Near the Masina Strait, in a secluded archipelago of uninhabited islands shrouded in thick sea fog.
The leader of the Blue Crescent Pirates, One-Eyed Karga, was grinding his teeth in ferocious rage.
“How dare they… run off with my gold coins?”
His mind was filled with a bizarre, forced logic in which common sense and madness were hopelessly tangled.
By combining the information he had tortured out of the captain of a spice merchant ship a few days prior with Count Lorenzo’s message, Karga had perfectly deduced that the grotesque iron ship of the Karnoble Trading Company had headed for the eastern sea—in other words, “Cypro Island.”
‘The vast amount of hard cash they swept up from the Southern Alliance. And the massive quantity of cotton absolutely necessary to keep Phelua’s textile factories running. The only place that can satisfy both conditions is Cypro Island.’
Up to that point, it was a fine piece of reasoning worthy of a seasoned pirate.
The problem was the grotesque delusion born from his rotten greed.
“That mountain of gold coins the Southern Alliance bastards spat out should naturally belong to me, the master of these waters! And that greenhorn brat of Karnoble dared to load up my gold and run east without my permission?! Insolent wretch!”
There was no logical basis whatsoever for why that gold should be his.
It was simply the logic of robbery, pirate to the bone: “Money earned in my waters belongs to me.”
“C-Chief! If they went all the way to Cypro Island, won’t we have no idea when they’ll return? We might have to wait half a year…”
At his lieutenant’s cautious question, Karga’s bloodshot single eye flashed.
“You stupid bastard! Didn’t they say that ship was faster than a hundred galleys when it left this strait? If it fled at that insane speed on the way there, it’ll surely return at that insane speed on the way back. At most, it’ll only be a few days!”
And pirates possessed one weapon that even an iron ship, no matter how fast, could never defeat.
Carrier pigeons crossing the sky.
Karga sent carrier pigeons to liaison ships anchored along every route leading to the eastern sea, laying down a tight surveillance net.
And finally, this morning—
“Chief! A carrier pigeon has arrived from the eastern sea! They say the ship belching black smoke has turned its bow and is heading toward Phelua!”
“Kahahaha! My gold is coming back! Raise anchor at once! Narrow the passage and load the cannons!”
At Karga’s command, dozens of pirate galleys quietly spread out through the sea fog.
Chiiiiiiik—!! Clank! Swaaaash!
Meanwhile, our steamship was tearing through the sea toward Phelua without hesitation, its belly packed full with cotton from Capros Island and three kinds of spoils.
“Haha, at this speed, forget the penalty deadline—we’ll arrive before mold even has time to grow in Phelua’s factories!”
Ayla was humming cheerfully on deck when it happened.
Kwaaaaaang—!!
All of a sudden, a massive column of water shot up from the sea only a few dozen meters ahead of the bow.
The hull shook violently, and shards and seawater rained down onto the deck.
“Wh-what was that?! A reef?!”
Ayla screamed and tumbled onto the floor.
I flung open the wheelhouse window so hard it nearly shattered and looked outside.
It wasn’t a reef.
Piercing through the thick sea fog, three enormous galleys were emerging from the front and both sides, their black cannons aimed straight at us.
“Chief Merchant! P-Pirates! Their sails bear the Blue Crescent!!”
The sailor in the lookout screamed as if his throat were tearing.
The Blue Crescent Pirates.
The most brutal pirates in the southern seas, infamous for skinning prisoners alive and hanging their hides from the mast.
“Damn it, they set up an encirclement!”
It was a pressure formation that had perfectly calculated cannon range and cut off all escape routes.
No matter how fast our ship was, we couldn’t dodge cannonballs flying in from every direction.
On top of that, we were loaded down with cotton until the waterline was nearly at our throats, so our turning ability had dropped drastically.
Bang! Kwaaang!
Warning shots came one after another, narrowing the steamship’s path, and at last Karga’s flagship rammed its bow against our starboard side and clung close.
Thud! Tatatang!
Thick ropes fitted with hooks flew like snakes and embedded themselves in our railings.
“W-we’re all dead! It’s the Blue Crescent bastards!”
“Please spare us!”
The sailors and escort mercenaries of the trading company turned pale at the sight of the overwhelming number of pirates.
We had mercenaries on our side as well, but true villains who had spent their entire lives cutting people down at sea and merchant ship guards were different in spirit from birth.
On the enemy ship’s deck, One-Eyed Karga stepped forward with a massive axe in hand.
“Kahahaha! Stop the ship quietly and hand over my gold, and I’ll only chop off your heads cleanly, without pain!”
Toward Karga, who spoke as if making an extremely merciful offer—
I kicked open the wheelhouse door, strode out, gripped the deck railing, and shot back with ice-cold eyes.
“Fuck you. Eat shit, you one-eyed bastard.”
“Wh-what did you say?!”
“You’ll die without even getting one sniff of the gold loaded on my ship.”
At my provocation, Karga’s face twisted like a demon’s.
“Tear that insolent brat limb from limb!! Board the deck!”
“Waaaaaaaah—!!”
