Chapter 5

Chapter 5 : Death Knight Orgilian

“Phew....”

I looked down at my blood-soaked palm and let out a trembling breath.

The second killing I had committed since coming to this world.

The shock of the first one had not even faded yet, but if I wanted to survive, I had no choice.

‘Do not grow weak, Doran. You swore you would become ruthless.’

He was merely one among countless evil men.

I clenched my bloodied hand and struggled to calm the trembling.

It felt as though the vivid sensation clinging to each joint of my fingers would torment me forever.

At the same time, the fact that all of this felt strangely familiar somewhere deep inside only added to my confusion.

This was clearly the first time I had ever killed anyone, so why was there another me inside, calmly accepting the situation?

Whose were these surging impulses and this sense of déjà vu?

Was this really the world of a game?

But now was not the time for trivial thoughts. It was time to make a decision.

Compared to what I was about to do, killing one or two people was nothing.

｢The cooldown has ended. You may cast [Disguise] again.｣

“...Disguise.”

In my mind, I vividly pictured the captain I had just killed.

His authoritarian tone, the habit of twitching his mustache at the end of every sentence, the look in his eyes that seemed to sneer at everyone else.

Before I knew it, I confirmed that the reflection staring back at me in the mirror had changed. After hiding the captain’s corpse inside a wardrobe, I changed clothes and stepped out of the cabin.

The battle was still raging outside.

Shouts erupting from every direction, screams, and the briny stench of blood vibrating through the wind and rain.

‘Their numbers have thinned out quite a bit....’

I did not care whether the pirates died or not, but I needed them if I wanted to accomplish my goal.

Having made my decision, I slowly walked out onto the deck, and the first mate—the only one on this ship who had managed to keep almost all of his wits about him—shook off a skeleton and shouted,

“Captain!! The undead assault is too fierce! At this rate, we are all going to die!! And some idiots already took the lifeboat and ran off...!”

“Take the helm.”

“The rudder...? But it is impossible to flee against this headwind!”

“We are not fleeing. ...We are advancing toward Mary Celeste!”

“What...? H-have you gone mad, Captain?! We should be searching for any possible way to survive, and instead you want us to sail straight into the undead nest?!”

“Silence. This is the only way we survive. Or else... Do you have another plan?”

At sea, the captain’s word was absolute.

When I issued the order with force, the first mate ground his teeth after a moment of inner conflict and steered the ship.

Passing him by, I shouted loudly enough for every sailor on deck to hear.

“All of you, listen!!! Lower your swords at once!!”

“What...? What do you mean by that!!”

“I will not say it twice. From this moment on, anyone who continues fighting will be considered disobedient to orders and executed. ...Lower your swords, all of you!!”

Even if I had to stake everything on the slimmest of chances.

I was going to survive and get out of here.

***

It did not take long for Doran to confirm that his judgment had been correct.

“Th-the undead really stopped attacking....”

The moment they steered the ship toward the ghost fleet, the skeletons stopped attacking as if it were a lie.

As the madness that had swept over the ship subsided and the full horror of the aftermath revealed itself, the pirates stood trembling on deck, stiff with fear.

The undead had moments ago seemed ready to pounce and tear them apart, yet now they merely stopped right in front of them, chattering their teeth as they glared.

But not everyone was so lucky....

On the decks of the captured ships that had been towed in, executions were already underway.

“P-please...! Spare me! I have a wife and children at home...!”

Slash!

“You damned undead bastards!! Even in death I will cur—”

Slash!

Each time a massive halberd swung, a human head dropped as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

If not for the grieving expressions and sobbing, the sight would have felt unreal, like harvesting fruit from an orchard.

Meanwhile, since only the ship Doran rode on had escaped the undead’s assault unharmed, even the first mate and pirates—who had initially doubted the order—were now looking at him with eyes flickering with reverence.

“C-Captain... only our ship is safe from the undead... How in the world did this happen...?”

