Chapter 83
83
*
The disappearance of the test subject placed Hugh Gun Hunter under immense psychological pressure. The fact that Viktor Dumpelt was the one who took her made it an even more serious problem.
Viktor Dumpelt was the variable in all of this. He hadn't anticipated that he would keep Scarlett under guard the whole time, and that he himself would hover around her.
Hugh Gun Hunter needed to find a way to break through this situation. Perhaps the time had come to give up on Scarlett Crimson's technological prowess. Viktor must have already realized the experiments that had been conducted to use this drug.
Hugh Gunther checked the photos of Scarlett Crimson that the Royal Police had in their possession. They were photos secretly taken of her inside the clock shop.
When Hiram was with the Royal Police, it was easy for Royal Police officers disguised as customers to infiltrate the store, but that was no longer possible. Hiram seemed to have no intention of cooperating with the Royal Police anymore, and because he was so familiar with the Royal Police's patterns, it wasn't easy to handle things quietly.
Hugh Gun Hunter, who had been fiddling with the photos, handed them to his subordinate, who had entered the office.
"Put these photos in the newspaper. Make them big."
"The photos, sir?"
When the subordinate looked puzzled, Hugh Gunther said,
"The pirates are grinding their teeth, looking for a way to get revenge on Viktor Dumpelt."
"Ah... yes, I understand."
If these photos were published, the pirates would immediately recognize Scarlett's appearance and her location. After that, the pirates would handle the rest relatively easily.
It was unfortunate for Scarlett Crimson, but it was currently the best way to divert Viktor Dumpelt's attention.
No sooner had his order been given than Scarlett's face was printed in the morning newspaper the next day.
*
Scarlett woke up at five o'clock as always and continued her usual routine. She was waiting for the newspaper when she heard Julie, who delivered the newspaper, shouting from afar.
"Miss Scarlett! There's a picture of you!"
At the excited voice, Scarlett's eyes widened and she took the newspaper. Sure enough, Scarlett's face was in the newspaper.
"It's true..."
"Everyone on 7th Avenue is amazed! Oh, I have to go!"
"Okay, thank you!"
After Julie, who was always busy, left, Scarlett checked her face again and tilted her head.
"Did Andrei put it in? If it was Isaac, he would have told me..."
It would still be quite a while before Andrei came to work. Scarlett already felt frustrated, wondering how she could wait until he arrived.
She went back to the second floor, spread the newspaper on her workbench, and wondered why her face was in the newspaper, reading the article. Then she heard Liv's voice from across the room.
"Scarlett! Your face is in the newspaper!"
"Yeah. I see that."
Scarlett made a troubled expression. She checked the title of the article and her expression darkened.
[Come to Crimson Clock Shop.]
Scarlett was not only embarrassed by the clock shop advertisement that she had never placed, but also felt a great sense of unease.
"Did I... do it again?"
Whenever something happened that she didn't remember, she suspected her own memory first.
Scarlett stared at the newspaper for a long time, trying to recall if she had ever placed this advertisement. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't remember ever doing so.
"This is driving me crazy, really..."
Scarlett muttered and covered her face with her hands. Still, she had a lot of work to do, so she pushed the newspaper aside and started working.
She hardly heard any sounds when she was focused on her work, so she didn't know about the commotion outside until later. It was only when she noticed that the store was full of smoke that she was surprised and got up.
"Scarlett!"
She heard Liv calling her name from outside, and someone running up to the second floor.
Scarlett felt dizzy and staggered, then spotted masked men opening the window and entering through the smoke. As they pulled Scarlett and put a cloth soaked in medicine over her mouth, two young men in naval uniforms ran up the stairs and shouted.
"Where are you!"
Before she could think about what was going on, one of the masked men hoisted Scarlett over his shoulder and jumped out the window.
The masked men had ropes attached to their waists, so they ran vertically down the wall and headed behind the building. As they got closer to the ground, they cut the ropes, landed on the ground, and started running. And as they ran through the alley, Scarlett lost consciousness.
*
When Scarlett opened her eyes again, she saw the high ceiling of a factory. As she groaned and raised her upper body, pirates gathered around her and looked down at her.
The Salantie court allowed pirates to live in the capital, but marked them so that people could recognize them.
