<h4>Volume 0 Chapter 7: Demise of the Expeditionary Fleet</h4>


    Trantor: The Light


    Edits by Yukan


    “Holy knight Felia! Aren’t you on the expedition party to Alfred continent? Howe you are here?!” Archbishop Nichs realized Be’s identity after studying her for a while.


    “You’ve got the wrong person, gramps. I’m the pirate queen Be, not some holy knight Felia.”


    Be did not have any good feelings for this archbishop, as he was the one who sent Felia, on her ill-fated voyage to Alfred continent. ording to Felia’s memories this archbishop only obtained his position through his family’s influence, his power was nowhere near the level of Archbishop Stanley – who had worked his way up the ranks.


    “Sounds like you’ve been mesmerized by the devil. You are but one person, and you dare proim yourself a monarch?” Nichs was about tough at Be’s foolishness but stopped when he saw Be make a gesture with her hand.


    From her ship flew several ropes with hooks attached to their ends and these hooks found their ce around the rails. Several figures, clothed in ck, climbed aboard the ship using these ropes; they were naturally the undead that had been summoned by Angel. After boarding the ship, they immediately rushed towards the human soldiers while ignoring the demons. To these undead, demons did not give off the same ‘smell’ as humans; and since they hadn’t received any orders, apart from that of attacking the humans, they ignored them.


    “You traitor! You’ve sold your soul to the devil! I will end you in ce of the Church of Light!” The holy knight Isaac started a ‘Knight Charge’ towards Be, who returned the favor by raising her shield and starting a charge of her own.


    The force given off by the two holy knights colliding mid-charge sent the surrounding soldiers flying – both humans and demons alike. Isaac got pushed back several steps and tried to stabilize himself but Be immediately started a second charge to drive home her advantage. Isaac was caught off guard and was sent flying further back for several meters this time around.


    “How is that possible? You are able to continuously charge twice!” Isaac looked at Be, whose face was unwavering, as he pushed himself off the ground. Isaac remembered that she hade from Bernard’s ship, and that she may have already defeated another holy knight.


    “Why is it that all you holy knights have the same attack pattern?” Be was surprised to see Isaac adopting the same defensive pose as Bernard had previously. It seemed to her that the profession of holy knight didn’t have many unique abilities. What she didn’t know was that most knights require a mount to unleash their full potential and abilities, unless they were a dragon knight, and they would be fighting at arge disadvantage without a mount.


    Currently it was a chaotic fight on the warship between Be’s undead pirates, the human assaulters, and the demon defenders. The undead had the absolute advantage in this chaos as they didn’t have to be afraid of any friendly fire, they swung their weapons wildly, aiming at whoever was closest to them.


    Be straight up ignored Isaac and approached Archbishop Nichs. Isaac was preparing to head to the aid of the archbishop, when a ming barrelnded at his feet – which sent him flying into the water.


    Of course this wasn’t enough to kill him directly, in fact he was almost unscathed; after all, a holy knight’s defenses are nothing to scoff at. It was just that, he would take some time to swim back to the ship; it was their fault that they wore such heavy armor out at sea. The two knights should be graceful to their god if they don’t drown.


    Be had decided to eliminate the two holy knights onboard from the start, but she knew that it was difficult to achieve that objective of her. She had only managed to kill Bernard after she caught him off guard, and she knew that she wouldn’t be so lucky this time. Her goal was the archbishop.


    “Holy knight Felia, put down your weapon and I can promise that nothing will happen to you once we return. Otherwise you will never be able to escape from the judgement of the Church...”


    “Shut it! Don’t be so arrogant if you don’t have any cash. If you keep talking I’ll throw you to the fishes.”


    Be didn’t bother to waste time listening to his nonsense, and stopped Nichs’ preaching. Be secretly felt very pleased, when she looked at his conflicted face. Neither Be nor Felia liked this guy. In Felia’s past life, this archbishop used to trick female believers to engage in intercourse with him, by proiming that they can be saved if they offer their bodies to god. Even Felia had almost fallen for it, before she realized his machinations.


    “Are you crazy...? What do you think you’re doing?”


    Nichs started to panic, when he saw Be walk towards the sealed girl. He had to maintain the sealing array and was unable to attack. He could only watch as Be got closer to the girl; and prayed that the two holy knights, who fell into the sea could make it back in time to stop her.


    The girl, who was sealed by the golden hexagram, had been roused by the loud sound of the two knights shing earlier; and had been watching Be the whole time. Her eyes shifted from wariness, to surprise, and then to shock as Be walked towards her. The reason for such drastic changes in her expression was because this holy knight did not have any ill-intent towards her, and was also studying her closely.


    The girl’s height was around that of Be’s, just that her chest was possibly one whole size above. Even though her body was well covered by a suit of ck armor, it was evident that she had quite the explosive body. Be got closer to look at her face, wanting to see how a demon princess looked like first hand.


    She had learned from the soldiers on the other ships that humans had encircled a princess of one of the four demon empires, Alf Dolores, 3rd princess of the Alfred Empire. Originally she didn’t want to get too deeply involved in the human-demon conflict, and only wanted to grab a ship and quickly leave the conflict zone. But there was basically no food on that ship; so she had raided all the ships in her way, all the way to the center of the encirclement.


    None of the ships that she had defeated on the way had much food so Be decided to try her luck at the biggest ship of both sides. It was the ship of a demon princess after all, there should be something worth looting this time. It wasn’t actually a surprise that she didn’t manage to find any food on those ships, as the human reserve fleet was still several nautical miles off, and carried all the supplies of the expeditionary fleet.