“H-how did you even think of sailing straight into the middle of the undead...?”

“......”

Still disguised as the pirate captain, Doran ignored the crew’s words and kept watch over his surroundings.

Undead, by nature, were creatures with little intelligence who hunted the warmth of life.

Monsters stripped of reason, driven to pursue the instincts carved into their bodies to the extreme.

A tragic fate that made them crave the blood and flesh denied to them in death, and in doing so, drove them to harm the living.

But things changed when a Lich, one of the highest classes of undead, intervened.

‘The Lich’s aura effect.’

A Lich’s aura not only increased the abilities of undead, but also granted them intelligence.

With power born of intellect itself, a Lich could help them recover fragments of their memories from their former lives.

Originally, it was meant to make commanding large armies through undead officers easier, but if used well, it could also become leverage for negotiation.

That was precisely why Doran had sailed into the heart of them.

From the perspective of a Lich, whose greed drove it to seek the principles of all things, those who willingly hurled themselves into a pit of death would appear incomprehensible.

If siding with the skeletons and attacking the other sailors had been mere individual acts of deviance, then this latest decision was outright stirring up chaos on a shipwide scale.

“Captain, how in the world...?”

“Hold your tongue and watch.”

Because from here on, everything depended on this.

At that tense moment, a Death Knight leaped down onto the deck where Doran stood.

Doran bent one knee to show respect toward the Lich’s representative, and the first mate and pirates, who had been staring dumbly, hurriedly followed suit and awkwardly lowered themselves as well.

Ignoring the pirates, the Death Knight strode straight toward Doran.

｢You have encountered the Lich’s representative, a Death Knight!!｣

｢He harbors strong suspicion toward you!｣

｢You have witnessed a powerful boss monster!! Your spirit is overawed, reducing the activation rate of all skills!｣

｢If you tell the royal capital’s dark mages that you once stood face-to-face with a Death Knight from a ghost ship, they will welcome you with free food and drink!｣

｢That is, if you manage to leave here alive!｣

From inside the Death Knight’s helmet came a voice so chilling it sounded like nails scraping across iron.

—Human... What possessed you to approach us...?

“......”

A meeting event with a top-tier undead.

Depending on how he answered here, life or death would be decided.

Quietly rolling his eyes, Doran examined the knight standing before him.

Armor lined here and there with tattered gold trim, a golden aura leaking through its gaps, accessories made of threaded gold coins.

Orgilian the Golden, commander of the Third Fleet that guarded the Mary Celeste.

‘Thank goodness.’

If the one who had appeared here had been Mordred the Ruiner or Arcturus of Torment instead, he would have been killed on the spot with no room for negotiation.

Kneeling on one knee, Doran spoke in a calm voice.

“I, Barbo, the lowly human captain of the Barba, greet Lord Orgilian, the Golden Calamity of the Sea. To behold with my own eyes both the glory of ages past and a legend of the present era is enough to send shivers through me!”

—The glory of ages past...? You speak as though you knew me in life.

“Of course. As a man born to chase martial valor and justice, how could I possibly fail to know the legendary knight Lord Orgilian...? The deeds of Lord Orgilian remain inscribed upon the memorials of the Teutonic Order and are passed down to future generations!”

—What...? You know of the Teutonic Order?! That was where I belonged in life!

“Haha... I visited it myself last year. Though I failed to join, for my martial skill was lacking....”

—Hmm....

The Death Knight looked down at Doran with newfound interest.

He still held fast to his greatsword, but the softening of his attitude was clear enough to feel.

‘...Good, it is working!’

Doran smiled inwardly.

In Velheim, brute force was not the only answer.

If one wanted to survive in a place where Four Heavenly King-class bosses sometimes dropped by beginner villages just to play poker for fun, one needed to master all manner of social maneuvering.

In that sense, the fact that I knew the entirety of Velheim’s history and the relationships between its major powers was a tremendous advantage.

