Sea Reaper: The Legend of the Black-Eyed “Boy”

The violent impact made it feel as if one's organs would be expelled, but the falling process was crystal clear. As soon as Nick regained consciousness, he immediately scrambled off the person beneath him, gripping his shoulders and shouting:

"Carl! Carl!!"

The knight was still breathing, but blood poured from his mouth as he lay motionless—clearly severely injured.

"Don't touch him!" The ship's doctor hobbled over to stop Nick's movements. When the rope snapped, he had been two metres up, so he'd only sustained superficial injuries from the fall. But Carl, who had fallen over ten metres while holding someone, was obviously not so fortunate.

Victor examined him thoroughly, conducting a simple physical examination: "Several ribs are fractured, and his back may be injured too. Moving him could pierce his internal organs. I think he won't die immediately, but..." He fumbled in his pocket for his cracked glasses and put them on, only to see Spanish cavalry in blue uniforms rapidly approaching in the distance.

"But if the Spanish catch us, even if the fall doesn't kill him, the interrogation will. Pedro's Inquisition is infamous throughout Italy."

The situation was chillingly clear.

The rescue ship should be nearby. If they abandoned Carl now and fled, two members of the assassin brotherhood would survive. If they didn't run, it would be total annihilation. Nick glanced at Victor—the ship's doctor's hands, unused to heavy work, were torn and bloody from the rope, and he was looking around in panic through his broken glasses and injured leg. He certainly wouldn't know how to escape on his own.

Nick stared silently at the man lying on the rocky ground. A decision had to be made.

Just then, Carl awakened from his coma, gasping painfully as he coughed up blood, the crimson staining his dignified face.

"Run... run quickly..." Carl's eyes were unfocused, searching for his master's figure.

Nick grasped his hand: "Don't move, you're badly hurt."

"Don't mind me... you, you cannot die... you are our last hope..." Carl suddenly gripped Nick's hand tightly as if experiencing a final surge of energy, his azure eyes blazing with the final flame of a cornered beast: "Live! You must live alone!"

From the Dead Sea-black memories erupted a massive firework, illuminating the past.

Nick could barely breathe.

Live.

Alone.

Years ago, there had been another blood-soaked man who had shouted at her like this, using all his life's pleading and compulsion.

She had never noticed before how much Carl resembled her uncle. The brilliant golden hair like sunshine, the clear blue eyes the colour of cornflowers, and most of all, the gaze full of expectation when he looked at her.

Nick finally understood why the captain had assigned the bumbling Carl to assist her. Because that man knew clearly that when faced with such life-or-death danger, Carl would certainly sacrifice himself to save her, and she, who had never liked this verbose fellow, would surely abandon him after weighing the options. The captain was so clever—he never needed to consider priorities.

"What, what should we do?" The ship's doctor was panic-stricken; the Spanish cavalry's hoofbeats were already clearly audible.

"I won't let you die, either of you." Nick gripped the knight's broad palm firmly in return. "This time, I will protect you both."

The ever-wise Hayreddin had completely miscalculated this time.

The rescue ship brought back not a single person. His three important subordinates—the assault captain, vice-captain, and ship's doctor—were all captured simultaneously. The three were identified as the murderers of Pedro de Toledo, Governor of Naples, and were immediately escorted by the Spanish cavalry to Santa Lucia for trial.

What awaited the three was thorough interrogation, followed by the inevitable gallows.

After the cavalry captain had sternly demanded, "Who is the ringleader?!" his migraine flared up intensely.

The two conscious assassins unhesitatingly pointed to the unconscious man on the ground. In fact, the captain knew without being told that the man lying there must be the ringleader.

As for the other two, one was powerless as a chicken, the other was merely a child. The captain couldn't understand what had gone wrong in the blonde man's head to choose such two incompetent accomplices.

The interrogation process for such criminals was simple: first torture them, extract the ringleader and instigator, then hang them. But the man lying on the ground looked like he might die from a gentle kick, let alone torture.

