Captain – Chapter 352 – Sin and Gift

Richi knew what sin the young woman was referring to.

It was Duke Manfred’s mad curse oath, the unwarranted disaster suffered by his family members and test subjects, everything the Castein family had done.

Those were indeed indelible crimes, but… what did they have to do with you?

Weren’t you also a victim?

“My surname itself is sin.”

Knowing what the young man was thinking, Vivian’s gaze gradually focused as she looked at the wine glass in her hand and explained calmly.

The wine glass had long been empty and had been washed with seawater and wine, yet even now, it still retained a lingering, unsettling bloody smell.

Her surname contained Castein.

She was the only survivor among those family members who had undergone evil experiments in that sinful family, the only remaining hope for the resentful Water Ghosts.

This was a gift from the deity, but also an original sin deeply embedded in her bloodline.

That’s why she had continued until now under the torment of that craving, willingly enduring this deathly silent life—all to atone for her sin, the sin of being a Blood Craver.

“Oh… is this also considered idealism?”

Richi’s raised eyebrow slowly lowered as his casual words dispersed the gloom in the air.

“I have no faith, so it probably doesn’t count.”

Supporting herself against the wooden wall to stand up, the young woman walked past Richi, pushed open the rickety wooden door, then turned to look at him with a very calm tone.

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The greenish firelight from some unknown fuel in the corridor outside shone through the door, falling on her bloodless yet still delicate face, reflecting a slight coldness. In those blood-red eyes, only determination remained—where was there any trace of weakness?

It seemed the earlier loneliness and pity had been mere illusions.

“Don’t misunderstand, I’m not a fool who likes to take on other people’s sins.”

Gesturing with her eyes for him to follow, Vivian left the room and walked along the pitted corridor, explaining as she went: “Everything I do is mostly for myself. I serve the Lady because she promised me that after our mission is complete, she will release me from suffering forever.”

“Don’t disbelieve me—if I hadn’t seen hope, how could I have persisted until now?”

Without needing to turn around, she knew the young man was skeptical. Vivian said softly: “I know what you’re thinking. My relationship with the Lady is indeed somewhat complex, but if I must say, it’s that she pities and loves me. How could you call that exploitation?”

Deities view everything as a play.

Being chosen by her, being given the opportunity to repay sins, was naturally her good fortune and blessing, not the deity’s deliberate intention.

Even taking a step back, the sea was boundless, the dead souls countless. There were many who understood pirates better than she did, who understood those conspiracies better. Some of those powerful, great figures might even have the ability to play a move or two against the devil.

Yet the Lady had chosen her.

Her, who initially understood nothing, who couldn’t even bring herself to kill.

Not to mention the gentle love she had felt from the Lady over these hundreds of years, the principles of right and wrong she had learned—all were real, without any falsehood.

If it were merely exploitation, why go to such lengths?

“Oh, so that’s how it is.”

Hearing the young man’s perfunctory, completely disbelieving response, Vivian couldn’t help glaring at him: “Do you think that if she wasn’t exploiting me, the Lady should have released me from the beginning, rather than insisting on waiting until I retrieved the Box?”

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Hearing this, Richi spread his hands, indicating “what else?”

“You’re a pirate, yet your understanding of curses is quite poor.”

Uncharacteristically pursing her lips, Vivian finally showed some of a young girl’s spirit.

She said mockingly: “The experiments my father conducted used a certain lost incantation, which is essentially a type of curse. Since that’s the case, to break it, one must find a specific counter-curse method.”

A curse is not power, but a mysterious connection related to fate.

Faced with such threads deeply embedded in the soul, even a true deity cannot forcibly cut them with sheer power, but needs to trace the patterns of the curse, and like unraveling a cocoon, untie those entangled knots.

“The curse I bear, though malicious, is not considered profound in the Lady’s eyes. It doesn’t even require me to find the medium of that lost incantation to have a way to break it. But that doesn’t mean she can remove it at will.”

Dull footsteps echoed in the ancient corridor, along with the young woman’s soft narration, as if walking through ruins from centuries ago, revealing a hidden desolation.

“Do you know… why I’m willing to lead those Water Ghosts?”

Immersed in Vivian’s explanation about curses, suddenly hearing such a question, Richi paused briefly but didn’t show confusion. Instead, he asked in return: “Because they are the key to breaking the curse you bear?”

This wasn’t difficult to guess, as the young woman had mentioned the word “sin.”

What was the greatest sin of the Castein family?

Was it those dark businesses, the use of that terrifying forbidden incantation, or those family members transformed into blood-craving monsters?

None of these.

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It was all the innocent people affected by the oath, those who once had their own lives but now were neither human nor ghost—the Water Ghosts.

Or rather, their resentment.

“Correct, so don’t think I’m particularly kind. My willingness to lead them on the path to redemption, isn’t it also to reduce those resentments, or to use them to cut a bloody path of judgment across the sea?”

The young woman spoke flatly, as if she weren’t talking about herself.

You can’t even lie convincingly—how could the Lady have found someone like you?

To this, Richi merely made a casual “hmm” sound, while thinking to himself and continuing to follow her train of thought: “Since it’s about reduction, does that mean by yourself alone, you have no way to completely eliminate that resentment, or to find that medium?”

When even such an incantation has been lost, how could one find the medium to break the curse?

Vivian responded faintly, though her mood slightly shifted due to his concern about the curse she bore.

“And since the Lady promised you, she presumably has a solution, but now her magic is scarce, even depleted. Creating the Death Silence and a very few Death-Fearers is already her limit, so in the end…”

Sighing helplessly, Richi smiled and said: “That method to break the curse still relies on that Box.”

As he spoke, the two approached the wooden door leading to the deck.

With a piercing creak, the wooden door was opened by a Water Ghost. Amidst the “pitter-patter” of falling seawater and raindrops, Richi and Vivian arrived on the deck where a crowd of crew members were already waiting, with Longfellow standing at the front.

“Then let’s try to get it.”

This was the last thing Richi said to the young woman.

After speaking, his smile gradually faded, returning to indifference. Looking at the respectful Longfellow before him, he asked in a hoarse voice: “What’s the situation with the Mermaid?”

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Longfellow, the former First Mate of the Death Silence who had always looked down on the young man, had not shown the slightest disrespect since witnessing the astonishing cannon fire he had created in the whirlpool and learning of his determination and methods.

He acknowledged that the young man was qualified to be the new captain of the Death Silence, but more importantly, confirmed that he did not have the ulterior motives Longfellow had worried about.

Because the Death Silence’s cannon fire symbolized withering.

That was the most genuine killing intent.

“Report, Captain. For some unknown reason, the fire on that ship has been extinguished, and because we need to go around that whirlpool, we’ve fallen nearly thirty nautical miles behind it.”

Hearing the young man’s question, Longfellow responded respectfully.

Extinguished? This gets more and more interesting.

Receiving this answer, Richi’s eyebrows raised slightly, though he wasn’t particularly surprised.

He knew the Mermaid wouldn’t be easy to deal with, and its captain even less so. He never thought those two cannon shots would end everything, or perhaps… it was precisely because of his inexplicable confidence in her that he had fired without hesitation?

“Pursue them.”

Neither the young woman beside him nor the Water Ghosts watching the young man could guess his thoughts. They only heard his emotionless command.

So the school of fish gathered, and the path of light gradually formed.

The storm once again submitted to the Lady’s will. The Death Silence pursued the lighthouse beam, moving further and further away from the whirlpool to their port quarter.

The hunt was not yet over.