It had already been two weeks with no movement at all.
They had been watching the ships from a spot well away from the port, but Clarissa hadn’t changed her sailing schedule once.
“Maybe my prediction was completely off…”
Denaris stationed herself at the bow, condensing the water vapor in the air into a giant magnifying glass, and kept watch day after day until she finally started grumbling.
“Surveillance duty is always like this. The moment you let boredom set in is the most dangerous time,” Fiona said.
“That’s easy for you to say, but after missing this badly, doesn’t it shake your confidence?”
Basti let out a huge yawn.
“It’s already been two weeks. Maybe she’s picking her ships carefully.”
“That’s possible. There’s a chance she’s deliberately choosing the routes with the highest insurance premiums,” Riera added.
The moment she spoke, Bernadia pointed sharply.
“Clarissa’s ship is here! It’s setting sail alone!”
The ship instantly became a flurry of activity.
“We’ll maintain distance and tail them.”
Bernadia issued orders to the crew.
The black-painted ship slowly began to move.
The escort warship was obvious at a glance.
A flag with the Kairos family crest flew from its stern.
The merchant vessel flew Aristera’s national flag.
The escort ship clearly had no idea how to match speed properly.
Because of the heavy cargo, the freighter sat deep in the water and couldn’t pick up speed.
An almost empty escort warship is naturally faster, so unskilled sailors would end up overtaking the very ship they were supposed to protect.
Just watching this told them the crew’s skill level was poor.
Any pirate ship observing would see them as easy prey.
There were three merchant ships under escort, all sitting noticeably low in the water.
They must have been carrying something very heavy.
Even so, the formation looked clumsy.
They were clustered far too tightly together.
If their scouting had been excellent it might have been different, but right now they looked like they were terrified of an attack.
The open sea that day was calm.
A gentle, steady breeze—perfect weather for a voyage.
It was also the perfect day for pirates to do business.
At that moment, three suspicious vessels appeared within visual range.
No flags flew from their sterns.
According to international agreements, any ship without a national flag or family crest could be treated as an unidentified vessel and sunk without legal repercussions.
The pirate ships had surely noticed them too, but they probably assumed they were colleagues. They ignored them completely and charged forward at full speed, practically saying “just sit back and watch.”
They headed straight for the targets, closed the distance in no time, and quickly spread out.
Because the enemy formation was so tight, they split up and attacked using superior speed.
In the blink of an eye, the mainmast of one escort warship was engulfed in flames.
The merchant ships apparently had guards aboard as well and were putting up resistance.
The pirates probably wanted the merchant vessels intact, so they were having a harder time with them. The second escort warship already looked like its fighting spirit had been completely broken.
In the end, without changing their initial tight formation at all, the entire fleet was overwhelmed in moments.
Surviving crew from the merchant ships were transferred to the remaining escort warship, which was then taken along with the vessels as they headed back to port.
Once the escort warships disappeared from sight, the real work began.
They first charged straight at the farthest ship. Seeing it was only one vessel, the enemy came toward them as well.
Not a bad decision—but they had chosen the wrong opponent.
Rather than bothering to aim for the mast, Denaris simply punched a massive hole in the bow.
The other ships must have watched their comrade sink bow-first without understanding what had just happened.
The pirate ships clearly went on high alert. The remaining two left the merchant vessels and moved to block their path.
It looked like their plan was to let the merchant ships escape first.
Convenient.
The enemy still had no idea what kind of attack they were facing.
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All they had to do was crush both ships at once.
Just like before, she destroyed their bows, and both vessels began to sink.
Then she turned her attention to the three merchant ships.
Only the bare minimum crew remained on deck.
In that case, shockwaves would do the job.
She set off explosions at a safe distance from the ships. One crewman after another was blown away.
She circled while applying pressure until they could no longer steer. Then she pulled alongside, boarded, and subdued them.
“Hey, if we became real pirates, wouldn’t we be unstoppable?”
“Yeah, yeah. Stop talking nonsense and let’s check the cargo,” Bernadia said.
With a cheerful “Yeees,” they headed to the hold—and everyone froze.
The cargo was gold.
Not coins—huge quantities of gold ingots.
On top of that, wooden crates packed with gemstones and several boxes filled to the brim with gold coins.
The other two ships held exactly the same cargo.
Analysis could wait. First they had to get everything out.
“Can we take it to Tsukiyama?”
Bernadia was deep in thought.
“With this much, one ship will need an entire night.”
They would have to transfer it to small boats, ferry it ashore, load it onto wagons, and repeat the process.
“Is there anywhere we can actually dock?”
“I’m thinking about it. Give me a little time?”
Smuggling this quantity of gold bullion ashore was a serious headache.
At least they didn’t have to go through the trouble of selling it like normal goods—that was lucky—but it was still a problem in its own way.
“Oh! I’ve got it!”
Denaris clapped her hands, and everyone looked at her.
“We can carry the coins and gems easily, but the ingots are the pain, right? Why don’t we just use them as ballast for Tsukiyama’s ships?”
“That’s brilliant!”
Bernadia raised her index finger.
“How do you come up with ideas like that so easily…?” Riera looked utterly amazed.
Bernadia had already contacted her sister to arrange everything.
Out of the five ships currently in operation, two could be freed up immediately. They said they could reach the area that very night, so they were dispatched right away.
The Moon Maiden replied that she could head out at once.
They began preparations immediately.
First they would load the Moon Maiden, so the other two ships took turns resting.
They divided the boxed coins and gems into smaller portions and brought the ingots up to the deck.
Each ingot weighed roughly two hundred ryo (one ryo ≈ 50 g, about 10 kg), and there were around thirty of them.