The refined young man claimed in fluent Latin that he was a coerced Medici nobleman who knew nothing of the conspiracy. The cavalry captain dared not act rashly—the Medici were a famous financial dynasty in Europe, and if there truly was some connection, he couldn't bear the responsibility. As for the thin, dirty child, even when beaten until his nose and mouth bled, he insisted he was merely a Florentine thief hired for five silver coins to pull a cart.

The body search proved this was true—five florin silver coins were indeed found on the child. When his deputy pocketed the money, the child's resentful, pained expression was impossible to fake.

The cavalry captain hesitated. His superior's death wasn't necessarily bad news for him—what truly affected his career prospects was how well he handled the aftermath.

After much consideration, the captain decided to package the whole matter and hand it over to the chief judge of Santa Lucia. He ordered his men to give the blonde man basic medical treatment and carefully move him to the prison cart. Whatever happened to the prisoners next was no longer his concern.

Thus the three were sent on another unexpected journey.

Victor, due to his unclear identity, wasn't treated roughly, but looking at Nick and Carl lying in the prison cart, he felt deep anxiety about his future.

Nick had been beaten bloody, kicked several times in the stomach, and had even vomited up breakfast. She lay silently on the floor, nose bleeding drop by drop through the wooden planks.

"How, how do you feel?" Unable to bear the unbearable silence, Victor couldn't help but whisper. He had just reset Nick's dislocated elbow, and the other party lay motionless like a corpse.

"Fine, just a bit thirsty," Nick replied quietly.

"You've lost too much blood." Victor licked his equally cracked lips, helpless about the situation. "I thought you'd been knocked unconscious. Why didn't you make a sound when they were beating you?"

"Idiot, crying for help while being beaten can make you bite your tongue. Since no one's coming to help anyway, gritting your teeth is the proper thing to do—losing a tooth would make eating inconvenient." Nick shared her years of experience in taking beatings with the ship's doctor.

The prison cart jolted severely on the muddy road, and the foreseeable future offered no hope. When a water bag was finally thrown in, Victor, the only one not tied up, caught it and carefully poured out a little to wash Nick's dirty face and gave her a few sips.

"Won't Carl drink any?"

"He's still unconscious. Forcing water down could make it go into his windpipe." Victor frowned, drinking the liquid of questionable hygiene with the fearless spirit of someone consuming poison, because he couldn't guarantee effective medical care if he became dehydrated.

"Will he die?" Nick asked again.

"Don't worry, your golden retriever is very strong." Victor comforted her. The broken bones were already splinted, but the problem was, even the strongest person couldn't last thirty seconds on the gallows.

Lucia was a female Christian born in Naples who was persecuted and martyred while preaching in Sicily. To commemorate this saint, people named the small port where she was born Santa Lucia (Saint Lucia). Pedro had chosen this place for its rich religious atmosphere to build the largest tribunal and prison.

The three underwent strict body searches. Nick's female identity provided no help whatsoever; instead, the brand on her chest made a deep impression on the judge. A female prisoner once condemned as a witch had no legal rights to speak of. Nick was thrown into death row along with the other two.

Upon entering this grim basement, Victor nearly fainted. Though he was familiar with the smell of rotting flesh that permeated the surroundings, this environment was completely different from a medical room.

A torture chair with spikes sat against the wall, and dirty iron pots containing unidentifiable organs were placed in the corner. A row of different-sized saws and whips hung on wooden boards on the wall, each stained with blood and rusted. There was one torture rack that Victor couldn't take his eyes off—it had terrible mechanisms for securing limbs, and by turning handles connected to winches, it could slowly tear a prisoner's limbs apart.

The executioner noticed him looking at the device and bared his filthy yellow teeth in a grotesque expression: "Beauty, you like it? This thing is rather interesting. Stretching up and down can make a person quite a bit taller. When pulled to the extreme, the belly becomes translucent, and you can see the organs moving about inside."

