As they approached the slavers' ships, they started preparing ropes with hooks to make sure boarding went well. The moment they were in range, Ars soldiers quickly launched themselves in, slaughtering every single slaver they could find.
The slavers who were used to getting their slaves given in cuffs, and not used to fighting were all quickly shredded to pieces, Ars didn't need to get involved. The ship was painted in red and so were Ars soldiers.
Ars looked at his soldiers with smiles that almost looked like they were put there artificially, it was unsettling considering they were completely covered in blood, he then ordered, "Check the ship for hidden slavers and any kind of merchandise, I will check the captain's room!"
"Yes, Sir!" His men quickly went to search, feeling invigorated from getting their revenge on the slavers. Even if they weren't the ones that took their friends and families in the past, it was a good way to blow off some steam.
When he entered the room he immediately saw an unconscious female tied on the bed, but he decided to ignore it and went to search for the money, hoping it was a lot of money.
After all, if she didn't wake up with all that noise, she was either dead, deaf or faking it. As he kept searching she suddenly tried to put herself into a position where she could look at him and commented "If you're searching for the money it's under the bed."
He went to check and it was true, there was a small suitcase of gold, then he looked at her and questioned her "And who are you???"
"Just someone who knows how to use her body to survive, it's better to be used by that scum than to be sold to some fat pig who might kill me for sports… Can you let me off on a different island??"
Ars didn't see a problem with letting her on a different island, there were a few on the way home so he nodded and left to speak with his men.
Under bed he found several suitcases, some full of gold, others were useless miscellaneous stuff, he wasn't exactly thrilled to find gold since he would prefer to find berries to gold ingots. Now he had to go somewhere, so he could change the gold into berries, so he could use the money to buy stuff for the kingdom.
But first he would go back and meet the bar woman once more, to ask her to group people so he could take them back easier.
They returned, now with 3 ships instead of 2, now with only their soldiers, it was starting to be a challenge to properly maneuver the 3 ships, he didn't bring enough sailors for operating a large number of ships, so now they were stretched thin among the ships.
They anchored the ships once more and Ars went back to land. There he realized that the bar woman had already started gathering people for him to take back to his place.
He looked at her and tried to continue his previous conversation "Before you didn't get the opportunity to tell me the number of people that would be happy to leave, do you have an idea of the numbers?"
She looked at him, nodded and then started making mental calculations. After a few seconds she answered " Probably below 500 but over 400, it's hard to have exact numbers, due to our circumstances…"
Ars nodded, it was probably hard to keep track of everyone in this situation, especially when nobles could come and take people without warning, even if normally they would only come when slavers had arrived there was no guarantee that it was always like that.
Ars looked at his ships, he knew it was impossible to take everyone in a single trip. He looked back at her and explained the situation.
"We only have 3 ships, so we can't take everyone on this trip. Each ship can take about 75 people at maximum, so it might take 2 or 3 trips, so it's better to decide between yourselves who will go first."
They had also already realized that problem, before they thought they only had 2 ships, but now they had 3 so it was already good news for them. Even before Ars said anything to them, they already were planning to divide themselves in 3 groups, but now with the extra ship, maybe 2 groups would be enough.
They had decided to let the youngest members go first, since they were the nobles' favorite prey.
The First group was made of 218 members, they slowly got transported back to the 3 ships, when done, Ars looked at the bar woman and warned her.
"Next time I won't be the one coming to pick you guys up, most likely will be one of my men, his name is Rook. Also our place is around a week away on normal conditions, so you might have to wait from 2 weeks to one month for him to arrive." She looked a bit depressed by the news, but she knew the nobles most likely wouldn't hunt for a while since the slavers were annihilated, so she regained her calm.
"I understand we will stay safe and hidden for a while and we will wait for your men to come back." She answered and then started going back to her bar along with a few people from the crowd. Ars also went back to his ship, after that he prepared to depart in the direction of Lvneel Kingdom to change the gold for Berries, to buy provisions and to leave the female that he found in the captain's room.
