If there was one part about his current way of doing things, it was that the fog was far too dense for him to see anything through. He had given up on mapping things out the old way, eventually deciding that it would be best to simply let the ship sail itself. If the rules of the MMO had any effect on this world (which was certainly the case on more than one occasion) then he would (hopefully) be able to let the ship direct itself.

In the end, a few orders to get things going were all that was needed. The ship began to take its own path, the directions, and orders given by its owner being all that it needed in the form of directives to follow. Vaile had given the vessel a single main directive, and that was to take him to the place that would get him out of here.

The ship obviously had a mind of its own, especially since it seemingly was making all speed towards some place or destination that it seemed to know and yet could not speak of. Vaile waited in the deathly silent ship with not a single soul to talk to as the sound of waves crashing against the hull and the shuffling of the automaton crew became the only noise that he was able to hear aside from his own thoughts.

However, the silent yet noisy life at sea would quickly end, as the ship slowed to a crawl during one cold and dreary night. This was picked up by Vaile, who hastened to the open air, hoping to see some great, monolithic temple or something of the like jutting from the waters around him. Instead, the sight of a massive armada of wooden warships was laid out around him and his vessel. There had to be at least a hundred ships of various sizes and classes, all armed with weapons that would be the rival of any great colonial nation during the golden age of Caribbean Piracy.

However, while those ships would have put any fleet of that time to shame, the ship that Vaile was on was an entirely different creature. Certainly, it did look like a greatly upscaled version of a ship like one of those that stood opposed to him, but there was a teensy tiny itsy bitsy little bitty detail that separated it from them.

This ship was far from just a simple ship from that time period, and as stated in the previous parts, it could annihilate the combined navies of multiple Napoleonic Empires. Simultaneously. The enemy may have had numbers, but you could not simply take out a modern main battle tank with a cork gun, and their fleet would be just as impotent as that analogy suggested.

Though it bore the likeness of an old wooden and metal banded ship, Vaile was effectively sailing on a mobile fortress, armed with all the firepower of a modern navy. Their cannons needed to be close to hit, let alone do damage. Vaile’s did not. Their hulls would splinter and shatter upon taking even a glancing blow. Vaile’s would not. And, of course, their ships were crewed by men and women who could die, feel fear, make mistakes, and more. Vaile’s ship was staffed entirely by soulless, mindless automatons that did their jobs at 100% efficiency and 100% effectiveness at all times.

The fog had lifted, forming an arena in which the naval battle could be fought, and all that passed through Vaile’s mind were words of pity and mockery. These people came for a slaughter, a massacre. They would get that which they sought, but not in the way that they wanted it. Like a wish on a Monkey’s Paw, they wanted a bloodbath, and they would get their dark desire sated.

The guns of Vaile’s ship were loaded, aimed, and readied. All that was left was for one side or the other to start the fight, and Vaile had already decided that he would let his opponents decide how things would go from here. As a handful of smaller ships drew close, they turned and opened up with their cannons, each letting a full broadside fly from their vessels and slam into Vaile’s massive ship.

The rounds hit the outer barrier and were immediately robbed of al kinetic and potential energy. Those that were on target and had not been swallowed by the raging waves were stopped in place in mid-air before dropping into the briny depths to sink for eternity. This satisfied Vaile’s parameters, and the tiny, fast-moving ships that had come to fight were almost instantly reduced to scraps of timber and metal as what some in the MMO called “Vaile’s Compensator” erased those vessels from existence in a withering hail of shot.

This was the impetus that drove the rest of the hostile naval vessels forward and into their untimely doom. The massive ship that Vaile was on surged forward, guns blazing, launching missiles of both physical and magical makeup as it arced mortars and artillery from the special weapons it possessed over and onto the decks of the approaching vessels. From both deck-mounted cannons, those mounted in the hull and even some small drone craft of steampunk design, the sea was filled with fast-moving shells that, like a typical MMO projectile, sought out their intended target, twisting mid-air to make contact whenever possible.

It took less than five minutes for the entire enemy armada to be reduced to nothing more than scattered wreckage that was either shredded, splintered, burning, or all three at once. As if simply casting all hostile crews into such terrible waters wasn’t bad enough, Vaile’s boat began to fire off air-burst munitions that either sent tiny bits of lethal shrapnel down towards the water’s surface or that exploded and left burning oil-like smears on the top of the water.

The cleanup continued for another three minutes, after which there were none left alive in that area save for Vaile himself. Having not done a damn thing of his own, Vaile had, by proxy, wiped out about 7/10ths of a city’s worth of people, and with that came all the Exp that you would associate with such a terrible action. Vaile finally reached another Level Up, but he didn’t feel particularly proud of it. It was, in his eyes at least, as well-earned a level up as one would get from taking their near-max level Main to the place where new characters spawn and just going to town on them.

To quote a certain group of people, “It was without honor.” But in the end, Exp was Exp, and once it was acquired it was not so easily lost. A level up was also a level up, and as so many other people (most of them utter trash) had found out, easy exp and levels were available if you cast aside all forms of sportsmanship, dignity, honor, and pride in your work.