"Where's Jack?!"
"Where did that damn intern go?!"
Roger's roar made the pirates on deck, who were having a friendly physical negotiation over the ownership of a thigh bone, freeze.
All the pirates stopped, and over a hundred clear, foolish gazes collectively turned towards their Captain.
"Captain, Jack... wasn't he sent by you to be an undercover agent?"
Hector cautiously reminded him.
He felt that today's Captain had emotional fluctuations even greater than a Caribbean Sea hurricane.
"Undercover?"
Roger's chest heaved violently.
He felt his lungs were about to explode from his genius brain circuits.
"I sent a squishy character who could die on shore at any moment to be an undercover agent?"
"I was sending him to his damn death!"
Roger was heartbroken, beating his chest and stomping his feet.
He felt he had made a fatal strategic error.
A CEO not understanding the basic attributes of his employees—if this were written into a business case study, he would be nailed to the pillar of shame!
The pirates looked at each other.
Sent to his death?
Isn't being an undercover agent just going to one's death?
What's the problem with that?
They were increasingly unable to keep up with the Captain's thought process.
"Boss, please calm down."
The system's voice resounded faintly.
"According to this system's big data analysis of Jack Sparrow's past behavior, his survival ability is comparable to a cockroach; he won't die that easily."
"I'm not worried about whether he dies or not!"
Roger roared in his mind.
"I'm worried that if he dies, he's really dead! Then won't my investment be wasted?!"
An intern, though not valuable, was still a company asset!
Just as Roger was having a heart attack over his impending bankrupt "human resource investment," a strange cry suddenly came from the crow's nest.
"Captain! Up in the sky! There's a bird!"
"It looks like it's drunk!"
Everyone looked up.
They saw a drab gray seabird flying towards the explorer in an extremely flamboyant, wobbly, serpentine path.
It flew high and low, sometimes diving, sometimes circling, exactly like a drunkard who had just stumbled out of a tavern.
Finally, it seemed to have exhausted its last bit of strength, crashing head-first into the explorer's main mast.
Then, with a "splat," it fell onto the deck, its wings twitched twice, and it stopped moving.
"..."
On the deck, there was dead silence.
"Holy crap, is this some new type of suicide attack?"
Billy leaned over and kicked the bird with his leg bone.
"Don't move!" Roger reacted faster than anyone.
He rushed over in three steps, and on the bird's leg, he saw a small piece of paper haphazardly tied with straw rope.
It was a carrier pigeon!
Roger carefully untied the paper and unfolded it.
It was a crumpled tavern menu, torn from who-knows-where.
On it, written with burnt charcoal, were several lines of crooked, almost illegible scribbles.
"To my dearest Captain...!"
"Your intern, the great Captain Jack Sparrow, has successfully infiltrated the enemy!"
"The Commander-in-Chief here, that big oaf named Kikkawa Motoharu, is actually not bad, he just has a terrible tolerance for rum."
"After three cups of rum, he's now hugging my leg and calling me 'Jyakku-dono'!"
"We are now the best of brothers! Closer than blood brothers!"
"He's already drawn me the map of the silver mine and the location of the treasury... oh no, the silver vault. He also said he'd take me to a hot spring tomorrow, with seven or eight women to help scrub me!"
"Please instruct the next course of action!"
"Also, quickly send three hundred copper coins over; the sake here is too bland!"
"Your loyal, soon-to-be-regular, Jack."
Roger held the paper, which reeked of strong rum, and he was completely petrified.
It succeeded?
This good-for-nothing, with a single copper coin, single-handedly, actually managed to infiltrate?
And even became sworn brothers with the enemy Commander-in-Chief?
Roger clutched the rum-scented paper, speechless for a long time.
And he's even asking me for funds?
"Captain, are you alright?"
Hector asked with concern, seeing his Captain's ghost-struck expression.
"I'm fine."
Roger crumpled the paper into a ball and, without batting an eye, tucked it into his pocket.
"I'm just genuinely proud that our company has such excellent employees."
Anyway, Jack wasn't dead, which was great news.
A living intern was always more valuable than a pile of dead investments.
Roger's mood finally rebounded from rock bottom to the passing line.
But a new problem arose.
He looked at the skeletons on the deck, who, having no more excitement to watch, had started gathering again to figure out how to jump rope with their own spines, and his head throbbed.
Copper coins.
He needed massive amounts of copper coins.
Without upgrading these guys' bones from "calcium" to "black iron," he wouldn't dare let them go ashore and fight people.
If they were really turned to ash by a volley, they wouldn't even be able to piece themselves back together.
"Gibbs!" Roger shouted.
"Here, Captain! What are your orders!"
Gibbs, who was counting money, scrambled over.
"Check our assets; see how many copper coins we still have."
A few minutes later, Gibbs returned with the ledger, his face long.
"Reporting, Captain, last time we made those ten engineers regular staff, and you said we upgraded the Giant Octopus again, it used up all our copper coin reserves."
"Now, there's not a single copper coin in our account."
"..."
------------------------
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