Some of the ex-knights felt dumb, they even knew of a few knights that had married people at the request of the royal family, to bring extra money and secure partnerships, and others who had given their lives to protect the kingdom and the royal family. Yes it wasn't something that happened often, but it happened.
On the ship Elia and Altan were fidgeting nervously from anxiety, Ars wanted to comfort them but he didn't know how. He could say that everything would be alright but if the pirates had reached the island before Ars and his soldiers, that probably would become a lie, and a big one at that, so he was lost on how to help them calm down.
Finally he decided on not saying anything.
After a while they managed to arrive on Kuen island and the sight of the island made Elia and Altan go from nervous to full blown panic. Near the village dock 3 pirate ships could be seen, 2 of them could be seen with some smoke coming out of their fronts. Sadly the houses in the village weren't any better, with most of them being lit in flames. As they approached, what had happened, had become clear.
The villagers knew that the pirates were coming so they prepared traps, and these traps managed to kill a few pirates and destroy the frontal part of the ships.
Once they disembarked, they could see a few dead villagers too, probably the traps had to be activated manually and they didn't manage to run from the rest of the pirates in time.
Ars then looked at his men and ordered.
"Split into smaller teams and try to find the pirates or any survivors."
"Yes, Sir!"
His soldiers quickly split up and started leaving in small groups, in different directions to find the pirates as quickly as possible. To make sure the moment they found them, they didn't need to come back to inform them, previously Ars had asked the blacksmiths on the island to make a small instrument that could be used to make very loud sounds exactly for events like this.
So now he only needed to wait for the sound and then all of them would converge in that direction.
After a few minutes of waiting, the sound was heard from the other side of the village, and everyone started to move there as quickly as they could.
When he arrived, some pirates were fighting with his men but were losing miserably, so Ars did not interfere and waited for the rest of his soldiers, while watching his men destroy the small number of pirates that had come to attack them.
Some of the pirates did try to escape but didn't get too far. After a few more minutes, all of his soldiers were here, and Ars finally started to move to destroy the rest of the pirates.
The pirates numbers should have been a good amount at the start, but with the traps from before and the small group from a few minutes ago, only about 110 pirates remained.
Apparently the islanders barricaded themselves in an old mine, and were hoping that the pirates would leave since they couldn't get them or that someone strong enough to fight back the pirates would arrive and save them.
Ars and his men quickly destroyed the pirate group, Ars was also watching for faces from bounties so he could cash in.
In the end he could only cash in about 17.000.000 berries, Ars complained a bit, with over 100 pirates he was expecting more pirate bounties, but apparently only a handful had bounties with the highest one being from the captain at 9.000.000 berries.
Elia on the other hand seeing all of the pirates dead rushed to the entrance of the mine, she could hear some people on the inside talking. She could feel the relief spreading through her body.
"What do you think happened?"
"i am not sure, but everything is silent now…"
"Should we go out?"
"What if it's a trap?"
"Good point, let's just wait a bit more."
Elia then said as loud as she could, while also trying not to scream.
"Blinkie are you there?"
Then from the inside she heard.
"Who are you? Why do you know Blinkie? And what do you want from her?"
Elia completely relaxed, since from the last question she could tell that Blinkie was fine.
"Tell her, Elia and Altan are here, she will know."
One of the people inside ordered someone else.
"Tell Blinkie to come, and to explain the situation to us. The person outside seems to know her, but why would they come here, she normally doesn't get that many visits, and this feels way too coincidental, it could be a trap."
Elia didn't know if she should be happy that someone was being so careful or annoyed that they didn't believe her. But Ars, who had approached in the meantime, looked at Elia and Altan who was by her side and commented.
"She probably didn't know if we would come or not, so she didn't say anything about her request for help from us."
After a few minutes, Blinkie had arrived, and for what Ars, Helia and Altan could hear, she started removing the blockade straight away without explaining.
"Hey!! Stop removing the barricade, if the people outside are pirates we are doomed!"
"Yeah! It could be a different pirate crew, or the pirates trying to deceive us."
Outside, the 3 of them could listen to more and more people talking and complaining about Blinkie actions. Then they heard a heavy voice talking directly to Blinkie.
"Are you sure you trust the people outside?"
"YES!!! Do you think I would be removing the barricade otherwise?"
She complained internally about their lack of trust, but then one of them said something with an angry voice.
"Well… It was your mother that brought them here, who knows if you helped or not…"
For a few seconds there was silence, both in and outside the mine. Some people in the mine hated Blinkie and her family simply because her mother was the one who caused this incident, which had led to the death of people dear to them.