Victor's head buzzed, and he nearly collapsed.

Because the ringleader was still recovering from serious injuries, the assassin brotherhood wasn't interrogated for the time being. They were simply locked in a small cell next to the execution chamber, awaiting the judge's final summons. The executioner, disappointed at missing the chance to practice his skills, gave all three a bone-chilling look before locking the iron door and leaving.

A huge rat crouched in the corner, its eyes glittering. Victor's face was grey-white and inhuman as he whispered to Nick:

"I earnestly beg you one thing with all the sincerity of my life. If truly no one comes to rescue us, please end my life before that man outside touches me. Strike from the spine—that way I'll feel nothing and can meet God."

"By 'touch you,' do you mean torture or sodomize you?" Nick asked very seriously.

"Both meanings are included!" Victor was nearly hysterical.

"Don't be such a harbinger of doom." Nick, who had seemed at death's door moments before, jumped up and energetically felt around the entire cell. "I'll tell you—counting this trip, I've been arrested six times. If you had the chance, you could see my wanted posters in places like Cartagena, Barcelona, and Nice. But their artistic skills are far inferior to that weird old man, your master—not one of them looks like me."

"Six arrests?! Did you get a pardon each time?"

"How could that be? I just successfully escaped each time." The vicious habitual escapee Nick said.

Meanwhile, Hayreddin was trying every means to rescue his beloved subordinate. Governor Pedro was one of the most important nobles of the Aragonese faction and Spain's chief representative in Italy. His death had significant impact on Spanish politics, making it pure fantasy to easily rescue the assassin. The ideal method would be to bring a small elite team and directly rescue them from the execution ground. But Pedro's thousand-man cavalry was deployed in full force, gathered at Santa Lucia awaiting the next governor's orders, and land warfare was really not the Red Lion's strong suit.

With the main culprit unconscious, interrogation couldn't begin, and the situation remained deadlocked.

Victor endured the most difficult half-month of his life. The death cell's environment was far from hygienic—it couldn't even be called barely clean. Omnipresent rats, cockroaches, bedbugs, and fleas constantly harassed him. The food was terrible beyond limit, with no heating facilities or change of clothes. Soon, the clear shape of his ribs showed beneath his shirt. Only Nick knew that conditions in this solitary cell were actually quite good. If they were in a mixed cell, the weak and handsome Victor, the helpless Carl, and herself would all be prime targets for sexual assault by other prisoners.

Nick searched the entire cell and found a bone fragment in the dirt in the corner. With this, she picked the lock of the small cell, but the execution chamber outside had more complex locks, and the prison was surrounded by round-the-clock rotating guards. Escaping alone would be easy for her, but bringing the mobility-impaired Carl and the combat-useless ship's doctor would be completely impossible. The only hope was Carl's recovery—if he could barely get up, Nick would have a fifty-fifty chance of escape.

The problem was, as soon as he recovered slightly, torture would be imminent.

That evening, the guards threw in the single daily meal and locked the door before leaving. Nick sorted through it, picking out the relatively fresh and intact food to give to Victor, while she drank the slop-like vegetable soup sip by sip. To increase the feeling of fullness, she carefully chewed the contents of the soup—various wriggling small creatures crackled between her teeth. In such tomb-like silence, this sound was maddening.

Victor's stomach churned as he listened, complaining weakly: "Can't you just drink it down in one go? Must you chew them?"

"They're just some maggots, cool and plump, quite tasty really." Nick commented in a gourmet's tone, then sighed: "Young master, you're really hard to please. Out of sight, out of mind—just eat your portion in the dark."

"I finally understand your obsession with white bread," Victor lamented. "Now if someone would give me a bit of clean food, I'd willingly transfer the Medici surname to him free of charge."

Nick shrugged dismissively, apparently feeling that an ethereal surname wasn't worth a single fragrant piece of white bread.

Carl lay down and ate some half-cooked bread chunks. Under the ship doctor's care, he was recovering very quickly, but to buy time, he continued pretending to be seriously wounded.

