Starting from Zero

"Someone\'s murdering her husband!" I jumped onto the bed and pressed her down. When I turned the lights off, Rose stopped her movement due to the sudden darkness.

"Don\'t worry my dear. You can always trust me."

A kick on the stomach sent me off the bed. "That’s what I\'m worrying about."

Ugh. Getting kicked off by my own wife. That’s going to leave myself a bad record.

I collected her blanket and looked at Rose with the most innocent expression I can manage.

"Don’t catch cold you hear me? Call me if you need anything."

"I’m not--"

"Stop. I know how you feel. I\'d never force you again. Get some sleep, we have a long trip tomorrow."

She hugged me from behind again. "Don’t leave. I trust you now, okay?"

Ah so that worked.

"As you wish then." I put her back onto the bed.

"Be gentle, will you?" She kissed my chest.

"I would never hurt you."

(The following scenes are censored by the author himself)

----------------------

I guess everyone can go out of control for the first time. Rose turned out to be quite a demanding little woman last night. We made it a bit too far and when we\'re finished it’s almost sunrise. Someone called us to wake us up. It\'s 9:50 then, my body clock failed me.

When I and Rose appeared in front of the twins with panda eyes they gave us two thumbs-up.

"It lasted four hours? Nice." Rin Ray commented.

I just looked at them with shocked expression.

"Remember to give Miss Rose some throat soothers. She doesn’t sound right in the end. "

Okay so we now realized that our "activity" can be heard across the other rooms during the last night.

Rose hid herself behind me.

Well I hope I can find somewhere to hide myself too.

"You checked the game yet?" I quickly changed the topic or my face is going to burn off.

"For a little while." Zirai decided to play along. "Everyone is waiting for you two."

"Let’s make it fast then!"

We washed, told Butterfly to wake us up for the island auction and went into the game together.

We appeared inside the weapon shop. The piles of cannons and ammunitions reminded me of something, so I contacted Hawk.

"Hawk, do we have enough ammunition for the war?"

"We have 1,000 shots for each cannon, should be more than enough."

"But we don’t know how long we’ll stay out there. What if we keep the war going on for two weeks? And if we manage to occupy a city we\'ll need to use our ship to defend it. Are you sure 1,000 is enough?"

"How many should we prepare then?"

"Go for 5,000."

"Isn\'t that too much?"

"I have all the gold here so money isn’t a problem right now."

"’K. You buy it. I\'ll send our sailors to carry them."

I cut the chat and asked Zirai and Rose to wait here for the sailors. While I activated my teleport ring and traveled to the Goddess City. First, I need to exchange the gold stock. And second, I need to find Red Moon. I agreed to her last time that I\'ll help her occupy an enemy city. She helped protect our ship after all.

As one of the main system cities, the bank in Goddess City obviously has a larger storage. Though I still didn’t get rid of all the gold. They only accepted half of it before they told me it\'s full again. I then went to the Cloudtop City. After some run-around I still have about 100 million worth of gold left. Next is the Celestial City. Shoot, I had to run about all three main cities just to do something about the gold blocks.

As an individual player can only carry 70 million crystal pieces at most, I also had to keep running between the bank counter and the gold exchange NPC during the whole process. Man this is tiring.

When the gold transaction is done, I again had to run between the weapon shop and the bank to pay off my debt. Hawk is still ordering the sailors to carry the explosives, so I teleported to the Goddess City again and sent a private chat to Red Moon.

But the system told me she’s not accepting messages right now. What is she doing at such a time?

Never mind that. I detected her location using Star Gaze and followed it. It led me towards a...garden of a castle-like structure. The place reminded me of those wizard guilds.

There is no guard at the gate so I just walked into the door. I first entered a central plaza, with a series of buildings surrounding it. A fountain statue is in the center of the plaza. The statue is a nice-looking young lady sitting on a white unicorn. She’s hold something in her hands but I can’t see it with all the splashing water.

Someone called me before I can take a closer look.

"Who are you? This is the headquarter of Goddess Alliance. It’s not open to outsiders!"

It\'s a bright looking female player standing behind me.

"I\'m looking for someone."

"Then you came to the wrong place. Leave."

"I\'m looking for Red Moon!"

