Shrouded Seascape

Everyone turned to Wrench, including Captain Klaus. When Klaus saw Wrench's sneer, he drew his large-caliber flintlock and blew the man's brains out. It had to be done. He couldn't let the situation spiral out of control.

Clap, clap, clap!

Klaus' clapping attracted everyone's attention.

"Are you guys my crew or not? How come you guys are already terrified when things aren't actually so bad? Where was that energy you had when you followed me to confront that thing back then?!

"Regardless of whatever the hell is going on, don't even think about surrendering before it! We're not even afraid of death, so why should we be afraid of what's going on?"

Sensing the churning emotions of his crew, Klaus added, "So what if we have to stay here for ten years? The ship is our home. Being here is the same as being at home! Don't people normally settle in their homes?

"We will never starve, we will never get tired, and we will never die! We won't even grow old. It's like the next ten years have been granted to us for free. Isn't that a good thing? I'm sure some people outside will be jealous of us."

Klaus turned to his crew and called them out one by one.

"Huck, haven't you always said that you wanted to learn how to read, but you simply don't have the time to do so? Now, you have ten years to learn how to read! You can definitely take your sweet time with it!"

The crew members looked at each other and eventually calmed down. Upon hearing Klaus' words, they felt like they had been blowing things out of proportion.

Klaus' words were effective.

The crew followed his advice and calmly faced the time loops together. They treated each time loop as a day. One day, they would gather to come up with a solution to their predicament. The next day, they would do their own business.

The illiterate crew members decided to learn how to read with the help of their literate companions. The crew learned cooking from the cook, and they also learned how to treat illnesses from the ship's doctor.

As long as it could relieve their boredom, they wouldn't hesitate to do it. They even welcomed Lily's teachings, and Lily taught them even the highly advanced knowledge that she had learned from the academy.

Time passed just like that, and they spent the next two years in peace. However, it also meant that they had spent the last two years searching for a solution only to come up with nothing.

In the end, the crew started subconsciously rejecting the idea of looking for a solution. In the third year, the crew began to feel fed up and started looking for other things to do to relieve their boredom.

At this point, everyone knew the location of every single book on the ship, including Lily's romance novels. By the fourth year, they began making up their own stories upon almost memorizing every single book on the ship.

At first, Lily persevered and joined them, but her cheerful self gradually became more and more withdrawn as time went on. The ruthless passage of time was eroding her heart.

Regardless of Lily's feelings, the time loop continued. When they ran out of stories to tell, the crew began realizing ideas that they had thought of before but had never dared to try until now.

For example, stripping naked and jumping into the pitch-black seawater, setting the fuel and ammunition hold on fire.

Lily could also feel furtive gazes on her, but no one dared to do anything to her—for now. In addition, Captain Klaus was trying his best to maintain some semblance of stability despite the fact that the crew's actions were becoming more and more absurd.

In the sixth year, everyone no longer thought about finding a way to escape their predicament. In the seventh year, the crew began harming themselves, using intense pain to relieve their boredom.

However, Klaus didn't stop them, knowing that his words many years ago were just a way to delude himself. In the eighth year, the crew's self-harming actions became even more serious. They started looking for unique methods to harm themselves, such as swallowing an entire gallon of red fuel.

By the ninth year, however, the crew's mood finally began to improve.

The ten-year deadline mentioned by Wrench was nigh.

Since their mind and sanity would always reset upon the start of a new time loop, they hadn't been able to go crazy. However, they really couldn't hold on much longer.

Interestingly, the crew members were worried about forgetting the passage of time, but it turned out that all of them had been secretly keeping track of it in their hearts.

They were like prisoners who were aware of how many days were left until they were released. Just like that, a new time loop began. Everyone was transported to the deck once again, but this time around, they were extremely excited.

Everyone knew—they knew that they had at most three more time loops before they could finally leave.

"Three!" the crew members shouted at the top of their lungs as if they wanted to yell out the emotions that had been accumulating within them over the past ten years.

"Two!" the crew members roared and fell to their knees.

"One!!" Lily roared along with the crew. Her face was flushed red with excitement.

When they found themselves on the deck once again, Lily took to the skies and cleared the snow in the air. Everyone then rushed to the bridge, and all of them were laughing wildly, including Lily.

At this moment, they were no different from Wrench ten years ago. Only those who had undergone the same torment as them could understand just how depressing it was to be stuck in the same time loop for ten years.

They couldn't die even if they wanted to, and they couldn't go crazy as well. The harrowing experience truly left everyone on the brink of collapse, or perhaps they would have collapsed had it not been for the time loop resets.

"Chief Engineer! Overload the engines!! Turn around! We. Are. Leaving. This damned place!" Klaus roared into the communication pipe.

"Wait! We can't leave yet," Lily rushed up to Klaus and shouted, "We still haven't reached our destination!"

"No!!" Klaus immediately rejected Lily's request. "I have to be responsible for my crew! And no one knows what lies ahead. Do you want to go through that hellish torment again?!"

Lily's mouth fluttered open, but she couldn't say a word. Lily struggled between the ten-year hellish torment and Charles. Upon weighing both options in her heart, she finally made a decision. "We just have to avoid the snow!"

However, Klaus could no longer be bothered to pay any attention to Lily. "Chief Engineer! Overload the engines, I said! Did you not hear me?!"

However, he received no response from the people in the engine room.

Everyone's hearts sank, and extreme fear engulfed them at once.

Someone went down to the engine room, and they returned quickly to report amidst their mournful sobbing. "Boss! The guys in the engine room are still frozen in! We're still in a time loop!!!"

Everyone present almost keeled over upon hearing that.

Tears streamed down Lily's cheeks, but the tears couldn't wash away even the slightest bit of the despair in her heart.

Everyone turned slowly, like robots, toward a small snow mound on the deck outside.

Wrench was beneath the mound, completely buried by the heavy snow.