But they also knew of Blinkie and her siblings' past, so they knew that in this village the people who hated that woman the most were actually her children.
So after listening to that, everyone went silent, they knew that Blinkie, her children and her brother Banii, had nothing to do with what happened. So now they all stood there in awkward silence not knowing how to proceed from here.
Finally, after almost a minute of silence, the previous heavy voice spoke again, and broke the situation by calmly ordering some of the people inside.
"Just help her remove the barricade…"
The previous angry voice tried to complain.
"But, what if…"
"Enough. Knowing your personality, you will never want to leave and we would all starve to death before you would be willing to do so."
"What's wrong with being a bit careful…"
After that, Ars, Helia and Altan could hear the barricade being removed at a faster pace.
Finally, after close to an hour of waiting, people started exiting the mines very carefully, except Blinkie, who literally rushed toward Elia and Altan, and hugged them tightly, she then murmured very lightly.
"Thank you for coming!"
They hugged her back and Elia murmured back.
"I will always try to help if I can."
An old man approached and with his heavy voice asked curiously.
"Thank you for the help. But this doesn't seem like a normal visit, so why are you here?"
Ars smiled, and replied calmly.
"This was no visit, Blinkie used the den den mushi to make a distress call to ask for back up from us, and here we are to help."
The old man looked at Blinkie and asked solemnly.
"Why didn't you say anything about having called for back up and that back up was on the way? If you did, the villagers who stayed to light the traps would have hidden together with us, without trying to fight back…"
She looked down with a sad expression and explained.
"I didn't know if they would come, or if they could come to help, I never managed to receive confirmation that help was on the way from their side, so i hoped but didn't want to raise everyone hopes up without being sure."
The old man instantly understood what she meant, she didn't want to risk giving false hope to everyone.
Ars then said.
"You got kinda lucky, if all of our ships had left or if we were uncontactable in the middle of the sea like sometimes we are, we wouldn't be able to come help."
Elia rolled her eyes at that and commented.
"With a small fleet of ships, I doubt that all of them would leave our port, unless it was an emergency. And even if you were on the seas along with Rook, as long as I had a ship and a few soldiers I would have come to help. And don't make fun of me and say it would be risky, I heard you say our kingdom soldiers are stronger than most pirates in the north blue, so it shouldn't be a problem."
Ars smiled, patted her head and explained.
"You're not totally correct, yes but what I said is that our soldiers are above the average pirate on the north blue, but i also said, 'most', meaning some pirate crews might be able to defeat them and sadly sometimes existences from the grand line might come. And in that case if it's a strong group you might die for nothing. In this case it would have been fine, but you shouldn't ever try that in normal circumstances."
Then he added.
"And yes while me and Rook can be considered strong in the first part of the grandline, most of our soldiers strength is considered normal or even weak in some cases, especially on the later parts of the first part of the grand line."
The old man was curious and asked.
"Can you explain it better? I got a bit confused…"
Ars nodded and clarified.
"You see in the grand line, the normal compasses are useless because the island's magnetic fields interfere with the Earth's natural magnetic field. So the first part of the grandline is mainly navigated by using a single point log pose or an eternal pose. An eternal pose will record a magnetic field and always point towards it, but a log pose will point to the closest unrecorded magnetic field, in short the closest island and once there it will record that magnetic field and seek the next new one. Thanks to that the best way for pirates to reach their desired destination, in this case sabaody archipelago, is to follow the log pose. From island to island and that slowly moves them away from the entrance of the grandline to sabaody archipelago."
Ars stooped to look at the old man to see if he had any questions, but since the old man didn't seem to have one he kept going.
"So I mentally divided the first part of the grand line into 3 parts. The first is the entrance zone, which is the place with most pirates in the grand line, but normally they are also the weakest ones there. The second would be the middle of it, in here it would be where you can find what most would describe as slightly stronger pirates, and the majority there should be considered the average pirate crew in the grand line. And finally the final part, normally it should be only the stronger crews with the addition of a few lucky crews that reach this point."
The old man nodded, he now understood what Ars meant before. The kingdom where they came from had soldiers who could be considered slightly strong, around the level of pirate crews in the first 2 parts but in the last one they would be at best, just below average.
The old man then remembered something, if there was a first half surely it would have a second, so he asked Ars about it.
"What about the second part?"
Ars simply said.
"That place is so bad, that natural catastrophes and some fights between powerful existences can shake the magnetic fields, sometimes even changing landscapes, so you can imagine that only the strong and the extremely lucky will survive there more than a few days…"