"Red Moon?" Her attitude changed. "Miss Moon is having a discussion with the other team leaders. You need to wait for a while."

The ship will be ready any time now though.

"Uhh I can’t stay now. Can you send her a message?"

"Sure go ahead."

"Tell her that, Bi-Lin will depart before 5 in the afternoon, come to the port before 5 if she wish to see her mission fulfilled."

"Which port?"

"She’ll know."

"I see. I\'ll remember it."

"Thank you very much."

I turned to leave, when three female players rushed in while yelling: "Miss Alice! We found your Big Pot!"

"What--stop it! What do you mean ‘my Big Pot’?" The player talking with me retorted.

"Oh don’t deny it sis. You fell in love with him under the bridge that day!"

"I what?? No!"

"Then why do you ask us to find his whereabouts?" The three girls chuckled.

"He owed me something!"

They’re talking about Big Pot? I’d better warn that guy then, cause every female player in this Goddess Alliance can be trouble.

"Are you talking about someone named [The Timely Big Pot]?" I walked back.

"You know him? Yeah that should be it. We never mentioned his full name, so you\'re his friend?"

"I...met him before! But we’re not friends. Tell me what he looks like, maybe I can help you locate him."

Sorry buddy. But this relationship may prove to be useful in the future.

"The Timely Big Pot, a warrior, he uses a nine-tooth spike rake as his weapon. He was wearing some strange looking light armor but I’m not sure he\'s still using it now."

Another girl continued: "Oh right, he has a giant, gray boar as his mount. Must be his companion."

...There’s only one guy in this world who fights on a boar while waving a tooth rake around.

The girl called Alice spoke: "We were involved in a group fight on the city bridge the other day, and we got knocked off the bridge and fell into the river. Then that guy dropped down following us!"

"He just, fell down?"

Another girl said: "That’s not all. He fell directly onto Miss Alice. And I think he stole her first kiss by accident ahhhhh---"

Alice began to chase the girl around, and another one continued: "That’s why Miss Alice asked us to find her new husband as soon as we can--"

"HEY YOU!!" She also became Alice\'s prey.

Good buddy. Fortune favors the fools.

"Okay, I\'ll tell you when I saw him again."

I quickly left the place. Any longer and I\'ll give myself out.

I found a corner outside the garden and laughed for a while. I thought this only happens in poorly written fantasies, now Big Pot proved it!

My private chat interrupted my thoughts.

"Oh Zirai, what\'s up?"

"My sister left the rookie village and it seems she\'s now in a place called the Dragon Isle. She wanted us to go pick her up. But where is it?"

"Ask her about her coordinates. I\'ll go fetch her."

"A moment...here."

"I\'ll be right back then." I activated my ring.

"Teleportation failed. Target location is protected by barrier of Dragon Isle."

Huh?

"Uh Zirai, I can\'t get into the island. Can you tell your sister to try to leave the area first?"

"Nope. She said that no one gets through the barrier. Herself included."

"What’s that place anyway? Isolated?"

"No idea. Maybe we need to do a special quest or something. I guess we can’t take her this time. Just come back, we should have left earlier. If we leave now we’ll reach Japan tomorrow morning."

"Alright right away."

I left the corner I was hiding in and prepared to teleport back to the port when Red Moon suddenly showed up.

"You\'re still here?"

"Weren\'t you inside a meeting?"

"We\'re done. So we\'re setting sail now?"

"Yup, and we’d better hurry so we don’t postpone it by another day."

We used the teleport station this time. I can bring her along with my ring but I don’t feel like holding her in my arms right now.

When reached the port, Bi-Lin is already ready to go, with...some extra people standing in front it.

"King? Who are these...?" I saw War Chant, Wuyuu and someone I don’t recognize.

"Hello Ziri, we hope you can take us with you this time."

I looked up towards Hawk, who just spread his hands and shrugged. "I told them to ask for your permission. You are the captain."

I turned to King. "This is for personal matter. You guys can wait for your new Ocean Might right?"

"We won\'t." He gave me a stern look. "There will be no Ocean Might. She’s sunk, and we’re not going to rebuild one. Our new ship is called the Ocean Soul, and she shall inherit our old ship\'s spirit. But before she’s ready we need something to motivate our people, and going with you is a good choice. We\'re comrades right?"

