Mystery: Mr. Witch and Ms. Hunter

Chapter 331 Empty Ship
A ship is coming? What ship?

Adele was a little confused. She took the saber from the knife rack beside her, picked up the revolver, walked out of the room and came to the deck.

On the deck, preparations for the banquet had been interrupted and the sailors were running around busily.

The sailors reloaded their guns and made sure their swords were not blunted. They brought out the boarding hooks and manned the guns, but Adele did not hear any shelling, which she found odd.

She ran to the side of the deck and found that the "Snow Wind" was circling a caravel, gradually closing the distance with the other ship. However, during this period, there was no movement on the ship, as if it was an empty ship.

When the Snow Wind turned an angle, Adele saw the ship's name painted red on the side of the ship:
The Nebuchadnezzar!

Adele rubbed her eyes vigorously to make sure they were correct.

How is this possible? Adele was a little surprised. She glanced at the wall clock and found that she had only slept for two hours. With the caravel's incredibly slow speed, it was impossible for it to travel eighty nautical miles in two hours.

However, after Adele ordered to drop anchor, it was obviously impossible for the "Snow Wind" to actively approach the ship that the captain had determined to be a dangerous target. Whether Adele believed it or not, it did come near the "Snow Wind", as if it was just taking a walk at the doorstep.

"Can you see what's happening on the other side's deck?"

Adele quickly walked up to a sailor holding a telescope, snatched the telescope from his hand before he could answer, and looked at the uninvited guest in the distance.

The deck was empty, without a single sailor, just as Adele had predicted; however, on the other ship, Adele saw empty wine barrels rolling back and forth, sailor knives discarded at random, and even clothes hung outside by the sailors on that ship, as if the owner had just left.

If this is a trap to lure the enemy into boarding, it is too crude.

Adele put down the telescope and was about to wave her hand to order her men to fire a volley first, but Tracy, who had jumped out at some point, held her arm.

"Is there a problem?"

Adele looked at Tracy in confusion.

"You want to sink that ship?" Tracy's expression was quite serious.

"This is the safest way." Adele nodded slightly.

"You know what kind of people we have, right?"

Tracy glanced around and whispered to Adele, "Your influence is not deep enough. It would be a serious matter to rashly give up such a gain. These desperadoes will not thank you for your risk-avoidance behavior. They only know that you are blocking their way to wealth."

There was a reason why the Loen military was able to accept Tracy so quickly. Before this, the kingdom had the experience of recruiting some pirates with low bounties and minor crimes into the navy. In West Balam, there was such a pirate force, which played a significant role in the early landing operations, but was gradually idled as the battlefield progressed in the later stages.

When it was time to reorganize Adele's crew, Emlyn, in order to make the best use of his resources, transferred a large number of people from the pirate-turned-unit to the fleet. First, it could sharpen their spirits, and second, they could work closely with Tracy, who was also a pirate. The third party would be discarded, so it was a three-pronged approach.

However, Emlyn made the arrangements very quickly, but Adele encountered a lot of trouble for no reason.

The morale was too low. Even with the presence of Adele, Tracy, Natalie, and Constantine, four true mid-sequence powerhouses above Sequence 6, large-scale casualties, empty returns, and other morale-damaging events would still be a devastating blow to this hastily assembled fleet.

Just like now, if Adele directly ordered the ship to be sunk, it would be difficult to get positive feedback from the sailors.

These sailors who were born as pirates were inherently stubborn and greedy. It was not easy for them to be allowed to return to their old jobs. These sailors, who had been idle since the landing operations at the beginning of the year, became even more excited and it was difficult to suppress them with words alone.

They could accept fighting with others, weighing the losses and retreating after a few rounds of shooting, and they could also tolerate giving up after losing a certain number of people during the test, but to just ignore it and sink the enemy was something that these greedy sailors could never accept.

