Chapter 1003: Chapter 499: The Assault
Late at night.
Bright moonlight poured leisurely down from the resplendent starry vault above, draping the heaving sea with a veil of silver-white gauze.
The faint shadow of the merchant ship rocked far off in the depths of the night. Amid the fine sounds of waves breaking against reefs, an inconspicuous wooden boat had already slipped silently to shore, leaving a long compressed groove across the soft sand.
Taking advantage of the night, Xia Nan and the five members of Iron Rock Shield quietly arrived on Wildberry Cliff Island.
To minimize the chance of their plan being discovered ahead of time, they not only scheduled their action for the dead of night, but had also taken the disguised merchant ship they came with and circled the island widely in advance, arriving at the northwest side of Wildberry Cliff.
The terrain here was clearly much higher than on the island’s southeast side, and the shore was riddled with dangerous undercurrents and razor-sharp reefs.
In a sense, it amounted to natural terrain protection.
The Ebbtide Gang and the pirates clearly wouldn’t station too many guards on this side of the island.
Xia Nan and the others were precisely using the convenience of this terrain to infiltrate under cover.
As for those jagged reefs and whirling undercurrents... if the arrivals were only ordinary fishermen, they might be extremely dangerous.
But when the boat carried five senior adventurers who had already gained Professional Levels, they weren’t worth mentioning.
They didn’t even need Xia Nan to make any reminders with his own Perception Ability; Seli, the Human Ranger in charge of guiding the boat’s course, had already relied on her own experience to skirt every danger along the shore and bring the vessel steadily to rest on the beach.
After carefully erasing the traces left by their landing and hiding the boat deep inside a nearby sea cave as a contingency, the group quietly discussed their next move in the dark.
"Tsk, tsk, this band of pirates looks quite sizable!"
The Half orc Howl sprawled on the ground without the slightest regard for his image, his slightly clouded eyes gazing from afar at the distant lights flickering through the forest.
His captain, the hill dwarves Habi, clad in Heavy Armor, showed no surprise on the face beneath his barrel helm.
"Their ties with the Ebbtide Gang run deep. Many of them, back when they were in Suo Yu Bay, were just thugs and flunkies in the gang. Once they leave the harbor, they become pirates again—you can’t tell them apart."
To build a power base in the Southern Islands, especially in Suo Yu Bay, one of its core towns, and then gain a firm foothold—even for a small, commonplace organization—the resources required could only be described as staggering.
Under such circumstances, the underworld forces, or rather adventurers, naturally had to leverage their own strengths somewhat and use the vast, complex seas between the Southern Islands to earn some side income.
In a sense, the pirates they were about to face were practically the Ebbtide Gang’s black-gloved hand in the Outer Sea, specifically for dirty work.
There was no telling if they even shared the same leader.
They were in the middle of a mission and had no time to explain too much to the Half orc. Hapik hefted his Edged Hammer with one hand and turned his gaze to the Ranger Seli, who was alert to their surroundings, and asked:
"Well? Anything?"
Seli shook her head, her already sharp eyes seeming even more focused in the night.
"At least so far, everything is going smoothly. Nothing outside the plan has occurred."
"Next... we can move in a bit closer and start searching for Aurie’s cargo stash."
Their plan was advancing quite smoothly, so there was no need for any last-minute changes.
Xia Nan was still subtly kept out of the decision-making and not trusted by the teammates around him.
He didn’t particularly mind.
Because from the moment his feet left the boat and stepped onto the soil of Wildberry Cliff, his extremely keen Perception Ability had allowed him to faintly pick up a trace of a familiar scent in the air, there and gone.
He couldn’t be sure, but he silently raised his guard.
The group continued forward.
It was worth noting that, unlike the formations in the previous adventurer team—where he was either in the rear protecting the core or Wandering on the flank to react at any time—
this time, after some discussion with the members of the Iron Rock Shield Team, Xia Nan had been placed at the forward flank of the formation.
Half a body-length behind Dwarf Hapik, shoulder to shoulder in the same rank as the Half orc Howl, with Seli and the Dwarf Wanderer A Gu behind him.
On the surface, it didn’t seem problematic, but in practice he could be said to be surrounded by the members of Iron Rock Shield.
Any unusual move would be laid bare under their watchful eyes.
Xia Nan could understand; this was a relatively cautious formation born of their distrust toward him.
Yet precisely because they had arranged things this way, surrounding him, he inevitably began to consider what he would do in the worst-case scenario.
Mm, he would still have to deal with that Ranger first.
A seasoned, calm ranged attacker like that would be troublesome if left alive; she needed to be eliminated at the very start of the fight.
Fortunately, given her Professional role, her margin for error was low; her rather impressive agility was still nothing in the face of his Teeth Hunting.
Xia Nan was confident he could take her head within three seconds of battle erupting.
Next would be the Dwarf Wanderer A Gu.
Though the latter had a low presence and seldom spoke, in truth his degree of threat was second only to the Ranger Seli and he likewise needed to be dealt with first.
And Xia Nan’s Perception Attribute, which had already reached double digits, was precisely the bane of such a low-Level Ranger. If he seized the chance and used Gravity Control and Heavy Tide to launch a sudden assault before the other even sensed it, he ought to achieve a good result.
