Dare Me to Crawl? Seven Seas Army Overruns the Royal City

"God! Leo! You son of a bitch, you vampire!"

With a rough roar, half a glass of sour, rancid ale was suddenly splashed onto my headscarf.

The troublemaker was One-Eyed Jack, a sleazy musketeer who had just lost money and was clutching a cheap tin goblet.

"You dare to charge me three extra copper coins for a bowl of rotten, stinking fish soup?"

Jack grabbed my rough collar with his dirty hand, which was adorned with a cheap brass ring, and shoved his face, which reeked of garlic and rotten teeth, right in front of me.

The thugs and drunkards around immediately burst into ear-piercing whistles and laughter; they loved watching the filthy masses trample each other in the mud.

I did not resist.

I simply hunched over obediently, shrinking into that greasy apron, and mumbled in a hoarse voice that sounded almost ingratiating and disgusting even to myself, "Listen, Mr. Jack... black pepper has gone up in price, I swear, the merchants at the port are selling spices for more than gold..."

If we could turn back time five years, Jack's hand that touched my collar would have been cut off and fed to the sirens by now.

These pathetic fools have no idea that the "cook" they are trampling on was once the uncrowned king of the Abyss Alliance "Black Tide," which ruled the Seven Seas.

In that era, the mere mention of the name "Leo" was enough to send the Imperial Navy fleets packing.

But now I'm just a dead dog, barely clinging to life. A walking corpse with violence and bloodlust locked inside a fishbone.

Just as Jack was about to raise his hand to teach this stinking cook a lesson, the tavern's perpetually irritating noise suddenly fell into a deathly silence.

It wasn't because they suddenly had a change of heart, but because the huge, dusty magical conch shell in the center of the bar suddenly emitted a blinding, pure white light. That was the frequency of the royal priests, which usually only rang out when announcing the most significant heretical executions or the imposition of taxes across the entire territory.

"To all the people of the Holy Empire and the Seven Seas," came the voice of the royal messenger, filled with nauseating arrogance and affected manner, from the conch shell, "and hereby proclaim the end of the Abyss."

Everyone held their breath.

"Announcement to the entire realm: The infamous pirate leader, the heretic Sarah Windrunner known as the Seven Seas Siren, has been captured by the Royal Navy at Despair Keep for allegedly colluding with deep-sea evil spirits and attempting to overthrow the Holy Light. At dawn tomorrow, she will face judgment at the Supreme Inquisition in the 'Radiant Dome' of the Imperial capital."

"To demonstrate the majesty of imperial power, she will be subjected to the most severe punishment. The sacred fire will tear her soul from her body and burn it to ashes."

Sarah.

The moment that name struck my eardrums, I felt as if my heart had been pierced by a poisoned ice pick.

The cheers and curses of the drunks around me, and Jack's spitting at me, vanished in an instant.

My vision began to blur uncontrollably.

Five years ago, in the storm of betrayal in the Sea of the Dead. When I was betrayed by my most trusted lieutenant, with three obsidian daggers coated with deadly poison stuck in my chest, about to sink into a vortex of undead, it was her.

It was Sarah's "Nemesis" that forcefully shattered the storm of death.

It was that woman with fiery red hair who roughly grabbed my collar through the raging waves and yanked me out of the abyss.

"Save your breath, you rotten bone."

In my memory, her face was covered in seawater, and she was laughing arrogantly at me while biting a cigar, saying, "Once you step onto my deck, even if Death wants to take your life, you'll have to ask my cannons for permission first."

Five years ago, she gave me this pathetic new life.

Now, the air above the sound transmission conch began to distort, and the faint light of the magic crystal outlined a holographic illusion in mid-air.

That's Sarah.

Her once dazzling, ruby-like long hair was now clumped together with dark red, foul blood, sticking tightly to her bloodless cheeks.

The heavy, magic-suppressing shackles, engraved with suppressive runes, dug roughly into her slender bones, leaving deep purple, festering marks on her wrists.

She was chained to the cold stone wall of the Royal Iron Prison like a broken rag doll, but on her slightly raised face, her eyes, like the deep green sea, were still fixed on the void, burning with an unyielding arrogance and contempt.

“For the sake of the gods, even in her current wretched state, this woman is still enough to make anyone drool.” Jack clicked his tongue, then turned to me with a mocking look. “Did you hear that, cook? Go lick up the wine I spilled, or I’ll shove your head in…”

He stopped talking.

He suddenly felt a chill. A chilling aura that didn't belong to this dilapidated tavern, but rather came from the depths of an abyss.

At that moment, Jack didn't notice my hands hanging down.

I'm holding that rusty fish-cutting knife. Everyone would overlook its cheapness, but no one knows that the handle of this old fellow is forged from the hardest mithril from the deep sea.

"Crack—"

A dull thud of metal cracking, a sound that made even my bones tremble, resounded in my palm.

That indestructible mithril hilt was crushed into a twisted and shattered piece of scrap metal by my rough hands.

The sharp metal wire mercilessly pierced my palm, and the dark red blood mixed with the murderous intent that had been suppressed for five years dripped from between my fingers onto the oily wooden floor.

I slowly raised my head, and those eyes, which had been gray for two thousand days and nights, were now quietly reflecting a ghostly light like that of purgatory.

I didn't look at Jack, but murmured to myself in a voice so soft it seemed to drift away on the wind, yet so cold it could freeze the soul: "Unforgivable."