Winter Lord: Starting with Daily Intelligence

Chapter 447 The Glory of the Fleet
The fog hasn't completely lifted yet.

Dozens of pirate ships tossed about in the grayish-white waves, like a pile of rotten wood smashed by the waves.

But suddenly, some unseen string snapped.

The bow veered, and the sails creaked as they were pulled.

The commotion didn't sound like a fleet changing formation; it sounded more like a group of sharks that had smelled blood suddenly turned their heads.

Without any hesitation, they locked onto the formation that was breaking through the waves ahead.

The scene on the sea at this moment was extremely eerie.

On one side is gray steel, with black smoke billowing from the chimneys drawing straight lines in the air.

The vanguard ships of the Red Tide are like a row of precisely calibrated scalpels, cutting through the sea at a constant speed.

On the other side were rotten woods and tattered canvases hanging from crooked masts. The deck was teeming with people, like a swarm of ants that had been poked and blown apart.

There were no roars heard on the sea, only a sticky sound churning in the mist.

It was a series of gurgling sounds squeezed from thousands of throats, intermittent, like a drowning person blowing bubbles underwater.

On the high deck of each ship, several dark green shadows were stuck.

Those fishmen were taller than ordinary members of their kind, and their dark scales gleamed with an oily sheen.

They didn't touch the sails or pay attention to the cannons; they just stood there like shepherds.

The still-pulsating lump in his hand was squeezed out of shape, and with each squeeze, a high-frequency vibration was added to the air.

Those were instructions that drilled directly into the brain.

The merman's bulging eyes were fixed on the distant steel warship.

In their murky eyes, those iron ships billowing black smoke were not war machines, but the perfect breeding ground, offerings to the deep sea.

Smash it and lay your eggs inside!
Meanwhile, in the lower deck, the real "fuel" was burning.

Hundreds of shirtless pirates were tightly strapped to their seats with leather belts, their rough wooden oars flying through their hands at an absurd speed.

That's a frequency that human muscles can't handle.

Some people had their shoulder muscles torn open, with blood flowing down their elbows; others had broken forearms, with the broken ends piercing through the skin and exposing a pale, exposed section.

But no one screamed, and no one stopped.

They all wore the same expression, their mouths stretched to their ears, drool dripping from their chins onto the wooden board, their eyes unfocused yet filled with joy.

The voice in my head kept going on and on.

Faster! Faster! Crash into that iron wall!

They pushed the pile of broken wood to its limit, using their last breath.

The ship's keel groaned under the strain, and the entire ship, like an out-of-control cannonball, crashed erratically into the cold steel.

The smoothbore cannons on the deck were already red-hot.

To fire an extra round before contact, the heat from the cannon barrel could singe your eyebrows from a great distance.

One of the loaders, annoyed by the excessive shaking of the cannon muzzle, lunged forward and clung tightly to the scorching copper tube with both arms.

"Zi——!"

The skin and flesh were instantly charred, and white smoke rose up carrying the smell of roasted meat.

He didn't flinch; instead, he trembled with excitement.

Those cloudy eyes looked at the skin stuck to the cannon barrel on his hand, and his lips twitched uncontrollably, revealing a grateful smile.

Even though his hands were useless, he numbly used his body to brace against the cannon and completed one last aim.

At this moment, he is not a person; he is just a disposable part.

The captain, like a marionette, stood at the bow of the ship with his arms outstretched, welcoming the sea breeze.

The main guns of the Red Tide Vanguard Ship had been turned around, and the dark muzzles were magnified in the field of vision.

Even in his eyes, it wasn't death; the flashes from the cannon were a pink, warm door.

"So beautiful..." He drooled, like a child seeing candy, and rushed towards it with a devout look.

…………

The air inside the armored command tower on the other side was a bit stuffy, carrying the smell of engine oil and heated brass.

The special glass filtered out the sound of the waves outside, leaving only the continuous hum of the engine running, like a huge steel beast snoring at your feet.

Cortez stood in front of the control panel, reached out and touched the microphone tube next to him; the cool touch of the copper tube made him feel at ease.

