“Did she master Link and Aed’s techniques too…?” Feng Bujue muttered this conclusion thoughtfully, running through all the other possibilities that could be derived from it.

A few seconds later, he asked again, “You said…she ‘improved’ the redundant soldiers as well?”

“Yes,” Billy replied, “In order to allow these guys to survive in the main universe for a long time, Twenty-Three made certain modifications to their structure.”

Something about that didn’t sound right. First of all, it didn’t sound like something an NPC would say; secondly, even if he could say it…how would he know about this?

“How do you know?” Feng Bujue immediately questioned.

“A Derivative named Chi Tie told us,” Billy said, “I think you know him too, he’s from the Z Organization.”

“Oh?” Feng Bujue raised his brow slightly, “Chi Tie is still alive?”

Jue-Ge was quite relieved to hear this news. He was genuinely worried that Chi Tie and Yi had been killed by Twenty-Three on the Island of Chewer, and if that were the case, he would bear some responsibility.

Now that he heard that Chi Tie wasn’t dead, Feng Bujue was relieved; since Chi Tie was still alive, then Yi, who shared the same body with him at the time, should be fine as well.

“Alive, and he gave us a lot of useful information,” Billy replied, “If it weren’t for him, maybe none of us would be here talking to you now.”

“Hmm…” Feng Bujue nodded, his thoughts returning to the information he had just heard, “So…as you said, Twenty-Three’s improvement was to ‘allow the redundant soldiers to survive in the main universe for a long time,’ does this mean…the original version of the redundant soldiers cannot survive here for long?”

“Correct,” Billy replied, “The redundant soldiers…to put it bluntly, are low-level redundant organisms created by higher-level ‘redundant organisms’ called Derivatives; compared to the ‘complex’ Derivatives, the redundant soldiers are very simple and ‘pure’ in their data nature, so when they are active in the main universe, the ‘Highest Will’ can easily locate them and directly obliterate them.”

“In other words…Twenty-Three’s improvement made them less ‘pure’?” At this moment, Xu Huai Shang heard a key point and asked.

“Heh…” Hearing this, Zhuan Xie Zun took over the conversation and said with a smile, “It’s not that difficult, actually. She just collected the data genes of various organisms that originally existed in the main universe, and randomly added them to the redundant soldier production line, so that each redundant soldier would have a little bit of the data attributes of the main universe’s local organisms.”

“…In this way, the System (these two words, when spoken by Jue-Ge, would be automatically transformed into a word similar in meaning to ‘Highest Will’ in the NPCs’ ears) will have more difficulty searching for the coordinates of these redundant soldiers, and…the amount of operations and complexity of obliterating them will also greatly increase,” Feng Bujue immediately understood what the other party meant and continued, “Heh…it’s indeed a good method.”

“Is now the time to admire others?” Dian Hu Wang looked at Jue-Ge with his “unhappy” expression and complained.

Before Feng Bujue could respond, Billy quickly regained the conversation in order to stop him from arguing, “Actually…those ordinary redundant soldiers are not the biggest trouble. After being ‘improved,’ they lost their data purity and are substantially weaker than the original version. Even if these guys are endless in number, we are not without a way to deal with them. But…in the redundant soldier legion, there is also an extremely棘手 (jí shǒu, thorny) group of guys – the Marauders.”

The Marauders, i.e. redundant arrays of independent disks; the code name Link and Aed used when creating this creature was [rAid] (redundant_Arrays_of_independent_disks), they were designed according to the idea of “being the main force responsible for cleaning up powerful players and NPCs in hyperdimensional intrusions.”

The intelligence of the Marauders, like that of the redundant soldiers, is relatively low. They are not AI life forms, do not have the ability to think and learn, and will only follow orders; however, compared to the redundant soldiers, the combat power of the Marauders has a qualitative leap. Each of them has the combat power equivalent to a level-three Derivative, and…they are all equipped with "tactical control modules."

“No way…” Feng Bujue’s expression changed slightly, “There’s no way that kind of mass-produced creature with that intensity can have its basic structure changed in a simple way like the redundant soldiers.”

