Talia’s Candid Approach

Saranya understood that people rarely paid attention to individuals they didn’t know. People went to great lengths to dress, apply makeup, and adorn themselves with expensive luxuries, meticulously concerned with the impression their words and actions left on strangers. In reality, such efforts were mostly for their own satisfaction. Few truly cared about passersby, unless… those strangers approached with a specific agenda. And that was precisely the case with Talia! The dark-skinned beauty’s approach was straightforward, yet highly suspicious. Coupled with her claim of being a boatswain holding important duties on the ship, it was difficult not to suspect she was deliberately approaching them to gather information for Borok.

“Did Borok send you?”

“He did.”

Talia was remarkably frank, admitting it outright. Rather than being unskilled at deception, it seemed she simply didn’t bother with it, interacting with people purely through her wild, unvarnished nature.

“I know you three are tough to deal with,” she continued. “But chatting like this is nice. It’s just a conversation; we don’t necessarily have to fulfill Borok’s demands…”

“Just chatting…” Saranya scoffed. “Easy for you to say. With so many fellow sailors on board, why aren’t you chatting with them?”

“Well…”

Talia scratched her head, her face etched with helplessness.

“You’ve seen the men on this ship, haven’t you? A bunch of annoying idiots, their minds filled with thoughts of mating. Before you can even exchange a few words, they’re practically ready to jump on you. It’s utterly uninteresting…”

Saranya noticed a bandage wrapped around Talia’s hand, stained with brown blood. It appeared to be from a brawl with other sailors.

Truth be told, Talia’s attitude had been quite amiable so far. Faced with such a healthy and vibrant woman, it was genuinely hard to feel any aversion.

“By the way, aren’t you tired? This voyage is so long. How can you stand at attention like this the whole time?”

The female sailor grinned refreshingly, sweeping her brown curly hair that had fallen over her face back behind her ears. She then turned and dragged over four large wooden barrels.

Thump!

Thump!

Thump!

Thump!

Under the silent gaze of Saranya and the other two, Talia deftly inverted the barrels beside them. She then plopped down onto one, stretching her wheat-colored long legs out comfortably.

“Phew, hah…”

Given Talia’s repeated displays of friendliness, Saranya found it difficult to maintain her hostility. She nodded gently, lifted the petite Kaelan onto a barrel, and then sat herself between her master and Talia.

She was quite curious how Talia managed to live freely among a crew of Bloodsail Alliance men all by herself.

“Are you the only woman on this ship?”

“That’s right, isn’t it tough? But let me warn you, these little beasts on board are incredibly brazen!”

Talia spoke with a strange accent and an exaggerated tone, unknowingly making Saranya and Paresha’s lips curl into smiles.

“Oh, in what ways, specifically?”

“Oh, many! Like stripping your clothes while you’re asleep, or peeing on your bedding as a ‘first deposit’, or ganging up to trap you in a cabin and forcing you to share a room with burly men… Oh, and the simplest trick: adding things to your fish soup. Aphrodisiacs or laxatives are considered the best-case scenarios. Anything worse is mud, or sh—”

“Ugh—”

Kaelan’s face turned pale. She clapped a hand over her mouth, nearly toppling off the barrel. Saranya quickly wrapped an arm around her master, then glanced down at the dark sea below, frowning as she glared at Talia.

“Hahahahaha!”

Talia cackled, reaching out to swat at their bottoms. Saranya, holding her master, barely managed to dodge, but poor Paresha was not so lucky.

“Oof!”

With a sharp smack, the priestess clutched her rear, her face flushed as she glared furiously at the boisterous female sailor.

“Fortunately, that scoundrel Borok made me the boatswain. That’s why there are far fewer blind idiots around… far fewer…”

Talia’s smile suddenly vanished. She lowered her voice, the hoarseness in it becoming even more pronounced.

“When I first started out, I wasn’t working for the Bloodsail Alliance. Their people attacked us at sea, stole our ship, killed all the men, and the women were treated as their common property…”

“Animals.”

“Mhm, one of their animals, Borok, gave me a chance to establish myself with my own fists.”

Talia clenched her right fist, striking her left palm with a clear, sharp sound.

Though Talia tried her best to appear nonchalant, Saranya’s expression softened, a pang of sorrow welling within her.