This ship is fantastic.

Sometimes, when he wakes up in the middle of the night, he will subconsciously worry that the hold is leaking or that the mast might break in two in a storm.

After all, in the first half of his seafaring career, he had been sailing those dilapidated wooden boats that would rattle and groan if the waves were even slightly big.

Back then, when encountering pirates, the first reaction was to check the wind direction, and the second was to calculate the load. If escape was impossible, one had to be prepared to throw the cargo overboard to save one's life.

It wasn't until the Red Tide people approached Colt and asked, "Do you dare to sail a ship that doesn't care about the wind direction?"

So he stood there.

Beneath their feet lies steel, powered by steam, and in their hands lies firepower sufficient to send any old-era navy to the bottom of the sea.

Cortez looked up and glanced at the Red Tide emblem hanging on the bulkhead.

"Crimson Flame." He murmured the name to himself.

Lord Louis gave him this ship, so he has to prove that the investment was worthwhile.

"Sir, the target is within firing range." The first mate's voice pulled him back to reality. "Forty-two in number, and they're still accelerating."

Cortez didn't turn around; he could see everything clearly through the observation window.

Those lunatics are here.

In the mist, dozens of dilapidated wooden boats were rushing towards them like madmen.

The sails were catching the wind, the bow was pressing down on the waves, and on the deck, a group of freaks were waving rusty swords and bone clubs, their mouths wide open, howling at something incomprehensible.

They don't even have a proper formation.

This isn't a charge; it's a race to their deaths.

Cortez slowly drew his sword, tapping the tip lightly on the chart table: "Don't let anything dirty get close."

His tone was as if he were instructing the sailors to wash the deck: "Free fire, see the guests out."

"boom--!"

Then came the second shot, the third shot...

The twelve vanguard ships resembled a ruthless execution squad, their broadside cannons exploding in succession.

The sound was rhythmic, clanging and clattering, with a unique mechanical cadence.

The high-explosive shell left several orange-red arcs in the mist before plunging headfirst into the pile of rotten wood.

There was no back-and-forth probing.

A cannonball pierced the hold of a pirate ship, and after a muffled explosion, the entire ship shattered from the inside, like a balloon that had been blown up.

The broken mast, carrying burning canvas, flew into the air and crashed down, killing a group of laughing mermen instantly, turning them into a rain of minced meat and wood chips.

Cortes watched this scene without the slightest ripple on his face.

So-called courage is worthless in the face of explosives produced on industrial assembly lines.

"That's pathetic," he muttered softly, but there was no pity in his eyes. "These days, you can't win by just yelling."

Just then, several long, narrow speedboats with abnormally high speeds emerged from the blind spots of the smoke.

They glided close to the sea surface, and wind magic made the tattered sails almost burst open.

A distance of a few hundred meters, you'll arrive in the blink of an eye.

Boarding action.

This is the pirates' only chance to turn the tide, and it's also their specialty.

A dozen or so monstrous creatures covered in scales had rushed to the bow of the ship, their grappling hooks barbed, howling like ghosts.

The grappling hook slammed against the gunwale of the Crimson Flame, producing a piercing metallic scraping sound.

But that's all; those hooks couldn't hold the smooth steel armor plates at all, and the vast majority slipped off and fell into the sea.

A few people managed to hook onto the railing, but before the people behind them could climb up, the railing was broken by the shock.

No one in the control tower panicked.

Cortez frowned, looking as if he had seen a few cockroaches crawling on his dining table.

“It’s too dirty.” He sheathed his sword. “Open the valve. Burn it clean.”

The boatswain expressionlessly pulled down the red handles.

"Zi——!"

The hidden nozzles below the hull opened instantly.

What sprayed out was not water, but a viscous, dark red gel-like substance.

It was fuel specially made by the alchemy workshop, poured out like a curtain of rain, drenching the speedboats and the pirates who were about to jump onto them.

They weren't given time to react.

The igniter lit up.

"call--!!!"

A wall of fire suddenly rose. The oil-soaked wood instantly began to carbonize, its structure emitting a teeth-grinding cracking sound.

