Chapter 426 -426-Burning the Fleet
Logar shook his head.
"This isn’t your fault. The difference between our strength on paper and the enemy’s was simply too enormous. We were blinded by our own arrogance."
"And it wasn’t just you, Alliance Leader. I was the same, and so were many of the other pirate chiefs. Even the pirates under us believed that our overwhelming advantage was enough to crush everything and flatten the enemy with ease."
"So naturally, we became arrogant."
Logar could not help but sigh.
"But no one could have imagined that our opponent would be this meticulous, or that he would prepare such an elaborate trap."
"If I were facing seven hundred thousand men backed by more than ten thousand cannons, I would have fled long ago."
"But he actually dared to fight."
"More than that, he boldly made a gamble."
"He gambled that we would be so arrogant that we wouldn’t divide our forces."
"He gambled that we were nothing more than a rabble incapable of coordinating with one another, and that we would never be cautious enough to suspect a trap."
"And now..."
"He won that gamble."
Gortar looked at the alliance that had already fallen apart before his eyes.
Some pirates had begun firing on their own allies simply because other ships were blocking their escape routes. Others started arguing after their vessels collided, only for those arguments to escalate into outright killing.
Some crazed pirates even ordered their warships to open fire on friendly vessels blocking their path, determined to blast open an escape route for themselves.
In the end, pirates really were just pirates.
When trapped in desperate circumstances, they did not treat other people’s lives as lives at all.
And once the situation turned against them, they no longer even treated their own comrades as human beings.
If it meant surviving, they would kill without hesitation—even if the person standing in their way had once been their closest friend or dearest family member.
And what Gortar could see was only one small corner of the battlefield.
Even more horrifying scenes were unfolding elsewhere, worse than the hell already before his eyes.
He simply could not bear to watch any longer.
He did not want his eyes tainted by what was happening.
In Logar’s field of vision, meanwhile, the raging flames only grew more intense.
Fire spread from ship to ship like a horde of demons, swallowing warships whole and setting one vessel after another ablaze.
The pirates’ screams were swallowed by the flames along with them.
This was no longer the human world.
It was a scene straight out of hell.
No...
Perhaps even hell itself was not as cruel as what lay before them.
Gortar finally urged,
"We should leave."
"We can still break out. If we wait any longer, even we won’t be able to escape."
"As long as we survive this, we can gather another force and rebuild our power."
"Then we’ll have another chance to defeat him."
Logar nodded.
"If we’re lucky, we may lose only half our forces."
"That should still be enough to stop the enemy from continuing to pursue us."
At this moment, the chiefs of the two strongest pirate crews in the Lather Kingdom had completely lost faith in the Pirate Alliance.
As for the battle itself, they had already fallen into utter despair.
They admitted that they had lost.
All they wanted now was to escape with their lives.
Captain Madman stood on the deck, staring wildly at everything unfolding before him.
He was utterly stunned—not by the destruction itself, but by the fact that his boss, John, had calculated everything almost perfectly.
Before the battle began, just how terrifying had the advantage against John been?
He had been facing a Pirate Alliance whose power was practically equivalent to an entire kingdom: seven hundred thousand men, more than ten thousand cannons, and nearly two thousand warships.
Even the Naval Corps would not have dared confront such a force head-on.
John’s strength on paper, by comparison, looked pitifully weak.
He had barely more than a hundred warships of various sizes, only a little over forty-five thousand men, and just several hundred cannons.
Anyone looking at those numbers would have shaken their head at John.
No one believed he could win!
And yet, when Captain Madman first heard John’s plan, he had begun to think that John might actually have a chance.
At the very least, John had come up with ideas none of them would ever have imagined.
Scattering obstacles across the sea.
Using gunpowder barrels.
Refusing to engage the Pirate Alliance head-on.
And countless other tricks...
All of them had been conceived and arranged by John.
And the facts had proven that they worked.
They worked extremely well.
The grand Pirate Alliance had looked enormous and overwhelmingly powerful.
Yet despite all that strength, Boss John had still outmaneuvered them and lured them straight into his trap.
Now, the Pirate Alliance had to deal not only with the sea of flames steadily devouring them...
but also with internal conflict, and even outright slaughter among their own forces.
That single blow had shattered the Pirate Alliance’s superficial unity completely.
At this moment, the Pirate Alliance’s warships were like ants on a scorching pan and headless flies, darting around wildly with no idea where to go.
In Captain Madman’s eyes, they had transformed from vicious tigers with razor-sharp fangs into helpless, witless lambs.
All that remained was for Boss John to give the order to harvest them.
Aboard the Golden Merry, John calmly watched everything unfold before him.
There was not the slightest ripple in his heart.
He was already far too familiar with this outcome.
After all, the Pirate Alliance had followed his script almost perfectly.
"They mistakenly believe that I’m a representative of the Naval Corps."
"So at its core, they believe this is a confrontation between the pirates and the Naval Corps."
"Faced with the Naval Corps’ overwhelming power, the pirates naturally wouldn’t dare take things lightly."
"But at the same time, my strength on paper is extremely weak."
"That made them believe that mobilizing their entire force would not only display their power, but also allow them to crush me outright."
"And once they believed that, they naturally stopped acting cautiously."
"After all, many people believe in one saying..."
"Before absolute strength, every scheme and trick is meaningless."
"The pirates believed that too."
John smiled faintly.
"But what they didn’t know..."
"was that their opponent was me."
Looking at the scene before him as though admiring the finest masterpiece he had ever created, John smiled and gave another order.
"Begin Phase Two!"
The first phase had been to use the sea of flames to consume the Pirate Alliance, disrupt their deployment, and force them to collapse from within.
Now came the second phase.
Attack.
Keep the Pirate Alliance trapped inside the sea of fire so they could not escape.
Let the flames compensate for the raw strength John lacked and destroy the Pirate Alliance in his place.
The moment John gave the order...
his warships immediately moved.
Under the enhancement of the God of Naval Warfare buff, every aspect of their performance skyrocketed.
And it was not just the warships that received the enhancement.
The people aboard them were strengthened as well.
More than a hundred warships moved toward the outer edge of the sea of flames, executed beautiful drifting turns, swung their broadsides into position, and opened fire.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Countless cannonballs crashed into the burning sea.
There was no need to aim.
Didn’t the Pirate Alliance have an overwhelming number of ships and men?
With a single broadside, dozens of ships and hundreds—even thousands—of pirates inside the sea of flames were struck by cannon fire.
At this moment, the Golden Merry pushed its speed to the absolute limit.
It surged forward, then drifted across the surface of the sea, bringing hundreds of cannons to bear on the inferno.
"Fire!" John ordered.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
The cannons roared.
Countless Pirate Alliance warships and pirates were destroyed.