The Blood Guard spread out around him as Kay headed down one of the narrow streets of Darkport. The pirates that had gathered around the now dead Head Captain had scattered at the approach of the organized body of troops from Avalon, and most of them had dived into the smaller alleys and avenues in between the ramshackle buildings and beached boats and ships that made up the pirate haven. Some of them had just run away entirely, but most had started making harassing attacks from the sides as the army passed by.

That was one of the exact reasons the adventurers had been brought along with the army, though, and Crucius had countered by sending groups of adventurers into the smaller areas as a counter. The army continued marching down the main roads and taking over buildings as adventurers chased down scattering pirates.

When a slightly more powerful group had started doing quick strikes from multiple different directions, Mapsight had sent Kay and the Blood Guard after them. Back on Kay’s Earth, a leader wouldn’t be allowed to get this close to a war zone in most cases, let alone actively fight in it, but here Kay needed to use his Skills in combat to get stronger.

One of the pirates they’d been chasing leaped out of an alley to the right, a cutlass raised high as she aimed at one of the Blood Guard. The guard blocked with a raised blade, and three others stabbed forward, two with spears and one with a dagger blade that suddenly jumped forward in his hand as it extended out. She failed to dodge any of the three attacks, and her body collapsed to the ground a moment later.

The Blood Guard had, as a group, leveled their Skills a large amount in the time until this assault. While they were no longer the only students under Kay in his role as Class Line Progenitor, they were some of the best trained and most skilled. One of the requirements to join the Blood Guard that was beyond the normal requirements just to be a student was that the prospective recruits had to have a decent number of open Class slots to use for Blood Manipulator Classes. Combined with their previous experiences, or, in the cases of a few younger people that had been recruited, what they trained in alongside Blood Manipulation, making them an interesting mix of a combat force. All of them were similar in that they had the Blood Manipulator Classes and related Skills, but then they all also had something else that they did well. Lauren was a scout and archer that specialized in sniping, and there were also tanks, casters, melee fighters, and more.

The Blood Guard was slowly gathering into two camps, and Kay knew that he’d have to split them up soon. Not for any factional reasons or dislike of each other, but for utility. The Blood Guard was, in the end, going to be a mix between his personal guards and his personal soldiers, and while the kinds of tasks those two roles undertook might seem similar, they differed quite a lot. So Kay was going to need to separate the soldiers, who would go out and achieve goals for him, probably through violence, although that wouldn’t be the only thing he had them be good at, from the guards, who would be in charge of protecting him. Lauren, the current leader of the Blood Guard, would end up being the leader of the soldiers, something she was already aware of. She was helping him sift through current members and applicants to find someone that would be her equal as the leader of the guard portion of the Blood Guard.

Once they had both divisions separated and organized, there would be all kinds of work to do, including diversifying the training. Obviously, soldiers and guards had different training for each role, as well as different Classes and Skills, but there was also the fact that overly relying on Blood Manipulation would lead to a weakness Avalon’s enemies could exploit. But Kay had a plan for that. The soldiers would be more varied in their paths, with a large number of obvious differences in Classes and Skills, with people able to match any objective. The guards would all have the same training, at least openly. They would all have the same weapons and armor and would be very obviously trained to fight in specific formations. Which would be a huge trap for anyone that tried to attack, with each and every one of the guards, hopefully at least, having their own secret Skills and weapons.

Three more pirates died as they rushed at the group of red armored figures, and inwardly Kay shook his head at them. Intellectually Kay understood the briefing he’d gotten from Eleniah about what kind of builds sailors in general and pirates specifically would have, and the heavy emphasis on Skills and Classes that helped with ship-to-ship combat and boarding actions seemed like the right ideal to aim for as a pirate. He’d still thought that the pirates would be individually able to put up some kind of a fight, but Kay’s forces were massacring them without pause. Here and there, a singleton or a pair might be able to put up something of a fight, but they still got overwhelmed in short order.

A little while later, after crushing one of the groups that were harassing the main body of troops and returning, Kay mentioned that to Eleniah.

She shook her head at him, “I mean, yes, the difference between fighting on a ship and on land is going to make them a little less coordinated and so on, but only the slightest bit. The main thing is that a majority of these poor fools,” She gestured out at the surrounding area of Darkport, “are mostly tier one and two. Very few of them are going to be tier three, and probably only the captains are tier four or higher.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because they’re pirates! They don’t go find monsters to fight or delve into dungeons to train up their combat Skills, so the only real chance they have to get more experience and level themselves in is when they’re attacking ships, which doesn’t happen often enough to level them quickly, at least not as individuals, or when they’re fighting each other, which is another problem for them when an outside party like us attacks. Plus, they’re criminals who rule over each other through fear and violence. For the established leaders here, heavy emphasis on the ship captains, anyone who starts to get strong enough to be a threat to us could be a threat to them! If they have a tier five here, I’d be shocked because a tier five would have taken over and made them all into one fleet underneath them instead of setting themselves up in a political fuckfest of competing pirate captains.” She paused for a moment, then shrugged, “At least, that’s what’s happened in the past. I can’t say that everyone would do that, but it’s the most common thing.”

“Why’re they poor fools?” Kay asked her.

