Chapter 55
It was a silent pre-dawn night with no omen at all.
It was an ordinary night at sea, except for the bleak, chilly weather and the thick fog hanging low.
Derrick, a sailor on the rearmost slave ship, stood on deck, exhausted.
"Haa... damn it, if I'd known it would be like this, I should've saved some money and lived a little cheaper..."
Rubbing both arms as the cold fog made him shiver, Derrick lamented his situation.
"No, but if not then, how often in my life would I have gotten to taste a high-class prostitute? That was worth going into debt for."
He broke the sea's silence with his muttering and watched the lights of the convoy ahead.
The torchlight spreading through the sea mist thick over the midnight ocean carried a mystical air all on its own.
"Yeah. If I catch those black bastards and sell them, I can start living frugally now. If there's a decent broad among them... heh heh."
As he muttered and looked ahead, Derrick felt that something was off.
The lights of the ships ahead were growing farther and farther away, to the point he couldn't tell whether the ships were slowing down, the fog was thickening, or both.
But Derrick's expression was calm.
Because that sort of thing often happened on a fog-choked sea.
Sailing ships that relied on the wind didn't turn sharply easily.
On a foggy sea where visibility was poor, it was even harder to see ahead, so captains often let the distance grow too large.
Still, as the last ship in the fleet, it wouldn't be good to fall too far behind.
Watching the lights beyond the fog, now blurred out, Derrick moved to report to the captain.
It was right at that moment that something strange came into view from somewhere.
"Hm?"
Something strange was approaching through the fog.
It was an unidentified something racing forward, leaving a trail of white bubbles behind it.
As the distance got a little closer, the sense of speed became apparent. It was racing toward the ship at a speed faster than most monsters.
Derrick, flustered by the bizarre object he had never seen before, turned toward where the captain was and shouted.
"Unidentified object appro-"
At the same time, a flash burst from beneath the slave ship's starboard waterline.
BOOM!
With a thunderous roar, a huge column of water shot up.
The section hit directly by the torpedo swelled for an instant, then split apart and exploded.
The rigging snapped one after another, and the mast let out a shriek as it tilted.
As the securing devices shattered and came loose, the cannons rolled around and smashed the deck to pieces, while the ominous sound of the keel being crushed rang out everywhere.
The last thing Derrick, a sailor on the slave ship, saw was the flame-engulfed hull slowly tilting into the sea.
"Guh..."
Derrick, with one leg crushed beneath a cannon weighing hundreds of pounds, sank beneath the surface with no resistance at all.
It was the fate of a sheep left behind by the flock.
The corpse of the 3,000-ton sailing ship slowly disappeared into the fog.
2:35 a.m., June 18.
It was a little later that the convoy noticed the slave ship at the very rear of the formation had disappeared.
"What? The rearmost ship can't be seen?"
"Yes. Contact through the crystal ball is not getting through either. It seems... something has happened to it."
At those words, the atmosphere in the convoy command center turned cold.
A ship can't be seen? That could happen easily enough. In a foggy night sea, even a ship slipping back a little could end up that way.
But being unable to make contact was a completely different matter.
If crystal-ball contact couldn't get through...
"...it seems to have sunk."
"Yes. I think so too."
And this... wasn't something that could be dismissed as simple grounding.
The waters near the Belfort Archipelago were deep.
Because of the convoy's nature, with large sailing ships traveling in a cluster, they had deliberately chosen a route with few reefs to avoid accidents.
Besides, if there had really been a problem, the ship at the front of the group would have sunk first.
"Could a sea monster really have appeared?"
There had already been several strange omens.
From the moment they were about to depart, even the sky had worn a sorrowful color as if it were crying. The Icthyo, whose senses were more sensitive than anyone's, had been convulsing wildly.
None of those were good omens for sailors.
At that point, the convoy commander had to make a decision.
Go forward. Or turn back.
The commander's decision was the former.
"The moment we retreat here, our Eastern control of the seas will be shattered."
"Then..."
"Continue sailing. Deploy the abyssal monsters in combat formation and wake all the sailors, raise alert status to the maximum! Enemy ambush!"
At that command, the sailing ships' lights grew brighter.
As the awakened sailors came out onto the deck, the atmosphere turned chaotic, and in the midst of it the fog only thickened.
