Otherworld Bone Dragon Operation Guide

Chapter 120: Loot (5K)

The hatch opened, and Bei Anqi skipped in. Zi Jin calmly finished the brown sugar water in her cup, and Su Ming threw the washed dates into the pot and put the lid on.

"It's so hot today!" She placed a piece of paper on the table, took out a chilled juice from the refrigerator, poured herself a glass, and then gulped it down in one go.

"Phew!" She let out a long breath, then poured herself another glass, carried it to the table, and sat down.

"Shall we decide what to do with the spoils?" Beanie asked the two.

Su Ming dried his hands and sat down at the table. "Okay!"

The girl waved the paper in her hand and said excitedly, "The statistics are complete. We defeated a total of 21 pirate ships, of which 4 were slightly damaged, 12 were seriously damaged, 3 sank, and 2 were on the verge of sinking!"

“We don’t have the capacity to handle so many.” Su Ming quickly realized the problem.

The White Triangle was severely lacking in manpower; the task of capturing prisoners and seizing spoils could not be accomplished by zombies and skeletons alone.

“So my suggestion is to auction off the disposal rights!” Beianqi was not surprised at all and directly stated her prepared plan. She handed the paper to Su Ming, and Zi Jin leaned over to look at it together.

The paper was titled "Statistics of Loot from the Battle of Maimang," followed by the tonnage, configuration, and number of pirates of the eighteen unsinkable warships, and then the prices, ranging from several thousand to tens of thousands of gold coins.

Each ship has two prices, one low and one high.

“The first is the starting price, and the second is the buy-it-now price,” Beanie explained. “If you agree, I will send the message to all factions in the fleet. The auction will last for half an hour, and the highest bidder wins. Or, if you think it’s appropriate, you can directly bid the buy-it-now price.”

"You're too close, Violet." Su Ming reminded her, as Violet practically draped her hair over Su Ming's shoulder.

The girl tossed her hair to one side and leaned closer to look. Beianqi watched the two of them, a slight smirk playing on her lips.

After reading it, Su Ming handed the paper to Zi Jin.

"I think this plan is good," Su Ming said, expressing his support.

Zijin slightly revised a few quotes, then handed the paper back to the mechanic girl, saying, "Well then, Beianqi, thank you for your hard work!"

****
As the White Triangle towed the pirate ship back, all the sailors of the fleet crowded onto the deck, cheering and jumping for joy. Many ships fired red, yellow, blue, green, and orange signal flares to celebrate the naval victory.

The white bone ship politely responded with alternating red and green signal flares, expressing its gratitude.

The auction went smoothly, and all the rights to collect the spoils were sold. The White Triangle, towed back undamaged, sold for the highest price, a full 40,000 gold coins.

The ship and its cargo alone are worth over 60,000 gold coins. Although this is at sea and requires further investment to realize the value, it's still a very good return for the buyer.

Ships and cargo were auctioned off, and captured pirates were taken in and escorted by the buyers of each ship. The bounty was split 50/50 between the ship and the White Triangle.

As for the dead, their bodies were recovered and brought back intact. One cabin of the White Triangle was filled with them, so Violet withdrew the notice to buy the sailors' bodies.

"Too much of this won't do," Su Ming thought to himself. Low-level undead can't be used for too long, while high-level ones are too costly. Preserving corpses is also troublesome; once a battle is won, they're everywhere, but when needed, they're easily gone.

He has discovered yet another major weakness of the undead class.

After declining all invitations to banquets, the three of them had dinner and then began a post-battle technical debriefing in their workshop, analyzing the problems encountered during the battle.

"The most serious mistake was mine." Beian stood up, bowed, and apologized. "I didn't consider the advantage of large-caliber shells in penetration, and I used too much propellant!"

With a 203mm projectile traveling at 2.3 times the speed of sound, and lacking actual test on target ships, Beianchi made an error that exceeded the limits of her imagination.

"That's enough to convey the meaning," Su Ming gestured for her to sit down. "Your response was very timely."

After discovering the problem, Beanie tried to attack the pirate ship at an angle to increase the penetration depth along the firing path and reduce the probability of over-penetration.

