Sadly what Nick saw didn't make him feel relieved at all. Captives were gathered in a couple of cargo rooms and thrown in large cages that were evidently constructed in a rush, and lived like in a pig stall. For some reason pirates found it easier to move the silk cargo into cabins and keep the prisoners here.
There were very few things Nick could do without raising any suspicion from both sides and unfortunately he had to play the traitor's role for that. The smartest captives, including his friends, immediately realized his intentions and didn't have any reactions, but some others were throwing angry glares, cursing him and even tried to spit on him.
When the first person spat, Nick kicked him on the butt and said with a smirk, "Let's see if you can continue like this for the next thirty days."
Then he went over to the girls, and to the great entertainment for the escorting pirates grabbed Kate by her tit with his right hand.
"Slap me." He whispered.
Even though she was taken aback by the act of lechery, Kate generously slapped him to what Nick pushed her to the ground and, while obstructing the view from pirates with his torso, pretended to hit her while slipping two jars of healing paste under her dress.
"You bitch! Let's see how your wounds will look after this!" It was the only clue he could give her, but she was a smart girl and should understand that the paste was for her uncle's injuries.
Suddenly Steven jumped towards him as to protect the poor girl, but only found a sword of the accompanying pirate at his throat. Nick aggressively stepped towards his friend and positioned himself only ten centimeters away.
"What is it, punk? Not so bossy anymore, huh?" Nick said while with his left hand put a bottle of healing elixir in Steven's right hand. Of course, this transfer was once more blocked from the eyes of the pirates by their bodies,"It's easy to be an arrogant prick in Aurora, but not here, hehe! Now try to drink some water and pretend it's a heavenly wine, hahaha!"
'Alright, Steven definitely understood what to do. I need to help him fix his shoulder as soon as possible. Also we need Clayton back on feet, but that will be hard.' Nick quickly analyzed.
"You scums will get water few times a day and food once every two days! I'll personally come and see you suffer, you arrogant motherf*ckers!" Nick cursed while throwing dried rations to his desperate friends.
'Ok, now they at least know it will be a thirty day trip and I'm able to come once every two days. If we are lucky, I can provide them with some more help.' He thought.
Then he proceeded to curse the other captives and distribute food to them. Nick knew few of the influential and smarter merchants, so he tried to pass on some information to them as well. When he was done with this tiring duty, for some reason he felt good despite the many curses and angry looks he got from the most prisoners. He had seen his friends and, despite the terrible conditions, he felt there was still hope.
During the periods when king White was absent, Nick could start to think of ways to deal with the situation they were in. The first idea he had was to feed narcotics to the pirates until they overdose or loose sense of reality. But that wouldn't work at all, because he couldn't poison all pirates at the same time. Then, while repeatedly checking his wristband, he found the sack from the grand elder's room with the hallucinogens the old freak fed to his victims. Multiple ideas sprung to his mind, like what if both narcotics were fed at the same time, or one after another, or what will happen if a different poison was added.
This way wrecking his brains for the next two days he finally got an idea. He needed to feed elder Jan's narcotics in a large dose to every pirate, but delay the trigger effect. If he could control the trigger time for already ingested poison, he could solve the situation in one go. Unfortunately his hands were tied for now and it could only be done at a later date.
Nick chose to stick with the Holy Order's narcotics for two reason, first – he needed a substance that could act as hallucinogen in case it wasn't lethal and second – he didn't have any other substance in large quantities. The only thing left was to perform experiments to find the best way to apply his idea. If few pirates had to die for this, the world might even thank him.
Energized with the new found inspiration he went down to the cargo decks and fed captives for the second time. As the pirates grew used to him, Nick got more free space as well.
"How many Qi masters alive?" He whispered to Steven while passing rations.
"None." His friend shook his head while looking down.
'F*ck! No wonder so few people are left. They killed off all the threats and Clayton is alive only because he might die any moment!' Nick's elevated mood dropped below the sea level.
"Nestri." He whispered to Conny who instantly got stunned.
"If he wakes up, he has to pretend to be unconscious again or he'll die!" Nick pretended to perform more lecherous moves while whispered to Kate only to get slapped again. The nearby pirates laughed, but Nick pretended to kick her in the stomach.
The next days were all almost the same. Nick tried to use his imagination as much as he could to keep king White excited about his food at the same time entertaining him with chatter. Then, while giving out the rations to the captives, he managed to slip over to his friends few healing products or sometimes plain healing herbs.
Once, when he saw the lustful gazes of the guarding pirates towards the princesses and Kate, he gave to the girls a herb they could chew on and their faces would swell up and become ugly or at least look sickly. The pirates had already raped several of the other female passengers and, while Nick couldn't save everyone, he could at least try to save his friends. Thus the girls kept a piece of that herb in mouths while their ugly faces disgusted the pirates and they left them alone. There was no doctor on board to not speak of an alchemist, therefore no one could guess what illness they had contracted.
