Otherworld Bone Dragon Operation Guide

Chapter 37 Old Friend
Even Violet felt a pang of sympathy for the enemy. With such overwhelming superiority in information technology and ship performance, any struggle seemed laughable.

Left with no other choice, the three ships split up, one heading west, one southwest, and one south, each escaping in a different direction.

Su Ming numbered them in turn as "Onlooker No. 1", "Onlooker No. 2", and "Onlooker No. 3".

"They've given up already?" Violet said with a hint of regret. In naval battles, such scattering and fleeing has an unspoken meaning: these ships have all tacitly received permission to surrender.

She basically doesn't need to take any action anymore.

However, Su Ming was caught in a dilemma. After calculating for a while, he told Zi Jin, "We can only chase one ship."

Given the speed of the Zhiyuan, it wasn't impossible for it to attack one ship and then turn to the second. The problem was that Su Ming had already seen a new fleet appear on the sea to the south on the radar.

Judging from the ship type, they are six Mabe-class coastal frigates from the Principality of Pearl, the same 500-ton warships encountered a few days ago during the breakout at Cui'an Cliff. They are rapidly approaching the reconnaissance ship in three groups.

Presumably their artillery officer has already updated the upper limits of the slide rule and artillery firing tables.

This isn't the main battlefield, so Su Ming has no need to get entangled with these Mabe-class ships. They just need to take out one reconnaissance ship and leave before the Pearl Principality's navy arrives.

"Which reconnaissance ship should we choose?" Su Ming asked.

"Which one is the easiest to catch?" Violet asked him in return.

Su thought for a moment, then pointed to the ship in the middle heading southwest, "Onlookers number two".

“Actually, the third one, which is heading south, is the easiest to catch,” Su Ming said. “But now is not the right time to expose the seaworthiness of the Zhiyuan.”

Heading south meant the Zhiyuan would be sailing against the wind at a 45-degree angle. All sailing ships could do that, just very slowly. But the Zhiyuan's speed would shatter everyone's understanding of the world.

Violet understood that it would consume more fuel and accepted the choice.

Six hours after departure, Su Ming closed the distance to "Onlooker Number Two" to 10 kilometers. Zi Jin set up a recliner on the bridge tower, resting, occasionally glancing up to see how close they had gotten.

The opposing side acted decisively, firing three white signal flares to signify surrender. Violet raised her hand and tossed out two yellow earth-elemental and one green wind-elemental magic orbs in response.

"This means accepting surrender and ordering the other side to abandon ship," she explained the meaning of the signal to Su Ming.

The other side acted swiftly. When the Zhiyuan was within 1 kilometer of them, they had already launched their lifeboats, and everyone had put on their life jackets, gathered their belongings, and rushed aboard.

The sailors were orderly and methodical. They carried their personal belongings in large and small bags, and even the white flags on the bow of the lifeboats were properly planted.

Su Ming slowed down in advance and folded up all the bone sails of the Zhiyuan.

He originally intended to shut down the steam engine, but Violet stopped him.

“You can’t let them see your sails,” she explained. “It would be a problem if they copied them! They can’t learn how to use a steam engine, so it doesn’t matter if they’re exposed.”

Su Ming indicated that he understood.

"Which one is the captain? Come out here." Violet sat sideways on her broom and casually flew over, shouting with an amplification spell.

Upon hearing this, a middle-aged man stood up from the lifeboat.

“Is there a mage? Throw him over here,” she continued.

The sailors shook their heads. All the mages had fled to the other two ships before the Zhiyuan caught up. Violet was cautious; she told the captain to swim over himself, but he hesitated when he saw the nearly four-meter-high waves.

The girl raised her hand, and four enormous blades of light sliced ​​the reconnaissance ship into nine pieces, leaving only the central rune tower intact. The reconnaissance ship rapidly disintegrated, slid onto the water, and slowly sank.

The captain immediately grabbed a swimming ring and jumped into the sea with a splash.

Violet first retrieved a piece of the ship's hull and threw it onto the deck for the zombies to dismantle. Then she retrieved the rune tower as intact as possible and gently placed it on the ship.

"Is this little tower very valuable?" Su Ming asked, unsurprised.

"Several times more than my bounty," Violet replied. "How much can we fit in these wooden hulls?"

Su Ming calculated the counterweight; it was only 300 tons, so the Zhiyuan would be fine.

“We can take them all as fuel,” Su Ming replied. “It won’t affect the speed.”

Violet immediately got the zombies to work, and she herself used her levitation spell to help. It took a full half hour to scoop them all up.

The captain had barely swum halfway through the giant waves when he was clearly on the verge of collapse.

She raised her hand and tossed him onto the ship from a distance. Sealing, binding, and blindfolding him were all done in one smooth motion. The speed and efficiency made Su Ming begin to wonder just how skilled this scholar was at performing these tasks.

Before either of them could ask, the captain quickly poured out everything he knew.

His ship was called the Four-Eyed Jenny, which belonged to the Carlo Magic Guild. It was hired by the Temple of Light to assist in the battle and formed a lookout formation with two other reconnaissance ships directly under the temple.

"But I didn't expect you to be so fast, God! Six hours straight, 20 knots!" the captain rattled off.

Zijin picked up a stick from the deck and hit him on the head. "Stop talking nonsense and get to the point."

The captain quickly changed the subject, explaining that the lookout array was the latest ocean detection technology developed by the Magic Guild, and the Four-Eyed Jenny was the main ship in it. Once it was destroyed, the other two ships could no longer work together.

The captain said some other random things, but it was no use. Violet gestured for him to shut up.

Just as she was about to have the zombies lock the man in the hold, the white skeleton approached and handed her a book. Su Ming glanced at it; the book's cover was soaked, clearly salvaged from the ship's wreckage. The cover read "Qing Jian Yun Zhi" (青简芸帙).

But upon closer inspection, it has an overall luster reminiscent of an alchemical creation, and is not an ordinary book.

Zijin took the book, felt its weight, and her expression immediately changed. "Kathalyn Osha! This is hers!"

The captain's heart skipped a beat. "We are the Magic Guild, and Lady Catherine entrusted this to me for maintenance," he explained.

The scholar knocked the captain to the ground with a stick, then slammed the stick down hard near his ear, creating a small dent in the floor. "Not being honest, huh? Still trying to hide it?"

"No, no, no, I'll tell you, I'll tell you everything!" the captain hurriedly said, and then began to confess.

The flagship for this operation was the Eye of Insight, also known as "The Bystander No. 3," the ship they hadn't pursued. Katharine O'Shaw, the overall commander of this maritime manhunt, was aboard it.

Su Ming quickly said, "Let's chase after them now, we still have time!"

If the flagship can be destroyed, the enemy's command center can be disrupted, which can greatly weaken the enemy's battlefield deployment and execution capabilities, causing chaos!
(End of this chapter)