Ciel should have expected this.

How could all the remaining selfish pirates still unite after losing so badly the last time? The House as a whole should realize Decimo must be throwing an even bigger bait or mind-control to stop the logical desertion.

The truth appeared to be a mix of both.

The waves subsided in a brief lull before an abomination rose from the nasty depth.

Upon witnessing these crimes for the eye, reactions varied from curiosity, sheer bafflement, horror, and good old disgust. In the end, it was Carolina who labeled it best.

“So this is what they call a Faustian Curse,” said the Necromancer. “God damn, not even I take things this far.”

What emerged from the crimson sea, rising in the middle of eldritch rainfall, was the macabre of ships glued together with sheer vengeance and Necrotic grudges. 22 ships' worth of wood were glued together to form an eldritch that vaguely resembles Noah's Ark for children’s nightmares. This architectural assault on the cornea shouldn’t float. Its existence was an affront to all laws of buoyancy and transportation, both natural and man-made. Yet, it stood, mocking all the laws of nature like a mutated crustacean high on hatred of humanity itself.

Then the crew made themselves known.

They were no longer human. No, the pirates had been transformed into barnacles encrusted by sea-animal hybrids. They squirmed and squatted out of the ship, waving their weapons encrusted with crimson curses and toxins.

Ciel, witnessing this sheer insanity through his EXOS: DURANDAL, did a double take. The sea creature angles were indeed Amibus’ claim to fame, but something about this entire ordeal felt off.

“Xia,” Ciel said, making his request. “Sink them again.”

The Princess of White responded with another gigantic tidal wave, conjured by the swing of her sword. The water swelled, tripling the size of the tower-dwarfing abomination. Sadly, a crimson ray of concentrated curses cut the tsunami before it landed.

Ciel sighed. Yes, this task would be more difficult than the initial estimate.

…

Lambard of the Nightslash saw the gigantic waves clash against the crimson ray and discovered the vital fact—he was less than an ant in this conflict.

“What will happen to me?” Lambard squeaked at Betty.

“If you survive, prison,” answered Betty. “If not… you can ask him."

Thump!

The humongous figure clammed on the deck of Lambard’s ship—a hulking purple beast in lion-cloth.

Lambard recognized that thing.

“Omni?” gaped Lambard.

Omni the Brute was a bald barbarian. That fact now existed in the far past. The current Omni was a meter taller and came with an extra helping of purplish fish scale and a salty smell. Like a computer-generated image too real for comfort, Omni the Brute struck the key in all the wrong places. Places such as his face with a thick fanged mouth of a deep sea creature and large bulby eyes leaking slime.

Lambard, having difficulty looking at the crime against the sensible aesthetic, instead focused on the webbed feet for the sake of his sanity.

“Meat…” said the monster. “Must eat…”

“Hey,” Betty said, directing her question at the prisoner without turning away from the threat. “Is he normally that dumb?”

The expression on Lambard’s face provided more than enough answers.

“That must be a no,” Betty exhaled her life regret at this sad state of affairs. “Ciel wasn’t kidding when he said unearned power-ups are bad for your health and intellect.”

Bruno charged with his fist raised high. As a train mage, Betty almost went for an attack spell in an instant, but something changed her mind. The bizarre war in the East and the catastrophe of Angel Fall taught her not to underestimate any opponent—not even when said opponent was a mutated fish idiot whose vocabulary now centered on ‘meat’ and ‘eat.’

Thus, instead of preemptive elimination of the threat, Betty grabbed Lambard by the scruff of his neck and activated two spells.

Red Magic Rank 1: Haste

Blue Magic Rank 2: Illusion

Omni’s punch blew apart the ship as Betty sped away. She summoned her familiar—the technology assimilating slime-golem—[Atlas Machina]. Using the blob levitating on thruster as foothold, Betty unleashed a disposable probing strike to gauge where Bruno laid on the threat scale.

Red Magic Rank 2: Bolt

The single shot of Bolt hit squarely on Omni’s forehead, swaying it slightly like a drunken sailor. That was all it did. To illustrate the sheer pointlessness of the act, the Bolt even has the audacity to bounce off the scaled forehead.

“Great,” cursed Betty. “His scale is Mana-reflective.”

A loud boom was then heard, and the worst designed sea-faring monstrosity since a toddler gluing wooden-planks haphazardly had its side gutted.

Lambard, briefly forgetting his chance of survival hinged on being as silent as possible, gaped at the spectacle of flying woods and sea demons.

“What is that?” Lambard asked the scary woman who was throwing lightning at Omni.

“That is Nuan,” Betty said without bothering to look.

In a circumstance where Ciel’s plan didn’t work, Nuan insisted on jumping in next. No one discouraged her. No one—not even Ciel the planner—deluded themselves into thinking two tsunamis would get Decimo to exit life. A guy like that tended to have a backup plan, and the House of Lord would welcome any volunteer durable enough to drag more trinkets from that bag of tricks.

