this infamous pirate fleet deeply to heart. He had tracked them numerous times and engaged them in multiple battles, though he had lost far more often than he had won.
Embarrassingly enough, even with such a track record, Mengge Grayriver had been hailed as a "famed general" of the Raging Tide Kingdom.
To occasionally gain a minor advantage against these undead was already an extraordinarily rare achievement.
Though showered with accolades on numerous occasions, Mengge Grayriver could never savor them. He simply could not accept that a rabble of pirates could lord it over the kingdom. Perhaps driven by this lingering indignation, he made substantial contributions to the realm.
He retrofitted his Gale, making the warship faster and its hull sturdier; he invented a novel detection spell capable of sweeping broad oceanic swathes for surface vessels through subtle shifts in tides and storms; and he collaborated with numerous storm priests to develop new strategic spells—the nearly completed Destructive Wild Thunder magic circle being his crowning achievement.
All of this had been prepared specifically for the Silent Night Pirates.
Phil had originally been sailing along the seabed with his fleet, but Anbaixiu's early arrival had forced him to break away from the main force, resurfacing to accelerate ahead.
Phil's solitary movement had been recorded immediately by the sea winds and tides, delivering word straight to Mengge Grayriver.
A single ghost ship had broken off from the main force, heading toward the western coast of the Emerald Dream Forest.
Without a moment's hesitation, Mengge Grayriver had pursued.
It could not be a trap, for the Silent Night Pirates never used stratagems in battle. They were bloodthirsty sharks; upon sighting prey, they would swarm in to tear and bite savagely, then dive back into the deep to vanish without a trace once finished.
In all the records, there was never any mention of this pirate crew resorting to cunning tricks against the Raging Tide Kingdom. Every clash was brute force against brute force—if they could win, they plundered mercilessly; if not, they simply fled.
Sure enough, the ghost ship had recklessly rammed straight in and initiated a boarding action.
This was the exact scenario Mengge Grayriver had hoped for. By sacrificing a few ordinary warships and holding out until the Destructive Wild Thunder circle was complete, he could obliterate the ghost ship in a single strike, denying it any chance to dive into the deep.
Everything had been proceeding smoothly; the magic circle had been merely moments from completion.
Yet... fate had played a cruel joke on him.
Four blazing meteors descended upon the Gale one after another.
The first was halted by the Gale's force field shield, though the barrier cracked all over. The second punched clean through the shield and crashed onto the deck, forcing the Gale's bow completely under the water and pitching the stern high into the air, nearly snapping the vessel in two.
The third slammed violently into the stern, piercing straight through the hull and setting the entire ship ablaze.
As for the fourth... Mengge Grayriver never saw it hit, for he had already triggered a teleportation spell and abandoned ship before it struck.
He had to report that the Silent Night Pirates now had an extra legendary mage—only that would give meaning to this sacrifice.
Before vanishing, he took one last, deep look at the sky, wishing to burn Anbaixiu's visage into his memory, but all he could make out was a dazzling burst of golden light, revealing nothing at all.
Anbaixiu had no idea who Mengge Grayriver was. He was solely focused on guiding his four meteors to ensure every one hit its mark. The Golden Throne had saved casting time and enhanced the spell's potency, but offered little assistance in terms of accuracy.
It was the power of the School of Divination that proved decisive here. The meteors, which normally would have scattered unpredictably, were locked firmly onto the Gale, completely obliterating the flagship.
The meteors that pierced through the hull detonated beneath the sea, churning up colossal waves that capsized the remaining Raging Tide Kingdom warships.
Having dealt with the enemies, Anbaixiu descended back to sea level.
By this time, Phil had ordered the ghost ship to resurface, receiving Anbaixiu back onto the deck.
This single-minded berserker was clearly a man of few words, repeating nothing but "amazing" and "too amazing" over and over again.
Yet it was plain to see that Phil genuinely admired Anbaixiu from the bottom of his heart. In this world, the strong always commanded respect.