"Two shells still managed to penetrate the enemy ship today, only to explode upon landing at sea; otherwise, the kill count would have been two more," said Beanie. "Tomorrow, I will reduce the amount of propellant in the propellant cartridges."

“No need to reduce them,” Su Ming said. “We can modify some close-range shells.”

Su Ming drew a diagram for Bei Anqi to see, "By using the disintegration technique to weaken the strength of the rectifier part that touches the fuse and the front of the shell, it will quickly disintegrate after impact and lose its streamlined shape."

The mechanic raised an eyebrow. "That's a great idea!"

Su Ming suddenly remembered another type of shell, so he drew another diagram. "We should also add a type of shrapnel shell to increase its lethality against personnel."

“What you drew looks a bit like a grape shot,” Beianqi said, puzzled. “Grape shots don’t mean anything to us, do they?”

Given the power of the MK71 cannon, attacking the personnel would be less effective than directly destroying the ship. The loss of personnel doesn't necessarily mean the ship is destroyed, but the destruction of the ship always means the loss of personnel.

"It's not for naval warfare, it's for attacking land," Su Ming explained to Bei Anqi.

"You're not still thinking about bombarding the Central Pacific Islands, are you?" Beanie asked in surprise.

"No, it's just better to be prepared," Su Ming sighed. "I wouldn't be surprised at all if we encountered any kind of enemy or any kind of battle scenario again."

Violet snorted in protest.

"I'll send you the detailed drawings later. Let's continue the review first."

“Okay. The response speed of the high-explosive impact fuse is a bit slow; the projectile velocity is too high,” Beianqi continued. “But this can only be addressed in the next batch of products.”

Su Ming also pointed out the problem he discovered: "The laser rangefinder is blocked at multiple angles, and the foredeck needs to be cleared."

"The smoke from the artillery fire makes it impossible for me to stay on top of the bridge," Violet said. "That's actually tolerable, but I really can't stand the shockwaves and sonic booms from the firing."

Su Ming then understood why she had been hiding on the mast lookout tower today. He had kept the radar off most of the time because he was worried about excessive electromagnetic radiation.

Not only that, the area atop the bridge is amplified by a magic array, placing it within the strongest defensive range of the Bone Fortress. Magic and modern artillery clearly still need some fine-tuning.

The three of them wrote down the questions one by one and then ended the debriefing meeting.

Su Ming printed out the blueprints for the cluster munition and continued the discussion with Bei Anqi. He then placed a new order for MK71 shells: 300 rounds of ordinary high-explosive shells, along with the matching propellant and mounting tubes, plus 2000 small warheads.

Beianqi accepted the order and gave an estimated delivery time of "twenty days".

"Try to hurry."

****
In the following days, the Golden Barrel stopped interfering with the details of the White Triangle's escort mission.

The convoy adopted a more compact formation with greater confidence, and some slower ships even had faster ships tow them with cables, which increased the overall speed of the convoy.

On the sixth day of the escort mission, the massive merchant fleet finally arrived at the Central Pacific Islands. The convoy split into two parts: the main force continued on to ports on the western continent, while a smaller portion stopped at the Central Pacific Islands for rest, replenishment, and to deal with spoils and captured pirates.

With this, the escort mission of the White Triangle came to an end.

The Purple Violet Liaison Association tried to contact them, but no one answered the phone, and this happened several times in a row.

She found it strange and contacted the old elf Sivor, only to learn the whole story.

Most of these pirates were connected to merchant guilds. They used information provided by these guilds to find targets, then sold the looted goods to the guilds at low prices as payment and used the loot to purchase supplies. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. Some pirate groups were even more directly funded and controlled by the merchant guilds themselves.

When news arrived that a large number of pirates had been captured, along with their ships, the high-ranking members of the merchant guild involved nearly fainted on the spot. Generally, even the unluckiest pirates would only suffer losses and gain nothing. Especially with such a large-scale pirate operation, failure was virtually impossible.

