<886 – The Unqualified (9)>
The Sandkooker, who climbed aboard the ship using the rope thrown by the Jigoku Pirate Group, felt like they had entered a new world. Just moments ago, they were about to charge into battle, risking their lives alongside friends, or facing the wrath of nature and feeling the terrifying power of natural disasters. But now, the atmosphere on the ship was completely different.
“Hey, if you don’t know what to catch, just detect the Magic Watch first. If we recover any corpses and hand them over to the new Professor, we’ll get a reward!”
“Look over there! Black bread is floating around!”
“Wow, that dirty, hard lump of bread doesn’t even soften up when submerged!”
“Filthy black bread. Are you really bread?!”
“A tooth-destroyer disguised as food!”
“Go die!”
“I mean, I’m not saying you should hate black bread, but look at the sheep. There’s no way anyone would stock up that much black bread. Unless they’re a snack bar owner.”
“Whaaaat? Then what’s that over there?”
Oknodie added certainty to the Jigoku pirates.
“It’s a snack bar!”
“Waaah!”
“It’s a jackpot! Grab the fishing rods!”
The Jigoku pirates fervently fished out food supplies from the wrecked snack storage. Not only did they catch magic tools and high-grade materials that remained intact, but they also collected tasty food, which became the top priority item, though it was a pity that they were so foolish that expensive tools wouldn’t even be useful to them.
“Healing fishing trip…?” The atmosphere felt just that way to the Sandkooker, who sat down dejectedly.
“Did you all know that a tidal wave was coming?”
“Well, I guess. We’re pirates after all.”
Jigoku glanced at Oknodie, thinking that instead of making the already hated kid be more hated, it’d be better to just take on the debt.
“You could’ve at least told us.”
“It was too late by the time I realized.”
“Ugh. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to act like I was demanding assignments just because I fished you out of the water. I’m just… troubled.”
Even knowing that they could be revived, watching friends die right in front of them was pretty shocking. It was perfectly normal to feel the urge to blame anyone.
“Have you seen Rozgini? She should’ve been above us.”
“No?”
“Is that so? Did she disappear after using that heat ray magic and getting swept away by the tsunami…?”
Feeling that their own weakness had led to Rozgini’s death, the Sandkooker grew gloomy again. Jigoku tossed them a fishing rod.
“You know the identification number for the Magic Watch. Call for it, pinpoint the location, and retrieve it. That way, they can revive a bit quicker.”
“…Thanks.”
The Sandkooker wasn’t the last person in need on the Jigoku Pirate Ship. Thanks to Irene, who had gone to help the emergency command center consisting of Student Council seniors, they narrowly avoided a crisis of total annihilation of the higher-ups.
Mentos Mintchoco, riding on the waterproof golem, and the golem owner also managed to board the ship after cutting through the water.
“You came to rescue us!”
“Actually, we came to draft you!”
Mentos Mintchoco was terrified by Oknodie’s unexpected reply.
“You, you’re… the Dark Princess who conquered the Underground Fighting Arena!!”
Oknodie’s shockingly powerful guard golems struck fear into the hearts of the golem owners.
“Drafting? Where do you plan to take us?!”
“Once we charge the magic stone battery, we have to head back down!”
Oknodie pointed below the surface.
It was a flooded battlefield.
“Why would you go back to a place that’s been devastated, with the lich dead and everything else turned to rubble?”
“Undead can live without breathing, right?”
The students who peered into the water, hoping for the best, realized their ominous fears were confirmed. While the undead great army temporarily perished from Oknodie’s tidal disaster attack, the Death Zone began to emit a sinister light once more.
The undead lined up underwater, bobbing up to peek above the surface or advancing along the bottom toward their next attack point.
“Truly a harsh weekly event.”
“We should be thankful if they at least provide supplies.”
“Do you think someone will quit midway saying they can’t do it anymore?”
However, the battle was significantly in favor of the surviving students compared to the tidal disaster.
“Before you go, take this.”
“Buff incoming!”
Jigoku pirates, lined up in a row, placed a buff on each person passing by.
The variety of buffs and their synergistic effects tripled combat power.
“Wait a minute, this is a super rare buff function.”
“Where did you get such a precious buff?”
Even Mentos Mintchoco, the elite golem owner, was astonished to receive such an expensive buff.
“Well, we’re just underqualified recruits at the bottom of the Academy with no real talent, so we have to make the most of the buffs.”
“We earn well from piracy, but any equipment we find is useless, so we went all in on a buff.”
Though their main job was piracy, the Jigoku Pirate Group had effectively transformed into a team of fishermen and buff casters to help out!
With such a strong push, there was no way to make excuses for not pulling through. Mentos had to brace themselves and dive back into the water they had just escaped from.
“Oh? These guys… they can’t move properly!”
And they realized a new advantage. The undead were slower in the water.