Anbaixiu was hardly the type to do good deeds anonymously. He explained the Raging Tide Navy's scheme to Phil, cautioning, "If I hadn't interrupted their spellcasting just now, your ghost ship would have been completely destroyed, and you might have perished along with it. Are you always this reckless?"
Phil expressed genuine surprise. "They have a trick like that? I've never seen them pull off anything like that before."
"Never seen it? How long has it been since you last fought them?" Anbaixiu asked in bewilderment.
Phil counted on his fingers. "Speaking for myself, it's been nearly ten years. As for the others in the fleet, I'm not really sure. The commander's been slumbering recently, so I rarely bother surfacing."
"No wonder," Anbaixiu chuckled wryly. The concept of time among the undead differed vastly from that of mortals.
Humans were a short-lived race. To them, ten years was an immense span of time—long enough for a nation to completely overhaul its military. New equipment, new tactics, new spells... a decade was plenty of time to turn all of it over.
According to incomplete records in magical circles, human mages took anywhere from five to thirty years to develop a new spell; beyond that window, most would simply give up. Elves, by contrast, took fifty to three hundred years, while the undead were even more absurd, ranging anywhere from centuries to millennia.
These were statistics from *Legendary Spells*—not necessarily exact, but undoubtedly close enough.
That was the difference. Despite not needing to eat, drink, relieve themselves, or sleep, and theoretically being able to research around the clock, most undead lacked inspiration because they had lost all mortal desires. Moreover, high-tier undead generally kept to themselves, lacking the large-scale, regular academic symposia seen among humans, making substantial progress in magical research exceedingly difficult.
Sensation was crucial. The undead had lost their senses, clinging only to obsessions; receiving so little stimulation in their daily existence, their flashes of inspiration were drastically diminished. Yet innovation rarely hinged on knowledge alone—it required that spark of inspiration.
Precisely because of this advantage, humanity remained dominant in this world, while other races could not compare to them as a whole.
An undead creature could slumber for years at a stretch, and by the time they reemerged, their enemies were entirely different people, putting them at a distinct disadvantage.
Yet one could not have it both ways. Long-lived beings could not be expected to harbor the same urgency as mortals, just as one would not wait at the coach station when the carriage was still three hours away.
"You mentioned earlier that your commander has been slumbering all this time. What's the story behind that?" Anbaixiu inquired.
"Just sleeping. Is it weird for undead to sleep? We don't have much to do normally—if we aren't raiding, we're asleep. It was only recently that the commander woke up out of nowhere, which was a bit odd. But wasn't that because of your visit, esteemed guest?"
Phil was indeed a legendary undead, but he was certainly no member of the Elegy Poetry Society; otherwise, he would have known that the most momentous recent event was the Society President dropping a message in the group.
It was most likely the mysterious president's appearance that had roused the slumbering Senior Mute.
Anbaixiu stroked his chin, pondering, *Is there an online notification feature in the group? Why haven't I found it? Does the Elegy Poetry Society require microtransactions to unlock premium privileges?*
When the president had made that sudden appearance, it seemed on the surface like a rebuke directed at the foul-mouthed vampire Heji Stone, yet the others interpreted it differently. Anbaixiu recalled that both [Non-Vegetarian] and [Mute] had spoken of a massive event on the horizon—one with a thousand-year gap.
Had something momentous occurred on the continent a thousand years ago?
Back then, Anbaixiu hadn't transmigrated yet, so nothing came to mind right away. He would probably have to look up the historical records once he got back.
Unaware of what Anbaixiu was contemplating, Phil said, "Esteemed guest, that little hiccup is handled now, so let's continue our voyage. Still, I'm afraid those humans might come looking for more trouble. I plan to submerge and sail beneath the sea. What do you think?"
Submerging beneath the sea... ghost ships really were convenient.
Anbaixiu was just about to agree when a problem suddenly struck him: his mechanical body didn't seem to be waterproof!
Chapter 173