No one expected that the White Triangle would be nothing more than easy prey. These corrupt high-ranking members of the merchant guild originally intended to use the time lag in information transmission to abscond with the funds. However, the White Triangle immediately auctioned off the pirate ships, and the pirates were dispersed to be housed on merchant ships. The merchant guild members quickly discovered the traces and evidence, purging the spies within the guild, thus exposing these dark secrets that very night and unleashing a massive tsunami in the Central Ocean.

The federation was thus paralyzed.

"So, our payment is off?" Su Ming asked with a displeased expression.

"Fortunately, they are mostly small, low-level business associations," said Zijin. "Siwo said that this turmoil will probably be over soon."

****
The old elf's judgment was correct; that very night, the White Triangle received a proactive reply from the Federation.

With the strong intervention of powerful forces, the matter was initially suppressed. The Federation was reorganized into the Sino-Foreign Business Federation, striving towards the goal of building a community of shared order.

Violet was quite pleased with the result. She congratulated the Business Union and announced that the White Triangle had been repaired and was ready to return to the Kraken mission.

After the liaison officer handed over the white triangle communication, the decision-makers were already numb.

When they first received the report that the White Triangle needed to withdraw from the mission for rest and recuperation, they fully understood. After all, it had fought against the Saint-level powerhouse Yesia, so any damage to the ship and its crew was reasonable.

Or rather, it's already unreasonable enough that they managed to defeat the enemy and survive! Some people even harbored ulterior motives and were itching to do something.

But unexpectedly, in just one week, the White Triangle made a powerful comeback, engaging—no, that can't be called engaging—this ship, whose combat power was already beyond the border, caught twenty-one pirate ships in just two hours, like fishing!

The decision-making group offered a polite greeting to Belladonna and the ancestors of the Bone King, then abandoned their futile struggle. Ever since the Battle of Cui'an Cliffs, the atmosphere at Bone Fortress had been anything but normal. The fact that Elisa was already physically weak and extremely difficult to heal from her injuries seemed to have been distorted by fate. Her newfound nickname, "Bone Siren," had become infamous, and pirates throughout the region were frantically moving away, treating any white ship with extreme dread.

In short, the Federation, which had just recovered from the chaos, did not dare to be negligent in the slightest. They immediately expressed their sincere welcome and delivered supplies and gifts overnight.

All fees are waived.

A large amount of cash was urgently allocated. At dawn, an armed escort ship set off, carrying the mission payment that the Federation had originally intended to delay indefinitely, and headed at full speed for the White Triangle.

"I told you MK71 is a great cure for procrastination, right?" Su Ming ate watermelon contentedly. "How are late fees calculated again?"

“Generally speaking, the standard interest rate is 1% per day,” Angie Beilke replied. “However, usually the one who owes money is the boss, and no one will actually ask for it back.”

“This is clearly not a normal situation.” Su Ming roughly calculated that, after deducting the seven-day payment deadline stipulated in the contract, the late payment fee was currently quite low. This made him very dissatisfied. “That escort ship can’t catch up with us, right? Should we linger a little longer? A full month is considered a serious overdue payment, and there are penalties for that, right?”

Zijin was reviewing the action contract signed with the Federation. "It doesn't specify any concrete measures, only that the party who defaults will bear the relevant losses. The right of interpretation still belongs to them."

“But it doesn’t matter,” the scholar continued. “We’ll point our cannons at the Central Pacific Islands and ask around, and we’ll surely find out.”

“That’s right,” Su Ming laughed, “that way the late payment fee can be increased by at least a few zeros.”

The White Triangle is now a force even more powerful than the sea monster. Those who deal with them have become exceptionally trustworthy and expect the same from them. The Federation is now kicking itself for the contract, which was deliberately left with numerous loopholes.

"So you're too lazy to do business, all you think about is robbing people!" Beianqi exclaimed in surprise. "If you worked harder to wipe out the pirates and escort ships back and forth, you could make a lot of money!"

"Is there still any escort business available here?" Su Ming asked her.

After a moment's thought, Beianchi realized that the local market had collapsed. The pirates were now desperate to escape, and it was estimated that wherever the White Triangle went, the area would be immediately cleared out – a classic case of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

If anyone still dares to use old-fashioned artillery to fight against the MK71 heavy artillery, eliminating them would be a contribution to human evolution.