    Alf Dolores had long violet hair that came down to her waist, coupled with her irises of the same color; she was quite the charmer. Be lost herself in Dolores’ beauty, and only returned to her senses after the princess looked away unnaturally.


    “Excuse me, are you the princess, Alf Dolores? Can you work with me a bit here, I’m a pirate and I want you to tell me where you carry all the goods on this ship!”


    Dolores froze after hearing Be’s demands. Since when did human pirates originate as holy knights? Had the world changed to the point that holy knights had to earn a living by pirating?


    As she saw Alf Dolores struggle to hold in herughter, Be was a little helpless; after all, she couldn’t yell at her and demand to know where the goods were, she might dere that she would rather die before telling a pirate. If that happened Be would have wasted her entire day. If she had known that being a pirate required so much work, Be would have never wanted to be one.


    “Princess Alf Dolores, can you be a bit more serious about this? I’m a fierce pirate, if you don’t tell me where you keep the ship’s money then I’ll...”


    “Miss Pirate, what if I don’t have any money?”


    “No money? Why didn’t you say so earlier? Goodbye!”


    “Eh? Pirate nee-san, don’t leave! I can give you anything else!”


    “I’m not a pervert, what else can you give me?”


    Be gulped when she looked at the princess’ explosive body; sadly she was a girl and couldn’t do anything to her even if she had wanted to.


    “If you help me... I’ll stay by your side until my father ransoms me.”


    Actually Alf Dolores had ran away from her home to escape an arranged marriage. Her father had disliked her, as she was not of pure demon descent; and had arranged for her to be married to the crown prince of the Mephyr Empire, Mephyr Derek, in order to obtain some political benefits.


    This crown prince was a renowned yboy in the four demon empires, and Dolores naturally did not want to marry him, so she ran away from home.


    “No, I have morals too; I don’t take people, only money. I’m a pirate not a human trafficker!”


    “Miss Pirate, if you help me I can promise you anything!” Dolores was panicking, afraid that Be might actually leave.


    “Oh well, I’ll take some losses this time...” Be wasn’t cold-hearted enough to leave Dolores, after she saw that tears were forming in her eyes. She decided to lend her a hand.


    “Felia! This is yourst chance, get away from the demon. Don’t get tempted by the devil!” It was Nichs’ turn to panic as he saw that Be was actually going to help Dolores. He knew that the demon princess’ power was at least on par with that of the dragon knight Shawn, and if her seal was removed her first target would be himself.


    “I’m nothing more than a mere pirate, things like holy knights are none of my concern, get out of my sight if you don’t want to die.”, Be walked up to Dolores’ side and studied the shing golden cross in front of her chest. It was probably key to whatever was sealing her power. It was a question of how she wore it as a ne in the first ce.


    “Are you mad, woman? This demon sealing cross was personally blessed by the pope, Croft VI, it is not something that a holy knight whose soul has been lost can so casually desecrate...”, Nichs almostughed when he saw Be reach towards the cross attached to the ne, but his words were cut short by what happened next.


    Be easily pulled the cross of the ne on Dolores’ neck. She then turned around and crushed the cross into powder.


    “Oi, mister archbishop! I think your cross is a fake. It seems that the church is rather short on funds if they are giving their archbishops such useless equipment.”


    “You,... remember this!”, Nichs flew back to his warship when he saw Be easily destroy the demon sealing cross that he had been so confident in, and once Dolores recovered her power she definitely wouldn’t let him return to the church alive.


    “Why did you let him go? This human doesn’t look like one to be able to put down his grudges, aren’t you scared that he will trouble you after he gets back?”, Dolores easily broke through the sealing array on the ground, if it wasn’t for the demon sealing cross she would have been able to break through it long ago.


    “Why would I let him go? That guy doesn’t even realize that his ship had already been taken.” Be pounced on Dolores and pushed her to the ground while saying this, just as Dolores was about to question, arge explosion rang throughout the sea. The ship that Nichs had just boarded had been broken into two pieces by the force of the explosion, one piece had already sunk and the other was inside an inferno.


    Nichs had stored quite a bit of strong alcohol on his ship, Be had already let Mia and Angel board his ship to turn the alcohol into an explosivepound before she boarded the demon’s ship. They had been waiting for Nichs to return to his death. The archbishop never suspected that his ship would be tampered with, and was killed on the spot by the explosion.


    Dolores looked at the sunken ships in the distance, then looked around her. The remainder of the human fleet that had surrounded them was now fleeing, many of their number were now either enveloped in fire or sinking. The one who had done all of this, Be, was standing right beside her observing her aplishments. At this point Dolores felt as if she wasn’t the demon here.


    “Pirate sister, how did you do it?”


    “It’s a secret of the trade! Take care, I’m going to take my leave...”


    “Can I ask something of you please?”


    “What is it?”


    “Take me with you!”


    ___


    After quite a while, the dragon knight Shawn finally made it back to see the remains of the fleet, and the demons’ ship had long left. This naval battleter became the spark that lit the fuse for the eighth Human-Demon war. Humans lost four holy knights including Felia and the two that were thrown overboard, and an archbishop along with several thousand capable seamen.


    On the demons’ side they had lost the 3rd princess of the Alfred Empire, Alf Dolores, whose location was currently unknown. ording to the surviving demons who had managed to flee before Be arrived, the Church of Light’s archbishop had already boarded their ship. It was most probable that the princess had already met her unfortunate demise.


    Although some of the human sailors imed that they also saw a female holy knight, when the Church sent Archbishop Stanley to investigate, they all simultaneously changed their ims and nothing ever came of it.