As for those freaks, they didn't even have time to scream before they were burned to black charcoal and rolled into the sea in their menacing poses.

The seawater boiled for a while, producing large plumes of white steam, before quickly engulfing the wreckage.

Cortez straightened his collar and turned his gaze forward again: "I told you, don't let anything dirty get on Lord Louis's ship."

He gave the order into the microphone: "Maintain speed. Run them over."

The Red Tide Vanguard Fleet did not pause or make any unnecessary maneuvers.

Steel warships lined up in neat wedge formations, boilers reaching their maximum pressure, and massive propellers churning the seawater to a pulp.

They pushed straight ahead like bulldozers, braving the smoke and stepping over the broken planks and corpses on the sea.

Before this moving steel wall, those pitiful remnants of the old era don't even qualify as stumbling blocks.

…………

On that now blurred sea, the Scorpion, like a wild dog with a broken spine, was desperately crawling out to sea.

Miller stood on the aft deck, his monocular telescope trembling uncontrollably.

Even from this distance, the sound of bone fragments being ground up seemed to still penetrate into my ears.

In his view, the situation should have been one-sided.

Nearly a hundred pirate ships.

Even if it's made of rotten wood, when densely packed on the sea surface, it looks like an unyielding wall.

What's more, those ships were crawling with those unkillable monsters that felt no pain and possessed immense strength; they were the most terrifying nightmare Miller had ever experienced.

There were only thirteen ships on the other side, and the large ship was even lagging behind.

With a ratio of one hundred to twelve, this should have been a tragedy of ants devouring an elephant.

"Huh?" Miller let out a strange, distorted cry.

There was no dogfight, no boarding maneuvering, and not even a slowdown.

Those twelve steel warships billowing black smoke were like twelve red-hot knives cutting into a piece of rotten butter.

"boom--!"

In the telescope's field of view, sawdust exploded like a fountain.

The first few pirate ships were smashed to pieces.

Those deep-sea monsters that Miller considered invincible were as fragile as paper toys in the face of the kinetic energy of thousands of tons of steel.

They tried to hook onto the deck with grappling hooks and tried to block it with their bodies.

But the iron ship didn't even sway.

It just rolled straight over it.

The ram at the bow sliced ​​through the keel, the steel hull crushed the hull, and at the stern... Miller witnessed the most chilling scene.

The seawater turned dark red.

The propeller churned at high speed underwater, turning all the wood, ropes, and monster flesh that got caught into a pot of thick, sticky meat paste.

That was a real meat grinder.

“One hundred…that’s almost one hundred ships…”

Miller's teeth were chattering, making a clicking sound.

He saw a two-masted ship covered in fishmen trying to flank it, but it was blasted in half by a broadside cannon and then rammed and sunk by the steel warship that followed.

The sea was littered with floating debris and limbs, while the twelve black plumes of smoke remained straight and indifferent.

They didn't even stop to kill.

Just passing by, crushing anything blocking the way, and continuing onward.

An unprecedented chill ran up his tailbone to the top of his head, causing Miller to slump against the broken mast.

He had just thought those man-eating fish-men were monsters.

But now he understood that these cold, steel machines that crushed everything to dust were far more terrifying than the beasts that only knew how to tear flesh apart.

Before Miller could even finish taking a deep breath, the mournful horn sounded.

His pupils, which had just dilated from shock, instantly shrank to the size of pinpoints.

The binoculars almost slipped from my hands.

…………

A horn sounded from the depths of the mist.

The sound was muffled, with a damp, vibrating quality, as if it were being blown directly from deep underwater.

It even penetrated the roar of the steam turbines, causing every steel plate on the deck to resonate slightly.

Cortez's eyes narrowed for a moment.

Those dozens of wrecked ships that were just blown to pieces were nothing more than cannon fodder used to fill the muzzles and absorb the heat from the gun barrels.

This is the real meal.

The waves were violently torn apart, and three enormous black shadows burst through the mist, bringing with them a nauseating stench and a sense of oppression, as they squeezed into the battlefield.

They can no longer be considered ships.

