Chapter 1471: The Pen
Stephen had recently been the victim of a military ambush, attacked by an armada of soldiers belonging to the Rurian kingdom.
He had only left Rumgrave for a few days when he had been ambushed, which came as a surprise to Stephen as he had not heard anything about the military moving.
He was a pretty wanted man in the Rurian kingdom for killing and pillaging many of its coastal cities, so he understood why they wanted to kill him.
The armada came with a lot of ships, which opened fire on his ship and his crews.
Without hesitation, Stephen rode away as fast as he could. The others had followed him for almost an entire day before darkness took over them as fogs roiled from all sides onto their ships.
It was no regular fog.
A monster began attacking both Stephen and every other ship that was following him.
The monster was so strong that one by one, it destroyed all the ships in the Armada. He didn’t know if he was lucky or what, but the monster left his ship as the last one to be destroyed.
However, by that time the monster itself was very tired and wounded.
Stephen and the two other pirates that remained on his ship used their cannons and managed to kill the giant monster.
When the monster died, something fell onto their deck.
A golden pen.
Without even looking at it, every one of the three people on that ship knew exactly what it was.
A Zurin Treasure.
One of the two other men rushed toward the pen first, but before he could reach for it, the other man pulled out his gun and shot him in the head.
When he did that, Stephen got the chance to pull his gun and point it at the remaining man, killing him with a single shot.
Stephen put back the gun into its holster and took the pen, quickly activating it to see what it did. As the knowledge of the pen came to his mind, his eyes shined with glee.
He quickly drew an illusory circle in the air with the pen. Once he completed it, he decided to leave.
Just as he was about to, he heard some footsteps and saw a few people walk aboard the ship.
Stephen frowned when he realized that it was members of the navy, one of the people there being the captain of one of the ships who had survived its capsizing.
Stephen pulled his pistol out and immediately the rest of the navy pulled their pistol on him as well.
“No funny business. You are all soaked and your guns don’t work. I can kill you one by one if I want to,” Stephen said. “But I won’t. My crew is dead, and I need people to help me row this ship. Will you help me?”
“Kill him!” the captain ordered.
When the people started shooting, Stephen realized that he had been mistaken about their guns being soaked. It worked as well as they could have wanted it to.
Stephen was soon riddled with bullets as he fell to the ground. And as the world swayed around him, he stood still, stunned, with his pen in his hand having just finished making the circle.
Stephen took a step back. He looked around him. The ship was empty, except for the two corpses that were next to him. The man he killed, and the other man who died to that man.
He breathed rapidly as he understood what had happened. The pen had worked. He had gone back to the time when he completed making the circle, just as the pen had said he would have.
The pen gave Stephen the ability to set a secure spot in space and time which he could return to should he ever be killed.
Which meant, that he was practically unkillable.
He looked around, realizing that if Time had gone back as he had thought, he knew what would happen next.
Just as he thought, people walked onto the ship, all of them pulling their guns on him.
“Hey! We can talk. We don’t have to—”
He was killed again. And once again, Stephen returned to the point where he had just finished making the circle.
Without waiting, he ran to the side of the boat and saw people crawling up with the help of some ropes that dangled on that side.
Stephen pulled out his pistol and started shooting at the men. Soon, he killed them all, including the captain.
Then, it was time to leave. Only, the ship was stuck in the middle of many floating debris and he could not tread through these waters on his own.
He needed help, and currently, everyone was dead. There was no way for him to leave this place on his own.
“Goddammit!” he shouted. He tried to make the ship move, but the pirate ship was not one where he could do everything by himself. He needed manpower, manpower he had just shot himself.
“Fuck it!”
He pulled out his gun and shot himself in the head. Time turned back once again, sending him back to when he had just finished making the circle.
He quickly walked to the side and saw the people coming up the side of the ship once again.
This time, instead of confronting them, he went and hid himself.
The people came up, looked around, and found him. He died once again, repeating the whole thing again.
This time, he hid himself in a different place and managed to remain hidden long enough that the people began pulling the ship out of the treacherous water toward life.
The journey was a long one, and Stephen reset his location in Time and Space once again by making a circle where he had hidden.
Should he die again, he would return to this moment and not the other one where he would have to restart all over again.
Now that he had done this, he decided to go do some interrogation.
He died multiple times, got captured, and tortured, and each time he came back and did it all over again. By the time he had the admiral pinned to the ground, a gun over his head, he had died nearly 20 different times now.
The Admiral spilled his guts, telling Stephen how it was Yolan who gave him up. He worked closely with the Rurian Kingdom and passed along messages from time to time to help them know things in advance.
Stephen got more information about the treasure Yolan had received and how it was something that belonged to the Rurian kingdom.
To Stephen, Yolan of the Greenskull pirates was someone he could not confront or attack, especially without any pirates of his own now.
However, now that he learned who was responsible for sending an armada after him, he wouldn’t sit by until he saw Yolan dead.
Once he made the decision, he killed himself to make it so that he never met the admiral.
The ship arrived somewhere, and it took Stephen 5 tries to get off the ship without being seen. After a few days, he left that place to go to another place where the pirates visited from time to time.
He got onto their boat, sneaking in for the 9th time before they headed off to Rumgrave.
In Rumgrave, he went to stay in Stillwater’s hotel where he would not be searched for. He had stolen enough gold that he could afford 5 days at least.
Then, he began planning on what he would do.
Telling people that Yolan was a turncoat would not be enough. He would need proof, which was the treasure he had received from the Rurian Kingdom.
Stephen had to steal just that treasure. But to steal treasure from the Greenskull pirates without being seen was an impossible task.
Still, he had to try.
In Stillwater’s penthouse, he set up his return location and began his task.
Stephen died over 50 times that day before realizing that there was simply no way for him to sneak into the Greenskull pirate’s place that day.
He would have to try another day.
The next day, he tried again, dying 45 times before giving up.
Then he tried it again on the 3rd day. By the 3rd day, Stephen had learned about something unusual happening in the town with some new arrivals.
They did not concern him much, but thanks to their appearance, the town was in enough chaos that it let him sneak around the place without any fear.
Even the Greenskulls were in shambles allowing him to sneak in more easily.
Stephen killed himself nearly 60 times this time before figuring out how he could sneak into the rooms without being seen.
He even got caught in a few more traps before realizing where the flute was and how to get it.
Finally, on his 79th try that day, Stephen found the flute. He held it in his hand, grinning as if it would bring the downfall of the man who tried to kill him.
He pulled out his pen and walked over to the door before activating the trap that let everyone know he was there.
Then, he clicked the top of the pen.
The pen had 2 functions, the second of which Stephen rarely had to use.
The first function was of course the ability to return in time to where he had set up his checkpoint. But the other ability was for it to allow him to consciously teleport back to the location he chose.
This did not allow him to go back in time, but he could teleport out of the dark room he was in, and with him, he took away the flute.
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