A sleepless night.
Lillian kept gripping his pistol, listening nervously to the commotion outside. All night long they were searching for him, but needless to say, they found nothing.
This ship, at least, would certainly not be searched again. Just as the captain had said, this vessel was headed for Paradise. Only an idiot would hide on a ship like this. So Lillian — the "idiot" who had voluntarily come to Paradise — naturally fell into their blind spot.
Woo—woo—
At last, the ship's horn sounded. Lillian felt a jolt run through his body as the vessel finally began to move. He could feel the ship slowly leaving the harbor, settling slightly into the water, and setting off toward its destination.
Soon, a crewman came down into the storage room, opened two barrels, and took some bread upstairs — probably for breakfast. After he left, Lillian guessed no one would come down again for quite some time. He pushed open the lid above his head and climbed out of the barrel.
Crack, crack.
As he stretched, sharp popping sounds came from his joints. After being curled up inside the barrel all night, his whole body was aching terribly — so badly that he almost felt like crying.
Before transmigrating, Lillian had spent his days at home playing games, reading books, and slacking off. His greatest suffering had been nothing more than getting fatter and fatter.
But after coming here, he had first been shot in the head — that instant of pain and the blankness flooding his mind were still vividly etched in his memory. Then he had killed someone. Then he had spent the night hiding in a barrel like a rat. It was too miserable — far more than a shut-in like him could possibly bear.
Lillian sighed, recalling an old saying: people only have blessings they can't enjoy, never suffering they can't endure.
No matter how painful things were now, he still wanted to live. Perhaps this was simply humanity's instinct for survival.
Rubbing his eyes and putting aside his self-pity, he began to eat. He casually took a piece of bread and a can of meat from a barrel and squatted in the corner, eating while keeping his eyes fixed on the doorway. At the slightest sound outside, he would immediately hide again.
"Mmm… this is really good…"
Ordinary black rye bread and cured meat, together, tasted like supreme delicacies to Lillian. After eating the pig-feed-like food in the internment camp, anything tasted unbelievably good.
After finishing his meal and replenishing some energy, he felt his strength return a little.
When he had been killed that soldier earlier, he had gained one-third of the man's physique. Combined with his own, this had given his skinny-looking body nearly the strength of a grown adult, making him somewhat deceptive to enemies. Of course, when it came to fighting, avoiding it whenever possible was still the best choice.
Leaning against the corner, surrounded by nothing but sealed walls and pitch-black barrels, with not even a window in the storage room, Lillian's mood sank into deep oppression. He did not know how long the journey from Marley to Paradis Island would take, but one thing was certain — it would be a very hard stretch to endure.
"Sigh…"
Day after day at sea, as time passed, Lillian gradually figured out the regular times when the crew came down to fetch food. So except for those fixed periods, he could move around outside the barrels.
In this pitch-dark room, with no clock and no view of day or night, he could only judge the passage of time by how often the sailors came for supplies.
Fortunately, he did not suffer from claustrophobia. Otherwise, he would have gone mad long ago. Even so, the irritation and anger in his heart grew day by day, nearly to the point of exploding.
Finally, after more than half a month of sailing, the ship slowly came to a stop.
Lillian's spirits lifted. He stood up, walked to the door, pressed his ear against it, and listened carefully.
Footsteps, voices, crying, pleading…
Clearly, the Marleyan crew were bringing the escorted Eldians out. Bringing them out for what? That hardly needed to be said.
He did not act rashly. Only after everything outside had quieted down did Lillian gently pull the door open.
Outside was a staircase leading upward. He carefully climbed it and found that the ship's deck was already empty. The crew had all gone up onto the stone platform built around the island outside.
Through the porthole, he could see that the Eldians had their hands and feet bound with nylon ropes, kneeling on the high platform. Meanwhile, the Marleyan crew were laughing and joking. One of the sailors was opening a metal case, inside which were small bottles filled with spinal fluid and syringes for injection.
Lillian watched coldly. There were seven Marleyan crew members up there, but there was no way there were only this many people on the ship. So there had to be other crew members still aboard.
He withdrew his gaze and began searching the ship. Soon, he found a rest cabin. Inside were several sets of bunk beds, and five crew members were fast asleep.
Because ships sailed day and night without stopping, and the technological level of this world was still far from automatic navigation, the crew had to work in rotating shifts. These sleeping men were clearly the ones who had stood watch the previous night.
Glancing at the guns by the beds, Lillian took the pistol from his pocket and switched off the safety.
He crept into the room and went first to one soldier lying on the lower bunk. After a brief look, he pressed the muzzle of the gun against the man's heart. At the same time, with his other hand, he grabbed the blanket, covered the man's mouth, and pulled the trigger.
"Pfft!"
"Mmm!"
The soldier woke instantly, but no sound came out. He only felt the world spinning, breath failing him, and after a few seconds, he went still.
Lillian released him and repeated the same process on the other soldiers.
Very quickly, the five sleeping men in the cabin became five sleeping corpses.
Lillian had thought that doing something like this would be very difficult, but in reality, it was not. Perhaps because he had spent half a month alone in that dark storage room, the violence in his heart had steadily grown, and his mind had already become clear.
At this moment, when he killed, hatred was one reason. But another was that his condition for survival was to kill these people. So there was no need to hesitate or struggle — just strike.
Only two bullets remained in his pistol, but that was fine. The weapons of these five men were now in his hands, and besides pistols there were also automatic rifles.
There were still seven soldiers outside. Even with a surprise attack, using a pistol might fail, so he had to use an automatic rifle.
Although he did not know how to use one, this kind of weapon was not very difficult to operate. After all, he was not trying to become a sharpshooter — he only needed to hit people during close-range bursts. He picked one up, piled several blankets together in front of the muzzle as a physical silencer, carefully examined the structure, tried opening the front guard and turning off the safety, and then pulled the trigger.
Pfft pfft pfft pfft pfft!
Bullets flew out, and the recoil was stronger than that of the pistol, causing his arm to rise involuntarily, but he quickly pressed it back down. He changed his stance and tried a few more times, gradually finding a position that suited him.
"Very good."
It was not very difficult. He put the gun away and returned to the porthole, looking outside again.