“Because they’re fucked.” She replied shortly, “But also because some of them could have had better lives if they’d had the opportunity. Not everyone that ends up a criminal or a pirate starts off as a bad person or someone that wants to hurt others. Some of them are hungry, so they steal food, or they get kicked out of their homes for some dumb reason and end up falling in with a gang to stay alive, or any of the other reasons out there that someone becomes desperate and has to make hard choices.” She shook her head and sighed, “They’re all criminals, and most of them are probably scum that needs to be executed, but they didn’t have to be like this.” She sighed again. “It just makes me sad, and part of me pities them that this is what they were reduced to.”

One of the buildings off to the side was smashed apart by a sudden blast of water, and a few bodies went flying into the air.’

“Kay!” Commander Mapsight called out, “Take the Blood Guard and deal with that! Eleniah, stand ready in case you’re needed!”

Kay patted Eleniah on the shoulder once, then took off with the Blood Guard swarming around him. As they jogged around the corner, a series of water blasts shot out from the gap, knocking a group of adventurers off their feet and sending one tumbling across the ground. Kay held in a wince. At least the ground isn’t concrete or asphalt, he thought to himself.

Standing back to back a few feet away were a pair dressed much more flashily than the rest of the pirates Kay had seen so far. The closest one, who was probably some form of Water Mage or Manipulator based on how she was throwing water cannon level blasts around, had a bright purple bandanna wrapped around her head that just barely contained her dark curly hair.

“I thought we were getting out of here!” She shouted to the man behind her.

He stabbed out with a harpoon at an adventurer, who deflected it enough to keep it from taking him in the neck but not enough to keep the barbed point out of his shoulder. The harpoon-wielding pirate had on what Kay thought of as the stereotypical pirate tricorn hat and garish red colored leather armor that was almost as eye searing as the woman’s orangish colored armor that clashed with her purple bandanna. “We are! He was out hunting today, so we just have to wait for him to get back!”

“We just had a massive fight that killed most of the other captains, and you let him go hunting?” The woman screeched as she let loose another spray of water.

“He was hungry! And you just said we’d already killed everyone else!”

Kay lunged forward with the heap of his blood-glaive sharpened into a spear point, taking advantage of the distraction the two were causing each other. Right before he took the woman in the side, she was yanked away by the man who tossed her behind him.

“Dammit!” He cursed and spat on the ground. “You lot look like you’re actually worth something.” He snarled. He glanced over his shoulder, “He’ll be here in a couple of minutes; we just have to hold out till then.”

“Right.” The woman looked around at Kay and his Guard with narrowed eyes. “You must be some of those Blood Manipulators we heard about.” She smirked, “Maybe you don’t know, but blood has water in it!”

Their armor started to twist around them as the woman raised her arms, and the various weapons in the hands of the Blood Guard began to shake as they fought over control of the material.

Kay slammed down his Blood Domain in one moment and sent a torrent of spinning blood at the woman the next. She managed to jerk her hands up and make a localized cyclone around her that redirected the attack. She stared with a shocked expression as Kay’s Skill forcibly ended her control of the blood around them.

“Ranged attackers move out of the Domain and started bombarding them,” Kay orders, “Watch out for her water attacks; the Domain obviously won’t affect those. Frontliners hit them hard. Gang up on him and push your way past. I want them down before whatever they’re waiting for shows up.”

The battle quickly turned into a slog. Even with the advantage in numbers, the pair were obviously used to fighting together and had a number of combinations together that blasted back Kay’s attacking forces multiple times. They managed to wound them several times and were obviously going to win in the long run, but they didn’t have the time for that.

There was a loud thump that shook the ground, and the pirate man grinned widely. “Too late, fuckers! Over here, Muckspite!”

A deafening croak rang out, and the ground shook. A moment later, a shadow fell over the fighting and started to grow.

“Scatter!” Lauren shouted from behind the line of combat, and the Blood Guard dived out of the way as a gigantic frog landed, smashing several people into the ground and demolishing the nearby buildings.

“So long, suckers!” One of the pair shouted.

Kay looked up from where he’d been knocked over to see the two of them scaling up the legs of the frog, which were covered in barnacle-like growths they used as handholds. On top of the frog were two chairs that seemed to be embedded in even larger barnacles, and the pair hopped into them, the man facing towards the front of the frog and the woman sitting the opposite way.

“Now that Muckspite’s here, we can’t be stopped!” The man cheered.

“We need to leave, dumbass; there are too many!”

“C’mon, we can take ’em! We aren’t called-”

“Oh, you two idiots are here?” A voice rang out.

Kay glanced over to see Eleniah stalking in his direction, an annoyed look on her face. “I thought I dealt with you two last time.” She slammed one fist into the other palm.

“Oh shit!”

“It’s the fucking Fist!”

The man slammed a boot down into the barnacles around him. “Go, go, go! Muckspite, run!”

The frog croaked once and jumped, sending another wave through the ground as its massive legs slammed down and sent it flying in the direction of the ocean, staggering Kay again as he tried to get up.

“You get your asses back here!” Eleniah shouted angrily and charged after them.

Kay stared after her for a moment, then turned and helped up the nearest member of his Guard, keeping an eye out for other attackers.

“What do we do now, sir?” A Guard member asked.

“We keep going. There’s still the rest of the port to take.” He glanced over his shoulder towards where his friend had gone. “From what those two were saying, I’m guessing they’re some of the surviving captains from the big fight we missed, so they’re probably the strongest fighters left. If they’re running like that from Eleniah, we might not have much left to worry about.” He turned back to look over his troops. “Not that we’re going to get complacent. We’re heading back to Commander Mapsight to see what’s next. Let’s go.”