And the reason I was so well-versed in this Death Knight was that, back when I was a top-ranked player, I had thoroughly researched the Mary Celeste while raiding it.

—But... you are far too weak for one who aspired to knighthood. Worse still, you turned to piracy. How did one who dreamed of being a knight fall so low?

“Lord Orgilian speaks true. But this ship is not a mere pirate vessel.”

—...Then what is it?

“A privateer! We prey upon the ships of the Kingdom of Novenheim, an evil heathen power and a public enemy of the Teutonic Order...! In peacetime, we escort warships or undertake missions to rescue vessels adrift at sea!”

—Hmm... that, at least, I rather like.

The Death Knight looked down at him with a faintly approving gaze.

It was a lie invented on the spot, and if he were to inspect the plunder piled in the cargo hold, he would realize that at once, but....

‘...Now!’

Slowly rising to his feet, Doran placed an object into the Death Knight’s grasp.

As the skeletal hand gradually opened, a gold coin taken from the captain’s cabin aboard the Barba lay there.

—...What is this?

“It is nothing much, merely a token of my sincerity. Please accept it.”

—What?! You dare offer a knight tainted gold?! Did you think I would spare your life for so petty a bribe?! I should cut off your head at once and strip your fl—

Clink.

—...—ay you alive, except... that is a somewhat larger sum than I expected. No, even so, a knight’s pride....

Clink. Clink.

—...Pride does not put food on the table. Ahem... no, but then, gold or no gold, I could just kill you and take it from your corpse anyway....

“But if you do that, will you not have to hand it all over to Lord Lich? If you put it away quietly now, no one will know.”

—Ahem... I suppose that is true, no... yes, that is true, that is true....

With each gold coin Doran pushed into the gaps of the Death Knight’s armor, the creature’s attitude visibly softened.

The reason this undead bore the title Orgilian the Golden.

‘He loves money!’

In truth, it was not so strange.

Once undead regained intelligence, unnecessary memories were stripped away, which only intensified the desires they had clung to in life.

And this undead’s defining keyword was ‘greed.’

Even when raiding the Mary Celeste in the past, the standard strategy had been to lure Orgilian away separately with bribes and then strike him from behind.

In fact, the Death Knight’s reaction right now expressed everything about his state of mind.

—...Thank you. The truth is, even undead have need of gold. Lord Lich Mortemius recently demanded that I turn over every coin I had if I wished him to purchase reagents for his magic....

“Again? Did one of his experiments fail, perhaps? Summoning a Kraken consumes an enormous amount of mana, so he would do better to try a different familiar first. Something like a Swallowship Fish, for instance....”

—My thoughts exactly!! I told him again and again that with our current finances, summoning a supreme-class monster outright was unrealistic, but it is as though fish bones are lodged in his ears...! He kept babbling incomprehensibly that tentacles are romance! No, wait! How would an outsider know any of that?

“I inferred it by observing the mana in the area and the monsters circling near the ghost ship. For a place where such a powerful summoning spell was recently cast, there are surprisingly few sea monsters around.”

—Ho... you have keen eyes. You seem to have some understanding of magic, do you not? It would be a shame to simply let you go. Have you any interest in joining our fleet?

“Come now... what are you saying?”

Clink. Clink.

—Hmm... perhaps there may be no need to kill you after all. If you were to labor aboard our ship for, say, a hundred years....

Clink! Clink! Clink!!

—On second thought, perhaps simply letting you go would be best!

With a pleased grin curling his lips, Orgilian gathered up the gold coins.

But unlike the expression on his face, the blazing eyes within his helmet remained quietly fixed on Doran.

‘...What a curious human.’

Undead were, by nature, highly sensitive to souls.

Having already experienced death and now standing with their feet in the waters of the Styx, they could hardly help but be.

High-ranking undead like Orgilian even fed on terrified souls for sustenance, all the more so.

