"Drop it!" Michael's killing intent filled voice reverberated the sea. Looking at their captain twitching in the air due to lack of breathing air, not all of them but a few loyal pirates dropped their cutlasses in the hope of saving their captain from the blood-covered monster.
"Or he dies"
"Do... as he says!" The words barely escape the pirate captain's mouth. Soon, one by one, the Pirates dropped their weapons. Quickly Marcella and the others rounded up the pirates away from their weapons. The bodies of pirates and crew members alike were lying on the deck in their own pool of blood. Most of the bodies belonged to Ross's crews because the pirates caught them off guard as well as killed a lot using cannon fire.
While everyone was staring at Michael to see what he's going to do next, he threw the pirate captain to Ross.
"Your op, your rules" He let Ross deal with the pirate captain and the rest of the pirates. Every single fiber in his body ached. If the fight continued, he would be forced to use Arch energy, revealing his secret.
"Men, take everything we want from their ship" Ross put his cutlass on the pirate captain's throat before ordering his men. They all waited for Michael to cross the wooden plank first. Only after he crossed the wooden plank, the crew members moved to the pirate ship.
On Ross's ship, everyone moved away from Michael's path. Many crew members were trembling at the sight of blood-covered Michael. Even Logan avoided direct eye contact with him. He was too exhausted to deal with everything else. Logan saw him sitting down on the floor.
"Where did Ross find him?" H asked himself. In his forty years of life, he had seen many great spartans and gladiators fight but he never saw someone as bloodthirsty as the young man. Even a spartan or a gladiator could kill a maximum of 10 men at a time but the young man killed almost twenty men single handedly. H was indeed terrified yet a sly grin appeared on his face because he knew the young man would be a great asset to complete the mission.
Eventually, after an hour, Ross's crew took everything they needed from the pirate ship.
"Ross, what're you gonna do with them?" H asked. The pirates were tied around their wrists including the pirate captain.
"You took everything, let us go" the pirate captain shamelessly spoke these words. Just an hour ago,he wanted to kill everyone and pillage the ship.
"Seriously" Marcella put her crossbow at the pirate captain's forehead.
"Let's kill these fuckers and dump their bodies into the ocean" Marcella's words made the pirates' hearts skip a beat.
"Put them back on their ship. I had seen enough death for a day"
"Fuck!"
Almost every pirate on the deck cursed. Their mainsail was broken by Michael, so they wouldn't be able to sail the ship. Putting them back on their ship was equal to killing them. In this part of the ocean, there weren't many islands nearby hence swimming wasn't an option, and getting rescued by another ship might not happen.
The pirate captain was the only one who felt relieved by their decision. He was fortunate enough to get a communication stone from Captain Redbeard himself. While Marcella was leading them back to their ship, the pirate captain took a glance at the blood-covered monster. He felt extremely excited to inform everything he saw in him back to Redbeard. A person who could heal like him would be worth a whole lot of coins. Next time, he would come chasing the young man with an entire fleet of Redbeard.
At that time, he would avenge his fallen pirates.
"He's gonna make me so rich" Taking a last glance at Michael, the pirate captain left Ross's ship.
*******************************
After a day and a half, the sun rose at the horizon enabling everyone to see their destination, the undead island. From the distance, one wouldn't see the horror hiding in the island among the ocean of thick trees.
"That's the place, David" Logan let out a heavy breath. After seeing Michael's bloodthirsty look, Logan wasn't as talkative with Michael as before. Not only Logan but many on the ship kept their distance from Michael.
This didn't irritate Michael as his current dress irritated him. After bathing in blood, he had to throw away the dress and wore a typical pirate robe. At Least he found something black to wear.
But even after changing his robes, he reeked in blood.
"Get ready team" Ross ordered as every team member began to assemble on the deck. Ross handed over the helm to someone else. Soon, Maria came out of the captain's cabin wearing metal armor that looked too big on her. There wasn't a spot on her body that wasn't covered by metal. Now he realized what Ross was doing a day with all the armor they pillaged from the pirate ship.
He put together many pieces of armor to create armor fitting to Maria. Although the silver armor would definitely slow down her movements, it would save her from getting bitten by Netherels to an extent.
Other than Maria, Jonah also wore a full plate and chainmail armor. Unlike Maria, it perfectly fitted him. Everyone else only wore leather armor which would provide some protection without restricting their movements.
Even Logan wore a mud color vest-like armor as well as arm bracers to protect himself.
"Our mission is simple, get to the center of the island and retrieve an artifact" Ross began to speak,
"Follow my lead. If you want to survive, do what I say when I say. Recently I heard, another team might be hunting for the same thing as us. So we move as fast as we can. David cover our backs, Logan you're on the front with Marcella"
Logan nodded, moving to the front. Jessie was standing on the left side of the group while Brownie was standing on the other side. The group was formed on a pentagon shape with H and Ross leading them.
"I'm not gonna lie, we will face undeads. Aim for their head, finish them off quickly"
After listening to Ross for another ten minutes, the ship finally came to a halt. One by one, they jumped down on the shore leaving the comfort of the ship. They were standing on an artistic sandy shore as coupled with the blue sea behind them painted a beautiful picture of a scene. A line of large thick trees stood a couple of meters away from them like loyal soldiers guarding the island. Even the dark rain forest had a charm to it.
"We'll camp when the sun goes down"
H said in a low voice. All of them walked forward without breaking the pentagon formation. Michael wondered how they were gonna keep the formation after entering the forest because just from the outside, the forest looked thicker than the amazon forest itself.
It would be near impossible to walk through the vegetation without breaking the formation. Since H and Ross were leading the group, they took out a machete to cut through the thick forest.
The rainforest was far-reaching, thick, and ancient. Its canopy was competed for by oak, sycamore, birch, and many other trees unique to this world that left barely enough light through the canopy.
There was no sound of an insect, bird, or reptile, no call of a human voice, only the steady rhythmical lap of the sea. The sound of the sea made everyone slightly shiver with fear for what's lying in the jungle. The heat of the sun pounded down on them as they gathered up the courage and kept moving.
Silent tree limbs dropped from most trees, and a hodgepodge of flowers, which grew in abundance, enhanced the otherwise uniform backdrop. The deeper they walked into the forest, the less they heard the ocean.
A hodgepodge of animal noises, which were caused by birds and vermin, reverberated through the air along with the fresh smell of the forest ground and were accompanied by the occasional sounds of breaking twigs beneath the feet of larger animals.
"Bloody mosquitos" Logan cursed, trying to swat the mosquitoes landing on him.
"I hate rainforests," Brownie spoke silently.
Even Michael who loved forests had to curse this forest when he looked down to see the leeches on his boots. He never would be grateful for a pair of boots as felt now.
As they were moving forward, suddenly Ross raised his hand, wordlessly telling them to halt their steps. Every single one of them looked around their environment vigilantly, expecting a surprise attack from someone or something. Michael closed his eyes for a moment to listen to any weird sounds around him. The more he concentrated, the more he could hear the sound of monkey chatter. If it was any other forest, a simple sound such as monkey's chatter would have freaked them out but in the undead island, the sound made them clutch their weapons tighter.
Keek!
Keek!
Keek!
The sound got louder and louder. They could tell they were being surrounded by probably a group of monkeys. They hoped the monkeys would not be undeads.
Abruptly the sound completely stopped. They all had a look of confusion on their faces but soon the confusion became vigilance as they saw red gemstone-like eyes glaring at them through the darkness of the forest above them. Those eyes above them glowed while the air soon became putrid, overwhelmingly putrid.