Skeleton Pirates

"Son of a bitch!" Wang Lui cursed at the skeleton. And he was hit harder by Plumo this time.

Wang Lui, who was already brewing with fury, struggled until the chains broke off his body.

His fellow prisoners were astonished by this, Birdie was able to find humor in this and Stoneman blinked with his jaw touching the floor.

Wang Lui was as startled as everyone else, unable to comprehend how the chains left his body like that. It seemed as though the pressure of the strike caused him to tap into a hidden power and he was able to break off his chains to fight back against Plumo.

When Plumo lunged at him for the third time, his hands were able to capture the blade before he could decipher what was happening.

With this, Wang Lui pushed the sword, rearward until it stuck in the space between Plumo's ribs.

Plumo struggled to draw the sword but it was futile because Wang Lui's grip on it was firm. They wrestled with the sword through their hold on it, until Wang Lui followed his instincts by loosening his grip on the sword. And Plumo not only went crashing to the wooden floor, his bones ripped apart from their joints. And this was the end of him.

A low hiccuping chuckle could be heard from Birdie before he burst into a peal of raucous laughter. He was amused by the quick occurrence.

While Stoneman looked at Wang Lui who was breathing heavily.

"Do you have powers? Mere mortals cannot break off chains from their bodies."

"I have not the slightest idea of what just happened." Wang Lui responded. He still couldn't wrap his head around the fact that he was in this unknown place with a Stoneman and a bird boy.

Wang Lui who had just taken off his blindfold, expecting to see the panorama in front of him, only to be greeted with total darkness. The tension was mounting.

"Why is it so dark in here?" He asked Stoneman.

"Dark? What do you mean by that? It's bright outside. We're at the bottom of the ship but sunlight is streaming in through the small partings and holes above us."

"I can't…see anything." God, was he really blind? Not only did he discover this wavering hidden power within himself, he was now in a mysterious and entirely dark realm.

"Something strange is going on with my eyes, I can't see anything but I can feel things with them," Wang Lui panicked.

"You don't mean that, do you?" Stoneman questioned.

"I'm fucking serious, damnit!" Wang Lui was wondering if there was more condition than his lack of sight. If he had some sort of extra-sensory perception.

Stoneman crept close to Wang Lui before holding his stony fingers up to his face.

"How many fingers do you see?"

"None. But I can feel the weight of your hand in my face."

Stoneman's jaw dropped when he saw Wang Lui's eyes for the first time. They lacked pupils.

"Did you get into a duel with a demon and they stole your sight?" He inquired.

Wang Lui didn't say anything else, it seemed as though his world was crumbling beneath his feet.

If he was truly blind then the whole robotic package thing was true. And the ominous voice in his head earlier?

How did he end up being captured by skeleton pirates? Sailing through the Median Sea in a cage with Stoneman and Birdie?

The whole situation was becoming increasingly perplexing. He felt overwhelmed and disoriented. Like he was having a nightmare where everything was strange and nothing made sense.

Talk more about how the chains easily detached from his body, something which was entirely impossible to happen.

Wang Lui jolted out of his thoughts when more skeleton pirates found their way in and upon seeing Plumo's bones on the floor, they went haywire. Started surrounding the cage with their swords and daggers.

"What's going on?" Wang Lui, who had heard their eerie cries and tossing swords, asked.

"It's the Skeleton pirates, they just figured Plumo is gone. I won't say dead because he was just bones resurrected by black magic." Stoneman provided, terrified.

It was at that moment an exasperated, cracking skeleton slid his sword through the cage to stab Birdboy, but Wang Lui who was able to sense this, shoved Birdboy down with a stomp of his foot on Birdboy's back.

The skeletons made a grating sound as they tried to injure them through the space between the iron bars. Until one of them was able to pierce Wang Lui's stomach with his sword.

Pain smashed in his gut at first, and as he gritted his teeth in agony, veins bulge out along his forehead as sparkling white blood spilled out from his stomach.

Wang Lui wished to awaken from his terrifying dream in which he was blinded, and was with strange creatures, as he appeared to be losing his wits. Still, his hands caught the blade and he was able to pull it out of his stomach, and his wound healed almost immediately.

Wang Lui was taken aback when he touched his stomach and discovered the fresh sword wound had vanished. Nor did he feel pain anymore.

He had some kind of mysterious self-healing power too?

Stoneman crawled, ripping stones off his body and using them on any Skeleton who came close enough to hurt him and Birdboy continued to tumble and dodge as more swords were thrown at him.

"I need to get out of here," Wang Lui's voice was loud after he had dodged another intended sharp blade cut.

"You or the three of us? We're in this situation together, remember?" Stoneman paused to stare at Wang Lui with absolute disbelief.

Wang Lui who was naturally selfish and self-centered, thought about only himself even though he was in a life-or-death situation with Stoneman and Birdboy.

"It's none of my business if anything happens to you two or you remain trapped in here."

"How could you be so self-centered when you're the blind one here?" Stoneman inquired.

Wang Lui was the one who couldn't see, yet he was being willfully blind and oblivious to the needs of others.

He was able to push some skeleton away from his side of the cage, and then his hands gripped the iron bars when he felt a wide range of emotions as an extraordinary sort of might surge through his veins.

The cage was uprooted in a matter of seconds and the impact drove the skeletons in front of it, flying and bashing into nearby wooden walls.

Birdboy was the first to fly out, and Wang Lui rolled on the floor, avoiding the spares and daggers aimed at him until his hand found the wooden stairs and he was able to climb to the top of the ship.

There, over sixty skeleton pirates were waiting. Wang Lui could tell because of how unusually quiet the place was, save for the sound of the ship cruising on the sea. He wondered how they had a Skeletal steersman slash captain who could drive. If the situation had been different, Wang Lui would've thrown himself on the floor and had a good laugh himself.

During Wang Lui's short period of studying Osteology in his past life, he learned that bones sunk deep into the seabed, meaning if the Skeletons were thrown into the sea, they would easily die because Skeletons couldn't swim. It didn't matter if they were revived by Black magic, they were already too dense.

"Fire scares them off," Stoneman said. When he struck his palm on a harder edge of hard stone on his torso, sparks flew and fire erupted.

Wang Lui ignored Stoneman and proceeded to push skeletons into the sea, the ones who lunged at him with swords, spares, and daggers.

This went on until the ship was completely empty, leaving just Wang Lui and Stoneman. And Birdboy who had been liberated flew above them.