It was a monster that forcibly stitched together old-fashioned shipbuilding techniques with deep-sea flesh and blood.

The ship at the very front was ridiculously large; it was the Tyrant.

Its freeboard was higher than that of the Red Flame, and the original hull was covered with thick, grayish-white rocks.

Now, the crevices in the rocks are no longer filled with mortar, but with countless wriggling, soft-bodied creatures.

They acted as a living adhesive, firmly adhering the rock armor to the ship's hull.

The steel ram at the bow of the ship was engraved with earth-elemental runes, and at the base of the ram were coiled, thick tentacles that were pulsating rhythmically.

"Focus fire on that big guy." Cortez's order remained calm, even tinged with a hint of disgust.

The twelve Hunter-class corvettes quickly adjusted their guns and fired a salvo from both sides.

boom! boom!
High-explosive shells slammed into the bow of the ship, creating bursts of orange-red fireballs.

Rock fragments flew everywhere, leaving the living rock armor riddled with holes, and splattering slime and blue blood.

But it didn't stop. The runes on the rock armor and the soft-bodied creatures worked together to absorb the kinetic energy of the explosion.

Like a deep-sea rhinoceros with a thick, tough scalp, it rolled over step by step, braving the gunfire.

Then the second boat glided out close to the water's surface. Its hull was long and black, covered with grease that could absorb light.

That was the Shadow Serpent. Just as a shell was about to lock onto it, a cloud of black mist would explode around it, and the ship would twist strangely, causing the shell to glide across the edge and into the sea.

When the third ship appeared, the air smelled extremely fishy and foul.

The sails were sewn together from dead human skin and fish skin, and the mast was covered with dried human heads and huge fish gills.

Hundreds of totem poles lit up on the deck, and beneath each pole knelt a mutated merman priest, their mouths agape, emitting silent shrieks.

The Death Whisper's spiritual shock swept across the sea.

The Red Tide sailors felt a sharp pain in their heads, but their usual rigorous discipline training proved effective.

No one knelt down and begged for mercy; they just gritted their teeth, stared intently at the crosshair, and continued loading.

“Too close.” Cortez glanced at the approaching ram and frowned slightly. “Full speed back, open the firing window.”

The order was given, but the steel behemoth did not retreat as nimbly as usual.

The ship jolted violently, emitting a deep, muffled roar.

That was the groan of the drive shaft on the verge of overload.

"Sir! The engine speed won't go up!"

The chief engineer's voice roared from the microphone, accompanied by the roar of the boilers in the background, "There are things all over the water! They're jamming our propeller!"

Beneath the surface, thousands of deformed deep-diving fishmen were frantically trying to get into the propeller.

Covered in thick, fire-resistant slime and fueled by leaking alchemical oil, they filled the rapidly spinning blades layer by layer with their bodies, bones, and the corpses of their companions.

Crunch-!
The sickening grinding sound was incessant.

The steel propellers continued to spin, grinding the flesh and blood that were caught into it into a paste, but this paste was too thick and too sticky.

Hundreds of corpses were stuck between the bearings and blades, forming a high-density layer of flesh and blood as brake pads.

The steam turbines still produced strong torque, but this drag significantly reduced the warships' maneuverability.

The once agile Hunter-class has become sluggish, like a giant with leeches hanging from its legs.

The shadow of the Tyrant had already loomed over the bridge of the Crimson Flame.

The ram, powerful enough to shatter city walls, was aimed directly at the side of the Crimson Flame, and the distance was gradually decreasing.

"Do you want to drag us into a mud pit for hand-to-hand combat...?"

Colt glanced with some annoyance at the red-stained seawater and the ugly rocky warship.

Although his mobility was impaired, his turret could still rotate, and his boiler hadn't exploded yet.

The Red Tide's warships will not sink because of this obstacle; they will only feel ashamed to have to let these filthy things get close.

“Since you’re so eager to get close, then so be it.” Cortez straightened his collar, turned to the signalman, and said, “The hound has been bitten. Now bring down the hammer and flip this table over completely.”

(End of this chapter)