My name is Trident. Captain of the Barbarossa Pirates.
One day, that absolute idiot Ollie stole a gem called 'Tears of the Saint' from the Royal Cathedral. It's no ordinary rock—it's a crystallized mass of magical energy the Empire spent a century collecting. Without it, every defensive mechanism in the Empire shuts down. That means monsters flood the city.
And that's not all. After stealing it, Ollie had the nerve to say, 'That's half my objective complete.'
I chase him. I need to know why h
Crazy Ollie: A Thief's Requiem - The Gospel of Ruins, Justice Drenched in Blood
The smell of the tide mixed with the stench of rotting wood and soot.
The half-wrecked *Red Bull* glided through the bottom of the storm's eye. Her broken mast groaned, a sound like stifled sobbing. A great gash split the port side planking, and every time the waves washed over the gunwale, the hull let out a deep, low moan.
The ruins of the Canaria Island wharf rose out of the gray fog.
The pier, once crowded with fishing boats, had crumbled and sunk into the sea, leaving only countless pillar stumps jutting up like grave markers. Behind it sprawled the charred spire of a church, tangled in black ivy that crawled over it like veins. Fifteen years of passing seasons had tried to bury the traces of atrocity under green, and mold, and silence.
"...We're here."
Trident's voice was hoarse and low. The bandages on his left shoulder were soaked through with blood and pus, and his face was flushed with the telltale red of a high fever. Even so, his deep navy eyes glared toward the island's center, burning with fierce light.
His trembling hand gripped his broken cutlass. A strip torn from Garnet's habit was wound tight around the hilt, serving as a makeshift bandage.
"Captain, I'm coming too."
Heinz, the master gunner, stepped forward, a shattered cannon fragment thrust through his belt. His face was still twisted with the grief of losing Jonas and Rolf.
"We're gonna beat that bastard senseless, right? This is for all of us. Settling the score."
"No. I'm going alone."
Trident spoke without turning around.
"This is old business, between me and him. Besides... you lot protect the ship. Without this old tub, none of us are getting home."
Heinz looked ready to argue, but over Trident's shoulder, he saw Garnet's trembling figure and closed his mouth.
Garnet Lumina clutched the breast of her tattered habit tightly, staring at the island with brick-red eyes. The sea wind swept roughly through her silver hair. Beneath the bandages on her left arm, countless old scars throbbed with a dull, insistent ache, as if in warning.
"...The magical power of the Saint's Tear is rising higher than I've ever felt. It's as if the sea itself is weeping... In that church, Olly has already begun the incantation."
"Yeah. So I'm in a hurry."
Trident jumped down onto the pier. The impact sent a shock of searing pain through the wound in his left shoulder, scattering sparks across his vision.
"...I cannot let you go alone."
Shaking off the restraining hand of Elmer, the ship's surgeon, Garnet followed after Trident. Her feet were bare, and splinters from the rotten pier stabbed into her soles, but she had no time to feel the pain.
"Please, Elmer. His wounds, his very heart—I cannot let him be alone in that place. I know this, deep inside."
Her voice was less a plea and more a resolve of solid steel.
Trident turned and looked at Garnet. His face held a mixture of anger and the faintest trace of gratitude.
"...If you don't want to die, stay hidden behind me."
With that curt dismissal, he began to walk, staggering, down the ivy-choked cobblestone path leading to the island's center.
The island's air was dead.
There was no wind, not a single sound. Only their footsteps and Trident's ragged breathing stirred the stagnant atmosphere. On both sides of the path, the charred frameworks of houses stood abandoned, half-collapsed.
Trident stopped for a moment before a burned-out signboard. *The Gull's Rest — Bread & Ale*. On it, the scorch mark of a small handprint remained, stark and clear.
(*A child...*)
A dull pain shot through the depths of Trident's chest. The memory of the Great Fire of Granz, twelve years ago, flashed back with vivid, raw intensity through his fever-hazed mind. The girl he had saved, ignoring orders. The screaming voices. The ice-cold eyes of his superior officer, Gustav.
(*It smelled like this then, too. That acrid, burning smell.*)
Garnet gently touched his arm.
"...Let's go, Trident."
The church ruins stood atop a hill.
Once, the walls must have been beautiful, pure white chalk. Now, half of it had collapsed under bombardment, and the blackened, scorched stone walls pointed skyward like the ribs of some colossal beast. The spire was broken at its base, the roof fallen into a mountain of rubble.
But the place where the altar stood was, strangely, untouched.
A shaft of gray light illuminated the altar.
And there was Olly.
His unruly brown hair was disheveled, his cheap coat faded by the sea wind. He stood at the center of the altar, his right hand raised to the heavens. Above his palm, the Saint's Tear floated, eerily silent, emitting a pale blue phosphorescence.
Olly's mouth moved ceaselessly, continuing a low, monotone incantation. No voice could be heard. But the faint tremor that traveled up from the ground told Trident that the crystal's power was seizing the ocean currents, slowly beginning to warp them.
Trident stepped over the rubble and entered the ruins.
Olly's incantation stopped abruptly.
Slowly, he turned. His amber eyes gleamed in the dim light, like a cat's. On his lips was that same old, mocking smirk.
"You're late, Captain."
His voice was light, almost lilting. A cheerful ring to it, unthinkable for a man who, at this very moment, was trying to bring about the world's destruction.
Trident raised his broken cutlass. His arm was shaking.
"...Olly. You're serious... about this?"
"Of course I'm serious. Can't you tell?"
Olly spread his arms wide, like a stage actor. The Saint's Tear floated gently into the air and began to orbit around him like a satellite.