The lack of a doctor started to become lethal for captives and, in some rare occasions, even for pirates. Captives started dying because of the lack of food, water and basic hygiene. Few who were injured more heavily died first, couple of the raped women bit their tongues and died soon after.
The first deaths of pirates were also caused by the previous injuries. But few days later one pirate went crazy, started to sing, dance, then scratched himself while laughing till he bled all over and in the end jumped over board. When captain got the report on this, he only shrugged and ignored. There was nothing he could do.
The next weird pirate casualty was when one of the ex-officers suddenly got high fewer, spasmed all night while bleeding through all orifices and then died in the early morning. These two events didn't look in any way related, therefore nobody noticed this one as well.
Only few days later when an absolutely healthy pirate suddenly marched on to the bridge, pulled out his sword and demonstratively killed himself, captain got suspicious. It was nothing out of the ordinary for someone to go crazy at the sea, even for seasoned sailors. The amount of inner stress they went through while being unable to leave the ship for months piled up and these pirates experienced hate of their victims when killing, robbing and raping on regular basis as well. Plus the bad food and cheap alcohol was a simple bonus to their already unstable minds. Any of these reasons could drive a person crazy, but they experienced them all at the same time, thus when someone lost his mind, others usually didn't care.
Except this time the captain got suspicious. They had sailed only over ten days and the mental exhaustion shouldn't have kicked in yet. In addition, he knew everyone of these boys for a long time, especially the latest casualty, who was one of his trusted subordinates whom he sent to infiltrate the Sun kingdom over ten years ago. He had handpicked people for this operation and planned it for months and some other things also didn't really make sense. For example, the one who committed the suicide was a Qi master! It was extremely unusual for Qi masters to have mental problems and the few rare cases that happened were usually to senile old men.
Thus king White ordered a full search on "Queen Elizabeth" and it continued for four whole days while all the off duty pirates took part in it. Pirates searched every nook and cranny on the ship, checked even every seam on prisoners and even themselves but didn't find anything besides some stashed valuables. Nick was searched as well and even his both wristbands were frisked, but to his big relief no suspicions were raised. In fact, he was not much worried for himself, but for his friends who had healing pastes and elixirs on them, but for some reason pirates didn't find those. Apparently girls managed to find a good hiding spot below the deck planks.
Since nothing was found, captain decided to drop the subject for now. It was three days later when two pirates at the same time went berserk and started fighting between themselves with their swords drawn and eyes red. Similar to any other sword fight, it ended quickly and one of the pirates fell beheaded while the other danced happily around the corpse singing a song of him killing an evil demon. The fight begun and ended so fast that no one could intervene and stop them. The 'lucky' winner few minutes later started to bleed through his eyes, ears and nostrils, and then died.
It was not out of ordinary for pirates to duel to death, but usually quarrels were settled after they returned to the base. Also duels happened only with the captain's permission and at least one officer present. Needless to say no one would fight his best friend like it happened now and then die by himself just like that.
This time king White got serious and even called an officer meeting which lasted for several hours. After this meeting there were several suspects, one of them being Nick. His small backpack that was filled with spices was carefully examined, all of the spices were fed to three different captives and their reaction was carefully monitored. In the end, naturally, nothing suspicious was found.
Most of the pirates came to conclusion that they have somehow angered the sea gods, some tried to pay tributes by throwing their valuables in the sea or pouring alcohol over board and for the next six days it seemed to work so everyone calmed down a little.
One of the people who couldn't relax was King White. He was over fifty years old and had seen a lot in his life. And when his Qi master's intuition told him that there was someone who kept playing them, he chose to trust his gut.
Nick was the only black sheep on board and was monitored twenty four hours a day, mostly by the pirate king himself. But still, as the pirate king saw it, it would be an easy way out to simply kill this kid and throw the body overboard, but all the evidence and the common sense dictated that he, despite being a bit arrogant and boastful, was just an extremely good cook without even being a Qi practitioner.
To check Nick's Qi abilities captain even injured him and saw how the wound on his shoulder got worse by day and even became infected. Nick, on the other hand, pretended to be in a lot of discomfort and while complaining about the unfair treatment, he stealthily rubbed some herb powder which increased the inflammation of the wound. For any Qi practitioner who had suffered a small injury, no to speak of a Qi master, it was normal to be able to heal a light wound at least partially even by not doing anything, thus it became obvious that Nick couldn't practice Qi.
In the end the captain still gave him a healing paste to treat his wound, because it would be a shame to loose his cook in case the boy really was innocent. Of course, all of this made Nick smirk to himself as the captain's charade was too easy to see through.