The pirates tattooed their bodies every time they killed someone, and marked them in red if they killed a navy officer. The navy executed pirates who killed civilians on the spot, but pirates who only killed navy officers were not executed and were sent to prison.
Those caught on pirate ships had their right eyes removed and were forced to wear gold prosthetic eyes. It was meant to mark pirates who liked gold coins.
Children under the age of fifteen were exempt from the punishment, so the sounds of sixteen-year-olds and their parents crying in despair could be heard far outside the execution ground.
It was around that time that they learned that pirates had a drug that could make eyes grow back from the beginning.
In Salantie, pirates were never allowed to cover their eyes. Thinking about it now that I know about the drug, I realized that if they couldn't cover their eyes, they would be caught if they used the drug.
Scarlett forced herself to sit up. She was dizzy from the drug and fell back to the floor. She heard voices from above.
It was difficult to understand because it was not Salantie language but Bestina, but most of the words could be inferred because the words that were heard in between were almost pronounced similarly.
A man with gold prosthetic eyes who had walked from afar shouted.
"The captain never negotiates with pirates, you know that!"
"But Harold! I'm only eighteen years old now. I have to live with these gold eyes for the rest of my life!"
Scarlett couldn't breathe properly because of the acrid smell coming from the factory.
The young men spoke in turns.
"I'm only going to ask them to let me use the medicine on this eye. I don't think Viktor will give up anything great for this girl."
"Sean!"
"I was young and didn't know anything! I just grew up watching what the adults did, and I grew up thinking that being a pirate was the coolest job, and that's how I ended up like this!"
"You guys are putting our entire island community in the capital in danger!"
Harold shouted, but the young men didn't listen.
Scarlett's head seemed to be paralyzed with fear, but she tried to figure out the situation somehow.
She crawled across the factory floor and huddled in a corner. And she covered her mouth with both hands to keep from screaming, and her whole body trembled.
Harold cursed repeatedly at the sight. Then he brought a mat and covered Scarlett with it.
The factory was dark. Most of the pirates lived by begging, but the income of the pirates who threatened the waters off Salantie was not much. If they were lucky, they could find work as tanners, but that was rare. And now, the young men here seemed to be renovating this abandoned factory and selling drugs made from things brought from the pirate island.
Scarlett saw the old, stopped machines. Most of them were steam-powered, and the pirates were using the machines at their discretion in ways that had nothing to do with their intended purpose. In particular, they were stirring some kind of unknown herb in a huge pot that seemed to be boiling something.
Scarlett felt dizzy from the smell and leaned her head against the wall.
"It smells bad..."
Whether he heard her voice or not, a young man called Sean took a handful of medicinal herbs and held them in front of Scarlett's face, saying.
"You know what this is, right? It's the medicine used on your brother's eyes. Do you know how much medicine was used on that bastard?"
Scarlett shook her head, trembling. Sean said.
"I don't know what route you got it through, but you have to use three sacks of the medicine over there to make one bottle of that potion. He poured it all in, so his eyes healed so quickly. Ten of us could have healed our eyes with that potion."
Scarlett nodded with difficulty.
Sean pushed her back into the corner and got up.
"Viktor Dumpelt should be here soon. The guards he put on us saw us."
Only then did Scarlett remember the navy officers who had run up to the second floor earlier, and realized that Viktor had been guarding her all along.
She was leaning against the wall, barely catching her breath. Suddenly, the grinder that was grinding the herbs stopped.
"Oh, what do we do?"
The young man was horrified and checked the engine that wasn't turning. If this broke down, they wouldn't be able to make most of the drugs that the pirates distributed in the future.
Since sometimes the answer to old machines was to hit them, the young man walked over and kicked the engine of the machine. And whether the kick worked or not, the engine made a rattling sound and started moving.
However, the kick caused the engine to shift, and nearby hay was sucked into the engine, and smoke started coming out of the machine. At the same time, a young man who was inside the grinder to check the turbine because the grinder was not turning also screamed.
"Aaaaaah!"
The screw of the huge grinder began to turn. The pirate who kicked the engine hurriedly tried to turn off the machine, but whether there was a problem when he kicked it, it did not turn off even when he flipped the switch.
As the huge screw in the grinder moved with a loud noise, the young man screamed even louder. The pirates nearby ran over in a frenzy and tried to push the screw with poles, but it didn't stop. It was a mess in an instant.