After this inedible dinner, Nick wiped her mouth and whispered to the other two: "Listen, I've been observing for over ten days and have roughly figured out the guard shift schedule. The guy on the two o'clock shift likes to play cards to stay alert. If we can take out that yellow-toothed ugly bastard in the outer room, get his keys and weapons, we can easily blend out."

"But we don't know the situation outside, have no backup, and even if we escape, we'll be discovered immediately. The entire Santa Lucia will be under martial law and manhunt." Carl was very pessimistic about their situation and once again suggested she escape alone. "You have experience and move stealthily—your chances of success are higher alone."

"If she wanted to run alone, she would have slipped away at the cliff bottom," Victor said disapprovingly.

Nick continued to ignore the golden retriever's suggestion: "Carl, can you walk?"

Carl supported himself on the filthy straw beneath him and sat up with difficulty: "I think I can walk slowly, but fighting is impossible."

"That's enough. Victor is weak, and I don't have the ability to carry someone during a jailbreak."

Everything was planned, but plans never keep up with changes. That night, a gunshot shattered the night's silence.

At dawn, five or six cavalrymen with firearms crowded into the cell. Each member of the assassin brotherhood received several rifle butts to the body, their wrists were bound with rope, and they were dragged out. A vigorous charcoal fire burned in the center of the execution chamber, and the yellow-toothed executioner was excitedly oiling his instruments.

The three were strung up by their raised hands from the roof beam, and Carl's not-yet-healed bones made spine-chilling cracking sounds. The leading cavalry captain looked stern and said coldly:

"Just now, a gang of bandits wearing black kerchiefs attacked the prison. Our cavalry lost thirteen brothers in total. It seems your backgrounds are truly extraordinary."

The cavalry captain concealed part of the truth—two prison guards had actually been heavily bribed to provide the shift schedule to the would-be rescuers. But quite unexpectedly, they encountered a cavalry patrol, which led to gunfire. The chief judge and cavalry captain, awakened in the middle of the night, were furious and decided to conduct interrogation immediately.

The executioner thrust his favorite branding irons into the charcoal fire for final preparation. He smiled ingratiatingly: "Sir, would you like to observe?"

The cavalry captain turned away in disgust from his foul breath. "No, handle it yourself. The judge has received a letter from Florence. Grand Duke Lorenzo states this matter has nothing to do with the Medici family, so you can proceed without worry."

The executioner's lizard-like gaze licked over Victor's body, making the latter shudder like a dying rabbit.

The cavalry departed. The executioner carefully bolted the door, turning over the branding irons in the charcoal fire while grinning: "When you three came in, I thought you were quite special—each one good-looking, and even a rare girl. It's a pity serious criminals can't be touched, and I've been holding back so long I can barely stand it."

He took down a whip, examining the three like selecting candy, hesitating over which one to start with.

Victor regretted not dying of intestinal inflammation earlier. Carl, in agony from his wounds, silently prayed to God to let Nick escape this ordeal and let all punishment fall on himself instead.

A floating, uncertain sigh suddenly rang out, carrying slight painful moans. Nick's eyes grew moist as she gasped softly and writhed.

"Mmm... tied so tight, so uncomfortable..."

Her hands were suspended in the air, her two slender legs constantly rubbing against each other, her waist swaying gently as if enduring some continuous torment. Her moans were clear and seductive, and the girl extended her bright red little tongue, slowly licking her lips.

The executioner's whip drooped, his gaze straightening with it.

Carl and Victor, puzzled and shocked, stared in astonishment at Nick's continuous gasping and moaning.

"Ah... ah... I'm so uncomfortable..."

"Want to suffer less? Very clever. Don't worry, I'll take good care of you." Female prisoners using their bodies to gain various conveniences and better treatment was extremely common in prisons.

With a "snap," the whip hit the ground. The executioner rubbed his already erect member through his clothes, having selected his first target for the night.