Chapter 230 – Blood Compass

Chapter 230 – Blood Seeking Compass
The steel battleship was quietly moored in the harbor of Prand, the flag representing the Sea Mist Fleet above the battleship was stretching in the wind under the sunlight, the pattern on the flag was a cluster of ice crystals as sharp as a knife, and there was a crack in the middle of the ice crystals – ice crystals, the mark of frost, and the crack, symbolizing the self-exiled “Rebels”.

After that famous pirate captain left with his entourage, no one left from that warship, as if the Sea Mist was an iceberg in a state of silence, quietly anchored, its towering and majestic ship’s side and bow blocked all the sights of the curious lookout on the pier, and at the same time there was a city guard from the nearby garrison, blocking off the intersection to the trestle bridge, in order to prevent unrelated people from approaching.

It was only after the sheriff had intervened to disperse them that the well-wishers gathered near the docks finally dispersed.

First Mate Aiden stood on the bridge of the Sea Mist, silently watching the movement on the pier.

He did not follow Tirian ashore – he, the first mate, had to stay on board the ship to temporarily assume the captain’s authority while the captain left the battleship to prevent any chaos.

“Those city guards look nervous,” one of the sailors muttered from the side, “are they afraid we’ll come ashore to plunder – I would have thought that the city guards of the Pearl of the Seas, Prand, could be a bit stronger than the straw men of the Cold Seas a bit.”

Aiden didn’t look back, “If they don’t step in to keep order, you’d have to say that the Prand’s guards don’t even have the courage to go out on the streets and close them off – if you really had to fight their steam tanks, would you do it?”

“…… I’m not going, I don’t want to be carried back to the deck in a bucket of water again,” the sailor hurriedly shook his head, and immediately looked up in the direction in which the steam walkers had left a moment before, “the captain’s gone after them ah …… all right? That tall woman doesn’t look like she can be messed with, I don’t think the captain can beat her ……”

“We didn’t come here to fight, we were invited, invited understand?” Aiden finally couldn’t help but slant this sailor a glance, “You, and you guys, can you adjust your mindset, has the captain’s usual teachings been forgotten? We are now the Sea Mist Venture Capital Company – robbery is not long-lasting, business is not faster than robbing money?”

“Then when are we going to rob?”

Aiden thought for a moment, a ray of sunlight reflecting off his shiny brain, “Of course it’s when the opposite side doesn’t want to do business ……”

Several immortal sailors nodded their heads, indicating the first mate’s high opinion, then after a few seconds of silence, one of the sailors whose left half of his head was deflated couldn’t help but look in the direction of the city-state and chanted, “Can we go ashore and take a look? O Prender, I hear the city …… is full of them.”

“Don’t even think about it,” Aiden interrupted, “Captain’s orders, no one leaves the Sea Mist without permission – you crooked bastards will scare the hell out of people if you go ashore, Prand isn’t the North, not many people have seen talking corpses in the area. Not many people have seen a talking corpse in this part of the world.”

“So the captain just picked the ones that looked the most alive to go ashore, right?” the sailor with the deflated head said grudgingly, and raised his hand to support his own head, “Actually I think I look okay, take half a shell to block this place, and then wear a hat! ……”

“Shut up, no one goes ashore without the captain’s orders!” Aiden looked viciously at this nonsense sailor, “If you really have nothing to do, go to the cabin and see if those few unlucky people who were previously glued to the deck have survived, if they have, let them come to report ……”

A slight clicking sound suddenly came from not far away, interrupting Aiden’s command.

Everyone on the bridge heard the slight clicking sound, and several lines of sight coincidentally looked in the direction from which the sound came, while the sailor who first spoke up was the first to realize the source of the sound.

Next to the captain’s chair, a strange machine that was a combination of many gears, connecting rods, and compass pointers, the machine was now at peace, but several of its pointers still trembled slightly, seeming to show that it had been suddenly running a moment before.

“Did this thing just move?” One of the closest sailors cautiously made his way over to the delicate and intricate machine and stared at the few compass pointers it had quieted.

Aiden came over as well, his gaze falling instead on the small hemispherical bowl in the center of the machine – where a bit of dried blood remained, left over from the last time Captain Tirian had used the device.

The bald first officer’s brow furrowed a little.

As the Captain’s most beloved henchman, Aiden knew the device well.

Anomaly 203, the Blood Foraging Compass, a brass machine with a complex structure and unknown principles, once in the collection of the Frost Queen, now owned by Captain Tirion.

Among the ranked “anomalies”, this machine should be regarded as one of the more “positive” ones. Its center bowl can hold blood, and after absorbing the blood, it will use a series of compasses to indicate the location of the user’s “blood relatives”. After absorbing the blood, a series of compasses will indicate the location of the user’s “blood relatives”, and the priority of the indication is related to the closeness of the bloodline, the distance, and the user’s will.