Looking at the neighboring ship, Denaris suddenly noticed something.
That ship looked far more submerged than usual.
“Hey Bernadia, doesn’t this ship’s draft seem way too low for its cargo?”
Bernadia peered over the rail at the waterline and agreed it looked low.
The other ships were the same.
“You’re right… I’ll go check below.”
She headed down to the hold and came back with an expression of pure disbelief.
“It was gold… This ship was already using gold ingots as ballast.”
She said there were still another forty ingots in the lower hold.
Everyone stood there stunned.
“With this much, Tsukiyama won’t be able to do any real work for a while…”
Bernadia said.
“Do we even need to run a business anymore…?”
“No…”
“We’ve officially become the Tsukiyama Pirate Gang…”
Staying in the area was too dangerous, so they changed location and headed for the waters near Ternova where ship traffic was light.
They hurriedly contacted everyone to change the rendezvous point.
(***In this world, gold coins are pure metal. One coin weighs about 25 g—roughly half a ryo. A 500 kg gold ingot is therefore equivalent to roughly 20,000 gold coins.)
◇
Once the transfer to the Moon Maiden was finished, Denaris and the others decided to return to Trisha to gather information.
The Moon Maiden was sent back to the Ternova waters to escort the remaining two ships.
When they stepped ashore in Trisha, the entire city was in an uproar.
The story on everyone’s lips was that pirates had attacked and made off with an entire merchant association’s assets.
They had overheard the conversation at the next table in a teahouse they happened to enter.
Apparently three merchant associations had been planning to relocate their business bases from Trisha to the southern city of Arseheina.
They had felt awkward requesting insurance from Clarissa’s association after abandoning Trisha, so they had switched to Kairos’s association instead—and that decision had backfired spectacularly.
The same topic was being discussed at another table.
A man burst into that table out of breath, bringing fresh news.
“I heard the total amount…”
Every eye in the shop turned to him at once, and voices demanded the figure.
“Roughly 40,000 gold coins… The manifest alone shows over 13,000 per ship…”
It was an unprecedented sum.
The manifest only listed what had been in the holds; in reality the amount was double that.
“Is the owner all right?”
“Who knows… More importantly, the Kairos family is finished, right?”
The moment those words left his mouth, a huge cheer erupted throughout the shop.
It stung a little in their chests.
But anyone could become a pirate.
If you committed plunder while flying no colors, you were a proper pirate.
Once you stepped outside the rules, the rules wouldn’t protect you.
Everything had to be settled by your own hand.
After leaving the teahouse, they rented a different inn from last time and unloaded their luggage.
“You look down,” Fiona said, noticing Denaris’s slumped shoulders.
“I just feel a little bad for the owners…”
“That’s not something you should worry about. When they got off the ship, they chose to give up. They chose their lives. We only took from the pirates.”
“Yeah… you’re right.”
Denaris slapped her own cheeks to snap herself out of it.
“Maybe Clarissa knew from the very beginning.”
Riera sat down on the couch.
“Probably. They used to be her clients, after all. She wouldn’t have just watched them switch associations without noticing anything. She must have suspected.”
“And she noticed they were moving assets out today, so she deliberately didn’t see them off. It really felt like she had them targeted from the start.”
Fiona walked over.
“I reported to the professor. When she heard the chancellor’s total payout was 40,000 gold coins, she was rolling on the floor laughing.”
“What was our total haul?”
“I told her. She went completely silent for a while. That’s rare.”
Everyone nodded.
“Apparently she’s been having tea parties nonstop lately. Ladies have been showing up every day to fish for information. Word has spread that the professor has the best ears in town.”
Riera laughed.
“That’s part of the plan too. Once her reputation as the ultimate source is locked in, tomorrow she’ll start spreading the information at full force.”
Fiona nodded.
“Yeah. The chancellor must be in hell right now.”
“Oh right, Denaris. They found Bernolt. They’re tailing him now to check his connections.”
“Oh~ I wanted to catch him myself.”
“You already did the big job, didn’t you? Be satisfied with that.”
Fiona gently patted Denaris’s head.
Denaris stroked Basti’s back in return.
◇
“Can’t we reduce the amount somehow!?”
Alexios shouted.
He scratched his head frantically, pacing restlessly around the study and taking his frustration out on anything within reach.
“Unfortunately, judging from the ship’s log, there are no deficiencies… The contractors are furious that the escorts did absolutely nothing, and they’re crowding in demanding payment by the due date…”
Alexios slammed his fist down on the desk.
“40,000 gold coins!? There’s no way we have that kind of money. How much is in the vault right now?”
“Currently about 12,000 gold coins.”
“We’ll have to borrow…”
“Shall I call them?”
“Call them immediately!”
Ignis instructed the servants to summon several moneylenders from the city, then clutched his head alone.
His own loan repayments might fall behind as well.
Then it hit him.
That’s right—he could just take it now…
He acted at once.
He grabbed a hemp sack, opened the vault, took out roughly fifty coins, stuffed them inside, and slipped the sack into his pocket.
Then he vanished.
Shortly after Ignis slipped out of the mansion, several moneylenders arrived and entered Alexios’s study one after another.
They all left quickly; the whole thing was over in less than five minutes.
Every single lender refused outright. There was no room for negotiation.
Those who left the room simply shook their heads silently at the ones still waiting and departed.
Moneylenders had sharp ears.
The information had already spread everywhere.
In fact, Lunafrea had immediately told her pet moneylenders.
Such news travels like wildfire.
By the next day it would expand even further.
After all, once it reached the ears of the socialite ladies, it would be disseminated all at once.
Alexios gulped down wine.
He had bought it by the barrel because he liked it so much, yet right now it tasted like nothing at all.
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