They had no strength to withstand it with muscle, so they had to create artificial muscle using dark mana born from negative emotions. But underwater, that dark mana kept mixing with elemental mana, causing their artificial muscles to be less effective, leading to much slower movement.
“It’s revenge. Let’s wipe them all out this time!”
“You bastards! If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have had to participate in this forced enlistment and go through this hell!”
After the monsters, it was time for the Death Zone. As they smashed through the Death Zone, which used to summon the lich-level boss monster that had brought despair to many, no more undead emerged from that area.
Finally, the students had secured a safe zone for the Academy without the threat of undead regeneration.
“Look! We destroyed the Death Zone…!!”
Excited to boast, the students emerged from the water only to be taken aback by the mess on the ship.
[Two Smuggler Squirrels]
[Terrified Bomb Rats]
[Two Great Rats Who Lost Their Habitat]
[Two Flying Dantoos in Bad Spirits]
[Two Dead Pumas from the Summoner’s Mistakes]
[Two Fourth Year’s Pet Cerberuses]
[Two Chimeras That Escaped the Laboratory]
[Two Exam Time Mecha Scorpions]
Animal, animal everywhere.
The ship had turned into a half human, half animal farm.
“What are you guys doing?!”
Oknodie shouted with excitement.
“Noah’s Ark! Animal Rescue Quest!”
“Is that so? But we’ve been working hard too…”
“Just in time! We’ve already rescued all the animals we could find here, so let’s head to the next Death Zone!”
“Next Death Zone?!”
“Surely you didn’t think we would get all those buffs and just take a break, did you?”
With Oknodie’s words, the Jigoku pirates nodded eagerly, realizing that pirates wouldn’t do any favors without a reason.
“Don’t worry about the magic stone charges. We’re fishing up a ton from above!”
A new form of endless labor as hunting slaves was thus born, different from Titosso’s situation.
*
The Jigoku Pirate Ship was in complete chaos. Oknodie, who reached the Boarding Storage Room, was so ecstatic that he was hiding animals left and right.
━━━
[Noah's Ark]
This quest’s final rewards increase in proportion to the kinds of animals collected.
Collection judgment is made each time a different animal is caught, distinguishing between male and female.
Asexual animals are regarded as exceptions.
━━━
It wasn’t weird for Oknodie, who was familiar with quests, to have stars in their eyes.
The rewards of Noah’s Ark have no grade limits.
Depending on how well you do, it’s even possible to obtain [Guaranteed Enhancement Coupons], which allow for mythic grade enhancements.
“Why don’t we just hunt the Dark Great Demon again?”
“No way! This is so much tastier!”
Jiang watched in fury as Cerberus unleashed hellfire at the mischievous Flying Dantoos, who were tossing around a fire dog and a charcoal dog with their front paws.
The fire spread to the ship, and the startled squirrels jumped from the upper deck onto people’s heads.
Screaming, Jiang swatted a squirrel that stuck to their hand, seeing the squirrel that should have been on the floor instead clinging to it, fur bristling in anger.
“Get it off…!”
“Fuh~ What should I do~? Should I take it off or not?”
Oknodie, giggling at Jiang’s unusually weak state, felt a dark slime sticking to her leg and pouted.
“Ugh, I want it off too!”
“Hmph. You brought this on yourself.”
The fire was extinguished by Irene, rescued, who doused it with ice magic, but the more animals piled onto the ship, the more the students onboard began to suffer from headaches.
“While it was great that we recognized the limitations of defeating boss monsters and launched this tidal disaster operation, shouldn’t we be withdrawing now? At this rate, if we load all the animals from the Academy, the ship will sink before they fight each other.”
“No, there’s still a way to load more! We need to bring a nature mage to organize the animals on board!”
“Who would that be?”
“Professor Weird!”
The once rowdy animals fell eerily silent as if charmed.
Even the kids seemed awestruck, as if they couldn’t be more shocked upon hearing the name of the Demon King.
“Is it really necessary to bring her on board if just mentioning her quiets them down?”
“When we bring on even more animals, there’s no guarantee they’ll stay quiet!”
“There are not an unlimited number of animals at the Academy; how many more could we possibly load?”
That was a shallow way of thinking for an NPC.
Oknodie, the player, had a completely different perspective.
“We can keep doing the Death Zone boss monster gacha until the Elder Lich animal summoner comes out!”
Repeating this foolishness of only defeating boss monsters while not erasing the Death Zone until the Elder Lich animal summoner appears.
And then taking her on board, the apex nature mage who can subdue all animals and bring them under control.
A complete metagame of a zoo was about to unfold!
“Who, pray tell, is doing the boss monster hunting needed for that random gacha?”
“The people who were pulled on board?”
A few rescued students dived into the water with ghostly reflexes.
The attempt was good, but they were simply pulled back onto the ship by Oknodie’s telekinetic magic.
What a sad event that was.
