Chapter 92: JACOBS POV.

I had to keep the momentum going before she realized that I was basically turning her into a vigilante. "Think about it. Every low-life thief can rob a merchant. But only a true monster of the sea can hunt down other pirates and make them beg for mercy."

I leaned in a little closer, lowering my voice to make it sound like a grand secret. "By saving others, you’ll have free voices that’ll help in spreading your magnificent name across lands and seas, isn’t that what you wanted?"

" When you save a merchant ship, those sailors will go to every single port, every tavern, and every palace. They will tell everyone about the great Captain Priscilla, the white-furred terror who crushes wicked pirates. Your name will be on everyone’s lips within months!"

"And who better to fight and prove your strength than other pirates. It wouldn’t be fun fighting weak defenseless merchant ships now would it?" I added, trying to sound as convincing as possible.

I knew she loved a good fight, so emphasizing the strength of our potential enemies was the best way to get her excited.

"Merchant sailors will just cry and give up. There’s no glory in that. But other pirates will fight back with everything they have, and when you crush them, everyone will know you are the strongest."

Priscilla began twirling a strand of her hair with her clawed finger, her golden eyes squinting slightly as the picture I was painting started to make sense in her head.

"That does sound true... Fighting people who don’t fight back is pretty boring. Douglas’s crew was tiny, and they all ran away like cowards after I threw a few of them into the sea. It wasn’t satisfying at all."

"See!" I chuckled, letting out a bright laugh as I felt the massive wave of relief wash over me.

In my excitement and satisfaction at having successfully tricked her, I reached out and patted her hard on the shoulder.

She blinked her eyes, staring at me in surprise. She looked down at my hand on her shoulder, then back up at my face.

Nobody usually touched her so casually, especially not a human who was shorter than her. But I didn’t let the awkward moment linger.

"Come on, Captain, you don’t need to dwell much on stuff like this, just trust your loyal first mate and everything will be perfect, alright?" I said with a big, reassuring smile. I pulled my hand back and gave her a confident nod.

’This way I don’t have to worry about having a bounty on my head if I ever set foot on land. I can’t have you ruining my plans for a comforting life, now can I?’ I said to myself, feeling incredibly satisfied with my thought process.

If she went around attacking innocent people, the world governments and navies would hunt this ship down to the ends of the earth.

As her first mate, my face would be on a wanted poster right next to hers. I had worked way too hard to survive just to get hanged from a gallows because my captain was a giant idiot who wanted to play pretend.

If we only attacked bad guys, we might actually be seen as heroes, or at least a necessary evil, giving me a chance to retire peacefully later on.

Priscilla was surprised by my sudden actions at first, her ears twitching as she stood there frozen.

But a slow, wicked smirk soon bloomed on her face, her sharp fangs peeking out from under her lip. She liked the sound of being a "pirate among pirates." It fed her ego perfectly.

"Alright, your Captain will trust you on this," she said, slapping her own chest proudly. "You make a lot of sense, Jacob. Hunting down the wicked sounds much more fitting for a tiger of my stature."

She spun around, looking out over the grand deck of the stolen warship, her eyes sparkling with renewed energy.

The lazy, groggy attitude from the morning was completely gone, replaced by a fiery enthusiasm.

"Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s get to finding those pirates! Hope the crew’s up and ready to spill some blood!" she said with enthusiasm, as if she couldn’t wait another second to charge into battle. She raised her fist toward the sky again, looking ready to roar.

"Ahhh... yeah, the crew." I froze, the smile instantly vanishing from my face. A cold drop of sweat rolled down the back of my neck as reality crashed back into my mind.

It suddenly occurred to me that there was another massive problem that I had completely overlooked in my haste to change her mind.

’I can’t just let her drag these poor men into battle!’ I thought to myself, panic rising in my chest.

I turned my head slowly to look toward the lower deck. A few of the freed captives were finally waking up, stumbling out into the sunlight.

They were rubbing their eyes, yawning, and looking incredibly frail. Most of them were skinny, half-starved farmers, laborers, and regular townspeople who had been dragged away from their homes by slavers.

They didn’t know how to hold a sword, let alone how to fight a crew of hardened, bloodthirsty sea bandits.

To be honest, out of the entire group we had brought over from the smaller ship, only Dinklehimer actually knew how to properly sail a ship or do anything useful on a deck.

I bet the others had absolutely no experience in being pirates, even if it came to playing pretend. If Priscilla took this ship into a real battle right now, these poor men wouldn’t be fighting; they would just be targets. They would get slaughtered in the first five minutes of a real boarding action.

I looked back at Priscilla, who was still looking out at the sea with a proud, heroic expression, completely oblivious to the fact that her "mighty crew" consisted of a bunch of hungover farmers.

My brain started working at high speed again, trying to figure out how to stop her from ordering an immediate attack on the next ship we saw.