…

Decimo knew exactly what Ciel was thinking.

Those gigantic tidal waves that dwarfed the skyscraper were warm-ups. Still—credit where it was due—they totally caught the sock puppets unprepared. Pirates were accustomed to storms and authority. They were not accustomed to coast-sweeping god waves, and panics popped off like firecrackers.

Decimo was surprised the Unity Lord didn’t open with this move for the first time. Maybe it was because whatever key needed to use this move was occupied, or it was impossible to use the tidal waves without sinking his own ship. Either way, whatever stopped the Unity Lord the last time obviously wasn’t here to stop him now. Decimo sighed in great disappointment. He expected to use the tools to drag more out of the Unity Lord. Instead, he needed to use his trump card to stop them from deserting.

Worst of all, that wasn’t the end of the problem. Decimo couldn’t fathom what he had done to warrant such an aggressive enemy who kept golfing one power move after another.

An explosion erupted, and his newly minted sea demons learned how to fly the wrong way.

Tsunami or Nuan Yulong? Decimo wondered what was worse.

A bisected body of a former pirate sailed at his face, forcing him to brush it away with Aura.

Question answered. It was certainly the Martial Queen.

Dressed in black and armed with only one weapon—herself—Nuan came face-to-face with Decimo on the stern of the abominable vessel. Aura roared from her like an open-air incinerator.

“Missed me?” Nuan said, grinning like her birthday came early. “It is time for the second round.”

“Missed you?” Decimo said. “No. I certainly don’t miss people I defeat.”

Nuan felt her vein throbbed. As a person, she did lament in her overwhelming talent and was   by the loneliness of bloodshed. However, being dismissed like this was still insulting.

“Oh, don’t worry, it won’t end the same way!” Nuan leapt toward Decimo. Aura Blade ignited in her hand.

Instead, a black spike, coated in Aura, and Necrotic power, intercepted the blow.

Nuan was shocked. There were no two-ways about it. The seasoned killing-machine of the Yulong Empire was totally caught off the corner. It wasn’t the first time someone intercepted her. What truly got her flabbergasted was what said the interceptor was.

The black spike clashing against her Aura Blade wasn’t a weapon. It was a limb connected to a hunching body, spiking with black barbs. No, it didn’t look like a porcupine. The cute critters' spines could still resemble fur to some extent. What faced Nuan was a sea urchin with spiky legs. No eyes. No face. It was a creature devoid of a human evolutionary line.

And Nuan recognized it as Aura.

“Black Hand?” Nuan was horrified by what happened to the Captain of Sanguine Blood.

Shattering that suspense was a slither of ribbons. Nuan, quickly reminded of where she was, regathered her composure and flipped backward. The dark green ribbon—something she recognized as seaweed—chased after her. Against this relentless threat, Nuan wielded the Aura Spiral to tear it to pieces. Her eyes saw the culprit emerging from the gap between the woods, or rather, the roll of sea kelp that made the culprit. Tied together to form a walking bundle of slimy kelp, the creature broke the rules of biology itself.

Nuan legitimately had no idea what the kelp monster was until Decimo spoiled it for her.

“You must be confused,” said Decimo, introducing her to the kelp. “This is Brine Eyes John.”

Nuan didn’t respond. She was busily dodging a decapitating hit from behind, unleashed by a man with skin ridden by a barnacle encrusted with diseased puss. A bulby crimson pool where its eyes tracked her movement like a ravenous duelist high on illegal opium.

“Let me guess?” Nuan blocked the sword with her Aura Blade. “Pangdu.”

As Nuan shoved what the Terror of the Southern Waves was turned into, she confronted the last guess of today.

He lumbered forth like a beast, leaving the trail of slime with a legless torso. The manly, powerful jaw was transformed into boneless flesh. His skin leaked with slime as the hand of tentacles grasped his thin sword. The head of an octopus squirmed, turning to an impossible degree to watch Nuan Yulong. The grotesque tentacle unfurled to reveal the clothless monster's counter-rotating maw.

That creature was the fate of a certain Chrysler the Butcher. Or one could also call him Chrysler the Duped.

Nuan was stunned. No, she wasn’t terrified of the abomination facing her. What frightened her was a more alarming certainty.

“You get all of them?” Nuan gaped. “Every Pirate Lord? How?”

“I believe you have a bigger problem than processing an answer,” said Decimo, floating away. “I might answer you if you survive, my little Marital Queen.”

After entertaining Nuan, Decimo flew up to the silver armor, observing the situation.

“I believe we haven’t met, Unity Lord,” Decimo addressed the silver armor. “Lady Sophia has praised you mightily, and I want to know why.”