Adele hesitated for a moment and saw the eager eyes of the sailors not far away looking at her. It was a kind of morbid fanaticism. As she returned to her old job, this fanaticism appeared again in the sailors' eyes.

Adele sighed helplessly, waved her hand and ordered the sailors:

"Aim at both sides of the ship and fire suppressing shots, then move closer to the other side and send out small boats to engage the enemy."

Although the other party seemed to be just an empty ship, Adele still remained cautious.

Under her command, the sailors first fired a round of artillery fire from the side secondary guns, blowing the hull of the "Nebuchadnezzar" close to them into pieces, and almost 80% of the guns lost the ability to fire.

Then, the impatient sailors lowered the small boat with a boarding hook and quickly rowed the boat towards the caravel that was already on fire in many places.

They did follow Adele's orders, but when they saw the flames coming out of the other ship, many sailors still scratched their heads in frustration.

After all, ironclad ships are new gadgets that only appeared not long ago, and their sentimental value among pirates is not very high; whereas caravels have been roaming the seas for hundreds of years, leaving a deep impression in the hearts of countless pirates.

To put it another way, there are not many pirates who dream of owning an ironclad ship in the future, but there are many pirates who dream of becoming the captain of a caravel in the future.

At this point, these sailors had already regarded the ship as their own property. If possible, they would even ask Adele to capture the ship and serve on it.

In this context, no matter how Adele tried to restrict them, these former pirates who loved their ship so much would not listen.

We must put strengthening our control over these pirates on the agenda later...

Seeing that several quick pirates had already climbed onto the side of the Nebuchadnezzar, Adele secretly made up her mind.

Those brave pirates boarded the ship and gave it a rough search. They immediately sent one of them to hold up a small flag and signaled to the "Yukikaze" that "everything is normal, you can board the ship", while the rest simply dropped their weapons, picked up a few empty barrels, and joined the firefighting.

Now even Adele had no reason to delay. The Yukikaze moved closer to the Nebuchadnezzar, and the pirates brought out a large number of boarding cannons that could fire steel forks with ropes tied to the rear end. Several cannons fired at the same time, nailing into the opponent's hull, and soon they had built a series of cableways between the two ships.

The side of the Yukikaze was much higher than that of the caravel, forming a natural downhill slope.

The sailors took off their tricorn hats, untied their linen turbans soaked in tung oil, tied the sturdy turbans into a slipknot, held them in their hands, and fixed them to the steel cable.

Then, they grabbed their turbans in one hand and held shining steel knives in the other, some even hiding the burning seals in their braided beards, and slid along the steel cables towards the opposite ship like a group of excited monkeys.

They had revolvers or rare flintlock rifles on their waists, some of which were even blessed by magic.

When she is alone, she definitely doesn't want to be bothered by these guys - this is the conclusion Adele came to after observation.

Tracy was very calm. After Adele told Wendy and the four witches in the bar to stay behind, she extended her hand to Adele with a little reserve:
"Shall we go over and take a look too?"

Although she was fully aware of her male identity and was unwilling to casually touch the bodies of other men or witches who were originally male, Adele was an exception. After all, she was still her brother...sister? Tracy couldn't explain it.

Adele smiled, but did not hold Tracy's hand. Instead, she stretched her hand forward. Countless white threads quickly entangled with each other in the air, twisted into several strands, and quickly weaved a rope ladder between the cableways.

"Let's go."

Adele made a "please" gesture and walked up the rope ladder with Tracy. Although the hull was shaking, the two of them still relied on the witch's strong balance ability to maintain balance on the rope ladder that swayed like a trampoline from time to time, and walked slowly onto the boat.

Following closely behind was Constantine Eggers. As a "Necromancer", he felt that his balance ability was no match for the two cat-like people, so he simply summoned a flying undead creature to lift him up. However, the frost on the creature's claws left white and pale green ice debris on his shoulders. He was now cleaning it up, looking a little embarrassed.