"Okay, Elisa and I were just joking," Su Ming said with a smile.

Just as Bei Anqi breathed a sigh of relief, she heard Su Ming continue, "We don't need to waste time, let's just open fire and seize it."

"..."

The girl was speechless, while Su Ming and Zi Jin burst out laughing together.

"Stop teasing her." The scholar covered her mouth to stop laughing and turned to Beau Anqi. "I have some other things to discuss with Su Ming. Could you please leave for a moment?"

Beanie went off to modify the MK71's shells in a huff.

****
Only Su Ming and Zi Jin remained in the workroom.

"Let's just accept these gold coins as usual," the scholar suddenly said seriously.

Su Ming was surprised. Although the previous conversation was in the form of jokes, given Zi Jin's fearless nature in causing trouble, how could she simply let the Federation off the hook?

"Are you still feeling unwell?" he asked.

The scholar rolled her eyes at her. "I'm serious. We just need to give the federation a nudge within the rules. This time, we have to be good."

Realizing that the scholar had something to say, Su Ming sat up straight and said, "Please enlighten me."

The scholar produced a handful of gold coins of varying sizes, each engraved with a number representing its face value. Because they were infused with a fixed proportion of magical crystals and engraved with a magic array, these otherworldly gold coins had a very high value density. The coin representing one was only the size of a thin fingernail.

“We don’t need gold,” the scholar said. “We just need to use it to mobilize productivity from countless corners of the world to provide us with the materials we need.”

As for the essence of commodities and money, Su Ming was no stranger to it: "Money is merely a representation of value, and traders are the link in the exchange."

“Not traders, but a system,” Violet corrected. “The process of studying different planes is not something that can be done overnight; some materials are even produced in this world in years.”

"Such a large dosage?" Su Ming was surprised.

"Do you think dimensional transfer arrays are as easy as cabbages?" Violet sighed. "This is a cost that even a Saint-level Galio would find difficult to bear. In short, we cannot be excluded from the trade system, otherwise it will cause a lot of trouble later on."

"In other words, we can't afford to strain our relationship with the Chamber of Commerce." Su Ming sighed. "I understand. You mean that if you want to do something bad, you have to wear a disguise and not be discovered, right?"

"You're a promising young man!" Zijin covered her mouth and chuckled.

"But what I really want to emphasize is that we also cannot destroy it." The scholar composed himself and continued, "The scale of trade in this world is not even a fraction of that of your Earth. The power structure is unstable, and there are countless people with ulterior motives. The intercontinental trade chain has an amazing function, but it is extremely fragile."

Su Ming realized that, coming from a world with highly developed commerce, he was once again experiencing a cognitive misalignment regarding this other world.

"Instead, we should take the initiative to maintain order?"

“Yes,” the scholar nodded. “When you reach a certain level, you will find that what limits your access to resources is not money itself. The losses from breaking the rules outweigh the gains.”

To be honest, this was a bit difficult for Su Ming. He had always been in a social class where how much he could buy depended on how much money he had in his pocket.

"Therefore, I do not recommend that you do that," the scholar stated bluntly.

Su Ming sighed, "You figured it out after all."

After completing MK71, he did indeed plan to accumulate funds through plunder. He just never expected that the one stopping him would be Miss Belladonna—someone who, by all accounts, should have been the one adding fuel to the fire.

"I was thinking of retaliating against those countries and forces that have been besieging us," Su Ming said regretfully.

“You’re quite vengeful.” Zijin was slightly surprised. “It’s alright. If we don’t touch the maritime trade, we can easily make up for it elsewhere. Besides, it’s not that we don’t get involved in the China Sea. We are also players in this business. We can do things like monopolizing shipping routes and monopolizing certain types of goods to make huge profits.”

Rewriting the rules is also a way of "respecting the rules." In Su Ming's world, capital repeatedly uses this approach to make all actions legal and compliant.

In comparison, looting is truly the most primitive method.

(End of this chapter)