As a female warrior who also fought with her own hands, Saranya deeply understood Talia’s plight.

At sea, especially for a woman like Talia, both dignity and status had to be earned inch by painful inch through blood and sweat. That process could not be described merely as ‘hardship’; more accurately, those experiences were undeniable nightmares that would haunt her for a lifetime.

Talia was sharp. She instantly read Saranya’s expression, her pupils contracting slightly, and her demeanor growing somber. She offered a bitter twist of her lips.

“Borok… I followed him, drifting at sea, and every day I faced either gales and waves, or the bulging crotches of men… Do you know that feeling? When you utterly despise someone, yet you can’t bring yourself to defy them…”

Saranya’s eyes flickered at her words.

“I, I also… Hiss—”

Before Saranya could finish, Kaelan pinched her sharply, making her gasp in pain. On the other side, Paresha spoke softly.

“So you and Borok…”

“Hey, don’t get the wrong idea! I merely respect him. I wouldn’t get involved with those smelly men in any other way!”

Perhaps feeling that revealing too much in front of outsiders would make her seem vulnerable, Talia quickly reined in her emotions. She slapped her thigh, a boisterous smile once again gracing her face.

“All that’s in the past now! I, Talia, am the boatswain of this ship, the ‘Monster’! This is my home, and Borok is my boss. So, if anyone dares to harm him or his ship, or harbors any ill intentions, don’t blame me for hanging them from the mast for three days and three nights before tossing them into the sea to feed the fish!”

Having declared this, Talia stretched leisurely on the barrel, her eyes narrowing contentedly. Yet, one eye subtly opened, casting a sidelong glance at Saranya.

Saranya pursed her lips, responding with silence.

Clearly, Talia’s words carried a double meaning: both a declaration of no intention to conflict with them, and a warning not to cause trouble on the ship.

“So?”

“So…”

Talia shrugged, proclaiming openly.

“My boss told me to come and spy on you, to see if you’re cooking up any schemes. So here I am. It’s my job; I can’t just not do it!”

Saranya slapped her forehead, sighing inwardly at the girl’s sheer honesty.

“As for you, tell me what you want to tell me. If you don’t want to, I’ll just go back and tell him you’re tight-lipped and I couldn’t get anything out of you! At most, he’ll call me useless a few times, but he won’t do anything to you.”

“Alright, alright…”

“Wait… you’re really not telling me anything?”

“Huh? You just said all that! Even if we *did* have a scheme, we wouldn’t tell you, would we?!”

“Oh, come on…”

Facing Saranya’s exasperated expression, Talia frustratingly clutched her head, vigorously rubbing her curly hair for a moment. Then, she leaped off the barrel, ready to depart.

“I’m off, I’m off!”

“See you around, Talia! Thanks for the barrels!”

“Heh heh… More friends are always better than more enemies, right?”

Hearing this, Saranya chuckled, then raised her voice to shout at the distant sailor.

“Are we truly friends?!”

“Friends!!”

Talia walked further away, shouting her reply and waving at them, her figure soon swallowed completely by the night.

****

The night had deepened, and the deck was gradually emptying. Talia had left an oil lamp for them before she departed, though Saranya couldn’t tell if it was intentional or if she had simply forgotten it.

“Shall we go too, Master?”

Saranya reached for Kaelan’s hand, only for Kaelan to swat it away. The little witch puffed out her cheeks, glaring at Saranya with a sour expression.

“Master… what’s wrong?”

“My Xiao Ya… seems to have been smiling a lot today… What could be the reason…?”

Seeing Kaelan’s icy expression, Saranya’s heart sank.

That’s right, her master loathed her expanding her social circle without permission. Ordinarily, even Saranya’s emotions were strictly managed by her master, and making friends—such an illicit act—directly crossed her master’s red line.

“I didn’t, I didn’t, Master!”

“There’s hardly anyone here… How about we have a long-overdue s*ave lesson, and Master personally leads you… for a stroll around the deck? You can even set an example for our little pervert Paresha…”

“Ugh!”

Saranya pulled a long face, shaking her head frantically in fright.

“No, Master, please… Paresha! Paresha, you should try to persuade her…”

She had intended to ask Paresha to intercede with her master, but the moment the priestess opened her mouth, Saranya’s lingering hope died completely.

“Lady Kaelan… are we *really* strolling?”