As the church's commissioner for monitoring Tracy, he had to follow Tracy when she boarded the ship to prevent her or other crew members from secretly hiding the ship's property or taking any other actions.

However, Tracy, who thought she had seen the internal struggles of the Witch Cult, attached great importance to the kingdom's military's golden ticket of immunity from death and would not do irrational things. Therefore, Constantine's job as an inspector was quite easy, and he usually hung out with Wendy. The sunny personality unique to the people of the southern continent and Wendy, a purebred engineering student who did not understand romance, complemented each other perfectly, so that today was the first time he fulfilled his duties.

Tracy glanced at Constantine who was following behind her, and without saying anything, she began to use her frost ability to let the dark blue ice spread from under her feet to the center of the fire, helping the sailors put out the fire.

Adele did the same thing, and Constantine kept an eye on the surroundings, but until the fire was completely extinguished, he did not find anything unusual.

Still no crew member appeared on the Nebuchadnezzar, as if they had never existed.

However, the boiling water in the kitchen, the fresh stew that was scattered all over the restaurant due to the shaking during the shelling, and the half-drunk beer that was still bubbling all indicated that this group of people had disappeared not long ago.

The traces of their lives were fully exposed to everyone who boarded the ship, silently telling these uninvited guests that they once existed in some way.

All this made Adele feel extremely uneasy, but she didn't know where the uneasiness came from.

"Tracy and I will go to the bottom cabin to check the cargo with the sailors and keep an eye on these guys to prevent them from hiding anything. You can go to the captain's room first."

Constantine glanced at Adele's serious expression and knew that she was thinking about something, so he immediately spoke with understanding.

Adele nodded slightly, and the three of them went their separate ways.

Led by a sailor in a linen shirt, Adele came to the captain's room.

The captain's cabin has a large dining table on one side of the room, and there is also a quartermaster's workbench with his navigational tools, maps and charts.

Several sharpened pencils and a magnifying glass were placed on the table, and the occupant of the room seemed to be working on some academic problem before disappearing.

Judging from the holy emblems of the Church of the God of Knowledge and Wisdom that can be seen everywhere in the room, this ship is indeed from the Intis and Lenburg area.

There was a portrait hanging on the wall opposite the gate. The person in the portrait was wearing gorgeous clothes with golden tassels and red and blue as the background. He wore a tower-shaped golden crown on his head and a short-handled scepter-like thing on his waist, but Adele thought it might also be a dagger.

His facial features are relatively soft, which is quite different from those of people in the northern and southern continents.

The text annotation below indicated that the person in the portrait was the source of the ship's name. He seemed to be an emperor from ancient times, outstanding in both civil and military affairs. However, Adele, who had a wide range of knowledge in the history of mysticism, had no impression of this name at all.

The country of Lenburg doesn't have a long history. How could a ship be named after such an ancient figure?
Secretly complaining in her heart, Adele temporarily turned her eyes away from the portrait and looked at the other person's desk.

Among the scattered stationery, there was a seemingly ordinary sailing diary.

There seems to be a layer of black wax on the paper, which makes the diary much more waterproof. However, you cannot write on it with an ordinary pen. It seems that you have to use a knife to scrape off the wax bit by bit to reveal the words on the red background underneath.

"People from the Church of the God of Knowledge and Wisdom always like to make these inventions..."

Adele picked up the diary and flipped through it casually, then her expression gradually froze.

"What the Pope said on January 1rd was true. There really is something behind the fog. It must be the Kingdom of God He spoke of!"

"Merciful God, may your wisdom guide me."

"On January 1, we finally passed through the fog. The power of wisdom is indeed infinite. Praise knowledge, praise wisdom!"

“On January 1, we are closer to His Kingdom. I can feel that the pilgrimage is coming to an end!”

From then on, there were dozens of blank pages, until the last page, where the bloody handwriting appeared again:

"On January 1, we will become stars."

(End of this chapter)