Chapter 44: Loyal followers

[ 5 months later ]

In the middle of the vast blue sea, in which the sunlight sparkles, there was a giant mountain of red rock that stretched to the end to split the sea into two parts, the mountain was so high that its top was not visible due to dense clouds.

In front of the majestic Redline and amid the calm waters of the New World, some light ripples began to appear, those ripples began to move rapidly, and a poor wooden shape surrounded by something transparent appeared from its center.

Whoosh!

The sound of falling water droplets!

The wooden figure broke through the water very quickly to jump into the sky for about half a meter before falling into the water, the water flew everywhere, forming a small rainbow due to the refraction of light.

The wooden ship that appeared from under the water rippled crazily before settling into position to clearly show its shape, it was a worn ship with poor sails that looked like it would not withstand heavy storms, the brown wood that began to rot showed how bad its condition was.

At the top of her mast there is a black flag with a few red dots.

The ship unfurled its sails and set sail amid the treacherous waters of the New World while the Black Flag full of red dots fluttered like a night sky full of bloody stars.

…

Inside the worn-out ship and in the captain's room, Arthur stood by a small window, watching the people on the deck with keen eyes. The people he was looking at were a few Fish-men who did not exceed seven people.

Each of them was doing his job diligently, one was cleaning the deck while the other was untying the ropes of the sails and the other was standing above the mast and watching their surroundings very carefully.

'Odrick was good at training these guys, their serious expressions and taut muscles are proof of their skills, even though the options offered to him were very low, it still surprises me how competent he is.'

Arthur sighed silently as he turned his gaze towards Odrick, who was standing at the helm and giving orders to the few men who could be called his crew.

'That's good I've placed my first pawn on the chessboard, I still have a lot of time before the main events in this world start, I have to stay low while I'm preparing my cards, I'll wait quietly, until the perfect time to get my revenge arrives.'

"I'll wait, I'll wait..! "Arthur muttered these simple words while an evil smile appeared on his face followed by the spread of a dense murderous intent.

…

Odrick stood in front of the ship's rudder while wearing a serious expression on his face, suddenly he felt some chills in his back, this made him surprised so he moved his head and looked around suspiciously.

"Was I imagining it?"

Having found that everything was normal, Odrick returned the serious look to his face and watched his crew with eyes filled with excitement and at the same time anxiety.

'I hope that these people meet the requirements of the leader, I spent a long time preparing them.' with a small sigh Odrick looked up at the sky and said in a resigned voice:

'Who would have expected that the requirements for the leader were so difficult, it took me about a year to gather only 8 men, fortunately the difficult part is almost over'

The first thing Arthur passed on to Odrick through his diary was to gather a few loyal people, it was an easy matter to gather followers, but when Odrick saw the conditions for accepting these followers, he felt some chills because it was very indescribably difficult.

The requirements were as follows:

These people should be former slaves of the Celestial Dragons, no matter their age or gender, but they should be people without a family or stable work.

They should not be people with a certain affiliation either in the present or the past, their physical condition is unimportant as long as they can still be used.

The worse their emotional and physical condition, the better.

At least one of them must have a good knowledge of the trade.

'In the end, what the leader wanted was a group of broken men who have a grudge against the Celestial Dragons and consider them the root cause of everything that happened to them.'

'It's good that I don't underestimate the leader, otherwise I would have been surprised by the cunning that he has, maybe I should keep in mind that he is not that benevolent person who helps former slaves.'

'We are just pawns in his eyes and if any of us show incompetence he will be eliminated or disposed of in the worst case'

Odrick was not a stupid person, he knew about Arthur's intentions a long time ago, but he didn't really mind it, in his eyes his life belonged to Arthur, he saved him from death and gave him a reason to live.

'A human heart that does not have free will is like a candle lit in the wind, it can lose the desire to live at any moment and turn off to be dominated by darkness'

Odrick looked at the men strolling in front of him and said in a serious tone full of malice:

"I will kill everyone who caused the loss of my free will!"

The usual calm expressions returned to Odrick's face as he turned to look at the captain's room with a heart filled with longing to see the future that Arthur wants to create, in fact no man knew about the fact that Arthur was on the ship and all they thought was that they were going on a training flight.

Over the past year, they have undergone intensive training, which made them moan in pain whenever they went to bed at night to sleep, but they did not complain or show any expression of discontent with the harsh training regime, on the contrary, happiness filled their faces and trained hard as if their lives depended on it.

The number of men that Odrick was able to save was small, even after searching the whole Fish-men Island all he found were some homeless and broken men, at first he thought they were useless but he continued to carry out his master's plan.

He offered them shelter and food and slowly began to fill their minds with his thoughts about revenge, his way of communicating these thoughts was indirectly in order to see their reaction at first.

Amid this process 3 men were eliminated because they showed no desire for revenge, Odrick did not fire them directly he left them for a few days and then he eliminated them sporadically over the course of a few weeks.

Then he trained the rest for a few months and taught them the basics of fighting and told them the laws of the group, the first batch of followers was the most important of them, so Arthur paid great attention to them, a strong organization needs a very strong foundation.

The reason they brought a worn-out ship was because they didn't need a ship in the first place and also didn't have enough funding, all the crew are Fish-men and even if the ship is destroyed they don't mind staying in the water for several days.

…

Above one of the poles of the sails Arthur sat in a place where no one could see him while quietly watching Odrick noticed all his previous actions and the change of his often conflicting expressions.

'Audrick, you really are a treasure, maybe I can say that you are the only good thing I've had in all the time I've been in this world' Arthur smiled slightly as he looked at Odrick, who only shows a part of him.

During the time Arthur spent with Odrick, he realized how smart he was and knew that he would see through his actions, but after Arthur watched Odrick for some time, he found that his former admiration and respect for him did not diminish but increased, this partially reassured Arthur and made him pay more attention to Odrick, he would not lower his guard so easily.

While Arthur was thinking about his next step and looked up at the sky to find a strange black shape approaching them at an insane speed, at first he thought he was imagining but the black shape kept getting bigger and bigger until it became clear and Arthur could distinguish its shape.

_________________

If you liked the fanfic, I wish you would support it on the Patreon:

patreon.com/ahiro

________________

There are only 15 chapters left and you will know the secret of the white light.

Well current events are boring so I wanted to get you excited