As soon as the order fell, hundreds of pirates, blades clenched between their teeth, began climbing the ropes onto the steamship’s deck like a swarm of ants.
“Stop them! If we give up the gunwale, we’re all dead!”
Our mercenary captain screamed as he swung his sword.
A fierce melee broke out, but overwhelmed by the difference in numbers and the pirates’ ferocity, the sailors were gradually driven inward across the deck, blood spraying.
“Elpanso! What do we do?! They’ve taken half the deck!”
Ayla grabbed my arm, her face ashen.
But I remained still, eyes flashing like a beast’s, waiting for the pirates to cram densely onto the deck.
‘Just a little more… bunch up just a little more.’
At last, the pirates’ main force, including Karga’s lieutenant, surged into the very center of the deck.
I pulled a whistle from my chest and blew it like mad.
Piiiiiii—!!!
It was the “emergency evacuation” signal I had arranged with the sailors in advance.
The moment the whistle sounded, our sailors and mercenaries, who had been fighting while retreating, split wide to either side as if by prior agreement, like the miracle of Moses, and flattened themselves against the floor.
“Huh? Looks like these cowardly bastards are all surrendering! Kahahaha!”
Just as the pirates raised their blades, certain of victory—
I grabbed the lever of the thick “forced discharge valve” specially installed right beside the control seat with both hands and, putting my weight into it, wrenched it down.
“I’ll show you the taste of boiling hell!!”
Chiiiiiiiiiiiiik——!!!!
In that instant, the ultra-high-pressure, ultra-high-temperature mana steam boiling inside the boiler at 150 atmospheres erupted like a volcanic explosion through the exhaust port opened toward the deck.
“Eh…?”
The pirates’ vision, drunk on victory, was instantly swallowed by pure white steam.
And before they could even realize what that white fog was—
“Kraaaaaaaaaagh—!!!”
“My eyes!! My skin!! My flesh is meltinggggg!!”
Screams not of this world—chilling, horrifying screams—tore across the sea.
It was a terrible pain entirely different from being burned by fire.
The high-pressure steam, far above several hundred degrees Celsius, seeped through the gaps in the pirates’ armor and boiled their skin in an instant, while the breath they inhaled cooked their lungs whole.
Dozens of pirates who had been swinging swords just moments before rolled across the deck with their skin red, oozing, and peeling away, vomiting bloody foam.
“Wh-what is this…! It’s the breath of a demon!!”
The pirates who had been about to climb onto the deck behind them froze in terror, utterly devastated by the overwhelming and horrific vision of hell before their eyes, where their comrades were being boiled alive.
No matter how brutal the pirates were, before this dreadful weapon of the industrial age—an invisible gas that melted flesh—they had no choice but to feel primal fear.
In that fleeting moment when the pirates’ momentum had been completely shattered by the baptism of steam—
“You dared set filthy feet on my ship?!”
Ayla, who had been crouching on the floor beside me, sprang up with venom in her eyes.
In her hand was not an ordinary blade, but an elegant red parchment scroll from which dense magic power seeped.
“Th-that’s…!”
My eyes widened before I realized it.
A High-Tier Magic Scroll.
A legendary luxury item that even the archmages of the Magic Tower could only make a few of in their entire lives—one of those scrolls was said to be enough to buy an entire top-class mansion in Phelua’s First Commercial District!
“It’s common sense to burn the bugs that crawl in after the smell of money with money!”
Ayla mercilessly tore off the scroll’s seal.
Paaaaaaat—!!
As the scroll burned away, a massive magic circle formed over the deck.
The mana in the atmosphere swirled like mad, and dozens of enormous pillars of fire poured ruthlessly from the sky toward the pirate ships.
Kwaaaaaang—!! Kwagwagwang!!
“Aaaaargh! Fire! The mast is on fire!!”
“The ship’s splitting apart! Run!!”
The “violence of money” Ayla poured out was overwhelming.
The pirate ship’s mast snapped, and its deck was engulfed in flames and exploded.
After suffering the hellfire of steam and then a magical flame bombardment on top of it, the pirates completely lost their will to fight.
“Th-those lunatics…!!”
On the enemy ship’s deck, One-Eyed Karga stared blankly at the horrific slaughter, and began trembling like an aspen as he watched his fleet go up in flames.
“Cut the ropes!! Cut them now and ruuuun!!”
The pirates hastily hacked apart the hooks they had lodged in our ship with axes, then turned their burning vessels around and began fleeing for their lives.
It was an astonishing moment—the Blue Crescent Pirates, once called the terror of the sea, had completely tucked tail and routed before a single merchant ship.
“Puhahaha! Farewell, you trash!”
Ayla laughed in satisfaction, raising her middle finger toward the burning pirate ships.
I clapped my hands at the sailors who were still trembling.
“All right! If you’re done sightseeing, shut the valve and stoke the furnace again! We’re heading to Phelua!”
Overwhelming force and capital.
And the power of steel that was ahead of its time.
Leaving the stench of burning pirate ships behind, our steamship once again sounded its whistle fiercely and began drawing its final trajectory toward Phelua.