“However, Twenty-Three still succeeded in improving them,” Billy continued, “Although we don’t quite understand the principle, but according to Chi Tie…she used the data genes of ‘Infinite’ on the Marauders under her command.”

“Cao le ge wo (damn it)!” Feng Bujue said a curse backwards in excitement, and it wasn’t even censored, “That…as far as you know, what is the approximate total number of these Marauders?”

“Not sure…” Billy replied, “But there shouldn’t be too many, because they basically appear individually. The only time they appeared in a group was…”

“Was the day they attacked my pirate crew…” At this second, Blackbeard very naturally took over Billy’s words and said in his hoarse voice, “Heh…I remember very clearly, seventeen…not one more…not one less…” He mixed some dispensable nonsense into his sentences like a typical drunkard, as if waiting for his brain to catch up with the rhythm of his words, “That dusk…seventeen guys you call Marauders, leading countless redundant soldiers…on the sea, surrounded the Queen Anne’s Revenge.”

“Those bastards didn’t say a word to us, no negotiations, no mercy, and didn’t accept surrender…”

“Before the battle started, my crew all understood that this was a kind of battle they had never fought before.”

“Our opponents are not for honor, not for bounty, not for anything…these heartless and tearless guys have only one goal until they can’t move at all…and that is to kill us all without leaving one behind.”

Speaking of this, Blackbeard picked up the wine bottle and took another gulp of rum. Then, with a solemn expression, he said four very heavy words: “We…won.”

He used “we” instead of “I”…as a notorious villain, an extremely evil pirate who basically doesn’t care about anyone’s life other than his own…perhaps only he himself knows what kind of experience made him firmly add that word “we.”

After saying that, Blackbeard also raised his head, hooked his fingers on his collar and pulled it down, revealing his neck.

On his neck, there was a hideous wound, and it was impossible to judge what kind of attack he had suffered to leave such a terrible scar just by observation.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have the feeling of ‘victory’.” Two seconds later, Blackbeard mocked himself with a bitter smile, “The spoils I got are probably a fake leg and a voice that sounds pretty sexy…” He paused, “And the things I lost…” He glanced around the empty deck, and shook his head again, “…too much…”

Having said this, he seemed unable to continue speaking. After taking another sip of wine, he looked into the distance with his cloudy and chaotic eyes and fell silent again.

For a time, the atmosphere on the deck became heavy. At this time when someone really needed to come out and liven up the atmosphere, no one answered.

After a long while, Feng Bujue finally spoke to Billy, “So…what is the situation of the other forces? The Necromantic Kingdom, the Monster Kingdom, and the Illusory Demon Church…”

“Not sure…” Billy said, “Two-thirds of the entire main universe is now chaotic scorched earth. Outside, there are either wandering brainless monsters or patrolling redundant soldiers…we can’t contact people from other forces; also, something seems to have happened on the Otherworld side, people from the Z Organization and Origin haven’t appeared for a long time, I guess they are also busy running for their lives.” He paused for a second, and then said, “However, some time ago…Oink did come here once and passed on some news to us…”

“Oh? You guys are being chased and hidden, but Second Senior Brother is still able to move around outside?” Feng Bujue continued.

“Yeah…this is the very important piece of information I’m going to say next,” Billy said, “The ‘Mirror World’…seems to be safe at the moment, even Twenty-Three has no way to invade that space. And Oink, he seems to have reached some kind of agreement with Doma (the God of Immortality), so he can use the Mirror World to travel back and forth in various places and pass on messages. Although his message cannot be verified and its timeliness is also unknown, it’s better than nothing…”

“Then, what information did he tell you last time he came?” Jue-Ge asked again.

“He said…” Billy was about to answer.

Unexpectedly…

Zizi—squeak—

A burst of strange noises suddenly sounded in the gray void around them.

“Tsk…have we been discovered again…” Dian Hu Wang looked up at the surroundings, “We only just moved to this place not long ago…”

Just as he muttered these words, streams of data light had faintly emerged in the gray void. Feng Bujue could see clearly from a distance through the data perspective – a massive number of redundant soldiers were tearing through space cracks and drilling in.