They departed slowly due to the lack of trained soldiers, but the trip was mainly uneventful, they saw a pirate ship, but the pirate ship avoided them, having 3 ships served as a deterrent to most pirates who had a single one, at least the ones who were on the weaker side.
Once they arrived at the Lvneel Kingdom they docked and Ars and 2 of his men carried the gold to a jewelry store, to sell it for money, the female Ars found in the captain's room thanked him and also left.
He went to the shop where he acquired over 40.000.000 berries. Ars tried to negotiate for a bit more but didn't manage to convince the shop manager to raise the price by much.
With the money in hand, they returned to the ship and brought a few more people with them to buy provisions to take them back to his kingdom. While they were shopping for the provisions, Ars discovered a full body suit that covered everything, in the description of that suit it read 'this suit will block 99.9% of light, good for blocking the sun and maintaining a constant temperature.'
He remembered someone who could use the suit in the past, but they were dead now… But then he started thinking about the rules from the time machine, the rules said he couldn't bring back people that weren't near their death, but never said anything about interacting with them and trying to change their fate. He thought about it and decided to buy it, at worst he would lose a few thousand berries.
With everything bought, Ars returned to his ship, looked at his men and ordered "Set sail for home! "
"Yes, Sir!" his sailors answered excitedly, they couldn't wait to get home and boast to the others who stayed behind guarding the island, about their battles.
Ars was also excited about returning, after returning he could send Rook to pick up the rest of the people who stayed on the island. After all, he wanted to get his future citizens out of that horrible situation, as fast as he could. And he was also looking forward to introducing Lily to her mother.
Ars had also decided to try an experiment with his pocket dimension, he was going to try to bring someone else inside. If he could, maybe he would be able to improve not only his potential but also the potential of those who were loyal to him, and he could also cure almost any sickness, since the computer could research and apply the solution at superior speeds compared to humans, maybe it would take a day at maximum to cure most sicknesses, and maybe just a little bit more on the really complicated ones.
They managed to return to their home island, in just a week's worth of time. They had gotten slightly delayed by a storm, it wasn't anything serious, but it ended up delaying them by a day or two, since they chose not to risk it, and decided to avoid it.
When they arrived, Ars was pleasantly surprised by what he saw, apparently Tom, Oak and the rest of the building team at started to build docks and a shipyard on the bay close to where they normally anchored their ships, it was still only able to properly dock one ship but it was an improvement and more was still being built.
Since they now had a dock they decided to use it and let the civilians that they brought disembark there faster instead of using small boats to take 2 or 3 people at a time, they would also bring people to get most of the provisions from the ship to the city and then let the next ship dock and repeat until all civilians were on land. Ars intended to leave only enough provisions to go get the people behind on the island, and come back.
Ars looked around for Rook until he spotted him and then signaled him to come speak to him. Rook saw this and quickly approached.
"Your majesty, welcome back."
First, Ars quickly asked about any event that may have happened while he was gone. "Did something important happen while I was gone?"
Rook shook his head, and Ars continued "Ok, good! Two more things, while on the trip, we fought pirates and slavers, durin…." Before Ars could finish, Rook interrupted him "Did someone die or get injured?"
Ars shook his head and continued "No, no one got hurt it was completely one sided, if they got hurt it was too light to care, also instead of two, i have three things to say… First, like I was saying before while we were fighting I realized that, at the start the men had quite the stiff movements, so I decided to add sparring to the training list. Second, Koral has apprentices for what i remembered, from now on, take at least one on the trip in case someone gets injured, even if they are only apprentices, anything that could save lives will help, and finally third, i need you to prepare yourself to depart as soon as possible, we left another group of refugees behind, because the original group was too big. The ones who stayed behind are in a bad situation, and the quicker we get them out of it, the better. "