Compared to most anomalies that are directly malicious and can be fatal if not properly stored, the Blood Compass is relatively safe in terms of “storage”, as it does not require any special sealing conditions – but in contrast, once activated, this device will reveal its sinister side. But in contrast, once activated, the device reveals its sinister side.

Firstly, once blood has been injected into it, the user will be constantly lured by the compass, generating the impulse to keep injecting blood into it, and those with a weak mind will even bleed themselves to death in the uninterrupted bloodletting; secondly, although the blood-seeking compass can indeed help the user to find his or her “blood relatives”, it often “carries bad luck” with it during the process. Although the Blood Compass does help users find their “blood relatives”, it tends to “bring bad luck” in the process, leading things to the bad side in the process of the user and the blood relatives getting close to each other.

Only Aiden knows, anomaly 203 has guided a father to find his long-lost son, but when they met, they killed each other by mistake.

But these negative effects have always been of little consequence to Captain Tirion – the Captain’s will is strong enough to resist the Blood Compass’s “lure” of blood donation, and the tendency to jinx the proximity of blood relatives… …

First of all, the Captain and Ms. Lucrecia would never see each other while the Anomaly 203 was in effect, and secondly, Abnormale and his son had always been “kind to their father and kind to their son”.

Even the Blood Compass wouldn’t make a reunion more “plague-inducing” than two cursed warships meeting and then covering each other in fire.

Over the past half century, Captain Tirion had often used the Blood Compass as a sort of “warning device” to determine whether the Lost Country had returned to the real world.

Aiden and the sailors gathered around the anomaly 203, several pairs of eyes staring at the brass device surrounded by several antique compasses decorated with intricate patterns. Those gears and pointers had gone completely silent.

“…… Maybe it’s just trying to move around,” a sailor with a hole in his brain said cautiously, as if trying to lighten the mood, “after all, this thing usually doesn’t move at all ……”

Aiden glared at the sailor, “Can’t take a joke you can leave it alone.”

“Why don’t …… we wipe off the blood left in the center?” Another dried up corpse-like sailor spoke up, “Otherwise it always feels like this thing is going to ‘wake up’ at any moment.”

“No way,” Aiden shook his head, “The captain explained that the blood in the center of the compass can’t be wiped off manually, we have to wait seventy-two hours for the compass to absorb itself clean.”

“…… What happens when you wipe it off early?”

“No one knows, it’s not easy enough to summarize the correct way to use the ‘anomaly’, who would be fed up to test all kinds of wrong operations,” Aiden said casually, “Why don’t you try? Count yourself as contributing to human civilization.”

“No, no, no, that’s what I’m saying.”

Aiden grunted coldly.

“Click-click-“

Just then, the blood-seeking compass suddenly made that slight sound of the mechanism running again, and the conversation between the first mate and the sailors was instantly interrupted, and Aiden’s first look at the machine showed him that the thing’s gears gradually began to tremble, and several compass pointers around its edges shook violently, and then, immediately afterward, all of them suddenly pointed to Prender… …around.

The blood-seeking compass fell silent once more, and this time it seemed as if it would literally never move again.

All of its pointers avoided Prand.

Aiden and the sailors looked at each other.

“…… I told you this thing just wants to move around ……”

“Shut up.” Aiden interrupted the sailors, but his eyes remained dead set on Anomaly 203 while his mind recalled what he had just seen.

All of the pointers were turned in some random direction outside of Prand, but he was certain that at some point just now, there was definitely a moment where the pointers of the blood-finding compass were pointing in the same direction – towards the city-state of Prand!
But that moment was very short, so short that one would suspect that it was just a coincidence in the irregular rotation of several pointers, but in Aiden’s view, it was as if several pairs of the compass’s “eyes” had just watched their target, and then shifted their sights in panic.

And now the anomaly 203 pointers all pointing to the surface of the sea near Prand, in Aiden’s view, but became a kind of “want to cover up”.

He suddenly thought of the captain’s words to himself.

Anomaly 203 occasionally exhibits the characteristics of a “living thing”, it does not always operate mechanically.

This thing, it’s afraid.

“Something’s wrong …… with this city-state!” Aiden suddenly reacted, “We need to tell the Captain what’s going on here.”

“But didn’t the captain give orders forbidding us to go ashore?”

“Pass a message over first,” Aiden spoke quickly, looking to one of the sailors, “Go, bring Perry here!”

The sailor scampered away, and not long afterward he ran back to the bridge – a huge, tail-feathered parrot stood on his shoulder, grinding the shell of its own beak against the exposed skull at the back of the sailor’s head.

“Perry, you’re needed to deliver a message.” Aiden said aloud.

The parrot stopped bullying the sailor at once and stared up at the first mate, “Purley, can pass the message.”

“Go to the Cathedral of the Citadel, look for the Captain’s scent, and tell him – the blood-seeking compass points to Prand, the Citadel is not safe!”

(End of chapter)