The pirates started yet another round of discussion between themselves. Captain Torrento then just waited quietly on his seat as he listened to them, one by one.
But the discussion did not go on for long since a guard standing outside the hall came inside and whispered something into Captain Torrento's ears before giving him a letter that seemed to have arrived just now.
Captain Torrento stopped everyone before he started reading the letter after which he tossed it towards the tall man sitting beside him.
"What do you think?" Captain Torrento asked apathetically.
As Captain Torrento's voice fell, everyone looked at the person sitting quietly on the right side of their boss.
The tall man had a very special position in the hierarchy of their pirate group. Captain Torrento would always ask him for his advice for matters that ware very important.
The pirates usually called him by his nickname, Viper.
Viper furrowed his brows after reading the letter.
"This... Captian, first we need to check whether this news is true or not. " Viper cautioned.
"Bring the person inside that brought this information." Captain Torrento ordered the guard.
Just then the guard also came back and with him was a middleaged man and from his attire, it looked like he was a merchant.
"Captain, what's the matter?" asked the Crooked squirrel looking confused when he saw the merchant because he knew this guy. He is one of the merchants that regularly pass through the region that Ragetti Crook looks after. First, it was a letter that even got Viper to frown and then a Merchant is brought inside that he is familiar with.
Captain Torrento exhaled the smoke out of his lungs before saying "Ragetti, you will find that out soon... Hm, do you know him?"
"He is a native from one of the islands that come under my region. Till now, he had always paid the protection fees that he is entitled to use the sea safely without our interference so I am somewhat familiar with him." Ragetti said.
Captian Torrento nodded after which he looked at the Merchant who clearly seemed uncomfortable standing in the midst of pirates.
"Merchant is everything written in this letter, true." Captain torrent asked.
"Ye...yes, all of it is true. There are others like me who are also returning to their home island and I'm sure they will also pass this news to the public. I was there when Lord Alex beheaded the previous Lord Darren Dorabnk and Cole Jordan after defeating both of them in the war. Soon after that, Lord Alex also captured both the Merchant Union and the Frey city in one just one night. It was... unbelievable, but it really did happen." The Merchant whose name was Sam replied.
He then started explaining everything from the start to the end till he and the foreign Merchants like him were allowed to leave the Seashell island and return back to their home.
On his return journey, unfortunately, a fish type demon beast attacked his ship but this kind of situation happened quite commonly.
Fortunately, they were able to repel the demon Beast but their ship was badly damaged till then and as luck would have it, some pirates related to Lion Shark Pirate group patrolling that area chanced upon them.
They rushed towards them so that they can profit from their misery but Sam was able to convince the pirates that they were their supporters and he revealed that he knew Ragetti Crook quite well.
That's why these pirates then brought Sam and his group to the same island where their higher-ups were having a meeting as they also found a letter on Sam's body.
The leader of that pirate ship thought the letter was important and needed to be reported to Captain Torrento urgently so with the letter he also made Sam together with his group to follow him back.
"This... Captain, if what he says is true then our men that are also staying on the Seashell island covertly should also have sent back this information." Ragetti, the Crooked squirrel said not completely believing in what the Merchant had said till now.
Most of the pirates sitting there were also having a hard time believing that a boy in his teens actually achieved this much in such a short time.
The merchant was told to leave before Captain Torrento started speaking.
"You are right, Ragetti. It is really odd that no word has been sent back to us from our own men even when so much had happened there. Do one thing, you send your people to all the three cities on the Seashell island disguised as merchants and fish out everything that is going on there before reporting back to me. As for the others, you all should start getting ready. We might need to move again together this time." Captain Torrento then turned to look at his other two Vice-Captain.
"Pintel, you have another work to do. For a long time now, I'm getting news that some new pirate group has started working in our waters. They have been targeting our customers, small-time pirates groups and they even dare to target ships under my flag too. Many times in the past they had clashed with our group and not even once did any one of our men came out alive. If not for the passerby's who saw them sinking ships with our flags on the mast, I wouldn't have even known how they went missing so suddenly or what went down with them."
"Captain, I'm too trying to find about this new group. Thay had already sunken four of our ships but never once did I came face to face with them. What I had gathered until now about them is that their Captain's name is Blackbeard. I had placed all my men on alert to watch out for them if they ever land on any of the islands around us to refill their supplies. But till now we had no luck in finding their whereabouts." the butcher said as he looked towards the crooked squirrel.
At first, he had thought that the person targetting his ships was Ragetti or Captain Torrento himself using underhanded means to weaken his strength and growing influence in the group he has been building for some time now.
If Ragetti and Mary were not facing similar problems he would have really started to doubt them.
"Yeah, those fuckers also got three of my ships that I had sent to do some work," Ragetti added. He had the same thought as his rival's, Pintel.
"I lost one ship to them and that is only a guess since they went missing for no reason. So I assume that this new pirate group is behind that." Mary Read said but she didn't seem to be much concerned about it.
"Hm, I know. Stay alert and find where this...Blackbeard goes to refill his supplies. He has to go somewhere; if you do not find him on any of the islands around us then its most probable that their group has found an undiscovered island unknown to us. Find out their position as soon as possible. Mary, you also help Pintel in this."
"Aye, Captain" The meeting was soon adjourned and all the pirates left to their own work.
The only ones that were left in the meeting hall were Captain Torrento and Viper.