"If you say so..." I patted his shoulder. "Come aboard. We need to arrive tomorrow morning. If we wait for noon there will be more enemies, so we’d better give them a bigger surprise when most people are still on the bed."

"I get you." King called to the other people. "Let\'s go. Those Japanese pirates shall taste our wrath! And Ocean Might will not go in vain!"

"By the way, who\'s the new face?"

"Introduce yourself will ya?" King spoke to him.

"Ah hello, name\'s [Blue Wind]. A Hunter."

"Nice to see you." I dragged him to the ship and told everyone about it.

When the team is chatting among themselves I ordered the sailors to depart. With the new boosters on, Bi-Lin quickly gained immense speed. The operators even made it slower than last time so they won’t throw everything on the ship off their feet.

As we went faster, the tip of the ship went higher above the water, and two hydrofoil wings emerged. Using the lift force of the wings, most of Bi-Lin\'s hull left the water, allowing us to go even faster than before.

"Woah when did you get this done?" I asked Zirai while looking at the flying water below.

"Just after you told me about the idea. Even the shipyard didn’t think it would work, but it did!"

"Just like I said. Right, what’s going on with Rin Ray? What kind of place is Dragon Isle?"

"I don’t know. She isn’t coming out, that’s for sure. There must be something special about that Draconian race. Why didn’t I see that selection before?"

"Special means good."

"Ziri!" King called me from somewhere.

"What’s up?"

He pointed to the now empty ship masts. "Where are your sail cloths?"

"There." I pointed at the base of the mast poles where the cloths are folded. I left them there in case when the boosters get stuck or break midway so we can still move our ship.

"How’s your ship advancing at all if you didn’t even put the sails on??"

"Engines." I joked. "We’ve come into nuclear powered era, only small ships still use those fuel machines."

"Come on I’m serious!"

"I didn’t lie about the engine part. They’re called boosters. Though they use energy crystals, not nuclear."

"For real? Where did you get it? I want one!"

"Oh, of course." I shrugged. "Each booster is as big as a shipment container, about 7 or 8 tons. They cost 5 million crystal pieces each. You can buy them. By the way, we have four on the ship to give us such speed."

"Five-five million?? Forget it. And Ocean Soul is just a little bigger than Ocean Might. If we place a container up there...just no. I really want a big ship like this now."

"There are drawbacks. Look, the enemies will see us from far away, while your Ocean Might can sneak up near them right? Besides it\'s really hard for us to make quick turns on the sea. We can’t even change direction while inside the port. You saw how us have to move backwards to leave the port back there."

"Still, big ship would be nice. Look at those cannons..." He looked at our new crystal cannons with drooling mouth. "Only if we can get one of these..."

"You want one?"

"Yeah, why? You have more?"

"Oh yes I do. A smaller one. It\'s not cheap mind you. It goes for 20 million crystals on the market. If you want it now I\'ll pass it to you for 15 million."

"15 million huh?" King slumped down. "I wonder if I worth that money. If so I\'ll change myself for the cannon."

So I can only sell the cannon to Gale then. Few people can afford it.

"What’s the time now?" Zirai suddenly asked.

"4...37." King checked his window. "You have plans?"

"Yes." I told him. "We have something important, need to get off before 8."

"Go ahead then. We aren\'t reaching the Japan sea before tomorrow morning. " Red Moon spoke while leaning on the rails.

"Nah. I can stay until 8."

"Humph. Just go, so I can look at the sea in peace."

"Captain!!" The lookout interrupted our speech. "Fleet ahead, 70 ships, 35 kilometers away, they’re approaching us!"

"What??" Hawk yelled. "Japanese? Here? They just bombarded our port yesterday. They are attacking again so soon?"

"We\'re not sure yet. Maybe it\'s our own people heading back?" I told him.

"I can tell you that they\'re definitely not Chinese ships." King explained. "We\'re pretty far from our border now, the friendly guilds would never get this far at such a time. And we never had such a big fleet anyway. If it\'s a joint operation by multiple guilds I should have already received message."

"Can you see their flag?" I shouted to the lookout.

"Can\'t see it clear. I think there’s a cross on it, and a...round object?"

"A cross and round?" Hawk mumbled. "At least that isn’t Japanese flag."