"This island is my home. Canaria Island, wiped off the map by the Empire fifteen years ago."
The flippancy vanished from his voice. In its place, the heat of an irrepressible hatred seeped from the edges of every word.
"It was a beautiful island. The fishermen were cheerful, the women beautiful, the children chasing crabs along the rocky shore. A simple, ordinary, happy life. We wanted for nothing."
Olly's gaze drifted outside the ruins, toward a long-dry well.
"That well. My little sister, Maria, fell into it on her ninth birthday. She cried and wailed for three days and three nights. The whole village formed a search party, and we finally found her. At the bottom of the well, covered in mud, crying from hunger. When we pulled her up, she clung to me and said, 'Brother, I don't want to anymore...'"
He stared into the distance, as if watching the scene play out on the back of his eyelids. Trident stood frozen, his sword still raised.
"The Velg Curia carried out their plan in absolute secrecy. A plan to have this island attacked by a pack of Grüewolves. A live experiment, a demonstration of the Saint's Tear's defensive barrier, meant to make the entire continent aware of the monster threat. They intentionally excluded just this island from the barrier's range and set the wolves loose. The field commander was then-Navy Commander Gustav Weisen."
Trident's fingers tightened around the cutlass hilt. The bandages creaked with a grinding sound.
Olly continued. His voice was flat, emotionless. It had moved past sorrow, honed over fifteen years into a pure, unadulterated blade of revenge.
"All two hundred and seventeen islanders fell to the fangs of the Grüewolves. Flesh torn, entrails dragged out, bones sucked dry to the marrow. I happened to be out fishing at a neighboring island and survived. When I came back, my home was filled with corpses, and blood, and the howling of beasts. I can no longer remember the faces of my family, my friends, my lover, as they were in life. Only as they were... in pieces."
"...Stop it."
Trident's voice was hoarse.
"Stop it, Olly."
"Why should I? This is the truth. The Empire's peace is built on the corpses of this island. And Gustav knows it. No, he doesn't just know it. He's the man who executed this massacre. His Excellency, that iron-faced Admiral, dismissed two hundred and seventeen lives as mere 'operational losses.' To him, Canaria Island never existed. Even the fact that we're standing here right now is nothing but unacceptable 'noise' to his precious order."
Olly thrust the back of his right hand toward Trident. There, etched in old scars, was the mark of a twisted flag—the proof of the Red Flag Oath.
"Even so, I didn't want to drag you into this. You're my benefactor, after all."
Trident's breath stopped.
"...What the hell are you talking about?"
"Twelve years ago. The Great Fire of Granz. You ignored Gustav's orders and rescued a single girl from a burning house. Suffering severe burns to your left shoulder in the process. And that, ultimately, ended your career in the Navy."
Olly's voice trembled for the first time. His first-person pronoun shifted unconsciously.
"That girl was my one and only little sister, Maria. She had miraculously survived the massacre and been sent to an orphanage in a distant city. When you and I swore the Red Flag Oath nine years ago, you thought you'd lost your career because of your own actions. But to me, it's different. You saved the only family I had left. My friendship with you... probably started, from the very beginning, as a life debt."
Something inside Trident's head collapsed with a deafening crash.
(*That girl was...*)
The small shadow sobbing beneath the burning beams. The lightness in his arms when he desperately scooped her up. The pain like molten iron that seared through his left shoulder. The last words Gustav had hurled at him when he left the Navy.
*'—What you did was a pointless death.'*
Had it all been for this moment?
For the sake of his own justice, he had saved his friend's sister. And now, that friend was trying to slaughter the innocent people he believed in.
Friendship, debt, and duty tangled into a monstrous knot of emotion inside Trident, crushing his chest.
"...What have I done..."
The broken cutlass trembled.
"So, Captain. You stay back. This is a war I started. With my own hands, I'll deliver the final rites to the Empire's rotten heart. I'll fully release the Saint's Tear's ocean current control, make this place the epicenter, and a two-hundred-meter tsunami will turn Fortica, the Velg Curia, and that damnable Gustav Weisen into sea foam. This is the cry of the two hundred and seventeen souls of Canaria Island."
Olly turned back toward the Saint's Tear, ready to resume his incantation.
"...Wait, Olly!!"
Trident thrust the cutlass at Olly's throat. His whole body burned. His knees were shaking. But his eyes alone were cold, like a dead fish, piercing only Olly.
"I understand your feelings. It cuts me to the bone. And I get that you've got no choice but to hold your head high and call that revenge 'justice.' But that tsunami won't just hit the Empire. The Peluton nations, innocent fishermen, babies, women—you'll drag them all in and kill them. How is that any different from what Gustav did? Do you want to become the same kind of mass murderer?"
"You think I *want* this?! There was no other way!"
The mask peeled away from Olly's face. What lay beneath was the face of a boy who had lost his nine-year-old sister, who had been crying alone for fifteen years.
"This isn't for justice! I'm doing this for the regret of my family who died that day! Tell me, is there any other way for me to be saved, after seeing that hell?!"
Their voices echoed through the ruins.
"And what about that 'salvation'—will you be able to face Maria in the afterlife?! She'll just end up saying, 'Brother, you shouldn't have done such a terrible thing'!"
"Shut up!! You... of all people, I didn't want to hear it from you...! That's why I told you not to come!!"
The moment Olly tried to resume his incantation—
"Kyaaaaaaah!!"
Garnet's scream rang out from outside the ruins.
The next instant—
—*BOOOOOOM!!*
A heavy impact tore through the air.
The entire island heaved upward, as if trampled by a giant beast. Cracks raced through the church walls, a
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