"Ambush? Here? Pirates?"
"No, by common sense, there's no way pirates would target a formation like this. There are abyssal monsters below us too..."
"Then don't tell me..."
The atmosphere grew unsettled.
The news that one sailing ship had already gone down only heightened the sailors' anxiety in the fog, where they could barely see a hand in front of them.
Naturally, the merchant ships at the rear of the formation were the first to start shaking in fear.
The slave-trade ship that had been at the very back had disappeared. Now they themselves were the ones at the rear of the formation.
The captains of the rear sailing ships desperately tried to get into the light cast by the convoy.
The sailors were panicking just the same.
"T-there! Something moved to the east..."
"No! There's something strange under the waves over here too..."
"It's following us! It's waiting for a chance to eat us!"
The sailors panicked at the slightest movement in the waves and sent in reports.
And some of those reports even reached the escort ships and abyssal monsters through the crystal balls.
The escort ships also understood to some degree that the rearmost ships were vulnerable.
"Yes, they do seem to be panicking and making poor judgments... but it's true that the rear ships are in danger."
So they left only the minimum escort at the front and moved to the rear.
The escort force consisted of a third-rate ship of the line and both giant abyssal monsters, Tusoteuthis.
And that was exactly the situation the wolf pack wanted.
The moment the fog thickened, five torpedoes were launched from 4 kilometers away.
KWAANG-!
Two sailing ships trapped in the fog at the very front of the fleet were engulfed by the water plumes.
The traces left behind where the blast had cleared the fog were horrific.
"Save me... ugh...!"
"Help us! There's a person here...!"
"Lower the lifeboats!"
"It's a monster! A monster appeared!"
"Fuck, what the hell are the escort fleet and abyssal monsters doing?!"
At that, confusion spread through the entire fleet.
A monster had appeared while the escort fleet and the monsters had all gone to the rear. And the ships had gone under without even managing a response.
Everyone trembled in fear at the sight of a 3,000-ton sailing ship splitting in half right before their eyes.
Even with the screaming sailors right in front of them, no one dared go near. If they went into the fog to rescue them, it felt as if they'd be devoured by the unknown monster.
"A-ah...! We're colliding!"
In the chaos, the captains hurriedly turned their helms and even caused collisions.
KRRRACK-!
The heavy crash shook the sea. As the outer hulls of the two ships were gouged away, broken railings and snapped rigging rained down onto the deck.
The sailing ship behind them had no choice but to enter the fog to avoid the collision ahead.
And that soon became the worst possible choice.
THOOM-!
Another fierce shockwave rippled out, shaking the surface of the sea.
The Icthyo, stripped of their sensing ability.
Sailing ships, hunted by monsters the moment they were swallowed by the fog.
An unidentified monster whose shape, abilities, and strength could not even be guessed at.
Fear began to spread through the fleet like a contagion.
People made one last desperate struggle against that fear.
"Fire the cannons! Keep the monster from getting close!"
Since merchant ships routinely kept cannons ready for pirates, most carried around twenty guns.
At someone's shout, the gunports all opened at once.
The wooden covers packed tightly along the sides of the hull were flipped open in sequence, revealing dozens of muzzle-loading cannons.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Flames burst up, and pitch-black smoke rose. The round iron balls vanished as if sucked into the fog.
It didn't take long for the answer to come back.
Because for submarines that homed in on sound, there was no better bait than cannon fire.
"All ships, fire as soon as you're ready!"
On Captain Ethan of U-7's orders, the submarines that had approached within 2 kilometers launched their torpedoes all at once.
The front merchant ships, exposed defenselessly, began to be hunted one by one without being able to respond at all.
***
3:17 a.m., June 18.
The crew of the third-rate ship of the line Wave Warden all looked at the burning sea with blank expressions.
"This is ridiculous..."
"How long has it even been since we left our post..."
While they rushed to the rear in a hurry, countless distress calls poured in from the ships at the front.
But when they hurried through the fog, everything was already over.
Ten sailing ships were horribly destroyed and burning.
The escort force, including the abyssal monsters that arrived too late, could do nothing but clean up the aftermath.
A chill sense of unease settled into everyone's heart as they stood there.
The wolf pack's hunt had begun.