“Get out of the stone door quickly! Escape back to the chaotic scorched earth, and then find a way there.” In the next second, Zhuan Xie Zun immediately said loudly.

In fact, it didn’t matter if he didn’t say it, because this was obviously their only way out at the moment. When the strange noise sounded, Billy had already used telepathy to get Bill to push the stone door.

Fortunately, it takes time for the redundant soldiers to invade the space and approach the ship, and these dozens of seconds are enough for everyone to escape.

Soon, the stone door was opened again, the Billy brothers ran out first, Brother Zun and Old Wang followed closely behind, and Xiao Tan, Xu Huai Shang, and Feng Bujue also walked towards the stone door one after another.

“Hey! What are you still spacing out for?” When he reached the door, Feng Bujue looked back and found that Blackbeard was still sitting against the mast, silently drinking his wine, “Can’t get up by yourself?” As he spoke, Jue-Ge planned to go over and pull him up.

“You go…” But…Blackbeard waved his hand at him and said in a calm tone, “The great Captain Blackbeard will not abandon his ship and run away.”

Feng Bujue knew what that sentence meant, and he respected the other party’s meaning.

“Alright…” Jue-Ge stopped. He stared at the other party deeply for a few seconds and said in a deep voice, “Goodbye, Captain.”

…………

The stone door closed again.

On the ship, there was only Blackbeard left again.

The expression of this sea overlord had never been as calm as it was at this moment; this calmness even…carried a bit of melancholy.

When the thousands upon thousands of redundant soldiers swarmed in from all directions, Blackbeard just slowly got up, raised his crutch and swept it…easily smashing the stone door not far away into pieces.

When the stones landed, the magic circle drawn on the deck also dimmed, announcing that the portal had completely failed.

“Yoo~hoo~yoo~hoo~”

At this moment, Blackbeard slowly paced on the deck, singing in his hoarse voice…

“We drink, we plunder, we do whatever we want~

“We can get everything without spending a cent~”

“We’ll deal with you first, then steal your babe~

“We are the Chaos Pirates!”

As he walked across the deck, many faces of the past floated before his eyes, as if…those people were still on the ship, right beside him.

Mr. Vog seemed to still be sitting on the wine barrel, scolding the clumsy newbies…

Udini stood at the helm, gnawing on an apple…

Garlic, Godfrey, and Madi were still playing their money-making poker game under the mast…

Nesru was still like an idiot, holding a mirror and tidying up his cake head…

And the Mark brothers, those two real idiots, were waxing the door panels of the captain’s cabin under the coaxing of the raspy voice…

At this moment, Blackbeard sang the line: “Let’s all ‘yo ho ho’!”

But…no one answered his “yo~ho~ho~”

Because only he was left on the ship.

“And another ‘hee hee hee’!” Knowing this, Blackbeard still sang on.

“We roam the Sea of Chaos!

“We brave the hurricanes, scaring your balls off, we are the Chaos Pirates!”

When he sang this line, a redundant soldier had already boarded the ship and was rushing towards Blackbeard non-stop.

Blackbeard grabbed the redundant soldier’s neck with one arm, stopping its forward momentum. Then, with a force, he twisted off the redundant soldier’s head.

“We leave our hometown, leave our mothers, for plunder and revelry~

“We’ll cut off your ears, break your toes, and make you drink our pee!”

More and more redundant soldiers boarded the ship, and Marauders also appeared among them, but Blackbeard did not stop singing while fighting the enemy.

“If you sail into our waters, you better listen to this law first~

“We’ll take your ship and throw you into the sea~

“We’ll happily smash your face and cut off your dick to feed the crocodiles!

“Because we are the Chaos Pirates!”

The number of redundant soldiers was still increasing, constantly pouring out of the gray clouds, covering the entire Queen Anne’s Revenge like locusts. Blackbeard’s figure…was also gradually obscured and swallowed in the vast sea of soldiers.

But until the last moment, he was still singing that song belonging to the pirates with his injured voice, hoarsely.

Singing that “Let’s all yo~ho~ho~” that no one would answer.