And yet, from the human before him, he could sense none of the trembling of the soul.

Ordinary humans, when met by his gaze, would usually tremble all over and be unable even to breathe properly.

And yet, impossible though it seemed, this man carried himself as though he had long dealt with beings like him.

How great must his courage be, to stand so boldly here!

‘O three goddesses of fate, I offer this gold before you. Weigh this soul upon your scales, and let truth be revealed.’

Feeling something deeply strange, Orgilian invoked his authority.

The unique skill that allowed him to discern the essence of another’s soul.

And then, with his jawbone nearly falling loose, he could do nothing but stare in shock.

‘Wh-what...?! What kind of impossibly mighty soul is this...?!’

A soul burning so brightly it seemed capable of setting the entire surrounding sea aflame.

Within it dwelled the intellect of an archmage who had mastered the principles of all things beneath heaven.

The ferocity of an asura who harvested the heads of enemies upon the battlefield.

The freedom of an explorer who ranged across mountain ranges, together with the honor of a noble gentleman.

‘Hmm... but why are the time periods all jumbled together...?’

And beyond that, something blood-soaked and monstrous seemed mixed in as well, as if several souls had been laid over one another....

—...Very well! Our business with this ship is concluded. All of you, return to the fleet! I will report matters to Lord Mortemius myself, so do not kill this one.

—W-what... about the r-rest of the h-humans...?

—A few insignificant pests will hardly matter. I will hear no objections. Return at once!!

The undead moved in perfect order, gathering the plunder and making their way back toward the ghost ship.

Just as Doran let out a quiet breath of relief at the undead gradually departing, Orgilian turned back and spoke.

—Wait. You have some business with me, so come to my cabin later. It is the sailing ship whose figurehead is decorated in gold.

“I would be honored. Once I have finished settling the ledger, I will come at once.”

Doran bowed politely and saw Orgilian off.

Just thinking of all the gold he had poured into the creature made it feel as though his stomach had been punched through, but right now he had to be grateful simply for preserving his life.

And there was one surprising fact he had learned from this exchange.

｢Due to the effect of the passive skill [Speechcraft], you are able to win the favor of the Death Knight with ease.｣

‘So this skill worked on boss monsters too....’

Thinking about it, that was only natural.

Just as Loki in Norse mythology had given birth to Fenrir, Antagon in Velheim was a god closely tied to boss-class monsters as well.

When I had obtained [Antagon’s Rune] in the game, I had never had the chance to speak with monsters, so I never knew it had such an unexpected use.

‘Wait... if that is true, then maybe a completely different growth route is possible from the usual one...?’

Perhaps I could use monster summons to compensate for a mage’s weakness in durability... or use a monster like a Kraken to make up for a warrior’s weakness against large numbers....

I had thought it was a completely worthless rune, but perhaps if I looked hard enough, it really did have its uses.

But as I replayed the skill’s effects in my mind, the pirates lined up on the deck were staring at me as though they had seen a ghost.

“H-hey... did you s-see that...?”

“T-the captain just spoke to that terrifying Death Knight as though it were nothing...! He is absolutely n-not the sort of man who could ever do that....”

The pirates made the sign of the cross and caused an uproar.

Letting out a sigh, Doran said,

“...All of you, settle down. And until this matter is completely resolved, no one is to enter my cabin for the time being... First Mate!”

“...Yes?”

“Make sure the crew does nothing to provoke the undead unnecessarily.”

“Y-yes, sir...! Understood!!”

After firmly warning the first mate, Doran entered the captain’s cabin and barred the door.

Then he quietly closed and opened his eyes, and a blue window rose into view.

On the skill window shining faintly before him, a new line of text appeared that had not been there before.

｢As the level of the active skill [Disguise] increases, you are now able to transform into monsters!｣

｢Current list of transformable monsters: Lesser Sailor’s Skeleton｣

Now then, it was time to stir up trouble aboard the ghost ship.